John 17:6-19 "For What Shall We Pray?"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         “Let’s pray,” the pastor says.  A short time of silence follows.  And then there is the connection:

         "Thank you for calling God’s House. Please select one of the following four options:  Press 1 for requests, press 2 for thanksgiving, press 3 for complaints, for all other inquiries, press 4."

         Or, how about this: "All of the angels are helping other customers right now. Please stay on the line. Your call will be answered in the order it was received."

         Or maybe this:  If you'd like to speak with Gabriel, press 1, for Michael, press 2, for any other angel, press 3.  If you want King David to sing you a psalm, press 6. To find out if your relative is here, enter his or her date of death and listen for the list that follows.  For answers to nagging questions about dinosaurs, the age of the earth, and where Noah's ark is, wait until you get here!   Our computers show that you have called once today already. Please hang up immediately. This office is closed for the weekend. Please call again Monday. End of message.

         Thank goodness prayer is really not that complicated – though, if we were to point to the passage we just read as an example of worthy prayer, at first glance, we might think differently.  Written very much in the style of the author of the gospel of John, let’s face it, the language of this prayer is densely theological, incredibly hard to follow, and in the end quite mind-twisting. 

         It is often called Jesus’ high priestly prayer because he is praying not for himself but rather on behalf of his disciples.  To put into its proper context, we should know that he prayed it as they sat around the dinner table together in that upper room in Jerusalem - just before they adjourned and headed to the garden of Gethsemane where he would pray his last agonizing, blood-sweating prayer all alone, that particular prayer for himself as his disciples gently snored in a heap nearby. 

         But the prayer we just read is found at the conclusion of the so-called Farewell Discourses, which are Jesus’ end-of-life directions to his little band of followers.  He laid out these instructions, being so acutely aware of what was likely to occur that night or tomorrow or someday soon even as they were so blissfully unaware. When we pick up the passage this morning, Jesus has been going on in his Discourse for several chapters now.

         They had completed their Passover Meal.  They had finished their final cup of wine.  He had told them about the vine and the branches, and they had reveled for a few moments in that deep sense of connection to him, to God, to one another. He had reminded them of the greatest commandment of all – to simply love one another – and they had silently pondered God’s compassion for them and, in turn, reflected on how their own compassion would stack up in comparison. 

         Now Jesus felt the need to bring the conversation to a close, and so he ended it all with a prayer – a lengthy table prayer – 26 verses in all – a far cry from “God is great.  God is good.  And we thank him for our food.” 

         However, it was not really a table grace anyway.  Rather it was a parting prayer for them, for the disciples.  He prayed for them, and because these words, first recorded by the author of the Gospel of John, have been remembered and recognized as holy words and have found their way into our church this morning, so he also prays on our behalf.  As Disciples of Christ pastor Fred Craddock imagines the scene, it was like “a congregation overhearing a pastoral prayer. We are not directly addressed, but we are very much in the mind of the One who is praying."

         The disciples’ lives were about to be turned upside down.  They were about to be tossed out on their own – small and vulnerable - with love as their only weapon to face a world lashing out in its brokenness.  They would face overwhelming odds.  Their faith would be sorely – and sometimes cruelly – tested.  They would feel anything but safe during this spiritual journey on which they were embarking. 

         Perhaps you know from your own experience just how they felt.  Perhaps you too have been in the same boat – on your own, small and vulnerable, wondering what sort of a weapon love can be against all the malice and resentment swirling about you.  Perhaps you have felt that the odds of your making it through this very day, let alone all of your life, are overwhelming.  Perhaps your faith has been tested – by illness, by addiction, by depression.  Perhaps you have felt anything but safe in a world that is anything but safe in so many regards.

         And if you have never felt any of those things, oh, someday you will, I can assure you of that.  However, in the meantime, perhaps you have been with or witnessed others whose world has been turned upside down, who seem to be so exposed and defenseless, who face overwhelming odds just to survive, who struggle as their faith is tested over and over again, who can never feel safe in the world that has been carved out for them. 

         Oh, though the millennia have gone by, though the particular circumstances have changed, in the end, we are still so like the disciples for whom Jesus prayed that last night before he was killed.  We are so like Peter and Andrew and James and the others simply because we are all humans – with the same human needs.  And because Jesus prayed for them, then surely he prays for us too.

         He prays that we and those we love and those we scarcely know will have strength.  He prays for oneness because he knows that is where true strength will be found. 

“…guard them as they pursue this life
That you conferred as a gift through me,
 so they can be one heart and mind…”

                 He prays that we will hang together – as families, as communities, as churches – because he knows that if we do not hang together, we will all hang separately, as the saying goes.  Disunity is always a great threat.  For example, for us, the more we can be one as a congregation – with a common vision - the more we can impact the world through our ministries.

         It is that vine and branches business again.  Life flows from that single root and throughout the vine bringing nourishment and strength to each of the branches.  There is something important about interconnectedness, not only between the vine and a single branch, but also among the branches themselves. 

         Remember how we talked a couple of weeks ago about those giant and ancient sequoia trees on the West Coast? They might be hundreds of feet tall and tens of feet in diameter but they have very shallow root systems. And the only way they can withstand the winds and rains and stress of the centuries is because they intertwine their roots with others, drawing their strength from one another.

         Lasting strength is not born of isolation, but it is born of community.  May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for strength – for our families, for our church community, for our nation, for those who are the least of these, the vulnerable ones in our world.  Oh, Jesus, we pray for strong and caring communities and particular strength to the least of these – you know who they are.

         If oneness was the first thing that Jesus prayed for, then the next was that God will protect us. 

 “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…”

         As Lutheran pastor Tim Shrimpton writes, “We want to feel safe because so often we don’t. We feel adrift in the world. We feel like there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves. We often feel powerless to affect any changes or to secure anything good for ourselves and others. And even when we can and do accomplish things to help and protect ourselves and others, we know that there is always a hard limit to what can be done. We can raise our children well and equip them for life, but we cannot protect them from every hardship. We can make careful plans for retirement, but we can’t stop emergency bills or economic downturns that hinder our savings. Things can feel somewhat hopeless at times.” 

         Jesus prays for God’s presence in our lives, but in our lives here and now, on this earth. 

 He does not pray that we will be somehow miraculously taken out of the world, but rather that we will be protected from whom the Gospel writer calls the Evil One (which probably has a different manifestation for each one of us). 

         We live in this odd and often awkward tension between being part of this fractured world in all its horrific and outlandish manifestations, but nonetheless a world we have no right to escape, and being set apart as a faith community within that crazy, jaded world, a faith community committed to its transformation into the Kingdom of God.

“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”

         It is a dangerous world out there.  That Jesus knows for certain.  But he also knows that we are not meant to be sequestered safely away from the trials we face, but rather that, in the midst of those trials, we will eventually know God’s presence, and we will trust in the protective power of God’s love. 

         Though it might be a lot easier otherwise, Christianity does not, as Lutheran pastor David Lose reminds us, “provide an escape from life’s difficulties, but rather offers support to flourish amid them.”

May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for protection against whatever evil we and those around us – both far and near – may face – war, earthquakes, health crises, loneliness, addiction, all those things that beat us down and wear us out.  Oh, Jesus, we pray for God’s protection from the evils that the world encounters – you know who they are.     

         And finally Jesus prays for a way out of our hopelessness.  He prays for a path forward when there seems to be no path.   Jesus prays for guidance.

“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

         As United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey notes, “The question we must ask focuses on how we will order our lives and examine our priorities and shape our institutions, especially if we are really, really close to God because of our knowledge of Jesus.” 

         We have a purpose here – each one of us – no matter how worthless or undirected we may feel at times.  And it is a holy purpose that we are called to live out. 

         We are the ones who know in our hearts that the Kingdom of God is not just a pleasant illusion – but is and can be even more through our efforts – a reality.  We are the ones who know the power of love and can affirm that it is the way – the only way – to forgiveness and reconciliation.  We are the ones to model a new life – where violence and abuse is not countered by even more violence and abuse, but where love trumps everything.  May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for guidance as we continue to try to walk his Way.  Oh, Jesus, we pray that God will guide us on our journey – you know its twists and turns.

         And so Jesus prayed that final evening, and his disciples listened, and soon thereafter Jesus uttered the final Amen.  His lengthy prayer was over, and he headed out to the garden of Gethsemane and all that would await him there. 

         But his words – the words of this high priestly prayer – the words that ask God for strength when there seems to be no strength, protection when we seems so vulnerable, and guidance when the path is full of so many twists and turns that we do not know how to move forward – the words of this prayer are still whispered – here – in this space – now by us – for ourselves but more often for others: Pray that God will give them strength, O Jesus.  Pray that God will protect them.  Pray that God will guide them always.  O Jesus, we pray all this in your name, you who are the Risen One, who by tradition has now ascended into Heaven to be with the Creator, who in your love intercedes for us and for the world.  Amen.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine         

John 15:9-17 "If You Can Say 'I Have Loved'"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was suffering from leukemia.  She desperately needed a blood transfusion if she was going to survive. Her brother was a match, and so his parents and the doctor asked if he would be the donor.

         The young boy thought about it for a bit and then said that he was willing to give his blood.  Little time was wasted after his consent.  Once in the hospital, he was positioned on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs, and the little boy watched in silence as his blood dripped into his sibling and the color returned to her cheeks. 

         He saw everyone around him smiling, and so he tried to smile too.  When the doctor asked him how he was doing, he answered with a question of his own, in a trembling voice, and with his eyes brimming with tears. “Will I start to die right away?” he queried as he watched his blood leaving his body. If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.”

         It is the Gospel in miniature.  It is the Good News in a nutshell.  It is the final substantive thing Jesus taught his disciples before his arrest, his trial, his execution, and his death.  He saved the very best for last. 

         Maybe they were still sitting around the Passover Meal table in that upper room in Jerusalem, reminiscing about the old days together, the taste of that final cup of wine still on their lips, the echo of his recent words – “I am the vine, and you are the branches” - still swirling and whispering in the air about them. 

         Or maybe they were walking together one final time, humming a tune – “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” – meandering their way toward the garden where he would pray – and they would sleep, the garden that would turn out to be the beginning of the end, which, when all was said and done, was really the beginning of the new beginning, but, of course, they did not know that then.

         Surely Jesus intuitively sensed that time was of the essence now, and the words he would speak would need to be timeless.  After all, they were his end-of-life instructions, and so there was a certain urgency about them.  They would need to be words that were unforgettable. 

         They would need to be words that would anchor the disciples when their life together got difficult (as it inevitably would) and the temptation to return to the old ways of fear and violence would be nearly insurmountable.  They would need to be words to fall back on when they realized that the world would hate them for the message they preached and lived. 

         They would need to be words that would steady them when their whole world imploded upon his death and they had to face the fact afterwards that they had abandoned him in his hour of greatest need.  They would need to be words to live by when he was gone.  They would need to be words to sustain them in all the decades to come. 

         They would need to be words that would create a new ethic and would inspire them to lives of action.  They would need to be simple words because, well, because his followers were pretty simple people. 

         Oh, he would need to choose his words carefully.  And it was only then that their essence bubbled to the surface:  If you can say, I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.” 

         It was to be an other-centered, belonging to something bigger than yourself sort of arrangement.  They would “abide” in one another - as he had already told them when he had spoken of that grapevine and its branches.  That is, they would never be far from his heart and mind nor he from theirs…They would dwell in him and live as if it were not possible for distance or circumstance to separate them.  Their relationship would be different going forward.  They would be no longer rabbi and students, the one pouring knowledge into the minds of the others.  That sense of hierarchy, that power relationship would be shattered.

“I do not call you servants any longer. You are my friends.  A man can have no greater love than to give his life for his friends.”  (G. Norbert)

         This final pep talk and lesson was, at its heart, preparation for the mission that they would undertake in his name – not because they were the servants and he was the master ordering them around but undertaken willingly because, well, because they were friends.  He had said so.  They were on an equal footing.  Believe it or not, he seemed to be saying, they had the potential to do what he had modeled for them these past few years that they had been together.  Because, well, because they were friends.

         And, of course, this final pep talk and lesson is also the foundation of the mission that we, as the Body of Christ, as his hands and feet in the world, undertake today.  This lesson is not a theological abstraction where we nod our heads knowingly and talk about it with a certain detachment here in church.  

         It is an ethic.  It is a lifestyle.  It is a commitment to action.  It is who we are as Christians.  It is who we are as his followers.  It is why today we give generously to our neighbors in Nepal.  If you can say, I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.  You are my friends.  A man can have no greater love than to give his life (or a bigger share of financial support than he thought he could) for his friends.”

         Whatever else this love of which Jesus spoke might be, first and foremost, it is a verb.  As blogger Brad Smith writes, “We are surrounded and bound together by the love of Christ. The Body of Christ, the Church is held together forever by the love of Christ. But if we want to abide in this love forever we must be willing to extend the love and demonstrate the love to other people….

(Jesus) expects the same love (given freely) to others that we have for ourselves.”  If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you”.

         In his book, which some of us studied during Lent, entitled Convictions:  How I Learned What Matters Most, progressive theologian Marcus Borg notes that Jesus is the norm for the Bible.  What Jesus says trumps everything else in Scripture. 

         As United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey writes, “Jesus' commandment to love provides a clear, comprehensive framework for forming values in every age and every situation, no matter how different our cultures, our technologies, our ‘sophistication.’ We ask ourselves then about every decision and choice and plan and vision: Is this rooted in love? Does this bear fruit for the kingdom of God? That's the true test.”

         It is said that American author Mark Twain once noted that it was not the things in the Bible that he did not understand that bothered him but rather the things that he did understand that scared him to death.

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you”.

         Oh, we can say that the real issue is that we do not understand the full significance of Jesus’ teaching.  We can say that he did not really mean what he said or that we blow it all out of proportion and take it out of context. 

         We can say it is a lofty ideal and leave it at that. We can even presume that it must be more complicated than what we see at first glance.  After all, the Jewish legal code called the Talmud has two hundred and forty subject headings on which rules that make up the Mosaic law are interpreted and re-interpreted by scholarly rabbis.  Similarly, the Babylonian version of the Talmud stretches to multiple volumes!  Surely our Christian teachings need deep theological study to be clearly and unequivocally understood.

         However, it is not that complicated.  Nor is it simply a lofty ideal or something taken out of context or something that we can never really understand.  It is really quite simple:  Love one another.  Be compassionate as God is compassionate.  That is the heart of Christianity.  If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Be a neighbor.  Be a friend in the most Christ-like meaning of the word – which need not mean throwing yourself in front of a bus to prove it (as Lutheran pastor Robert Moss stresses) but it does mean “putting their needs, their benefit, their life ahead of our own. That’s Jesus’ “laying down your life” kind of love.” If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Jim Wallis, perhaps best described as spokesperson for the Christian evangelical left wrote about a conference on progressive Christianity that he once attended.  The topic was, not surprisingly, social justice.  At one point, a Native American stood up and spoke to the mostly white audience:  “Let’s pretend that you were all Christians. If you were Christians, you would no longer accumulate. You would share everything you had. You would actually love one another. And you would treat (one another as if the whole world was) family….Why don't you do that? Why don't you live that way?”  If you can say: I have loved, then you have truly lived.

         Going forward then, as UCC pastor Kate Huey challenges us, “Let's (do) pretend we are all Christians. What would that look like? How would it be different than the way we live today?”  Would we begin by holding our Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other? Would we continue to see church membership and involvement as something we choose for an activity, much as we choose soccer or voice lessons for our children?

         Or would church be something different than it is?  Rather than being there to respond to and fill our needs, would it instead powerfully and unequivocally call each one of us to fill the needs of others and in so doing, find our own deepest needs met? (Huey)  Would the church be different if we recognized and openly affirmed that it is the structure that Jesus left for us to shelter and nurse into action that final lesson he had for his disciples?

“My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you. The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.”

         If you can say:  I have loved, then you have truly lived. Then you are abiding in Jesus. Then you are the church as it was meant to be.  Then you are part of the vine of which we spoke last week.  Then you remain in him as he remains in you – and all will call you his disciple.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

         

John 15:1-8 "Lessons from VIneyards"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         There was once a farmer.  He had been a farmer for a long time.  He was in his 80’s, a quiet man and very wise.  He was one of those fellows who said little, but, when he did speak, it was worth listening.  Nothing against his wife, but she usually spoke for both of them.  You get the picture.

         One day he was in his backyard doing some pruning while a neighbor, a young man who was just learning about farming, looked silently on, eager to pick up any tips and tricks from the vintage expert. Having pruned several branches, the old farmer said to his neighbor: “Let me show you a trick.”

         The young newbie watched closely as the old farmer bent down and gathered a handful of dirt, which he then rubbed over the fresh cuts on the branches.  His neighbor nodded his head and tucked away this nugget of information, assuming that such a simple action would seal the new cuts and protect the tree.

         “Oh, no,” the farmer replied when queried about his unusual technique.  “That’s to protect me. This way, my wife can’t tell I pruned her plants.”

         Today we are talking about gardening, a worthy topic in the spring, even in this very late coming spring here in Maine.  We are pondering pruning – and branches – and vines – and, of course, because we are in church, God and Jesus and us as well. 

         “I am the vine.  My father is the vinedresser, and you are the branches”: That is what Jesus said to his disciples during the so-called “Farewell Discourses,” a lengthy passage unique to the Gospel of John.  It is the last of the “I am” sayings and sets the scene for another one of Jesus’ extended metaphors, one that even the most simple-minded of his followers would have understood. 

         Jesus’ disciples knew about vineyards, just as today many of us might know about apple orchards.  Methodist pastor Philip McLarty put it this way: “They knew the secrets of proper planting and grafting and pruning. They also knew the responsibilities of keeping a vineyard, that when plants fail to produce, it's up to the keeper of the vineyard to dig them up. After all, they're not there for show. Unless the vines and the branches bear fruit, they're taking up valuable space.”

        In their mind’s eye, the disciples could imagine the gnarled central vine, so sturdy and likely hundreds of years old.  They could envision its taproot and capillary roots firmly entrenched deep in the ground.  They could see the branches radiating outward, not haphazardly and unkempt, but rather cut back dramatically each early spring to force not so much new growth as an abundant harvest of grapes in the autumn months, grapes which would then be processed and made into wine and raisins to see them through the year.  No vine, no wine.  No fruit if you don’t prune the shoot.  No pain, no gain.

         Pruning (particularly from the perspective of that which is being pruned) does not seem to be a pleasant endeavor.  I must admit that I shudder when I see Joe emerge from our barn with pruning shears in hand, making his way toward the large forsythia bush and lilac that border our woodshed.  There is quite a large pile of brush by the time he is finished.  However, I must also admit that there are more and fuller blossoms in future seasons – though sometimes it takes a couple of years to see the benefit. 

         In this passage we just read, Jesus speaks about the need for pruning.  Every branch that does not bear grapes must be cut off, he says.  And every branch that is grape-bearing must be pruned back so it will bear even more. 

         He seems to be telling us that, whether we are fruit producers or not, if we are part of this vine, we will not remain the same – change is inevitable - which perhaps is a way of, at the very least, suggesting that none of us have it all together spiritually.  We are either deadwood, or we need pruning.

         Either we do not get it at all, or we could be so much better at it.  We could love more.  W could take compassion to a new level.  We could more deeply understand that the Nepalese family who last week lost everything – shelter, clothing, furniture, kitchen equipment, friends, children, cousins - is our neighbor as much as the lily-white family who lives next door to us – the former undoubtedly needing our neighborliness now more than ever.

         There was once a robber, a 5 foot 6 inch man weighing some 270 pounds.  He walked into two banks in broad daylight and attempted to rob them. He also made no attempt to disguise himself.

         Within hours of the robberies, police found him. He was easily identified from the surveillance tapes. Nevertheless, he was shocked.

         "But I wore the juice!" he said to the arresting officers.

         It turns out that before the robberies he had smeared his face with lemon juice. It caused his face to burn, and he had difficulty seeing, but he was under the impression that smearing lemon juice on his face would render him invisible to the security cameras. 

         You know, the old disappearing ink trick taken to a new level.  His case was highlighted in a social psychology study entitled, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments."

         Incompetence can take many forms, not the least of which is spiritual incompetence (that is, not having it all together spiritually), which maybe is why pruning is such essential aspect of Jesus’ metaphor of vine and branches.

         For me, another striking image in this passage is the connectedness between the vine and the branches.  “If you remain (or, as some translations say, “abide”) in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” 

         I love that word, “abide.”  As blogger John Shore writes, “It means to dwell, to live your days, remain in . . . rest in the love of God.”  He goes on to say that “to abide is not effort, it is gift.

It is the way you live in the presence of a loved one…They are never far from heart and mind…You and I are called to abide and dwell in Christ - to live as if it were not possible for distance or circumstance to separate us.”

         To produce that good fruit we are called to produce as followers of Jesus, we as the branches need to stay firmly attached to the vine.  We need to be abide in Jesus, be connected to him, for he is our lifeblood as Christians.  He is the one in whom we find real life, compassionate life as God meant life to be.  As Presbyterian pastor Meda Stamper notes, “We bear fruit not by squeezing it out of ourselves but because we are extensions of the vine.”

         In short, we need the vine. We need the model of Jesus’ ministry if we are to live the kind of lives God intended for us.  The connection is vital, and, in that sense, we are dependent on the vine, for it is the source of our compassion. 

         Without our attachment to the vine, we are deadwood.  When we look the other way, when we are consumed by our own lives and possessions and fail to have the time or inclination to respond to the deep need all around us, we are detaching ourselves from the vine.  We are just like everyone we point fingers at because they are not “very Christian” in their dealings with others.   

         Yes, we need the vine – though that is a scary thought.  It means engaging in deep dependence, profound reliance. It means recognizing that, in the end, life is nothing without the intimacy, without the relationship with the vine. 

         Now how un-American is that!  After all, we have been taught to stand on our own two feet, to demonstrate self-reliance (“The best help you have is at the end of our own arm” – that sort of thing. (Shore))

         And yet, this text says – over and over again – no!  This text says that there is no room for that rugged individualism that has characterized our culture for so long. 

         Instead it says, “’Abide in me.’ Over and over again. Abide in me. Live in me. Dwell in me. Trust in me and count on me, for all things. You will find your life — in me” (Shore) - not in possessions, not in the place you carve out for yourself in your world, not in your independent spirit – but in me and in the compassion I model and embody.  You are grafted to the vine.  Or, to be a bit more New England-ish: Rejoice, I say, rejoice in the fact that are a branch in God’s orchard.

         But grape vine or apple tree, you are not the only branch – and that is the final image I want to look at this morning.  The tree or the vineyard survives and thrives because of its many branches – interconnected, interrelated, drawing strength from the vine, from the trunk.  In Hampton Court near London, there is a grapevine, which is about 1,000 years old. This grapevine has one root, which is at least two feet thick, and some of the branches are 200 feet long. Despite its age the vine produces several tons of grapes each year.

          Although some of the smaller branches are 200 feet from the main stem, they still bear the sweet and delicious fruit because they are connected to the vine. Life flows from that single root and throughout the vine bringing nourishment and strength to each of the branches.

         There is something important to be said about such interconnectedness, not only between the vine and a single branch, but also among the branches themselves.  If Jesus were to extend this metaphor down to us here today, I think he would say that there is something important about community, about all the branches together.  For us, then, that would mean that we can not do this Christian thing effectively alone.  We are so much more powerful in community – as a church - than in isolation.

         If it can be taken seriously because of its deep commitment to compassionate mission, there is a role for the church – even today when membership is declining so precipitously.  But we need to be like those giant Western sequoia trees.  You have probably seen photographs and so know that they can be hundreds of feet tall, ten or more feet around, and thousands of years old.  But did you know that sequoias have very shallow root systems?   And the only way they can withstand the winds and rains and stress of the centuries is because they intertwine their roots with others, drawing their strength from one another. 

         We in the church need to be like those giant sequoia trees because if we are, that is, if we can effectively work as a community with a common vision, then we can be a wellspring of compassion.  That is our calling, you know – over and above fellowship and fundraising. 

Compassion is who we are meant to be because the lifeblood of the vine itself is compassion.

         And so we should not take our relationship with our church lightly, for it is through the church that we most fully realize our connection to the vine.  Reformed Church pastor Scott Hoezee makes an interesting point about our relationship with the church. 

         He writes, “We view our membership and involvement in most every institution as something that is wholly up to us—we can initiate membership and we can terminate membership at will. Hence we tend to view the status of our membership, of our belonging, to this or that group sort of at arm’s length. Being a volunteer member carries with it a vague sense of detachment. I come and go as I please, thank you very much.

         And so even in terms of church membership—and here (he says) I am recalling something Eugene Peterson once wrote—we have a hard time wrapping our minds around the idea that to say “I am a member of Second Church” (or I would add the Raymond Village Community Church) is (biblically speaking) like referring to your own hand as a member of your body. Being a voluntary member of some group means joining or resigning are rather easy things.  Being a body part carries with it quite other connotations!  A hand can’t quit the body without some pretty dramatic effects.”  Think about it.

         “I am the vine, and my father is the vinedresser.  I am the vine and you are the branches.”  In short, first, be prepared for pruning, sometimes deep and painful pruning.  But don’t let that scare you off.  Because, second, you will want abide with the vine.  You will want to stay connected because within the vine is the deep wellspring of compassion you will need to draw upon if you are (and, by connection, this church is) not to be relegated as deadwood.  And finally, remember that, though you are not the only branch, you are a most important one – sustaining someone here in this community or elsewhere in ways you probably will never know.  The vineyard will not be the same without you, without your presence, but most of all, without your active involvement in compassionate ministries.

         And when all is said and done, the wine – oh the wine – will be most intoxicating, in the very best sense of the word.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine