Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), 2003
Let me tell you a parable about two apple trees. The
one tree was great and mighty with branches reaching into the sky and in all
directions, full of luscious green leaves. This tree was proud that it was the
biggest tree with more branches and leaves than the other apple tree. The other
apple tree, however, was short and did not have many big branches or many
leaves. For this tree was a humble tree, which allowed its branches to be
regularly pruned and cut back. The big proud tree made fun of the short, humble
tree. Soon the time for the harvest came for the fruit to be collected. The
short, humble tree yielded lots of big juicy apples. But the big tree yielded
only small and sour apples that were worthless. That’s because it was so busy
promoting itself, growing bigger branches and more leaves that it forgot what
its purpose was: To produce apples.
Sometimes we also forget our purpose. Why do we
exist? Is it our purpose in life to accumulate wealth and become financially
secure? Or is it to stay fit and healthy? Or to be popular and be well-liked?
Or to help the poor and to make the world a better place? As much as we may pursue these ideals, we find that our
world is not becoming any better. New and more dangerous killer viruses keep
popping up even as suicide bombers terrorize and our world is paralyzed by
fear. But I have heard that the real killer is cancer. According to reports,
one third of us gathered here are likely to come down with cancer. Can you
imagine one third of your loved ones and friends ending up having to struggle
with cancer in their lives. This makes me wonder whether this life with all its
troubles and disappointments is really worth all the effort we put into it.
There must be more to life!
Thank God that there is more to life. A lot
more. It is about being fruitful in our life; fruitful, not materially but
spiritually. In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus encourages us to be fruitful: “This
is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit…” (John 15:8) The kind of
fruit Jesus is talking about that glorifies the Father is described in our
Epistle lesson in 1 John: “To believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and
to love one another as he commanded us.” (3:22). This is the kind of fruit that
pleases our heavenly Father. Jesus said: “I am the vine; you are the branches.
If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you
can do nothing.” (John 15:5). We produce fruit as we keep and obey the commands
of our Lord.
Being fruitful for God, however, is not an easy
task. By nature we are not loving, generous and kind to others. The love we
give to others often has a way of coming back to serve our own ends. We tend
much more to “love with words or tongue” than “with actions and in truth” (1
John 3:18). It is also natural for us to complain about the past, to fret about
the present and to worry about the future. We find it difficult to really trust
that God is in control and always has our best interests in mind, no matter how
dark the clouds are that surround us.
One of the keys to leading a fruitful life is to
recognize that the farmer who comes to prune the vine is not our enemy. The
farmer does not intend to hurt the vine when he cuts it back. His actions are
intended to make it produce more fruit. I lived much of my life in the Niagara
area which is known for its vineyards and award-winning wineries. Just a few
weeks ago as I was driving along the QEW on my way to visit my parents in St.
Catharines, I still saw farmers in the vineyards, trimming what seemed to be
endless rows of grapevines. What struck me was how utterly bare they were
cutting the vines. They literally pruned the Vine right down to the main
branches that were tied to the supporting wires. That was a lot of work and it
was all being done by hand! Basically this job kept the farmer busy over the
whole winter from the end of the harvest until the buds began to grow out in
the spring. I suspect that the reason farmers take this job so serious is that
it must make a big difference when it comes to harvesting fruit. All the
man-hours spent pruning pay off with a bountiful harvest.
The pruning is important for several reasons. For
example, it ensures that not too much energy and juice is goes into producing
bigger branches and more leaves, but into the production of grapes. Secondly,
pruning ensures that air and sun can reach the whole plant, helping it stay
free of diseases.
Jesus uses this illustration of grape farming to teach
us an important lesson; a lesson on bearing the kind of fruit in our life that
really matters. If we are to be fruitful we must allow God to trim and prune
away anything in our life that hinders the work of the Holy Spirit in producing
a vibrant faith and true love with actions. The things that hinder this work
are the things in life that we tend to cling to; the things we think and worry
about the most. Perhaps for us in North America the most important of these is
money and possessions because our lives can get so consumed by the race to earn
enough money to afford our expensive lifestyles. Not too long ago I realized
just how close money can be to my own heart when I had difficulty paying off
the credit card bills. Talk about anxiety!
Another thing we idolize is our health. You only
have to look at how much our nation spends on health care to see where our
nations’ biggest idols are. Politicians know that voters value their health
more than anything else, and that is where our dollars go. The billions we
spend on health care in one year would be enough to end starvation throughout
the whole world! Now, I’m not saying that proper health care is not important.
I’m just letting you know that if we as Christians regard our physical health
as that important, we are probably neglecting our spiritual health, which is
really far more important.
Other common idols we Christians have may include
our family and friends. Again, money, health and family are not “bad.” They are
all good because God created them for us. Rather, it is our attitude towards
them that can turn these blessings into things which the devil uses to ensnare
us and turn our attention away from God and the spiritual fruit we are supposed
to be producing.
That is why God must come along every once in a
while and do a pruning job on us. A loved one gets killed in a car accident.
Your child gets hooked on drugs. A friend lets you down. The retirement nest
egg gets chopped in half by falling stock markets. The doctor discovers a
serious health problem. Many of us have experienced such challenges in life.
The older one gets, the more frequent they can become.
I believe that God allows these things to happen to
us to remind us as Job realized: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked
I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;” (Job 1:21). Naked.
All these things, money, health and friends that we worry about so much all our
lives will mean nothing to us once we are dead. That is, everything, except for
the spiritual fruit we produced by following Jesus. This is the only thing that
will last forever.
Following Jesus means serving your neighbor in
whatever vocation God has placed you. As a father or mother, a husband or wife,
a child or parent, a student or teacher, an employee or an employer, a citizen
or a ruler, etc. In each of these relationships God has placed you, you have
the opportunity to serve diligently and according to the faith God has given
you, even as Jesus came to serve you. We serve God and glorify him in the way
we serve our neighbor. It is through our service in these ordinary vocations of
life that God is glorified.
When we come to accept this as God’s good and
gracious will for us, along with the faith to see and accept his pruning work
in our life as a blessing and not a curse, then we will experience a further
blessing mentioned in both of our readings. Jesus says: “If you remain in me
and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
(John 15:7). John adds, that when our hearts are thus at peace and “…do not
condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask
because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:20). We
experience this blessing once our will and desire is conformed to God’s good
and gracious will for us.
Yes, this is the peace and confidence that your heavenly Father wants you to have this day. You have come to hear his word of grace, which has made you clean (John 15:3). May you continue to allow the Holy Spirit to use that word of grace in your life to produce an abundant spiritual harvest! Amen.