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Spring in Rochester is truly fantastic – a season not to be missed. It seemed as if the whole community was either running or gardening yesterday, or both. I have read article after article in these past few months that gardening is on a huge upswing – for environmental and economic and recreational reasons. If the White House can do it – plant a garden and teach Washington DC school children about growing vegetables, then perhaps Third Church can as well, though I have not checked that idea with the Board of Trustees. Some of you remember victory gardens, perhaps experienced them. For those of us who don’t remember firsthand, during World War I and World War II, especially, the United States government asked its citizens to plant gardens in order to support the war effort. Millions of people planted gardens. In 1943, Americans planted over 20 million Victory Gardens, and the harvest accounted for nearly a third of all the vegetables consumed in the country that year. Emphasis was placed on making gardening a family or community effort -- not a drudgery, but a pastime, and a national duty. And it worked. I think about all of that – the Lilac Festival, yard work, victory gardens, as we begin to unpack this profound image from Jesus this morning – God the vine-grower, Jesus the vine and we the branches. Whether we are green thumbs or not, we understand right away what his symbolism suggests. The connectivity we experience with him and the connectivity we share with one another – both essential to growth. The need for pruning, for shedding some things in order to experience new ones. The call to abide in him – Jesus as the sole source of what enables us to grow and flourish. The garden is such a strong and consistent biblical image. The garden in which God placed our first human forbears. The garden in which Jesus last met his disciples and from which he was abandoned to his death. The garden tomb into which he arose – as we continue to abide in the season of Easter. The tree of life described by John in the Book of Revelation, growing by the river of life, producing twelve kinds of fruits. So we need to pay attention to these powerful images. There is an old adage about sermons. Three points and a poem, or three points and a joke, which sometimes turns into three jokes and who knows what. I have heard some, and likely preached some, where one point would have been enough. There are many trajectories, many branches, that a consideration of Jesus’ imagery could take us. So today – in the midst of a lovely Spring, Lilac Festival, and of course, on this lovely Mother’s Day, here’s a little old school. Three points. 1. One would be conservation, and by that, I nod toward our growing awareness of ecological and environmental concerns. We are fast on the heels of Earth Day, but it would seem in our lifetime that every day needs to be Earth Day. An earlier mention of victory gardens echoes a new victory garden movement, that thinks about the production and distribution of food, that thinks global by acting local. Books on how we think about food are growing like, well, like weeds. I am not sure that Jesus was thinking about all of this when he said what he said, but the connecting point is the very fact that his was an agrarian culture, where his listeners would relate to his references from their own experience. We are not agrarian. The gardens in which we toil, we do so primarily for recreational purposes. And though we might never all become farmers, what will grow is our awareness – even as we become more technologically advanced – of our connection to the earth, the soil, the means by which our food comes to us. Top that off with efforts to reduce paper use, recycle paper waste, build buildings in more environmentally friendly ways. We know the litany, and it’s a conversation that we as people of faith simply must have, and must have for reasons of our faith. 2. A second point would be pruning. My arms and shoulders are feeling the effects this morning of pruning done yesterday. I remember in the first church I served, a small church on the North side of Chicago. We had a work day in our church front yard. One of our members took our 9 or 10 foot tall ewe bushes down to about 18 inches. He went to town on those bad boys. Some members were horrified (as, apparently, you are!). Some were satisfied. I was kind of amused. His argument was that if you were going to do it at all, do it right, and do it completely. It took years for some growth to return, but return it did. Jesus talks about pruning, pruning that happens to allow more fruit to be produced. I do not know what pruning needs to happen in your own life, what habits or practices or attitudes need to be chopped away in order for new and good growth to happen. But you do. And you know, as do I, that it needs to happen. Religion is often placed in a negative light, a list of restrictions and prohibitions and threats – and there is even a bit of that later in this morning’s passage. But it seems to me that at the heart of this is Jesus’ hope that we grow. And in order to grow, some things need removal – things that clutter or distract or sap energy away. You know what they are for you. I do for me. Perhaps we can discern collectively what they are for the church – and prune them away together. What uses our resources wrongly, and how can we make changes? What limits us? What holds us back? And where and how do we start cutting and chopping and pruning? 3. But pruning will only help if there is cultivation – point three. It’s not only about jettisoning the things that prevent growth from happening, but doing those things that will promote growth. In the garden, we know what those are – simple things, like air and water and sunlight, and adding nutrients to enrich the soil. In our own lives, we know what those things are as well. Care of body and spirit. Nurturing relationships. Things that challenge our beliefs. Practices that enhance us. Disciplines that grow the stewardship of our time and energy and financial resources. We are thinking about cultivation at Third Church a lot these days – what cultivates each of us and what cultivates our faith community in order that we might grow and flourish. At the heart, and on this day especially, must be worship. Worship that feeds our spirits and that calls us out into the world. And education that not only delivers content into our minds, but education that takes that content and insists on its application in the real world. And fellowship that tills the garden of this community. We might not always call it fellowship, but ways that we connect, branch to branch. That happens in a dining room ministry team, or at a Deacons meeting. Certainly the tasks are accomplished, but at a deeper level, human connection is made. It is surely what happens in a choir rehearsal. It is why we are working so hard on “out to lunch” Sundays and new social groups – Beatles to Bon Jovi, for example, which is, I hope, the last time I will ever mention Bon Jovi in a sermon – and other ways to link us together. *** Beverly Gaventa writes that the vine and branch imagery “carries the notion of corporateness. The command to ‘abide’ …is directed to the church, whose communal life and ministries of social justice are no more than branches to be tossed into the fire, apart from the indwelling Christ.” Remember that; remember that whatever growth we seek will happen only as we are connected to Christ. And remember also what Gaventa says: that painful pruning has a positive intent…that growing includes vitality, usefulness, permanence. (Texts for Preaching, Year B, pages 314-315) We are still in the season of Easter, and we remember that when first Mary encountered the risen Christ, she encountered him as a gardener. We will not sing “I Come to the Garden” this morning. But connect the image of Jesus as the gardener to the words he shares with his garden, then and now. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower…Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit... Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing... My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” Believe that and live into it. And seek the activities – the three points – of conserving, pruning and cultivating, that will allow it to happen, all of this wondrous fruit-bearing. And now, as promised, a poem, in the form of a prayer, from
the Catholic priest Donal Neary: “I am the river, you
are the water/ I am the mountains, you are the soil/ I am the
love, you are the touch/ I am the mother, you are the child,/
I am the fragrance, you are the rose,/ we belong with him, and
in him.” Amen.
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