Of the 4 or so billion people on the planet, we are some of the few fortunate enough to live in a Mediterranean climate zone. While Mediterranean refers to the countries that rim the Mediterranean Sea, it also refers to a kind of climate zone found scattered throughout the planet that – to my mind – is about the closest thing one can get to paradise on earth. Only 2 percent of the globe enjoys our benign Mediterranean weather pattern, where warm, dry summers follow mild, wet winters – and where a profusion of plants grow. A docent at the Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco told me soon after I moved here, that even though the Mediterranean climate zone comprises only 2% of the earth’s surface, 98% of the earth’s plant life can grow in it.
Anyone who has gardened here can be, think, both excited and sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer number of plant choices we have in this area. With no freezing cold to kill off half of the plants and no baking heat to take down what remains, almost anything can grow here. It is a gardener’s paradise.
It is a small wonder, then, that the metaphor of the Garden of Eden sprung from the imaginations of a people who also lived in a Mediterranean climate zone known as the Holy Land. Some of humanity’s most ancient and widespread crops – figs, olives, grapes – were first domesticated in the rich flood plains of Syria and the Holy Land, and historians reckon that this is where the very idea of gardening and horticulture was invented about 8,000 years ago.
And so earthy, sensuous agricultural images inspired by the Mediterranean permeate the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps no agricultural metaphor was more often employed in these writings than the one we heard today – that of the grape vine, a plant celebrated and loved by the people of Biblical times. The grape vine, of course, is a plant also much beloved in the Bay Area. I read in the Chronicle a few years back that Bay Area folks spend more money on alcohol than any other city in the country. But why wouldn’t we? We are the only Mediterranean city in this country, the only city that knows firsthand the delight of the vineyards, the juicy reality of grapes and the wines they produce. Grapes and vineyards and wines inspire our imaginations, and provide one of the central metaphors of the good life here in California.
The people of Biblical times were similarly inspired by the grape vine. Over and over, the image of the vine occurs in scripture —evidence of an agricultural people who prayed their praise and laments through metaphors found in their native landscapes. In Genesis, vines were the source of life and prosperity. Prophetic utterances of doom foretold languishing vineyards and vines with withered leaves in Isaiah. The Song of Songs, that incredible love story, is set in a vineyard. The Hebrew Scriptures refer repeatedly to the House of Israel itself as the Lord’s vineyard, the soil from which the divine gardener longed to harvest good fruit.
It is no surprise, then, that Jesus took up the images of the vine and the vineyard and wove them into his own theological vision. More than once, Jesus explores the mystery of the kingdom of God through parables centered around the vineyard. And in the passage we heard today, John’s Gospel makes use of this metaphor to help explore and explain the identity not only of Jesus and his relationship to God, but of our identity and our relationship to God: “I am the true vine, and God is the vinedresser,” Jesus says. “Abide in me, as I abide in you. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in them, bears fruit in plenty.”
There’s a lot of meat in this metaphor. Or is it wine? I think we could spend a sermon series or two unpacking everything in it, but let me simply pull out two strands from this metaphor.
First, let’s look at what this metaphor tells us about our relationship to God and Christ. Let’s look particularly at verses 4 and 5: “Abide in me as I abide in you. (Some translations say this “make your home in me, as I make my home in you.”) Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing.”
This image of the vine and branches calls to mind most vividly the idea of our fruitfulness in Christ – our calling to “bear much fruit,” to produce “good works” in the world. It’s a rich image that has been mined throughout centuries of Christian life and thought – but it is sometimes, I think, a misused metaphor. The focus within much liberal Protestantism (as well as in Anabaptism) has typically been on producing much fruit, rather than abiding in the vine – which is really the central point of the passage.
This emphasis on fruit production comes from a compassionate impulse. Faced with the urgent needs of the world, we feel compelled to “bear much fruit.” In our passion for justice, in our impatience for change, in our belief that “faith without works is dead,” we can come to believe that social change is more urgent than a rich, sustaining contact with the Vine, the Source of all life. We become quite ready to appropriate the aspect of Jesus’ metaphor that best affirms our own core values — productivity and effectiveness – while ignoring the contemplative element of simply “abiding” in God.
In fact, these verses are very clear as to what comes first. If you read them carefully, you’ll see that Jesus does not command his disciples anywhere these verses to bear fruit. They are simply asked to abide in the vine. Fruit-bearing is not a command here, it is a promise. If you want to bear fruit, Jesus is saying, don’t focus on bearing fruit. Focus on abiding. The fruit will follow. If you want to bear fruit, abide in the vine.
In our life as Christians, cutting ourselves off from the life-giving vine has many consequences, not the least of which is we may never develop much stamina for seasons of drought and failure. We risk forgetting that the image of the vine and branches speaks to the necessity of making ourselves available to the hidden depths of God – even if in fact there is no harvest. If we identify the life-giving goodness of God too closely with the fruitfulness of our own lives, we will be tempted to feel abandoned by God when calamity or spiritual drought occurs.
The prophet Habakkuk, writing in the 7th century BC during the worst of the Babylonian captivity, braved the question of why God seems to countenance the treacherous and is silent when “the wicked swallow those more righteous than they.” The answer he receives assures him that God is eternally present: “There is still a vision for the appointed time… If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.” And then the book ends with a song of serenity and trust in the face of utter desolation:
Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines…That’s what it means to abide in the vine, even when no fruit is present.
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
Second, I want to pull out the strand of this metaphor that tells us about our identity, about who we are. Basically, this metaphor speaks to our essential sappiness. I love to tell the story of the first time I visited one of the Napa Valley wineries, and some of you may remember me telling it before. While there, we were told that one vine can have branches extending 30 to 40 feet out in each direction. I decided to prove this fact for myself in a section of the vineyard in which we were free to roam and taste the fruits. I traced a branch from the base of the vine to its end and, looking back, I gauged that it was indeed close to 30 or 40 feet. Hanging at the end of this long branch was a huge cluster of grapes. I picked one and ate it: it was warm from the sun, sweet and juicy.
Obviously, such fruitfulness is possible only because the sap that animates the vine at its base is also the same sap that animates the branches 30 or 40 feet away. There is one and the same sap running through the vine and its branches. What this says about us is exactly the same. There is one and the same sap running through the capital V Vine (Jesus) and its branches (us), and that is the very sap of God. What this metaphor tells us is that the deepest thing I am is the energy of God, the life-giving, fruity force of God. I am animated, brought to life, made fruitful by the divine Sap of God. You are animated, brought to life, made fruitful by the divine Sap of God.
There is one and the same sap running through the Vine and its branches, even though the branches are different, even unique. I might not like your branches, but I have to love your sap. In fact, underneath your annoying tics and your overbearing personality and (fill in the blank here) underneath it all, you and I are made of the same sappy substance. Underneath it all, you are my Sap and I am yours, and we are all together in this unity of the sappy Spirit that Jesus loved to talk about. I live in you and you live in me, and together we live in God and – oh my– our identity is starting to get as complicated here as one of those twining, tangled far-reaching grapevines that spread their tendrils out in a maze of interconnected shoots.
There was an obnoxious Calvin Klein ad that ran a few years ago for a perfume called “Obsession.” The video showed two young heterosexual lovers mooning at each other, while the announcer said underneath: “I don’t know where you end, and I begin. Obsession.” Jerome and I thought this ad line so ridiculous that we still sprinkle it into our verbal banter from time to time, and it always makes us laugh. And yet, the true is, in our essential sappy substance, we really don’t know where one of us ends and another of us begins, for we are all tangled up with each other, animated by one and the same sap.
Perhaps the best place we experience our sappiness is in community. For if the deepest thing we are is the energy, the life-giving Sap of God, then when I bump into you, I am bumping into God. And one of the things we need to do, we must do, in spiritual community is recognize and reverence each other’s Sap. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhardt once said that the only blessing we can give each other is the glance of recognition – the glance that says, “I recognize your sappiness. I recognize that the same sap that animates me, animates you. I reverence you as the holy Sap that you are.”
There’s so much more in this metaphor. For instance, I discovered about a month ago that the Aramaic word for blood, “dami,” can also be translated as “sap.” It’s made me rethink all that language about the blood of Christ – the sap of Christ.
But for now, it’s enough for me to chew on the fact that we are to be abiders at heart – that our main job as Christians is simply to abide in Christ. And that the deepest part of our identity is our sappiness. So I guess you can say that when we are living the Christian life to the fullest, we are abidingly sappy people. May we know ourselves even moreso to be those people.