Grafted

John 15:1-5

The line we really need to spend a lot more time with is the last thing Jesus says—

…apart from me you can do nothing.

Our immediate response might well be defensiveness—

Yes we can! We can do anything! Nothing can stop us!

Until something stops us—stops us dead in our tracks. Something like the senseless violence in Charleston, SC this week. A broken young man walks into a church, not to pray, not to seek counsel, not to find help, but to kill whoever happens to be there. Then he walks out, leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess. Suddenly, our bravado about our own abilities and power falls away to nothing. We need to hear the voice of Jesus—we need to hear it in a way we never heard it before.

Apart from me you can do nothing.

Perhaps what Jesus meant was something akin to declaring that actions and words done for some other reason than love—other-centered, self-emptying love—will come to nothing. All of us at one time or another want to change the world, to alter its course, and the vast majority of us want to do so simply because we see things that need to change, that must alter, if we are to find hope, security, shelter, and peace. But a few of us want to change the world because we feel left out by the world, left behind, ignored, abandoned, and that leaves us angry with a rage that nothing can quench, so by God, we will make the world notice us. We will do something no one can dismiss or overlook. That is when hell is unleashed on earth. What will result if our actions are done in the absence of Christ; i.e., the love that is God, is going to be worlds removed from what is good, right, or compassionate. They will only be manifestations of who we are, as we are; i.e., they will be as fallible and as imperfect as we who do them. In our absolute worst moments, they will be reflections of the hell within us. So, Jesus offers us himself to transcend what we have to offer. 

Which leads to a second observation. As we welcome Christ’s offer, we align ourselves with the power and presence of God. We now have God’s backing. Things can now change as they need to change, they can become as they need to become, and they will result in something that benefits everyone who experiences them. Jesus employed the metaphor of a grapevine. Cultivators will spend years working on a vineyard, carefully manipulating the vines into producing the vintage they want. They will carefully graft separate growth onto old vines, they will add flavor or piquant through additional strains of grape, and they will carefully nurture new vines into being productive. They work to make the best wine they can. So it is with God and us. In Christ, God revealed and placed before us the essence of what it truly is to be a human being before God. Here is a man who embodies all that humanity can be. Here is a version of humanity that completely lives by the love that is God.  Now, God recognizes that there is a great distance between Jesus and the rest of us, so God works with us in grace, carefully infusing Christ within us, seeking to add each of us and our strain of being human into the entity that is the fellowship of Jesus, what we call the Church. God freely invites all of us to join. God welcomes anyone and everyone. God seeks every human being breathing to become part of it. To reject this invitation is to reject the source of new life, new creation, and new being. To reject this invitation is to remain at a distance. It as if God laid a bridge across a raging river to rescue those threatened by flood, but the threatened deny there is a bridge there, and choose to remain in the way of the flood. Welcome the offer. It is yours to keep and to take.

As we begin to make this our practice, we can find a way to respond to events like Charleston that stop us dead. We can find light in the midst of darkness. 

How?

First, we heal and practice the art of healing. We cannot bring back the dead, but we can remember them always. We can remember them actively by continuing to do and to be what they were as they worked. In this case, for us in the Church, it is a matter of continuing to be the Church. They were gathered for Bible study and prayer, so we will gather for Bible study and prayer. Some of them were noted for living in the Gospel in their daily walk—the pastor who perished, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, became involved in the morass of politics to make a difference, to walk by faith in a context in which the ideals of faith struggle to breathe—so we, too, walk by faith where we work and live. Furthermore, we add an intentionality to our study, worship, and service—the world is broken and there is an overabundance of broken human beings walking among us—once again it was a young man who perpetrated this violence—so we need to ask what it is about our time and place that so breaks young men. We need to work for changes that will rescue such persons before they break completely. We need to pray our way to an understanding of how the Church can reshape and reform the world in which we exist. We need to reclaim the young from a world that tears them asunder, creating rage-filled perpetrators. 

Second, we can never grow deaf to Jesus’ words and continually and exhaustively seek his counsel, love, and presence as we go about our work and decide which way we are to go. God offers himself to us, willingly seeking to graft us into God’s own being. That needs to be our focus. That needs to be our purpose. That needs to be where we walk.