5
Easter B May 6, 2012
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8
What do you think about the metaphors found in
the Gospel of John? Last week, we read
that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and that we are sheep.
And this week we get bumped down in metaphors
from the animal and human kingdom into the plant kingdom.
This week Jesus is the Vine and we are
branches.
Sheep and branches; how are the metaphors of
the Gospel of John working for you? What
we learn about metaphors is that they cannot represent complete one to one correspondence, they have
their limitation and so one has to simply get the insights and move on.
There is something wonderful about nature
metaphors. They leave lots of room for
probabilities and they honor organic processes in life. Sometime all we can do is to represent the
mystery of the unknowable with a nature metaphor.
The discourse on the Vine and the branches
include the age old subject matter of nature versus nurture or nature and
nurture.
What is the telling factor in have a great
yield in agriculture? Is it the hybrid
of seed or plant or is it the environment and the type of environmental
controls performed by the gardener? And
what about unpredictable timing of climatic events such as rain, storms, wind,
drought or insect or other animal pests?
A gardener, a vine grower will try to exert
controls and factor in responses to probable ranges of occurrences in order to
maximize the yield of the crop. The goal
is the get as much fruit as possible, but just not quantity of fruit, quality
fruit as well.
The Vine and branch metaphor is descriptive
of the organic process in application to the life of human behaviors. What is the goal for human behavior? What are the metrics of success in human
behavior? Different vocations have
different metrics of success.
The Gospel of John is a book dedicated to
spiritual transformation and so the excellent fruit desired in the spiritual
life are the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness,
goodness, meekness, self-control and faith.
We have in this model of spiritual life some
insights for how we deal with all of the things over which we had no
choice. We did not choose our parents,
nor our genetic natures. We did not choose
the communities where we were raised. We
had very little control over many aspects of the environment of our lives. We were "thrown" into life
situations. We depended upon mentors to
give us our bearing within the situations within which we were "thrown." We could not choose all of our mentors or
peers. We did not always have perfect or
even adequate mentors or peers. And we
may have had excellent mentors or peers but who were too fearful to let us
learn from our own mistakes.
The Vine and Branch metaphor provides us some
insights about understanding our lives in a way that we can take a degree of
authorial action, no matter how many things in our lives that we did not have
an initial choice about.
The secret of the Vine and Branch discourse
is the insight about finding within ourselves a very deep connectedness with
the Risen Christ. Christ is the Vine and
we are the branches. The sap of the Holy
Spirit is the inner life that can course through us to energize our lives.
The Vine and Branch discourse holds us to a
very high standard. You and I are
required to find a deep Essential Spirit present within our lives which helps
us to adopt and integrate all of the contingent and unpredictable things which
happen to us.
Something bad happen to us? Some serious loss? Some sense of personal impairment, lack or
short-coming? How can you and I come to
an empowered view of our lives when we know that we are not exempt from a wide
range of conditions in our lives? How
can we come to view the things which happen to us as merely the pruning actions
of God so that we might be brought to better quality of life performance? Pruning implies the pain of loss and cutting
and discarding. It takes lots of time
and subsequent exercise in faith to integrate our experiences of pain, lack and
loss. Sometimes we can only know the
value of pruning after there is quality of fruit. We thin our gardens and we prune our trees
even though it seems destructive to cut the branches. Yet we know the outcome of effective pruning.
The insight of the occurrences over which we
have no control is that we can come in our lives of faith to interpret them as
providential pruning for future success.
How many of us have had events which seemed like profound loss and
failure when they occurred but later we have been able to look back and see
that we have learned and integrated the events to excellence in the
transformation of our lives. I don't
think that we go back and wish that bad things happened to us; we don't go back
and say God made them happen; all we do with subsequent faith is to say, since
it did happen, I did not give up and I have come to better life performance
because of it.
How can we come to integrate everything in
our life through faith? I think we have
to have an experience of a quality of life beyond our nature or our
nurture. As we develop our natures, our
gifts and natural abilities in interaction with our nurturing environments, we
need something greater than our natural gifts or the negative or positive
aspects of our environments. We know
there are people who have ideal supportive environment who end up being really
poor life performers. We know that there
are people who are challenged by nature and by their environments who end up
with seeming heroic outcomes. What is
the secret to dancing well with all of the probabilities in our lives that make
up our nature and our environments?
I believe the secret is finding the
"God-aspect" of our nature, the deep place within us which is the
intersection with the image God in our
life. It is Holy Spirit life; it is the
Risen Christ life, it is the experience of knowing we have a Spiritual nature
beyond our human nature which enables us to resist the over-determination of
our human nature and the unhelpful influences within our environment.
Let us ask ourselves what are a factors which
inform our human natures today and the imprint which we have received in our
environments of nurture? In the midst of
all of the probabilities of our lives, have we been able to find this inner sap
of a deeper life which has given us the ability to produce the good fruit of
excellent life performance?
Well,
not yet, because we are still called to
even better life performance.
But let us get over our life pity
parties. Woe is me, I'm not 7 foot and I
can't play center in the NBA. Woe is me. I was born at the wrong place in the wrong
time to the wrong people. I did not have
the adequate opportunities in life to excel.
Woe is me, I was born as the wrong person to live with the wrong
people. We can really get into self-pity
by viewing our lives as having been over-determined by things that we did not
have choice or control over.
How do we get over this pity? By the discovery of our deep, deep identity
with Nature of God's Presence within us as the Holy Spirit. And then from the energy of the Spirit we
forgive the world and all in it for not being omni-competent to our needs and
we arise to reinterpret our seeming pitiful history with new insights of the
providence of faith, because we came to discover our true identities as sons
and daughters of God.
Once we discover the determining power of
being sons and daughters of God, our standards of success and excellence will
change. We may no longer regard being
wealthy to be the highest standard of success, we may cherish just having a
contented peaceful and gentle heart able to sleep restfully at night. We may savor friendships, joys, beauty and
generosity as defining truly successful and fruitful lives.
The Vine and Branch metaphor insight is an
invitation for each us to find the deep life of God's Spirit coursing within us
and when that happens we will find that we will redefine success in life as
love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness and faith.
And to
manifest these fruitful virtues is truly the successful life. Amen.
