One morning this week as I took those first glorious sips of coffee while looking out my kitchen window – I noticed a couple of squirrels in my neighbor’s trees jumping from limb to limb. In the higher part of the tree was their home – a large squirrel’s nest. I watched for half a cup of coffee as they used the highway of branches with this spring’s fresh new leaves to get from the tree’s top section to the ground.
As they jumped to the ground one of them scampered over to another tree. It happened to be the same tree that my neighbor and I had just discussed the afternoon before. This tree doesn’t know what spring is anymore. It is not sprouting fresh new leaves because this tree has been dead for quite some time. To tell you the truth I hadn’t noticed it had died until leaves started popping out on the trees around it.
My neighbor has piles of fallen limbs in her yard to the point where she can’t cut the grass. “Yeah, she said, I’ve got a guy who said he would take that tree down soon.” And I was thinking, I hope so because it is tall and is long enough to hit both of our houses if it fell.
Well, I’m enjoying my coffee, and the cirque du soleil squirrel troupe are enjoying their morning trapeze act. One squirrel climbs the dead tree going up the trunk about a third of the way. Maybe 40-50 feet high. Most of the limbs at that height have broken off or are long gone. The squirrel tentatively scoots out toward the end of one limb and stops a few feet shy of the tip. I wondered if they stopped because the branch, which looked a little iffy, was sagging or cracking a little bit.
After its moment of discernment it reversed course and started making it’s way down to the ground. It didn’t dare go out on a dead limb to jump across to the other tree. It went all the way to the bottom and then over and up the living tree next to it.
Why do you think that happened?
Looking back at the upper section of the dead tree, I noticed the bare branches were completely void of any squirrel nests at all. It seems squirrels know the benefits of building their nests in a tree that is alive! The live tree offers shelter, perhaps a food source, and is, all around, a better real estate investment. The take away is? – Squirrels don’t build nests in dead trees!
In our gospel text today – Jesus says that he is the “true vine”. Connected to that vine are the branches. We are those branches. And connected to the vine and branches is the fruit of discipleship.
Vines and branches grow in many different directions. Vines don’t grow in straight lines. Nor does our faith life. Our faith lives are winding, twisting, and curvy. Sometimes they can get tangled until they stop producing fruit at all. Sometimes you don’t know what the fruit of that vine even is, until it is pruned. Then the vine’s branches can grow towards the light again.
Sometimes things in our lives have to die and be removed in order for new life to shoot forth. The fruit of the Spirit comes from this new life connection to the source of all life.
Think of pruning not as punitive but rather as a type of loving discipline, which is where the word disciple comes from.
Jesus uses this image of the vine and its branches to tell the disciples that while they have already been pruned and have been fruitful in their discipleship – there is still more for them to do.
Vines can yield many harvests over many years– if continually pruned well. The vinedresser, God, through the Holy Spirit, will shape us into what is needed next for the kingdom of God.
The disciple Philip, in our Acts passage, is led by the Spirit to proclaim the good news of the resurrection in places and to people considered to be – outsiders.
When we abide with Christ through our prayer life, our formation, and outreach then we choose connection.
Jesus taught that abiding in spiritual community is the key. The vine cannot produce fruit without the branches bearing the fruit. The branches can’t bear any fruit without the vine. We live – in community.
God produces the fruit. The branches don’t produce the fruit, because that is not our job. Showing up, as they say, might be 90% of our part!
However, it is human to get confused about this, who’s producing what and who’s bearing what, to the point where we take for granted that abiding in Christ is even part of the equation. We don’t have time/ We are too busy. We don’t think our little part matters in the general scheme of things. We tap out.
Jesus says nothing about putting a value on our human productivity levels. It is in our limited human thinking that we value what and how much we produce. We can put too much importance on these self-serving performance goals. We get twisted up like untended vines choking our life and work. Vocation, our calling and direction, then needs to be addressed.
This is why Jesus is speaking to the disciples about who they are and who they are to become. In other words their lives will be the witness and their lives the message as much or more than what they say.
God cares about the sustained connection, the relationship between the vine and the branches. God provides whatever we need to do kingdom work.
I love this passage from Acts we heard today. The Ethiopian Eunuch has heard something – about this Jesus the Christ. He is heading to Jerusalem because he wants to find out more. That’s the Holy Spirit working. He wants to worship God.
By definition he is very much an outsider to the Jewish faith and the early church.
He’s a Eunuch from Ethiopia. Probably forced to be a Eunuch in order to fulfill a role for the state. He is of a different race, culture, and surely speaks a different language. He is in every way a foreigner to Philip.
But to God he is not a foreigner. He is a human being. With all of his differences – this man is a person – a child of God – too. He is an outsider to other people, and yet no one – no person – is an outsider – to God.
This Ethiopian seeker asks Philip to help him understand the scriptures. Philip could have easily denied teaching him. But then that’s the Holy Spirit working in Philip’s life. And Philip, encouraged by the Holy Spirit, invites this Ethiopian to be baptized!
To understand God’s love through the holy scriptures this man will be baptized and connected to God and other believers in a new way.
There are people around us everyday who are foreign to God’s love. They may be the same race, speak the same language, and share our area’s culture, and yet – they have never been taught, never been invited to belong to a Christian community or have simply drifted away. The concept of belonging to a healthy Christian community is a foreign belief to them. Some people may be disconnected from God, but we do not have to be disconnected from them. Maybe we can “branch out” a little more?
Philip has branched out and is connected to the transforming power of God. These two men may be from different countries but now they share a common citizenship only God can offer.
How are we abiding in God? Do we tend to abide more in the things of death in this world or more in life giving, life affirming pursuits? At the same time the world, like that Ethiopian wants to see what Jesus Christ is about. So the call before us, shapes us too.
How we bear witness to the life-giving things in this world may be simpler and “closer than they appear”. In other words, the opportunity to be a difference maker – might be nearer than we think.
Jesus tells us to stay close to the vine and Jesus says, “I am the true vine. You are the branches.” We are invited to drink from this fruit, this cup, and this relationship with him. You and I will have all of the fruit of the Spirit we need to make a difference. Abide in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then share his cup of life with the world. Maybe we will truly be – keepers of the feast! Thanks be to God! Amen.
