Abiding in the Vine of Life

The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Easter 5^th Sunday Sermon – 8am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL Year B 5/06/2012

Scripture Text: Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 22:24-30, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8

Sermon Text:

Have you ever seen a vine grow?

How can you live in East Tennessee

and not see vines grow?

They're all over the place.

A vine is such a wonderful metaphor for Jesus Christ,

but not just because of the connection to the Eucharistic Wine

we immediately go to.

Vines are interesting compared to trees,

because they seem to be so much more active.

They don't just stay put.

If you have a vine that you're trying to control,

you know it is hard to keep it growing the way you want it to,

you constantly have to prune,

or it will go off in all sorts of directions.

There is so much life in a vine,

it seems like if you look at it

from one day to another, it has grown so much!

And if a vine has a healthy, old root and stalk,

you know it can endure just about anything.

But vines also need something to grow on,

and to do well, to produce fruit, they need to be tended.

An interesting thing about Jesus' “I am” statement here,

compared to all the other “I am” statements,

is that this one includes the role of the father.

He says “I am the true vine,

and my Father is the vinegrower.”

The Father doesn't just let Jesus grow wherever,

He is the one who gives him the support,

to grow and thrive wherever he is planted,

and he tends to Jesus, as a careful gardener,

pruning those places that need to be pruned,

so that the best fruit is produced.

This is a wonderful image and the best part of it,

is that we are included in it.

When we are in Christ, abiding in Jesus,

we are branches of the vine, whether we're grafted in

after a time of being a part of another vine,

or whether we grew in this vine from the beginning.

But there is something to our place on the vine as well,

something to how we need to abide in the vine,

for our lives to bear fruit.

I have had a powerful experience that started this winter,

about abiding in the vine.

That I would like to share with you this morning.

It started at the beginning of Lent.

The day after Ash Wednesday I was sitting,

and doing Lectio Divina,

with our Centering Prayer Group on a Thursday afternoon.

As we usually do, we listened for a word we were drawn to

in the Gospel reading for Sunday.

I felt drawn to the word “beloved.”

So I meditated on that word,

and as I sometimes change the word

I use in my practice of Centering Prayer,

to fit with the season,

I felt lead to use “beloved” as my sacred word,

in my daily prayer practice throughout lent.

Well, of course, I just thought for the longest time,

that the word “beloved” just had to do

with Jesus being beloved of God,

with Jesus being God's beloved son.

And that idea was enough for quite a while.

I didn't think too much about it,

but continued to abide in the practice of Centering Prayer,

using “beloved” as my sacred word.

When I went on my first Cursillo Weekend,

this March I had been meditating on “beloved”

for about 5 weeks, almost everyday.

Then God changed my thought and began to show me,

that there was more to this than the way he loved his son.

An early talk on Cursillo made a point,

that we are God's “beloved.”

The connection to my sacred word was not lost on me,

actually it hit me like a beam of light into my heart,

and I felt my heart being healed,

in a way I did not know I needed.

Later that weekend we had a healing service,

and I went up to one of the spiritual directors,

with a heavy heart.

I still had not told anyone of the importance of the word

“beloved” to me.

As he prayed for me, this priest reminded me,

that I am God's “beloved,” and I started to cry.

God was getting through to me,

even though I thought I was open to him,

there was something deep inside me that had needed to be pruned, for me to accept and realize,

this state of being “beloved” of God.

I left that weekend with a greatly lifted spirit,

and was starting to experience what being “beloved” means.

That would have been enough for me,

I did not think I needed any more.

I prayed for help to continue to experience what I was

coming to know.

I continued to abide in Jesus,

through my practice of Centering Prayer.

It was as if I had been cleansed by the word

that Jesus spoke to me.

Just one word, without explanation,

was enough to be a pruning, a cleansing of my spirit.

But I had to abide in the vine,

keep to my regular prayer practice,

and make space for Him in my life,

to be able to experience that.

But that was not all God was offering me.

Let me go back and tell you a little

about what convinced me that I was not beloved.

(This portion of the sermon is available in audio but not in written form on the internet, to protect the people described. See Father Rob personally if you need the text.)

I left church work,

and went to work for a hospital for a year,

in a chaplain resident program.

I told the people I worked with,

that I went to help people in the hospital,

but really I needed to “go to the hospital” myself,

to seek healing from the wounds I had endured,

right out of seminary.

I look back on that time as a time of pruning as well,

we all have them in our lives don't we?

Times when we don't know how we'll make it through,

and how life could really get any worse.

I know there have been times like that here at Ascension,

and I imagine there have been times like that,

for each of you here.

But I was constantly told by people who love me,

to stay connected to Jesus throughout my suffering,

not to abandon him,

to abide in the vine.

So I continued to seek to be rooted in Him.

By God's grace I was brought here to Ascension,

to work with you all.

This was a place that needed healing,

and was experiencing it.

It was and has been a place

where I experienced my own healing,

while praying with others for healing as part of my work here.

Last week I got to go on a once-in-a-career conference

called Credo.

You may remember hearing about it from Fr. Howard,

who went on one a few years ago.

My conference was at Lake Logan,

it started the day after the Brotherhood

finished their annual retreat out there.

I'll let you know they left the conference center

in good condition.

I gathered with an intentional community of clergy

under the age of 39 from around the Episcopal Church.

It was a phenomenal week,

and I thank all of you for allowing me to have the time,

to pursue this kind of conference

as a form of my continuing education as a priest.

Through a week of study, large group plenary sessions,

small group talks, worship,

prayer and reflection,

I experienced a sort of completion of the healing

that began back in Florida,

continued here at Ascension,

and has intensified these past few months.

Why did it take so many years,

for God to heal these wounds?

Well, I kind of think, when it is love itself,

that needs to be healed,

when what is broken is the sense,

of being beloved of God,

it doesn't come fast,

but in a loving and gentle way.

Once again, at Credo I was struck,

by the fact that in one of the first lectures of this week,

the word “beloved” was used as a focus of the idea.

It seemed that God wanted me to know,

and I hadn't gotten it quite deeply enough,

that I am his “beloved.”

That he loves me, and is in love with me.

And that belovedness is not just reserved for Jesus,

but is central to everyone who abides in him.

The word beloved was all over the place at Lake Logan,

it popped up in prayers,

and in readings,

and in lectures.

And it clearly was getting through to me,

that God wanted me to know from all sorts of angles,

to make this belovedness abide deeply in me.

Deeper and more strongly than I had ever experienced before.

If Jesus is the vine,

and we are the branches,

than God's love is what flows through us,

binding us into the vine,

and helping us grow and flourish.

You know,

in some ancient images of the Tree of Life from the Garden,

The tree is represented as a vine.

Jesus has life in himself,

and is for us the Tree of Life,

that tree we were separated from in the Garden,

has come to us in the risen Lord Christ,

and we are invited not just to eat from the true vine,

which will make us live forever,

but to be grafted into his very trunk,

as branches of the true vine,

so that we will not just have life in ourselves,

but through sharing our fruit, can give life to others.

I do not think that God has been healing me,

and making me understand my belovedness

just so I will feel good.

The fact is, I thought I felt pretty good before

all this started happening.

He is clearly doing this, from pruning,

to caringly feeding, so that I will bear fruit as well,

so that I will spread his life and love to others.

Do you want to have this kind of experience,

to abide in the vine so that you are healed, and renewed?

That requires some discipline on your part.

Maybe you can't take a retreat right now.

Though you could go on

the next Cursillo Weekend this fall.

But we can all be more intentional

about making space for God in our lives.

We can turn off the devices from time to time

and spend time becoming aware of God's presence,

we can look at our schedule and dedicate a weekend,

or even a whole week, to prayer and study,

seeking what the Lord wants to heal in us.

There are so many ways to do this,

and here at Church of the Ascension,

your clergy, staff, and fellow ministers,

want to help you grow more and more

into your place in the vine.

That is the very reason we are here.

Avail yourself of the opportunity,

to become more rooted in the vine of life.

Abide in Him,

and you will find him Abiding in You.

You will bear much fruit and

become Jesus' disciples.

Amen