Now, some of you may know that I am not fond of gardening, or really, the great outdoors in general. Some of that at this point in my life is because I cannot be out in the sun for long periods of time, but I really don’t find digging in the dirt relaxing or fun. My goal in life, really, is to live in a moderately high rise apartment in a city… maybe overlooking the water… somewhere warm… or perhaps a tiny house in the desert; anyway, I am not a gardener by any stretch… but, there is something about the vine, the branches and the fruit that truly speaks to me…
Jesus as the vine is a powerful image because it is Jesus who feeds and nourishes us who are the branches so that we might bear fruit in the kingdom. As I thought about this image, I thought about all of the ways in which Jesus feeds us; certainly there is the real feeding that goes on at the altar on Sundays; but most plants need to be fed more often than that; unless of course you’re a cactus; and maybe that’s why I like the desert, the plants don’t need much to keep them going…. But, back to being fed by Jesus… I know, at a deep level, that in order for this particular branch to bear any kind of fruit in the kingdom, I must make sure that I am drinking from the overflowing well of spiritual nourishment that Jesus provides…
Well, you remember that time before Easter, that season called Lent? I don’t know if it was just me this year, but I never really got grounded during Lent; my discipline never really got off the ground, and I felt out of sorts the whole time. Maybe it was because we have been in a spiritual Lent since last Lent. This last year has been a struggle for all of us emotionally and spiritually. Prolonged isolation isn’t God’s for us; we are created to be on community. Thanks be to God that somehow I found myself able to find the well of life by holy week, and could be truly present in prayer and worship so that Easter morning felt like the amazing miracle that it is…but I know that I need to keep myself spiritually fed if I’m going to be anywhere close to the person Jesus has asked me to be. Thankfully, the true vine keeps offering what we all need even when we are too stubborn to realize we are getting spiritually weak…
For myself, when I get too busy or too lazy to attend to my spiritual life, it’s also really tough for me to abide in and with God; it’s easy to forget that my whole life depends upon that relationship, and that it guides my actions… loving others becomes a bit more tricky because I am not allowing God’s love to sustain me… old habits start to creep in, and suddenly there is fear and anger at things that are completely out of my control… as John reminds us, love casts out fear, and when I am grounded in the love that God has for me, there is no fear… I can more easily recognize the image of God in others, rather than recognizing my own fears and anger…
When Bishop Fisher was with us, we celebrated a baptism which signifies the bringing of one of God’s beloved into the body of Christ. We all renewed the baptismal covenant, which helps to remind us of our life together in Christ, for we too have been marked as Christ’s own forever… we all promised to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers”… continuing in the prayers is something that sustains us as well as sustains those around us; for myself, I know that I must pray, so that I can be the person Jesus has asked me to be, but also so that I can allow myself to feel the love that God has for me… it’s not a one way conversation, and when I go through the motions of doing the prayers of the church without allowing time for God to respond, it ceases to be prayer. I can always tell when I am getting off track, when I start to think that prayer is becoming a chore… and, honestly, sometimes it is a chore… but as a wise spiritual director of mine once told me, chores are those things that we must do in order to make our lives more bearable.
So, I have been working my way back to the living well. The true vine, Jesus our saviour is where my spiritual nourishment comes from… and fortunately for me, even when I start acting like I don’t need to be fed, I get fed anyway. It’s kind of like the little kid that screams that they don’t need to sleep and desperately fights sleep, when everyone in the room knows that that baby needs a nap…
The spiritual life is no different… If you’re like me, sometimes you fight it for a couple of days because there are more important things to do, and suddenly, a few days turns into lots of days. Beloved, allowing ourselves to be fed by Jesus is the most important thing we do… we must find ways to make sure that happens, whether it’s time in quiet, time with the prayers of the church, time with music, time reading scripture…. Whatever it is that helps each of us to connect not just to our own stuff, but to Jesus who loves us enough to always be willing to help us to bear fruit in our lives.
There are all kinds of ways to pray and to allow ourselves to be open to the Love that is God… if, like me, you find your particular branch a little weak and withered, I would be happy to help you find a way to be nourished. The first step is to recognize that it’s absolutely necessary for our life… and to realize that God wants nothing more than to be in relationship with us…how will each of us allow ourselves to be fed today?