Remain

The message of John 15, this coming Sunday’s gospel reading, is a call to a culture longing for connection.

Jesus tells his disciples that he is the true vine and that God the Father is the vine grower. Jesus is not just “a vine,” he is the true vine. This reminds his followers that the world is full of false vines—weeds and webs that are not grown or nurtured by God. These false vines are unhealthy relationships. They are dependencies and addictions: to pleasure or to pornography, to people-pleasing or to paychecks, to politics or to princes.

These things are vying for our attention, our connection. But God is His goodness and mercy prunes us of these false vines, of measly or meandering twigs, removing my dead leaves and any rotting fruit. God prunes His vine, the Body of Christ, by trimming, cutting, removing the excess, the ugly, the scary, the bunched-up-branchy-baggage.

This does not mean that God is a vine hater or destroyer! No! God is the vine grower. Everything the gardener does he does so that we may be fruitful, so that we may grow as the vine intends us to grow—so that we may bear fruit, that we may live into our fullest vocation of branches on the vine, as true children of God. 

The word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ, prunes us. It works within us in the silence of our hearts. The branches don’t cry out: “I’m growing, I’m growing.” The growth happens in the stillness and silence. The Spirit stirs, and we, the branches, stretch out in silent yawns. Just as roots, a stem bursts, forth from a shattering seed in the shadows of the earth, so too do we develop and grow in the darkness and pain of this pruning process. Under the soil, under the cover of the earth, our soul stirs when we hear the Truth of Jesus, the Word of God, proclaimed.

This is the pruning process…and at times, it hurts. It really, really hurts. But it helps... Pruning helped me once I realized that Donald Trump was elected president. I recognized how I implicitly was expecting life, creative energy, and goodness to flow forth from the political sphere. Not that this is impossible (although it certainly may seem so now), but expecting and seeking the peace of Christ, the Kingdom of God, to flow forth from the political world is foolishness… no president, no politician can fulfill any—any—of the encoded desires written upon our persons. This is a sacred space reserved for Jesus—for the true vine, from whom and for whom we must live. Although anger, fear, anxiety, were all normal responses from me, the extent to which these feelings controlled, influenced, and affected me made me realize that I had to be pruned. I was reminded of who is in control, even as things may have seemed out of control. This was a call to a deeper connection, a closer trust in the one from whom all Life does indeed flow. 

But this passage isn’t about being pruned. Jesus doesn’t tell His disciples to be pruned. Although pruning is an essential aspect of discipleship, His message cuts deeper. Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to “be pruned!” nor does he tell them to “bear fruit!” He only gives them one command in this passage from John 15:1-8…

He tells us to remain.

That’s it: simply remain.

Remain in me, Abide in me

Jesus wants us to remain: “Remain in me as I remain in you.”

This is counter-cultural. Jesus tells us to rest in Him. He tells us to hold on to Him. He reminds us not to look out for the results, for the fruits of our labors, but he simply tells us to cling more closely to Him, to hold onto the vine, to seek the life that is necessary in order for us to even ever dream of bearing fruit that will remain.

I used to see God, the vine grower, as someone who just wanted to prune me: to take this away, to stop my bad habits and to enforce some commandments. Other times, I have imagined God as a driving task-master who asks the impossible: to bear fruit—to go and sell everything I have, to be poor in spirit, to be slapped on one cheek and give the other!

But God does not invite us into usury or slavery. God invites us into a relationship, a personal relationship where, yes, we will be pruned and where we will have the responsibility to do good works and bear fruit; but most importantly, he invites us into a relationship where we can get to know Him, where we can remain in Him, in Jesus, the True Vine, our true connection and lifelines to the Father.

As disciples, we are responsible for remaining; we must live like Mary, the Mother of God: we must remain in Christ as Christ dwells in us. We may not physically bear the Son of God, but spiritually, you better bet your button that we are called to give life to Christ in the world. In order to bear fruit, in order to bear Jesus, we must work to stay, to abide, to dwell, to remain: to sit with Christ in stillness and silence and savor the love of the vine grower channeled and alive in the vine—alive in us in prayer, in scripture, in the sacraments.

As branches, as disciples we, like Mary, can decide if we want to remain. We can choose to say, “Let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Or we can be like Satan, and respond with a non serviam: I will not serve.

We can easily pretend that we are not a branch; we can identify ourselves as independent free thinking left and right leaning thrill seekers only desiring to be cut off, to be removed. And if we want this, we will be cut off; if we want to leave, we can will to leave the vine. The sayings of Christ are difficult, they are hard—to take and eat His flesh: these feelings are not new! “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” But like, Peter, the apostolic branch from which our branches grow and flourish, we have the chance, the choice, to abide, to remain and say: “Master to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (cf. John 6).

The words of eternal life are meant to be shocking; Jesus’s message is jarring because it challenges all of those false vines from which we seek our very livelihood. This marks the beginning of the pruning, where we are challenged to stop looking and worrying about the results and to finally begin trusting in Jesus, clinging to Christ, surrendering. To be served, or to be the handmaiden, the foot solider of the Lord—the choice is ours. 

And this choice is not an intellectual decision! No...no, it is a choice of the heart; a decision that chooses between persons: between Jesus, the living God, a Person who is Love, or more often than not, myself. Christianity is personal, it is fully human: in its purest form, it is a relationship:

Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. 

Where does Jesus dwell?

Jesus remains in the Eucharist in every Catholic Church (and even in some Methodist chapels, wink-wink Duke Chapel); remain in Him. He dwells in His word, which is living and effective; remain in Him.  He dwells in us, sitting, waiting, longing to be tapped into, touched, recognized—loved; remain in Him.

The true vine is growing—whether or not we cling to the vine, it flourishes. Even as the winds buffet it, the false vines choke it, the ground quakes beneath it—the vine grower will do everything to keep His vine, His fruit, from fading, from falling, from failing. That is unending, unfading love; this protection, this intention, it is eternal life. 

 

(from:https://forward.com/food/310735/fruit-of-the-vine/)