April 28, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
Grafted to the Vine
John 15:1-8
Rev. Loren McGrail
Holmdel Community UCC
April 28,2024
At Easter, even the dirt itself is rebirthed. And from this fertile ground,
vines and branches grow — flavored with the spirit.
There we make a habitation. God abides here. With us. And we abide in a holy habitation.
We are the terroir of the sacred.
Vines and abodes invite us to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Diana Butler Bass
I learned about vines and branches while living in Palestine, Occupied East Jerusalem. For five years I lived in a cottage with a small garden. I had a garden with three kumquat trees, one lemon, and one askidinya tree, and a ‘magic tree’ that produced both oranges and kumquats. I also had three olive trees, two baby fig trees, and a grape vine. In addition, alongside the walk to the front door, I had gigantic orange/red geraniums that looked like burning bushes when in bloom. What I lacked with light inside---no windows in the salon because I lived next to a UN office and they were scared of sniper attacks, was made up by having this verdant secret garden always brimming with life.
The landlord’s mother was in charge of maintaining the garden. She spoke no English and my Arabic remained elementary, but we managed to take care of it with smiles and lots of tea and laughter. She taught me how to water, when, and how much. We often watered at dusk or at dawn before the sun rose. She also taught me how to talk and sing to the plants so they would grow. Every plant was Habibi or Habiti. All were dear.
But there was one thing she did that I did not understand. One day I came home from work and found she had cut back most of the geranium bushes. When I saw them, I wept. Her son, my landlord, brought his mother to explain the need to cut them so they could grow stronger. I was from New York. I knew nothing about pruning. She had pruned them back so they would fill out and not be so thin and tall. I was shocked that such a drastic measure could lead to more growth but indeed it did.
Another day, she put in a trellis for the grapevines to crawl up explaining that without it, the branches would not be able to hold the fruit and the grapes would fall to the ground and be eaten by the creatures. We are the branches but who is the trellis? The Holy Spirit?
One early spring day I took her to the ‘magic tree’ and managed to ask how was it that two different kinds of fruit came from one tree. She got her son to explain the process of grafting two species together so that the two could feed each other and thus be stronger. I was transfixed by what I was learning and scrawled down what I was hearing like they were notes for how to live a better life.
1.) Pruning---sometimes you must trim back so something can grow fuller. What did I need to prune back?
2.) Support structures are sometimes necessary for the plant that has vines to crawl up. Who or what were the trellises in my life that helped me to grow and bear fruit? Who was I a trellis for?
3.) Grafting---what things might be brought together to strengthen growth for both. Did my work at the YWCA helping them to grow into an organization that could continue to be of support to the Palestinian community? Was I temporarily grafted onto them and they onto me? How is being grafted together different or the same as being branches on a vine?
Dear Ones, all of this has informed how I now come to this well-loved text this morning. Jesus makes seven “I am” statements in John’s Gospel, each evokes the name of God in Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” This week’s passage---“I am the vine” is the seventh and last statement.
In John the language “I am the vine; you are the branches” is a way of saying that the revelation that God made through Jesus (the vine) will continue out to the Johannine community (the branches and the fruit). The vine and the branches abide in each other; they indwell together. In other words, don’t worry, we’ll be together; your life and all its fruit will testify to our ongoing relationship. “I will not leave you alone.” Jesus abides in God, and we abide in Jesus, as deeply and organically as a branch is to a vine. I like the way Eugene Peterson from the Message paraphrases this passage: Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you cannot bear fruits unless you are joined with me.
Dear Ones, this is the heart of what it means to be a Christian, to be in an intimate relationship with Christ and each other, the other branches. The mark of a faithful community then in not who are the members, the ones who come to church, or believe in doctrines, or even the sacraments, but those who love each other. Those who love each other will bear fruit. Listen to Catherine of Siena[1] describe this relationship on being engrafted onto the vine:
You, then, are my workers. You have come from me, the supreme eternal gardener, and I have engrafted you onto the vine by making myself one with you. Keep in mind that each of you has your own vineyard. But everyone is joined to the neighbor’s vineyards without any dividing lines. They are so joined together, in fact, that you cannot do good or evil for yourself without doing the same for your neighbors.
Mutual engraphing would look like a buzzing, blooming, fruitful garden. Pruning helps our garden grow and thrive. Trellises hold things up so that nothing is lost.
Dear Ones, Holmdel Community UCC will be looking at its upcoming budget for the next year. Keep in mind the importance of pruning or cutting back in order for something to grow and keep the faith in the promise that Jesus is our vine, and we, his branches. Remembering the wisdom and promise in this passage will be important in the years to come as you move forward in search of a new pastor who will come to grow your garden.
Let’s return to the vineyard before ending with one final insight. Each of us has our own vineyard but everyone is joined to the neighbor’s vineyard without any dividing lines. We cannot do good or evil for ourselves without doing the same for our neighbors. We are all connected in what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together in a single garment of destiny. In injustice to one is an injustice to all.” This network of mutuality means that what happens in someone else’s vineyard matters. Cornell West says, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Dear Ones, being identified as a Christian, a branch of the vine, also means becoming the fruit for another’s hunger and thirst as the Poet Pablo Neruda says: There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There was grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Dear Ones, we are commanded to become fruitful so we can become nourishment and refreshment for each other, so that we may bear the fruit of love for one another. Go forth then and know that pruning and grafting are part of how God dwells within us.
[1] Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) Dialogue, The Vines That Are Tended by the Divine Gardener (quoted from Mystics Visionaries and Prophets, Shawn Madigan, CSJ, editor)