Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
May 14, 2006
John 15: 1-8
This marks the second Mother’s Day since death of my mother in February 05, and I was aware this morning that there is still a little sadness to this day – I suppose there always will be. The last years of my mother’s life were difficult ones. There was a long, slow decline in her health – many of you have gone through the same thing with family and close friends. Also she never really recovered from the death of my sister – this year marks the 10th anniversary of her death. A lot of my mother died ten years ago. So when I think about my Mom, I try to think about years prior to 1996, and all that we shared as I grew up. And what always comes to mind for me is how supportive she always was, and how she encouraged me and my sisters to move out beyond our comfort zones.
I was raised in Arizona. I always stayed pretty close to home, I was probably kind of a ‘momma’s boy’ to tell you the truth. But with her encouragement, I went to college in of all places, Rhode Island. I was scared to death – very shy (yes, its true!) very low in self-confidence, 3000 miles from home, had never been in Rhode Island until I got off the plane that day. I was not sure if I would make it. And it was difficult at times, there were hard times. Now for me it turned out to be a positive, life-changing experience. I emerged from that four years a very different person than when I went. But I have no doubt, as hard as it was, it would have been a lot harder, and I may not have gotten through, without my mother and her unwavering support. She was the steady vine, always there when I needed her, always dependable, always supportive. That held true for anything I did. And it would be my hope that each of you has someone – or had someone – in your life about whom you could say the same thing. I know we come from all shapes and sorts of families – some supportive and nurturing, some not so. But on this Mother’s Day, what we in church often call The Festival of the Christian Home, hopefully we can think of a parent, a sibling, a relative, a close friend who has been that firm, unwavering vine for us, always providing nurture and support when we needed it. As we think about that perhaps we can also re-commit ourselves to being that nurturing vine for someone else.
But it isn’t easy, this nurturing, supportive stuff. It’s not easy. And I am sure we can all think of times in our very closest relationships when we have failed at it. Just in that moment when I know I should say the caring word, the supportive word, I hear myself saying the sarcastic word, the angry word, the cutting word, the hurting word. I get tired; I lose patience. I wonder where I am going to find the strength to keep this up? I imagine we all often wonder that in our families and in life. What to do? Where to turn?
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them, bear much fruit…Abide in me as I abide in you.” I once heard a preacher insist that Christ must be a third party in any family, in any human relationship. I wonder if she had this text in mind. “I am the vine, you are the branches.” What is Jesus telling us here about us, about our relationship with him and about our relationship with each other?
I first heard this little poem at an ordination service and since then I have shared it at other ordinations and clergy gatherings, but I suspect it might speak to many of us in our work or in our families and closest relationships:
I’m not the one who runs this train;
The whistle I can’t blow.
I’m not the one who designates how far this train will go.
I’m not allowed to blow the steam,
Or even ring the bell.
But let this darned thing jump the tracks
And see who catches hell.
It so often seems that it all depends on us, that if we don’t make it happen, nobody will, and that if it goes wrong – if that train jumps the tracks - it’s my fault. And it certainly gets exhausting holding up the universe, or driving the train, by yourself – there is a potential for a lot of guilt, a lot of exhaustion. In fact, I recently read an article that indicated a condition shared by many American mothers today is that of exhaustion, along with the nagging suspicion that, in spite of their best efforts, they are somehow are not doing quite enough for their children and families…the train is always threatening to jump the tracks! Then we run headlong into this text. “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
Did you hear what Jesus says? “I am the vine…” We aren’t the vine and we don’t have to be the vine. Did you hear that? Did I hear that? We don’t have to be the vine! Is it possible that it doesn’t all depend on me?
Fred Craddock tells this story – don’t know if it really happened this way, but often with Fred Craddock that doesn’t matter. “I was walking one afternoon and I passed a corner where a man was doing something that fascinated me. So I stopped my walk and watched him. He had a pile of bricks, and the thing he was doing was measuring each brick – how long it was, how wide it was, how deep it was. He’d throw a bunch of good-looking bricks out, saying, ‘I’ve got to get them all exactly the same. They have to be all exactly the same.’ ‘Why?’ I asked.
“He said, ‘I’m building a church and I want it to stand.’
Says Craddock, “There are people who think that the way to really have a church is to get people that are from the same economic and social and educational background, and then they will all stand together. That man started laying those bricks; they were all alike, they all looked just the same. I went by the next afternoon, and you know what I found? A big pile of bricks – the whole thing had fallen down.’
“So I went around the corner, and I saw a man with a pile of rocks. You’ve never seen such a mess in your life. No two of those rocks were alike, round ones, dark ones, small ones, big ones, little ones. I asked, ‘What in the world are you doing?’
“He said, ‘I’m building a church.’
“I said, ‘You’re nuts! The guy around the corner had all the bricks alike, and he couldn’t make it stand.’
“He said, ‘This one will stand…it will stand.’
“’No it won’t!’
“’Yes it will!’
Then he went over to a wood tray, took something like a hoe, and began to stir something back and forth. Looked a lot like cement to me, but that’s not what he called it. He put healthy doses of it between all these different rocks. I went back thirty-four years later, and that church is still there. It was that stuff in between, looked a lot like cement. But that’s not what he called it. You know what he called it.”
What do you think he called it? What do you think it was? Mortor? Love? How about the spirit of Christ himself – holding all those different rocks, all the branches, together? “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t continue to work hard at our families and friendships. I’m not saying we should quit taking responsibility to make things a little better in this world of ours. But maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to be the sole vine, providing all the nourishment, all the strength. Perhaps we can look to another source, one greater than ourselves, deeper than ourselves, whose love and nurture and strength can never be exhausted. I suspect it is a source of life that which most of us have not even begun to tap. So close.
And then one final point on this Mother’s Day. The story is told of a man who got lost while driving through unfamiliar territory. Driving along and trying to read a map at the same time as he drove, he ended up driving off the road into a ditch. Thankfully he wasn’t injured, but his car was now stuck hopelessly in the mud. So the man walked to a nearby farm for help. “Old Warwick can get you out of that ditch,” said the farmer, pointing to a big old mule standing in a field. The man looked at the farmer, who repeated his assurance, looked at the mule, and figured he had nothing to lose. So the two men and Warwick made their way back to the ditch. The farmer hitched the mule to the car. With a snap of the reins the shouted, “Pull Fred! Pull Jack! Pull Ted! Pull Warwick!” The mule proceeded the pull the car from the ditch rather easily. The man was amazed. He thanked the farmer, patted the mule, then asked, “Why did you call out all of those names before you called Warwick?” The farmer smiled and answered, “You see, old Warwick is just about blind. But as long as he believes he is part of a team, he doesn’t mind pulling.”
“I am the vine, you are the branches.” Not branch, but branches. No one branch on the vine is expected to produce all the fruit. Only when every branch on the vine does its part, then you get that good Cabernet at the end, right? The same is true in our homes, our relationships, our workplaces, our church. We need each other. We are part of a team. And things really begin to break down when we forget that, when it becomes all about me and my needs.
Speaking of faith and the church – and he could just as well be speaking of our families – one pastor writes, “Christianity is a social religion…But true to our ruggedly individualistic self-centeredness, we have tried to practice the Christian faith as if it were a home correspondence course in self-improvement. The great heresy in American popular religion is the notion that religion is a private affair, a secret contract between God and the believer. It is not! The church is, above all, a group of people. It was no accident that Jesus called a group of disciples, not isolated individuals…We need each other. Those who are really strong are strong enough to admit that we need other people.”
“I am the vine, you are the branches.” It doesn’t all depend on us, it doesn’t all depend on me – that can be a hard thing for a minister to say sometimes, but it doesn’t. We are a community of believers growing and ministering together in the faith, many branches on the vine of Christ, interconnected and interdependent. If we could just begin to wrap our brains around that, imagine what it could mean for our nurture and support here in the church, and what it can mean in terms of nurture and support in the life we share beyond these sanctuary walls. The family of Dr. Salmon was really just blown away and it didn’t seem like we did that much. The women of Women’s Fellowship put together a reception, literally at the last minute; we actually put together a funeral service at the last minute. The family came here and told me they felt so embraced by the love of so many people. One of his daughters said, “And we were just strangers and you treated us so kindly.” Well, they weren’t strangers – they were just other branches on the vine of Christ.
As one woman said of her church after her husband died suddenly, leaving her with three young children and no income, “This is my church and they will make sure that me and my family will be okay.”
And I believe we will be okay, as long as we remember this: I am the vine, you are the branches…abide in me as I abide in you.”