The Vineyard
Scripture: John 15:1-8
7-29-2018
When I was 18, the summer after I graduated high school, my school offered the opportunity for seniors to travel to Europe. It was about a two week trip and while there we traveled from Italy through the Swiss Alps to France and finally to England. While we were there we were fortunate enough to see the Louvre, and the Arch d’triumph, and Versailles. We got to boat past the White Cliffs of Dover and spend an evening in the theater district in London where we saw Phantom of the Opera and shop down in Piccadilly Circus. And in France and London all the sights that we were lucky enough to see were incredible. But the place where we spent the most time was Italy. We spent lots of time touring the cities, Florence, Venice, Rome, Vatican City and they all are, as you might imagine, visually stunning. There is history and architecture and fountains and statues seemingly around every corner. On one day we saw the Pieta, on another the David, on one day St Peter’s Basilica and another Trevi Fountain and looking back now, maybe even more so than when I was experiencing it, it was one of those opportunities that remains with you for a lifetime. But perhaps the part of the trip that has stuck with me the most ever since our return was not the David or the Pieta, the leaning tower of Pisa or the ruins of Pompeii. It was something that I saw while staying at an inn overlooking the Italian countryside.
It started when the group arrived at this old style hotel in the dark of night and as anyone in my family will attest, I am not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination. If it gets to be 9:00 or so and I am not at least pointed towards the bed I start to get, lets just say, grumpy. And I can assure you that I wasn't all that different when I was 18 and so when we arrived at this hotel it was late enough that all I really wanted was for someone to hand me a key and give me a room number as it was clearly past my bedtime. And in getting from bus to check in to bed, it’s possible that I didn’t fully appreciate the immense house in which we were staying in, nor the large collection of art on the walls, nor interesting furniture in the sitting rooms, nor its surroundings. I really just wanted to go to bed. And while I am not a night owl, as has been previously established, I am a chronically early riser. Like I said last week, there are few things as peaceful in my mind as that time in the morning when the dark night sky begins to show a blue hue as it begins to gain wisps of pink and orange. I like that time when it is just me and my coffee and the early morning swallows singing and darting from tree to tree. It is at that moment that I am truly at peace. So it was that I woke up much earlier than any of the travelers in our group and made my way down to one of the sitting rooms that overlooked the countryside. At this point, I should mention, and if you have ever done any traveling in places that don’t speak English as their primary language and you yourself are not multilingual, that one of the blessings of this life is that coffee is almost a universally understood and that word caffè in Italian sounds an awful like coffee in English because, as an 18 year old kid who had grown up in the sticks of North Carolina with an accent thicker than molasses in January armed solely with the broken Italian that I had picked up from the past week it was unlikely unlikely that I could accomplish much more than communicating to our hostess of my need for a cup of black coffee. Though when she returned with a cup and french press I knew enough Italian to say, grazie, or, more likely, grazie, to which she smiled and said, “you know, I speak English.” And just like that I had become that American. But I digress. So I took my coffee and went to sit in the sunroom off to one side of the house at which point I was greeted with the sight that has stuck with me my entire adult life—the whole house was surrounded on all sides by grapevines as far as the eye could see. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am sure that I knew that Italy had a wine region and at that moment it was clear that we were in it. And it really was one of those sights that took a few minutes to fully appreciate, these sprawling vines running from the house and up the hills that surrounded us. So I spent much of the early morning watching the sunrise over rows and rows of grapes. And as the light grew from dim, to pale, to bright, in the distance, maybe 100 feet away, I began to make out the figure of an older man, late 70s maybe even early 80s making his way slowly and deliberately down a row of vines. And at first, he was too far away to recognize what he was doing, I could tell he was walking a couple of steps, stopping, looking, and then continuing on. And as he grew closer, it was clear to me that he was meticulously doing something as he continued a take a few steps, stop, look for a moment, then make a single motion and continue on. This intrigued me further so I continued to watch him as he drew closer and repeated this pattern over and over again, until he got to where he was in complete focus and it was clear what he was doing. This older gentleman, with a large brimmed hat and a tan like he lived in the sun, was making his way down this row of vines, stopping every couple of feet, each time he saw, the slightest sign of a brown stem, and he would pluck it off, and drop it on the ground and continue on in his journey. And at first, I couldn't figure out why he was doing this—taking what amounted to the tiniest of little twigs off the vine and breaking them off and dropping them to the ground to return to their baser elements and it wasn’t until a few years later when I was reading these verses in John that we have read for today, that it actually made sense what he was doing. Because this farmer, this vineyard keeper knew, when you are growing grapes and you want to produce as much fruit as you possibly can from each vine, even the slightest piece of dying stem can drain crucial nutrients that aid the entire plant in growing to its fullest potential. Thus, presumably, this man did this each day in a different row, maybe a different area of the vineyard, starting far back in the vineyard and making his way to the front and removing anything from any plant that he could see that wasn’t going to produce the most fruit possible and returning it to the ground from whence it had come. And now, this image of the old vineyard keeper comes back to me again and again each time I read this passage from John.
The Gospel of John, is the most put together of the different narratives of Jesus’s life. By this I mean that each of the transitions is smooth as Jesus and his disciples move from one event to the next. As those who have been attending the Wednesday Evening Bible study will attest, the Gospel of Mark, for instance, which is the oldest of the gospels, is at times, choppy and seems to have been put together section by section. By comparison, John reads seamlessly. John is more like a drama that is unfolding before the reader with difference scenes and characters and, unlike all the other gospels, long soliloquies by Jesus directed at to the disciples. And today’s passage comes in the midst of one of those long soliloquies in which Jesus uses the image of God as the vineyard keeper taking time to move through the whole of the vineyard, along each line of vines, looking, searching, seeking to break off any part of the vine that does not bear fruit. And this is an essential part of the living, a crucial part of what it means to be truly alive. God is forever and always at work in all of us, pruning, weeding, nourishing, growing the spirit in our souls. Cleaving away anything in us that does not lead us to a greater embodiment of holiness, of goodness. Taking all that does not blossom, that does not grow the fruits of the spirit and, like a refiner separating gold from dross, God is breaking away that in each of us that is not alive that we might each have life and have it in abundance. We are told in scripture that all fall short of the grace, of the majesty of God. We are told that all have fallen and cannot, of their own accord, gain salvation. It is always and ever the process begun by God of purification and then of sanctification. Of taking an honest accounting of our lives and beginning to break off that which is dead in us that our spirits might be alive in Christ. God is vineyard keeper in all of us, patiently, meticulously, sifting through the whole of our beings and redeeming us a little more each moment until that glorious day when all of God’s children are finally made whole, are at rest, and are welcomed home.
It is not difficult to see where this process of refining and rebirth is so desperately needed in our worlds. Because, if we are honest with ourselves we know that not every area of our lives, not every aspect of our personality, not every little thing that makes us unique, that makes us, us, bears the same degree of fruit. In each person, there are going to be times, ways in which we bravely and with conviction serve the holy realm of God, helping others to see it, hear it, experience it. We offer a smile or a hug or a kind word or just a shared look that says, “I know you are in the storm, let me be your shelter for the moment.” But we also know, again if we are honest with ourselves, that there are plenty of ways in which we fall short of being the people that God has called us to be. There are plenty of ways in which we are the opposite of the people that God has called us to be. We know all too well about all the needs of the world that go unmet each day because we as a species haven’t figured out a way to share the bounty of the earth. We know all too well that we haven’t figured out how to create a lasting peace in the world. We know all too well that we haven’t figured out how to speak of and act in ways that are guided the gospel of Jesus Christ all the time so that all people can hear and believe the powerful words and deeds of the one that each of us follow. We know all too well that we live in a world in which so many of God’s children are denied a place at the table. We know all this far too well. And if we let it, if we let the darkness, the brokenness creep in enough, we can, ourselves, become convinced that there just is no lasting goodness, no hope in which to found our souls, no love that dwells at the center of time and space bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice. We can do that. Or we can close our eyes, once a day, once an hour, once each moment and see the image of an older gentleman making his way towards each of us, in row after row of grapevines just waiting to burst forth with fruit, and stopping and looking us over, and with an equal measure of tenderness or forcefulness, breaking the slightly brown pieces off our souls, those things that prevent us from seeing the world both how it is but more importantly how it can be, those little things that keep us from fully seeing the light of God shining in the darkness, those tiny, tiny pieces of us that prevent us from accepting that we are each children of God. This alone can and should be the prayer of the world, the prayer of a vineyard keeper breaking away the deadness of hate and apathy, of fear and distrust, of pain and sorrow, and allowing love and hope, peace and joy, and grace upon grace upon grace to grow wild and free in each of our souls. The vineyard keeper making his way through and taking only those small pieces in all of us, those pieces which cannot bear fruit, and breaks them off, to return to the ground, or the fire, or space dust, until all that is left is pure spirit, pure soul, pure heart.
You cannot experience this type of attention, this type of healing, this type of love in the brokenness of the world. Oh sure, you can turn to the world to tell you everything that is wrong with you. There are whole industries that will give you the help you need to look your best, to dress your best, to carry the best phone, or drive the best car. There are whole genres of books, and dvd’s, and plans that will transform your diet, your sleep, your appearance, you outlook on life, you relationships, and yet most, if not all of them, are trying both to sell you something and make you feel otherwise horrible about who you are. And once you have fixed whatever, another thing crops up, and another, and another, a vicious cycle of near constant fixing and fixing and fixing. That is peace how the world gives it. But we follow one who gives us peace not as the world gives it but as God gives it. A peace that surpasses all understanding. The peace of vineyard keeper, moving down row after row, seeing you as you are, with all the potential in the world, and breaking off the single piece that prevents you from being that.
Each week we gather together at the foot of the cross. And here in this place we are given the chance to take all our misgivings and apprehensions. We can take all our hopes and doubts. We can take all our sins and the memories of those times in which we have fallen short of being the people that God has called us to be and we can stop, we can silence the mind allowing all of that noise to pass through and away like clouds moving across the afternoon sky and we can breathe. We can breathe in the very breath of the Holy Spirit. And let it all go. Here in this place we are welcomed just as we are, broken and ashamed, full of the spirit or completely emptied out of anything that looks like God. Whoever you are, whoever you have been, whoever you will become, for this moment and in this space we can come just as we are. We can come with fear and trembling, with sorrow and song, with joy and celebration, with sadness and lament. We can come however we are, because here, at this place we can be exactly who we are, and allow the great vineyard keeper to trim away that which separate us from one another, separates us from our creator, and then we can collapse into the grace of God, the grace from which creation arose. The grace into which time will one day recede. The grace that infuses each moment of our lives. Come to the cross and lay your burdens down, however you are, just come. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples. Alleluia, amen.