Abiding John 15:1-8, Acts 8:26-40

Abiding
John 15:1-8
Acts 8:26-40

I don’t say this enough, but I’m glad I’m not God.
I’m glad I’m not God because as sure as I’m standing here I would mess it up.
I get cross if somebody changes lanes in front of me
without using a turn signal!
Just think of what I might do if I had omnipotent powers
and I saw thousands of children starving in Haiti while political factions
waste precious resources fighting amongst themselves,
Or what if I had lightening bolts at my fingertips
and a tornado or two holstered on my hips
and I saw somebody cruelly teasing a mentally retarded man.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to blast SOMEBODY into next week.

Let’s all pause a moment and breathe a sigh of relief that I’m NOT God
but let’s also realize that because we ALL come at life
from a limited, somewhat twisted, ill-informed perspective
not one of us could do the job – not well.
In fact, even when we simply set out to interpret
what seems on the surface a very straightforward Bible passage
we have to first admit the serious handicap of being human and not divine.

Take the first verses of John 15 for example.
It starts out with an image that would be very familiar to John’s original audience
and it’s one that’s quite familiar to this congregation
made up, as we are, of master gardeners and residents of Virginia wine country.
The image is of a vine grower, a grape farmer
whose task it is to get the best from his vineyard, to make it bear fruit
and WE know what it means to bear fruit, right?
it means to be PRODUCTIVE.
It means to compete vigorously in the marketplace,
to maximize efficiency,
to refuse to settle for second best.
Sure, there will be times when it seems the only fruit you can put out there is a lemon,
but, gosh darn it, that’s when you need to make lemonade!

Of course we also know what it means to cut away, to prune,
to get rid of UNPRODUCTIVE vines
Each of us can conjure up in our mind’s eye
a poster child for fruitlessness.
We’ve each got someone in mind who epitomizes waste:
wasted efforts, wasted time, even wasted space.
It’s all about efficiency,
the right use of limited resources.
We know about fruitfulness and we know about barrenness
and with the shears in our hands we could get it done!
We could whip any vineyard our ours into shape like nobody’s business.

Sure we COULD do it,
the trouble is that what we would end up with in our vineyard
would be far different from God’s.
We’re human beings, remember?
With foggy insight, limited foresight,
and, even with 20/20 hindsight we're not very good at learning our lessons,
not very good at exercising patience,
not the kind of patience it takes to tend God’s vineyard.

Where we go wrong is in forgetting that, in God’s vineyard resources AREN’T limited
Efficiency is NOT the primary consideration,
Abiding is.
Instead of putting all the focus on production,
instead of couching everything in terms of reward and punishment,
success and failure,
Jesus reminds us that in God’s vineyard the MOST important thing
is simply to to remain, to abide, to stay connected.
The Master Vine Grower is the one, who, in the end,
is responsible for the ultimate overall health of the vineyard.
Our job is NOT to sort, to snip, to judge the relative value of any branch.
Our job is simply to hold on to Jesus for all we’re worth
and to hold on to each other as well.

It’s Mother’s Day so it seems only right to confess
that mother’s seem to consider this truth more often than fathers.
We fathers tend to take the role of efficiency experts in the family.
If there is a family get-together planned and grown children are traveling from afar
It’s the father who spends time plotting out the shortest route for everyone.
It’s the father who considers whether the old hot water heater is going to be able
to give a hot shower on demand if everybody stays in the same place.
But the mother, she doesn’t care about that stuff.
She may plan out some meals, do the grocery shopping,
but that’s not chief on her agenda.
All she cares about is that everyone is together again.

Let’s face it, if you and I were in charge of the vineyard
we’d have it staked in rows and free of anything that didn’t look like it belonged.
We’d prune it passionately and quickly lose patience
with any vine that didn’t produce.
"It’s wasting space," we’d yell to our helper,
"Yank it up and put in something that’s going to pay off."

But thankfully, we’re not in charge. God is.
And instead of putting all the focus on production,
instead of couching everything in terms of reward and punishment,
success and failure,
Jesus reminds us that in God’s vineyard the MOST important thing
is simply to abide, to remain, to stay connected.

Some of you may see that as an awfully lax view of discipleship,
a shirking of Christian duty,
a convenient excuse to indulge in an "anything goes" corruption of the faith.
but you’d be wrong.
The truth is, it’s us trying to do God’s job that’s the corruption.
It’s us assuming that we know what’s best for God’s vineyard
that is the height of arrogance.
Anybody can judge.
Any group can divide itself into little subsets of like-minded robots
setting up and jealously guarding rigid group standards of behavior and doctrine.
That’s a cake walk.

It’s staying connected that’s hard,
especially in this toxic culture of television’s barking heads
and editorial page sniping that try to divide us into polarized camps.
It’s having the strength to keep in touch that’s a struggle
in the face of right wing evangelicals and liberal activists
who loudly pit themselves against one another.

ABIDE in me, Jesus said. Abide in ME.
Keep the branches connected to the vine,
and stay connected to one another.
Belief will come. Behavior will come.
Not out of fear of failure, not out of concern over being cut due to lack of performance,
but as the natural outgrowth of deep love.

The remarkable thing is that it’s this passion to stay connected at all costs
that allows for unprecedented freedom to bear fruit in surprising ways -
in organic, unscripted, Spirit-led ways.
Philip found that out.
He was a Jew from a Galilean fishing village
and he was nudged by the God’s Spirit to engage with an Ethiopian court official
who happened also to be a eunuch.
I suppose there could be two people more different from one another,
but it’s hard to imagine.

After Jesus’ death those disciples who had been so close to Jesus,
could have become an insulated group.
Out of fear or misguided loyalty,
they could have set up a lot of rules, put up assorted roadblocks
to keep people out.
It would have made sense,
given the hostile environment in which they found themselves.
Except that they had already seen with their own eyes
that they really had no control over the movement of God’s Spirit.

They had been in Jerusalem when the Spirit was poured out on thousands at Pentecost
and unless they were going to deny their own experience
there was no other option for them
but to realize that they were on a beautiful, wild, bucking bronco
and all they could do was hold on for dear life –
stay connected. Abide. Remain in Jesus, their Risen Lord.

So Philip followed the Spirit’ leading when he could have said "No."
He could have argued that it would have been an inefficient expenditure of energy
given the fact the he, an olive skinned Galilean country boy
had nothing in common with a brown-skinned, African, government man.
Fortunately, Philip knew that it wasn’t his job to prune the vineyard.
He’d apparently been listening on the day when Jesus talked to them
about the Vineyard Owner being in charge.
He remembered Jesus’ admonition to simply abide.

So he engaged the stranger.
And God used Philip’s connection with Jesus and with his fellow disciples
as the raw material from which to forge a new connection with the Ethiopian.
Philip gave no final exam, not even a pop quiz as a final test of worthiness.
In fact it was the Ethiopian who asked the question.
"What is to prevent me from being baptized?" he asked.
You and I could think of a hundred things
To his credit, Philip knew he wasn’t God.
He was just a conduit, at best a coupling hitch, nothing more.
"What is to prevent me from being baptized," the Ethiopian asked?
"Nothing," Philip replied, "Absolutely nothing."