Sermon May 17 John 15:1-16

As we wind down the Easter readings, we hear that Easter life is one of love and connection. After all, love requires connection. I love this passage because it is all about living connections. Years ago, I read a piece by Sellars called the web and tree. Mostly he spoke of the interplay of all the connections in the web and the relative simplicity of the design of the tree. We live in a dense web of connections: air routes, highways, tracks, the pipeline that has been constructed forever, it seems, through the fields that will supply natural gas to the East. I don’t know much about grape growing, but I do notice that the wineries seem to prune them vigorously. They want as much energy as possible for the fruit, not growth that will compete for the limited stores of nutrients. Judging from my hikes in the Napa Valley, I saw grape vines don’t require very good soil either, but still produce wonderful fruit.

I’m attracted to this image of the vine in that the branches are connected to each other through the vine. I don’t think we can find any distinctions between the various branches of the vine. When I think of a vine, I think of a lush tangle of growth and fruit. It’s hard to tell an individual branch amidst the weaving of growth.

From an early age we are trained to be independent, to make it on our own. The truth is that when we get disconnected from each other and from God, we get disconnected to our own selves. When a prayer goes unanswered, we may feel that God is disconnected from us. A lost friendship does diminish the quality of our lives. When we get cut off from each other, we lose the connection that allows fellow feeling. Sadly, some relationships do wither on the vine. Poisons threaten the branches that prevent the nutrients from reaching them

Jesus announces that we are more than disciples, but friends. Not only that, the very love that flows from God to Jesus flows through the vine to every one of us. When we act as if we are on our own, we deprive ourselves of the life-giving energy of the true vine. In the end, the fruit of the vine is one of abundance and quality. It is also an image of life, for more fruit to be produced. In the same way, we are all connected through the true vine to the health and well-being of each other.

We know that distance does not have to undercut connection. Communication builds up the strength of our relationships. We speak of a wired, or better, wireless world for connection. When I was in Bloomington, I was struck by so many of the students walking about with cell phones pressed to their ears. My daughter’s phone has one type of ring for calls and another for a mysterious, to me, form of communication called texting. Something called Twitter allows folks to shoot about short thought bubbles to each other. We can directly use some of the same notions for prayer life. I guess we could call short prayers as tweets. I love the idea of keeping our spiritual cell phones close to our ears to hear what message God may well be sending us. Cut off from the vine, we may allow ourselves to wither away from it.

Easter life is life that pulses with new groth and abundant living. Easter life is a life of connection to the source of our very being, a constant transmission of life-giving energy to each one of us. We are not made to wither on the vine, but to flourish.

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