No “if”s: A sermon on John 15:1-8 and 1 John 4:7-21, 5th Sunday of Easter

A video of this sermon being preached in worship can be found here.

I’m not the gardener in our household. I think I have mentioned this before. I truly don’t know what I’m doing either with the decorative plants out front or the food that is growing in the back. At the Youth Group flower fundraiser last year I almost made a very accidental HUUUUUGE donation because I didn’t understand how many flower plants were in a flat. I mean, I know nothing. During the pandemic, I got a little on board with the houseplant trend, but, my part of our little plant area often looks like a plant hospital. This is not my arena. I love plants! I enjoy them a great deal. I just require some more knowledgable help to keep them alive.

Which is why I was thrilled to read the advice of New Testament scholar Karoline Lewis in her commentary on this teaching of Jesus found in the gospel according to John. Do not go down any horticultural rabbit holes, she said. She saved me a whole lot of time on Google, because I had those thoughts at first. “Oh geez. Time to go read up on pruning and grafting and vine tending and grape producing. Cutting back, cutting off, and burning.”

And I am sure there have been many faithful sermons that have included those elements. But I also know there have been some really harmful sermons that have been based on those elements.

On Friday night, singer and songwriter Bobby Jo Valentine performed a concert of his songs interwoven with his stories here at our church. In some of his offerings, he talked and sang about the strained relationship he has with his parents who raised him in a church that was neither welcoming nor affirming when he came out as a gay man at the age of 23. He told us about the pain he experienced when he thought the removal of the church’s love was a sign of the removal of God’s love – that he had been cut off, pruned away.

Yesterday I attended a conference of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, an organization that “seeks an equity still not fully realized for LGBTQIA+ people in church and society,” similar in some ways to More Light Presbyterians of which we are a member church. From the panel of speakers that opened the conference we heard stories of queer members and ministers, some of whom were told by their churches, “You are welcome here, but only if you cut out the part of who you are that we don’t find acceptable.”

Cut off, cut out, prune away. Wither, gather, throw, burn.

These words – and plenty others – have been used by the church and individuals in ways that harm. They have been used to scare. They have been misused and twisted to get people to align with standards – not just around sexuality or gender identity, but around any number of human categories – that are well outside the boundaries of what the scripture is actually talking about. And so if all this talk of pruning and cleansing and withering scares you, then we have failed. The church – this one specifically, another congregation, or the church universally – has failed.

These words of Jesus are spoken during his last supper with his disciples, one of his most pastoral scenes. In John’s gospel the central act of that supper isn’t the words that Jesus says around the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Instead John focuses our attention on the way Jesus shows love to his disciples – the way he takes off his outer robe and ties a towel around himself, in order to kneel down and wash his disciples’ feet – and the words he shares in his final teaching and prayers – words of comfort, promising life and love and peace.

There is a pastoral crisis going on here. In the face of the statements Jesus has made about his death, the disciples are questioning their future, their safety, their identity. But, Jesus doesn’t come at them with warnings to straighten up and fly right. He comes to them with love, with promises, with reassurance. “I am the vine,” he says, and extremely importantly, “you are the branches.” “I am the vine; you are the branches.”

This gospel writer puts the words “I am” on the lips of Jesus a number of times. Sometimes they are followed by a concrete object, forming a metaphor for us to ponder – “I am the bread of life.” “I am the door.” “I am the good shepherd.” Other times they are followed by more lofty ideas to unpack “I am the way and the truth and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” All of them are meant to remind us of Jesus’s union with “I am who I am,” the name given for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, while also expanding our understanding of what the union means. But this one “I am” statement alone is followed by a “you are” statement.

“I am the vine; you are the branches.” This is the only one that tells us directly where we fit in this metaphor. “I am the vine,” Jesus says. “You are the branches.” We are connected to Jesus. We are direct recipients of all the flows through him. We are part of his very organism, not tacked on later, not attached by some special means, but we are a natural outgrowth of all that he exists to be and do in the world. We have our very lives because he has his, not because we choose to join with him, but because by his very nature and ours we grow from him. We have life because of his life. We have love because of his love. And the fruit that love bears in our lives is sweet because of the sweetness of his grace.

“I am the vine,” Jesus says. “You are the branches.”

These are declarative sentences, not conditional ones, and the explanation is description, not a threat. Apart from him, we can do nothing; we cannot bear fruit on our own. There is no “you could be” of “you might be” branches. There is no “if” that follows. Jesus isn’t trying to convince his followers to do the right thing or else. He isn’t telling them to watch out or they’ll get cut off. He doesn’t attach any “if we believe,” or “if we behave correctly,” or “if we conform to one person’s or one church’s idea of holiness,” or “if our lives align with someone else’s arbitrary standards,” or any other “if” we may have heard and internalized. Those “if”s are human creations. Jesus doesn’t give us an “if” when he tells us who are, to whom we are related, from where we come. Jesus declares! “I am” and “you are.”

Now the church… that’s another thing. Across time and geography the church of all flavors and traditions and members of it have added all sorts of “if”s to Jesus words. The church has been known to make statements that declare who is in and who is out, who is worthy and who is not, who receives grace and who watches it pass by. The church has been guilty of cutting people off, cutting people out, and throwing them into both literal and figurative fires. While much of that has supposedly been in God’s name, it has not been of God. I’m not sure we say that often enough for the people who need to hear it. I’m not sure we say that often enough for us to believe it.

Friends, I’d like for you to help me with something. I’d like you to help me proclaim this divine promise, this divine truth. When you hear me say “Jesus is the vine,” I’d love for us all to declare, “and we are the branches.” I know this is the second time in a couple of weeks I’ve asked us to stretch ourselves a little. One week we’re holding up our hands in blessing. This week I’m asking for some call and response. Let’s stretch a little together.