Sunday, May 10
Fifth Sunday of Easter

Focus Theme
Abiding in Love

Weekly Prayer
God, you sent your Son into the world that we might live through him. May we abide in his risen life so that we may bear the fruit of love for one another and know the fullness of joy. Amen.

All Readings For This Sunday
Acts 8:26-40 with Psalm 22:25-31 and
1 John 4:7-21 and
John 15:1-8 

Focus Reading
John 15:1-8

[Jesus said:] "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. 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. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."

Reflection and Focus Questions
by Kate Huey

Focus Questions 1. Which image is more meaningful to you, the good shepherd or the vine and its branches? Why? 2. How does John's image of the vine challenge our contemporary standards about individual achievement and personal success? 3. In what ways could the church today continue in the tradition of Paul, Anthony, Francis, Luther, and "the rest"? 4. What does the word "abide" evoke in you? 5. What does Sarah Henrich's statement about bearing fruit "revealing" disciples rather than "making" disciples mean to you? Text for Meditation Those who abide in me and I in them / bear much fruit. For ideas on how to meditate with the Bible, read our article on Praying With the Bible

Last week, the Gospel of John provided the image of a good shepherd to describe the close, caring relationship between God and Jesus, and between Jesus and us. Perhaps we're not sheepherders, or haven't spent much time in an agrarian setting, but we get the idea of what John is talking about. First of all, the shepherd image is familiar to us from the much-loved and often-memorized Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd...." And, from childhood, we've seen many paintings of Jesus with a little lamb over his shoulders, the flock grazing peacefully around him. Our theme last week, Enfolded in Love, was reassuring, and reassurance was what the disciples and the early Christian community needed, especially John's community. Just as the disciples must have been bewildered by some of the things Jesus was saying and anxious about the negative response of religious and political leaders, so the early Christians a generation later, expelled from their religious home, also needed a word of tender reassurance from the risen Christ, telling them that they weren't alone or abandoned.

In this week's reading, John uses another image, that of a vine and its branches, to help–and challenge–that early community, and ours today, to claim our close relationship with Jesus. In Jesus' time, people would have been familiar with the vine metaphor; it appears in the Hebrew Scriptures several times to describe Israel. But even if contemporary Christians have never tended a vineyard, most of us have seen a grapevine at one time or another. Looking closely, we see the many entwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends. This is not just intricate; it's intimate, and the vine shares with its branches the nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant. Even closer than the shepherd there on the hillside, this vine is one with the branches.

Mark of faithful community is how it loves

Gail R. O'Day finds the "anonymity" in this metaphor "stark." John isn't interested, she says, in "distinctions in appearance, character, or gifts." The many voices of the New Testament give us a fuller, richer picture than one voice might have provided, so here we recall the writing of Paul in I Corinthians 12. According to O'Day, Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, highlights the different gifts and roles within the community, and he even considers those differences as what makes it a body. Instead of highlighting our particular gifts and roles, however, John "undercuts any celebration of individual gifts, and this, too, challenges contemporary Western understandings of personality, individualism, and self-expression." For John, she writes,"The mark of the faithful community is how it loves, not who are its members."

We hear that word, "love," often in John's writings. Love is at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Love is the measure of faithfulness. Our readings this month linger on this line of thought, but they're not legalistic or detailed. "Love" feels like a state of being, so the word "abide" almost jumps off the page in these readings from John. Fred Craddock understandably calls it "the central verb" in the passage, and "one of the most significant words in the Gospel." Eugene Peterson translates "abide" in verse 4 a little differently, but with the same meaning: "Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you" (his translation of the Bible is The Message). Just as we need the air to breathe, we need food and nourishment to live. We need shelter and community; we need a home. The early Christians, who had in a very real sense lost their spiritual homes and perhaps, along with them, their family ties and their physical homes, were undoubtedly comforted by this thought.

Rise up and get moving!

The setting for these words is interesting. Just before this passage, at the end of chapter 14, Jesus has finished the Passover meal (the Last Supper) with his disciples and is ready to move on. "Rise," he says, "let us be on our way" (14:31b). But the very next verse, which begins this week's reading and chapter 15 as well, continues his long farewell speech, full of instructions and exhortations for the disciples. Charles Cousar doesn't skip over the significance of that last verse in chapter 14 or its connection to what follows: "Jesus' words are a call to get moving. The talk about the indwelling between Jesus and the disciples is not meant for a community at rest that has settled in for business as usual, but for a community engaged in service, a community whose distinctiveness from the world evokes the world's distrust and hatred (15:18-19)." In a way, there's a tension here: the word "abide" could suggest "planted" (like a vine, perhaps?), in place, rooted, fixed. But Jesus' command to "rise up" puts us in motion, in mission, in works that bear witness and bear fruit at the same time. Sarah Henrich is helpful here: "Bearing fruit does not create disciples," she writes; "bearing fruit reveals disciples. Both of these activities are dependent on abiding in Jesus, the real vine."

The corporate: a word of reassurance for the church

Scholars take two different approaches to this passage. Some focus solely on the community, on the "corporateness" of this image, to use Cousar's term: "The command to 'abide' in the first instance 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." In this image, Cousar finds words that are front and center for a church that seeks new life: "connectedness, permanency, vitality." I love the image of green plants for church vitality, and Cousar would seem to agree: "the very image (fruit) may suggest other associations such as growth, usefulness, and nourishment." O'Day also emphasizes the communal nature of this life, a "model" of "social interrelationship and corporate accountability" that challenges our unceasing attempts to stand out from, and rise up over, one another.

But what about this notion of "bearing fruit"? If bearing fruit reveals disciples rather than creating them, as Sarah Henrich claims, we might take a look-back at our church's history to see how often "abiding" in Jesus can cause all sorts of trouble, just in case we're forgotten that the early Christians were not the only ones to face opposition and persecution for their faith in Jesus. Stephen A. Cooper calls the roll of such disruptions caused by Jesus' "radical" instructions: Paul (who baptized Gentiles without requiring circumcision), Anthony (who went out to the desert to pray), Francis (who chose simple poverty), Luther (who initiated the Reformation), Anabaptists (who challenged state-sponsored violence), anti-slavery activists (who were even earlier than the abolitionists). The question for the church today is whether we find ourselves speaking and acting a word contrary to the "comfortable" within us and around us, where we face together, not alone, the forces arrayed against justice and mercy. What would happen if our congregations spent less time talking and worrying and working on our survival and more time on putting ourselves in the line of fire, as Paul, Anthony, Francis and the rest did?

The personal: a word of reassurance for each one of us

However, the corporate reading of this passage is not the only way to approach it. Not surprisingly, Nancy R. Blakely's beautiful pastoral reflection on the text considers the personal relationship each of us has with Jesus, the vine. She reminds us that we find the best grapes close in to the vine, "where the nutrients are the most concentrated." And she uses Peterson's image of "making a home" in describing the peace that we long for in our hearts. This kind of abiding for Blakely is the way God "sustains" us and showers us with "shalom, which speaks of wholeness, completeness, and health." Here, up close to the vine, immersed in shalom, we find not only nourishment but also hope and joy, and we let God's word "find a home in us through faithful devotion." Here, close to the vine, we find peace about all the things that we face, and all the things that we pray for: "When we remain that close to Jesus, we attuned to him and he to us, the remarkable result is that what we want will be what God wants, and it will surely come to pass." Even that painful pruning is redemptive, she says: "All that is extraneous is carefully and lovingly removed. What remains is centered and focused on God's word."

A word of challenge for us all

How do we bring these two streams together or, to be closer to today's image, how do we graft them together, the personal and the communal? Blakely does just that when she reminds us that the Risen Christ in John's Gospel is warning his followers in every age and every setting that "they cannot go it alone, trusting in their own strength. On their own they would be cut off from their life source. They would bear no fruit." This is really good news for us, no matter how much it flies in the face of everything we're told about success and measuring up. It's not up to us to dig deep down inside and make happen what needs to happen. Blakely reminds us that, if we stay close to Jesus, we have a source for all the grace and strength we need in our lives, and the result will be joy. The result will be fruit that blesses the world and reveals us as the followers of Jesus, a community of love. Together, we are so much more powerful than any of us can be on our own. However, this "together" isn't out there, on our own even as a community, because our life force flows from the vine with which we are one. Barbara Essex perhaps puts it most succinctly: "The community that Jesus calls forth is one that embodies an African proverb: Because we are, I am."

For Further Reflection

William Sloane Coffin, 20th century
I think, therefore I am? Nonsense! I love, therefore I am.

Richard Rohr, 20th century
It's not addition that makes one holy but subtraction: stripping the illusions, letting go of pretense, exposing the false self, breaking open the heart and the understanding, not taking my private self too seriously.

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Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.