5-14-2006

Celebrating the freeing, supportive presence of God. So your experience of God may become your experience of life. It is wonderful what God can do!

“Those Pesky Vines and Branches”

May 14, 2006

It’s that wonderful time of year: Spring! The ground which was once cold and barren is now freshly tilled and producing new sprouts of growth in various bright shades of green. Bushes and trees which have resembled dead sticks for the past five months are now radiating the warmth of fresh green and white or other pastel blossoms.

Once again we have the privilege of thinking in terms of “weeding and feeding” instead of cold and snow; of magnolias and lattices trimmed in our favorite climbing flowers and vines. By the time that August arrives, all this joy of new growth will be tempered by underbrush, weeds, and vines growing out of control and constantly needing time and attention. But for now, it’s a joy.

Both my mother and grand-mother were avid gardeners who could spend many hours at a time planting, weeding, and watering. My job was digging holes, hauling the watering can, and lawn mowing.

I was also responsible for trimming and pulling—trimming the dead branches from the trees and bushes, and pulling those wild vines that could overcome a flower bed often in just days. Elimination of the vines were the most important because they choked the life out of the flowers and damaged the mortar between the brick and concrete blocks on our home. Still, I loved those blue flowers on those weedy “Morning Glory” vines.

On this Mothers’ Day 2006 our morning Scripture is about comparing our faith to a vine—most likely a grape vine. God is being compared to a vine grower who always hopes for more fruit, and who continually prunes for it. Jesus describes himself as the “true vine” – the one who cleanses and nurtures his connected branches with all that is necessary for good life. We, as his faithful people are portrayed as the branches. Faithful people automatically produce fruit (or results) in God’s kingdom. Without the fruit, a branch must be eliminated from the vine. This should not be surprising. Branches were created to bear fruit, so why wouldn’t God expect a branch to produce?

This is why we say that there is no such thing as an inactive Christian. A Christian is a branch, and if the branch is inactive, then it is no longer producing fruit and no longer part of the vine. Jesus is reminding us that faith in God is not just an intellectual or mental exercise; it involves our regular faithful actions on behalf of God’s love in our midst.

How does this relate to Mothers’ Day? Jesus has well established that God is a heavenly father to us and he is the Son. The gospel writers have told us about his mother, Mary, and her dynamic interest in all that Jesus did. If God is our Father and Jesus is the source of life, and we are the children, then perhaps we need to apply the same vine and branch principles in our biological families as Jesus has taught for our spiritual family.

Mothers are the source of life. Mothers love, nurture and comfort. Fathers are the vine growers — loving, pruning, and taking responsibility for the welfare of the family. Children are asked to be faithful in the biological family, just as God expects spiritual faithfulness.

Here is where the analogy must alter its course. The biological parents are neither God nor Christ and therefore share the responsibilities of faithfulness within the family. The relationship must be both caring and reciprocal. Most importantly, both the parents and the children must be fruitful for the sake and the welfare of the family. Both parents, particularly today, have responsibility both in the home and outside the home. The same is true of the children—they have responsibility both in the home and outside the home. Each has the responsibility to produce fruit whether it is at home, at work, at school, or at play. The old hymn says, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” Our Scriptures might put it this way, “They will know we are Christians by our fruit.”

What kind of fruit are you producing these days? Is God able to use your life to accomplish his goodness in the world? Have you allowed God to use your hands, your feet, and your words to accomplish good throughout the parts of his creation that your life touches?

When you stop to think about it, most of our mothers seem to have taken a page from God’s playbook. God wants us to be kind to those weaker than us, respectful in our conduct toward others, and forgive those who wrong us. That sounds a lot like a Mother’s playbook. My mother had at least one additional guideline — never leave the house without clean under-wear.

Our mothers, much like God himself, have rules and guidelines because of their great love for us. They want us to be safe and so they train us in the regimen that will produce the highest level of safety. To quote Ben Franklin, our mothers want us to be “healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

When we are in our youth, we often feel unnecessarily restricted. As we grow older, we become much wiser to the ways and the dangers of the world. At some point we begin to appreciate all the effort and sacrifices that our mothers have made on our behalf. We need to demonstrate our appreciation to her just as soon as we own this realization. We do this on a day like today, but we should do it, many more times throughout the year.

In the same way, when we finally come to an appreciation of all that God has done and sacrificed for us, we need to demonstrate our appreciation to God as often as we can. The Scripture makes reference to God’s many mothering and nurturing qualities—and so it is appropriate that we show our appreciation both to our mothers and to our God on a day called Mothers’ Day. Amen.