Be the branches
John 15: 1-8
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 28, 2024
After hearing that passage, I wouldn’t blame you if you reacted like this:
What’s that, Jesus? Sounds like you said something along the lines of “My way or the highway”: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers.” Didn’t you say something similar in Matthew, “Whoever is not with me is against me”? Which really makes the hair rise on the back of our necks because White Christian nationalists take words like that and use them like weapons. Why would you sound like that on the last night with your disciples? You washed their feet, you ate with them, you comforted them and now this? What’s going on here?
In John’s gospel, Jesus uses a lot of “I am” statements, harkening back to Exodus and God’s declaration to Moses, “I am who I am”. “I will be what I will be”. I am the bread, I am the gate or door, I am the good shepherd, I am the vine, I am the way, the truth, and the life. John, and most likely his community as well, see Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and so John uses imagery from the Hebrew scriptures to replace Israel’s hope for a messiah with the person of Jesus.
And so in our pluralistic world we’re right to be disturbed by such binary, exclusive statements. John also uses the Greek term hoi Ioudaioi (hoy yoo-DYE-ee-oy) to reference Jews in a certain power class but we don’t know who. There were many forms of Judaism in the early part of the 1st century. Even so, this term has been used against all Jews and stoked violent anti-Semitism throughout the Church. I find it grounding to remember that Jesus was a Jew, as well as his disciples. John’s gospel embodies the desire to simplify the complicated, messy process by which early generations of Jesus’ followers differentiated themselves from those who did not believe as they did.
Which has also been a dominant theme throughout church history. While Jesus was teaching as a rabbi how to live as a faithful Jew in 1st century Palestine occupied by the Roman Empire, with no apparent thought of forming a separate path away from those roots, in just a few centuries that’s exactly what happened and continues to happen to this day. When Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches”, I don’t think he had any idea that something like this would happen.
This is a simplified version of how Christianity has expressed itself over the centuries. This graphic shows the Great Schism between eastern and western Christianity in 1054 CE, the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517, which gave rise to movements like the Amish and the Quakers, as well as denominations like the Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians, members of which began this local congregation of the United Church of Christ in 1979, the UCC having been formed in 1957 from the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Church. Even before the Roman Catholic Church was established, just as there were many Judaisms, there were many different ideas of who this Jesus was and it took over 400 years and several conversations between Christian bishops called councils before there was the one holy apostolic catholic church.
It wasn’t so much pruning as it was quashing dissenting voices and calling them heresy, of which Protestants have been just as guilty. In our search for religious truth, we have started whole wars over who gets to have the final say. We have burned heretics, colonized other lands and peoples, condemning their truth and replacing it with our own. We accuse others of cherry-picking scripture to fit their ideas of what it means to believe in Jesus, but we do the same when we avoid some scriptures like this one because Jesus sounds so harsh.
So, what are we to take away from John and his all-or-nothing community of Jesus-followers? What does it mean to be the branches when the vine has suffered from rot? Many have just walked away from it, abandoned the vine to wither away, finding their own way of being connected to something meaningful and bearing good fruit. Others have taken their branch and cultivated new roots, trying to reconnect with Jesus’ message of justice linked with compassion, finding common ground with other faith traditions and people of no faith.
And that is indeed something to be all-or-nothing about. Are we all-in when it comes to justice and compassion for all, especially for persons who are suffering from those who impose their will through violence and oppressive systems? Would we be willing to be arrested, like Dr. Noelle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department at Emory University? This past Thursday she came out to the protest to make sure students were protected, concerned that things would escalate, and indeed they did. When she saw a student being violently beaten by police officers, she was asked to step back. She said afterwards, “No human being is going to step away [from something like that]. So I said ‘no’.” She was then arrested for disorderly conduct, handcuffed, and put into a van.
One student protestor at the Emory campus, as she was being carried away by police holding her arms and legs, sang.
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
The world didn't give it
The world can’t take it away
She kept going.
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
The world didn't give it
The world can’t take it away
That, my friends, is a branch connected to the vine that gives life and bears good fruit. This strength, this joy, this love that we have, the world didn’t give it, but rather something deep inside us and in our life together. Something deeper than the best or the worst life dishes out, something more than the comfortable clasp of privilege, even more than the unbreakable, unshakeable covenant of being human together which is broken every day, which was broken on the cross.
It is a love which is given to us first, without condition, without merit, without limit. It is from that love that we are the branches, and Jesus wants to know if we are all-in, ride or die, ready to join him in setting the captives free: hostages and Gaza, Israel and Palestine, rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, people of color and Whites, all genders, all abilities, all bodies. We love not because we have been coerced but because we have been set free to love and to abide, to live in that love. May it be so. Amen.
Benediction
Go now and love one another
Because love is from God,
From a mystery deep within you
Proclaim this love in the living of your lives
In your generosity and in your rest
In your care for others, regardless of creed or class, color or gender
And in letting others care for you
Abide in God’s unlimited love and find your strength there
And also your peace
Amen.
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 28, 2024
 |
| Photo of the trunk of a large tree, with thick vines coiled together climbing from the ground up the side of the tree trunk. The tree is in a dense tropical forest with lots of green undergrowth and leaf litter. Some sunlight can be seen in the background. |
After hearing that passage, I wouldn’t blame you if you reacted like this:
What’s that, Jesus? Sounds like you said something along the lines of “My way or the highway”: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers.” Didn’t you say something similar in Matthew, “Whoever is not with me is against me”? Which really makes the hair rise on the back of our necks because White Christian nationalists take words like that and use them like weapons. Why would you sound like that on the last night with your disciples? You washed their feet, you ate with them, you comforted them and now this? What’s going on here?
In John’s gospel, Jesus uses a lot of “I am” statements, harkening back to Exodus and God’s declaration to Moses, “I am who I am”. “I will be what I will be”. I am the bread, I am the gate or door, I am the good shepherd, I am the vine, I am the way, the truth, and the life. John, and most likely his community as well, see Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and so John uses imagery from the Hebrew scriptures to replace Israel’s hope for a messiah with the person of Jesus.
And so in our pluralistic world we’re right to be disturbed by such binary, exclusive statements. John also uses the Greek term hoi Ioudaioi (hoy yoo-DYE-ee-oy) to reference Jews in a certain power class but we don’t know who. There were many forms of Judaism in the early part of the 1st century. Even so, this term has been used against all Jews and stoked violent anti-Semitism throughout the Church. I find it grounding to remember that Jesus was a Jew, as well as his disciples. John’s gospel embodies the desire to simplify the complicated, messy process by which early generations of Jesus’ followers differentiated themselves from those who did not believe as they did.
Which has also been a dominant theme throughout church history. While Jesus was teaching as a rabbi how to live as a faithful Jew in 1st century Palestine occupied by the Roman Empire, with no apparent thought of forming a separate path away from those roots, in just a few centuries that’s exactly what happened and continues to happen to this day. When Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches”, I don’t think he had any idea that something like this would happen.
 |
| Family tree of Christianity. Pentecost, 33 CE. Holy Catholic Church. Great Schism, 1054 CE. Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Church. Roman Catholic Church, Modern Roman Catholic Church. Anabaptist, Protestant Reformation begins 1517, Church of England 1581. Baptist, 1612. Amish, Mennonite. Lutheran. Presbyterian. Dutch Reformed, Christian Church, Church of Christ, Reformed, Disciples. Quaker, 1683. Anglican/Episcopal, 1791, Methodist, American Methodist Episcopal, Modern Methodist, Pentecostal. German Swiss Reformed. Congregationalist, Unitarian, United Church of Christ, 1957. |
This is a simplified version of how Christianity has expressed itself over the centuries. This graphic shows the Great Schism between eastern and western Christianity in 1054 CE, the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517, which gave rise to movements like the Amish and the Quakers, as well as denominations like the Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians, members of which began this local congregation of the United Church of Christ in 1979, the UCC having been formed in 1957 from the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Church. Even before the Roman Catholic Church was established, just as there were many Judaisms, there were many different ideas of who this Jesus was and it took over 400 years and several conversations between Christian bishops called councils before there was the one holy apostolic catholic church.
It wasn’t so much pruning as it was quashing dissenting voices and calling them heresy, of which Protestants have been just as guilty. In our search for religious truth, we have started whole wars over who gets to have the final say. We have burned heretics, colonized other lands and peoples, condemning their truth and replacing it with our own. We accuse others of cherry-picking scripture to fit their ideas of what it means to believe in Jesus, but we do the same when we avoid some scriptures like this one because Jesus sounds so harsh.
So, what are we to take away from John and his all-or-nothing community of Jesus-followers? What does it mean to be the branches when the vine has suffered from rot? Many have just walked away from it, abandoned the vine to wither away, finding their own way of being connected to something meaningful and bearing good fruit. Others have taken their branch and cultivated new roots, trying to reconnect with Jesus’ message of justice linked with compassion, finding common ground with other faith traditions and people of no faith.
And that is indeed something to be all-or-nothing about. Are we all-in when it comes to justice and compassion for all, especially for persons who are suffering from those who impose their will through violence and oppressive systems? Would we be willing to be arrested, like Dr. Noelle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department at Emory University? This past Thursday she came out to the protest to make sure students were protected, concerned that things would escalate, and indeed they did. When she saw a student being violently beaten by police officers, she was asked to step back. She said afterwards, “No human being is going to step away [from something like that]. So I said ‘no’.” She was then arrested for disorderly conduct, handcuffed, and put into a van.
One student protestor at the Emory campus, as she was being carried away by police holding her arms and legs, sang.
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This joy that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
The world didn't give it
The world can’t take it away
She kept going.
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
This strength that I have
The world didn’t give it to me
The world didn't give it
The world can’t take it away
That, my friends, is a branch connected to the vine that gives life and bears good fruit. This strength, this joy, this love that we have, the world didn’t give it, but rather something deep inside us and in our life together. Something deeper than the best or the worst life dishes out, something more than the comfortable clasp of privilege, even more than the unbreakable, unshakeable covenant of being human together which is broken every day, which was broken on the cross.
It is a love which is given to us first, without condition, without merit, without limit. It is from that love that we are the branches, and Jesus wants to know if we are all-in, ride or die, ready to join him in setting the captives free: hostages and Gaza, Israel and Palestine, rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, people of color and Whites, all genders, all abilities, all bodies. We love not because we have been coerced but because we have been set free to love and to abide, to live in that love. May it be so. Amen.
Benediction
Go now and love one another
Because love is from God,
From a mystery deep within you
Proclaim this love in the living of your lives
In your generosity and in your rest
In your care for others, regardless of creed or class, color or gender
And in letting others care for you
Abide in God’s unlimited love and find your strength there
And also your peace
Amen.
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