Easter 5 – 28th April 2024 (Christ Church St. Lucia)
Readings: Acts 8: 26-40; Psalm 22:26-32; 1 John 4: 7-21; John 15:1-8
When Libbie and I have accepted an invitation to dinner at someone’s home, we like to take a bottle of appropriately labelled wine. Last year, for example, we visited an old friend in Sydney who was in the Navy when I was in the Army, so we took a bottle with a nautical label. So when we’re invited by fellow clergy, or by people we’ve met during our ministries, whether parishioners or otherwise, we like to take a bottle of ecclesiastically labelled wine. And it doesn’t take too long to find some. A favourite of ours is Grant Burge Holy Trinity, but on a quick trip to the bottle shop the other day – solely for the purposes of research you understand – I noted the following: St. Hallet Sacred Ground and also St. Hallet Faith Shiraz, Wirra Wirra Church Block, Two Churches The Preacher Chardonnay, or Chapel Hill The Vicar. Or if you want to go a bit more upmarket there’s Glaetzer’s The Bishop Shiraz. If you’re in a biblical frame of mind you could buy a bottle of Bryan and Harold’s Chapter and Verse. Online you could go for some Langton’s Save our Souls, or if you have $950 to spare (who does?), a bottle of Henschke’s 2018 Hill of Grace. And when you’ve worked your way through that list, maybe it’d be time to open a bottle of Sobriety Society (they have both whites and reds) and advertise their wines as zero-alcohol wine that tastes like heaven and won’t leave you feeling like hell.
All jokes aside, the links between faith and wine reach way back – for centuries in the monastic tradition, wine was made. Of course the links are much wider and deeper than that – what we do here this morning is inextricably linked with the vine, and even deeper, the links are grounded in the scriptures and in the life of faith of God’s people of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The vine is one of the most powerful biblical images for God’s relationship with the people. Israel is the vine “brought out of Egypt,” and a choice vine planted by God[1] She is also a vineyard planted and tended by God.[2] Some of the parables of Jesus revolve around vineyards, and those employed there, like the vineyard owner who gets vineyard workers from the local village and causes uproar among those hired first when those hired last get exactly the same pay.[3] So when Jesus takes the image of the vine, it’s not something coincidental, or something that’s just come to him, the image of the vine and the vineyard was deeply embedded in the spiritual life of the people. Jesus builds on this image by calling himself the “true” vine and his Father the vine grower. It’s a profound image, since the vine and the branches (unlike a tree trunk and the limbs) are often virtually indistinguishable, and there is a mutual interchange of life between them. It was also a dangerous image for Jesus to use because in St. John’s Gospel the significant point of conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees was his claim that he and the Father were one.[4]
This point of ‘one-ness” of the Father and the Son is characterized in John 15 by one of the most distinctive theological concepts of the Gospel of St. John; that of “abiding” (other translations might say “remain,” or “stay”). “Abiding” appears over 40 times in the Gospel, and if you go home and read today’s Gospel again, you might take note of how often the word “abide” appears. In four verses it appears 8 times. It almost jumps off the page. One commentator calls it the “central verb” of the Gospel. Another translates it slightly differently as “live”. “Abide in me as I abide in you” – or “Live in me as I live in you.” John really wants to emphasize this closeness. And when we turn to the passage from the First Letter of John this morning, there it is again – another 6 times. Characteristic of John is that terms from daily life—such as light, a good shepherd, the door of a sheepfold, bread—take on profound symbolic meanings, which invite readers constantly to ponder their depth. Jesus uses them in his “I am” statements in St. John’s Gospel. “Abide” is another. Early in the Gospel, when Jesus asks two of John the Baptist’s disciples, “What do you seek,” they counter with “Where are you staying?”[5] and then stay with him. People brought to Jesus by the Samaritan woman ask him to stay with them, and he remains with them for two days.[6] Discipleship in John begins with brief “abiding” with Jesus, walks the walk of his life and culminates in the symbol of the branches abiding in the vine.
How do we abide in God? He is the very source and being of our life – some say that the best grapes grow close to the centre of the vine – there they are well supplied with all the nutrients they need and sheltered from harmful conditions. They key to our own life and our life together as a faith community depends on our abiding in God. And to me, abiding has a sense of spending time. If you abide with someone, it’s surely more than a passing acquaintance. Life gets so busy these days – both for those who are in paid employment and those who aren’t. You know the saying – if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. So I think there’s a very real sense in which we’re being invited to step aside from that busyness and to spend time abiding with God – the source of our life. There are all sorts of ways in which we can do it – what we do here in worship is of course important. But I think we’re being encouraged in the reading to do more than that – to foster a deep intimate relationship with God – as close and as intertwined as the vine and the branches. How much time do we set aside for prayer, or just sitting quietly with God, or reading a good spiritual or devotional book, or using the prayer book for the daily offices, or following some structured reading of the scriptures with a good guide to help us understand and reflect on them – the Bible Reading Fellowship notes for example. All ways in which we can help ourselves to abide in God and to nourish our souls.
And the purpose of doing all of that is not just for its own sake – as satisfying and as nourishing as that may be. The purpose of it all is bearing fruit – the other main theme in the passage this morning. What kind of fruit? For that I think we turn to John’s letter and his reflection on God’s love for us and our love for one another. God is love, he writes, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. It’s a bit circular – it begins with God who loved us, so our response is one of love, and the fruit of abiding in God is that we try to imitate God’s love in our daily lives. Earlier John writes “Whoever says I abide in him ought to walk just as he walked.”[7] It’s a tall order. Our lives are lived on two planes – love for God and love for one another. The words of the chorus “We are one in the Spirit” include these “Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
And living in love for God and for one another has two streams, the personal and the communal – it’s not just you or I who are urged to abide in God and bear fruit, but it’s the community – and in this instance I believe it’s the faith community. How do we graft them together, the personal and the communal? The Risen Christ in John's Gospel is warning his followers in every age and every setting not to go it alone, trusting in their own strength. On their own they would be cut off from their life source. They would bear no fruit. This is really good news for us, no matter how much it flies in the face of everything we're told about success and measuring up. It's not up to us to dig deep down inside and make happen what needs to happen. If we stay close to Jesus, we have a source for all the grace and strength we need in our lives. The result will be fruit that blesses the world and reveals us as the followers of Jesus, a community of love. Together, abiding in Jesus, staying close to the centre of the vine, we are so much more powerful than any of us can be on our own.
[1] Psalm. 80:8; Jeremiah. 2:21
[2] Isaiah. 5:1-7; 27:3.
[3] Matthew 19:26-20:6
[4] John 10:30
[5] John 1:38
[6] John 4:40
[7] 1 John 2:6