"6 Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you have really known me, you will also know the Father. From now on you know him and have seen him.” (CEB)
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 He removes any of my branches that don’t produce fruit, and he trims any branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit. 3 You are already trimmed because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch can’t produce fruit by itself, but must remain in the vine. Likewise, you can’t produce fruit unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything. 6 If you don’t remain in me, you will be like a branch that is thrown out and dries up. Those branches are gathered up, thrown into a fire, and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified when you produce much fruit and in this way prove that you are my disciples. 9 “As the Father loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete." (CEB)
“Ego
Eimi: The “I AM” Discourses of Jesus Christ,” Week Four
It
was one of my last weeks there, a time when I was selfishly hoping to celebrate
my two years of student ministry with the church in California I worked at
before arriving here, but it was also one of the most painful: on one of my
last days of work, I made a hospital call to the deathbed of a 90-year-old
patriarch of the congregation who would pass away the following day. And in a recently previous Sunday in worship, I had
seen the mother of one of our young adults, Kelsey, who, devastatingly, had just been
diagnosed with testicular cancer and as of now has been undergoing treatment
for it.
His
story, though, has a happier ending—he is not only living life, he is offering
up his faith in new ways. A few months
ago, in the midst of his treatment, he preached at that church. Obviously, I was here and so I didn’t hear
him preach, but I did receive this message on my Facebook feed when I got home,
which contained this little bit from his sermon…Kelsey said: “This place—church—is like
the Olive Garden. We serve complimentary
bread with each visit, and when you’re here, you’re family. But, unlike the Olive Garden, when you aren’t
here, you’re still family.”
And
it was one of those eureka moments for me, where the purpose of everything we do
here as a church makes sense—as gnarly and messy and painful as life is for
someone—even for you—we still have a place to grow, to live, and to be caught
whenever we stumble.
This
is it—we’ve made it to the last week of this sermon series—a series that has
taken us through the entire month of August, and whose name, ‘ego eimi,’ is
actually the Greek words “I am.” A lot
of Jesus’ most famous teachings are immortalized one-liners—turn the other
cheek, do unto others, love your neighbor, that sort of thing. We’ve done a pretty good job of remembering
the one-liners themselves, but perhaps less of a good job remembering the
contexts from which they came. And the
one-liners Jesus uses to describe Himself fall into the same camp—we may
remember that Jesus says He is the Way, the Truth, and the Light, or that He is
the Good Shepherd, but we may not remember the circumstances in which He said
those things. Well, all of those “I am”
one-liners come from the Gospel of John, and we’ll be walking through John’s
Gospel to visit almost all of these one-liners in turn. We began with the first “I am” statement in
John: Jesus proclaiming that He is the Bread of Life; and continued last week
with His second “I am” statement: Jesus proclaiming that He is the Light of the
World. Last week, we came to the third
and fourth “I am” statements: Jesus proclaiming that He is the Gate, and that
He is the Good Shepherd. And finally,
this week, we have arrived at the final two “I am” sayings from Jesus: that He
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that He is the True Vine.
These
two sayings take place in what is called the Farewell Discourse, which
constitutes four entire chapters of the Gospel of John. Given that John is 21 chapters long, this is
impressive—a single sermon from Jesus makes up nearly one-fifth of John’s
Gospel. And it is called the Farewell
Discourse because, well, that is exactly what it is—a good-bye to the twelve
who have been with Him every step of the way, because as soon as chapter 18
opens, Jesus is betrayed and arrested.
In
other words—life is about to get horrific, painful, gnarly, and, ultimately,
lethal for Him. But even then, He still
dares to talk of how He is, among other things, life itself!
For
John, perhaps more so than any other Gospel writer, Jesus was, and is, as the
New Testament scholar Gail O’Day puts it, “the tangible presence of God in the
world…humanity’s encounter with Jesus the Son makes possible a new experience
of God as Father.” What this means, she
argues, is that “John is concerned with helping Christians recognize and claim
their God and claim the distinctiveness of their identity as a people of faith.”
Like
I said, Jesus says all of this right before being tried and executed, and of
course He knows what is about to happen—He foretells it in all four Gospels, He
knows His hour has come, and that what is about to happen to him is, as Paul
writes in Philippians, not simply death, but death on a cross. Nothing but pain and shame awaits the
wretched soul put to death by crucifixion as opposed to almost any other means,
which short of being thrown to wild animals, would likely have been more
humane.
And
of the ancient messianic figures who have founded religions that have survived
the warp and weft of history, only Jesus died through martyrdom. Judaism’s forefather, Abraham, died of old
age. So did Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and
Moses. The prophet Muhammad died from a
fever in 632. The Buddha, Siddhartha
Gautama, after surviving multiple assassination attempts, died of old age in
his 80’s some 400 years before Christ came to earth. The way of Jesus is a unique way because of
how that way ended—not just in death, but in violent death and ultimately, in resurrection.
Which
is why I think Jesus turns to another metaphor to describe Himself—the True
Vine. This imagery, like that of the
Good Shepherd from the 23rd Psalm, has its roots in the Old
Testament, in this case from the book of the prophet Isaiah, who describes
Israel itself as God’s vine; in both cases, God is depicted as the vine keeper,
the viticulturalist.
But
of all the things that were central to the agrarian Israelite economy and diet—and
bear in mind, we know that Jesus was fond of using agrarian metaphors precisely
like the Good Shepherd—Jesus chooses the vine.
Not a grain or barley crop, that would have produced bread, even more of
a staple than wine, but the vine. And as
opposed to the billowing majesty of waves of crops—as the line from America the
Beautiful goes, “amber waves of grain,” with nothing about vines or grapes! I mean—I lived just south of Napa Valley for
my three years of seminary, and while Napa itself is beautiful, the vines are
these sort of chest-high rows of gnarly wood that comes out of the ground and,
at least when there aren’t grapes, aren’t always that much to see.
Of
course Jesus is saying that He is no ordinary vine, yet even with God as His
vine keeper, His life will still end up like that of the vine—gnarled and
twisty. And so it is with us—even if, or
when, we turn our lives and our trust completely over God, complete with all of
the peace of mind and grace and love that it promises, doing so does not remove
the obstacles in our lives. It is not
cruise control button, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even after identifying as Christians, we
still struggle, in our jobs, with our families, with everyday life and all that
it entails. God is simply not a vine
keeper who removes the thorns for us.
And
if that is what we come into church, or into tomorrow, expecting from the
divine, then we will most likely be met with overwhelming disappointment,
probably not unlike what the disciples feel in the Passion story—disappointment
in what is happening to their master, disappointment in themselves for their
own fear, disappointment in everything that was wrong with the way their world
worked.
The
way, and the truth, and the life that Jesus is, and represents, and offers to
us does not remove such disappointments.
It transcends them.
It
is what we must do as a church—we cannot remove disappointment and hurt and
pain and illness in peoples lives, but we can help them transcend those things,
those wrongs, those evils. We can offer
a way out of brokenness, we can offer a truth of reconciliation, and we can offer
a life of love and purpose and acceptance for each and every person who walks
through our doors.
I
learned this in California—that God did not undo an old man’s death, or removed
a young man’s cancer. God instead
reached beyond those things.
After
all, God did not simply undo Jesus’ own death.
God created something more.
And
that, I think, is the mark of a true vine keeper.
Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
August
26, 2012
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