"The Sappy Vine"

Psalm 98, John 15:1-8

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…
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.

That’s what it means to abide in the vine, even when no fruit is present.

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.

"The Shepherd’s Voice"

Third Sunday of Eastertide

Psalm 23, John 10:11-18

The story goes that Tommy was sitting in his 3rd grade Sunday School class, getting ready to do a drawing. His teacher came up to him and asked him what he was preparing to draw. "God," he said. "I'm drawing a picture of God." "Why, Tommy, you can't draw a picture of God," said the well-meaning teacher. "No one knows what God looks like." "They will after I'm done with my drawing," Tommy said.

I like the sassiness of the imaginary Tommy, who has the audacity to draw God. But, in truth, we’re always doing that. God is Mystery, ineffable, beyond all imagining. And yet we have to imagine the Divine, we have to “draw” God some way. We have to use words, concepts and images because they're all we mortals have -- blunt instruments though they may be. In other words, all of our language about God is inherently metaphorical.

One of the most-beloved metaphors of the Divine, humanity and the relationship between us is that of the shepherd and the sheep. It was a common metaphor in the Bible, mentioned more than 80 times – sometimes referring to the King of Israel as a shepherd of his people, but more often referring to God as the good shepherd, the one who – in Isaiah – feeds his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young. It reaches its peak of metaphoric perfection it the 23rd psalm, which is probably the most beloved psalm in the Bible. I’m guessing many of us know that by heart, too.

In the New Testament, the author of the gospel of John picks up this potent metaphor from the Hebrew Scriptures and uses it to describe who Jesus is. This is Jesus speaking:

10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the
sheep.
10:12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the
sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away--and the wolf
snatches them and scatters them.
10:13 The hired hand runs away because a
hired hand does not care for the sheep.
10:14 I am the good shepherd. I know
my own and my own know me,
10:15 just as the Father knows me and I know the
Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

This image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd has become so beloved you’d be hard-pressed to find a Protestant church that does stained glass windows that does not have one of them devoted to a beautiful, pastoral image of Jesus holding a lamb. The problem with much-beloved metaphors, however, is that they can become old, hackneyed, sentimentalized -- too familiar. Metaphors at their best open a window into a truth we hadn't realized before or at least hadn’t realized that profoundly. They shake us up a bit. At their worst, metaphors dull our perceptions. Our eyes glaze over. We've heard it all before, and there's nothing there that makes us see things anew.

I fear the latter is more often true of this shepherd-sheep metaphor. It's been used a lot, and it’s easy to sentimentalize the idea, easy for it to lose its edge. For instance, have you ever noticed how pictures of the Jesus shepherd and sheep are always remarkably dirt-free? The shepherd, Jesus, is wearing flowing robes that look like they just came back from the dry cleaners, and the sheep are spotless, "white as snow." In fact, we usually don't even see grown sheep, just lambs. Innocent, playful, cute lambs, whom the shepherd is cuddling in his arms. It's a lovely -- and unreal -- pastoral scene.

Let's peel back the layers of this metaphor and see if there's anything new there. We can start with the shepherd: shepherds (both then and now) were dirty. They didn't bathe much, if at all. Gretel Ehrlich, a writer from Wyoming who lives on a sheep ranch, tells of one modern-day sheepherder named Fred who showered so infrequently that his body hair had grown through his long johns.[1] Now if that repulsive piece of information doesn't shatter the “shepherd as Mr. Clean” image, I don't know what will.

The reason shepherds are so dirty is that they live a hard life, away from any of the comforts of home, completely exposed to the ravages of both sunshine and storm. Sheep need grass to eat and water to drink, and lots of it, and the search for such will take a shepherd into far hills and meadows, whether we are talking about 1st-century Judea or 20th-century Wyoming. The same Gretel Ehrlich found herself one Wyoming summer serving as a substitute sheepherder when one of the regulars quit. And so at 5 o'clock one morning, with a mare and a border collie, she rode off to find the herd of 2000 sheep who were grazing somewhere in the middle of nowhere. For the next several months, alone, she let her flock wander over 90 square miles of pasture land, wherever they wanted to go.

And where sheep want to go is often where they shouldn't go, she found – down into crags or ravines or, if they are in a panicked run, which sheep seem to be in often, right over a cliff. Sheep become easily lost, and once lost they are defenseless. They are easy prey for wild animals and thieves. The idea that a shepherd might have to lay down his or her life for the sheep is not an exaggerated claim. In 1st-century Palestine, it was not uncommon for a single shepherd to have to fight off bands of thieves. In 20th-century Montana, Ivan Doig – another sheepherder turned writer – tells of his father fighting off a bear to protect his sheep, and almost getting killed in the process.[2] This is why today’s passage from John speaks so scornfully of the hired hand, who will not do what is needed – that is, risk his own life – to protect the sheep.

Perhaps there was more to this willingness to risk life than just economic concern. In ancient and present-day Palestine, at least, sheep are raised for their wool. And thus, sheep are often with a shepherd for years. The shepherd grows to care deeply for them, giving each of them names and knowing when even one of them wanders away.[3] As our passage for today says, accurately, “I know my own and my own know me.”

One traveler to the Holy Land wrote this description of a shepherd that beautifully summarizes all I’ve just said: “On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, everyone of them on his heart, you understand why the shepherd of Judea sprang to the front in his people’s history; why they… made the shepherd the ultimate symbol of providence.”[4] The people of the ancient Middle East were so impressed with the vigilance, courage, love and care of the shepherd that they gave that name -- shepherd -- to their rulers, to their God and eventually to Jesus.

What a beautiful, and gritty, metaphor of God’s or Jesus’ affection for us: fierce, protective, tenacious, willing to endure whatever it takes to see us through to green pastures and cool waters. It’s a metaphor you can climb inside, take comfort in. Put me under the care of this God, this Good Shepherd, and I shall not want.

There’s only one catch. If God is the Shepherd, what does that make us? Baaaaa. The sheep, obviously. And here the going gets a little more rough, in terms of this metaphor. Because there’s some hard facts to face about being sheep.

Sheep are easily thrown off balance and have difficulty righting themselves again, with catastrophic results. Ivan Doig tells a story of he and his grandmother being left alone for two weeks one summer to tend a herd of 4000 sheep, while Ivan’s father was away. No sooner had the father left, than grandma and Ivan noticed that not all of their new charges were happily grazing. A few were on their backs, legs stiff in the air, dead as stones, he writes. Soon, they figured out that the sheep had ticks and were rolling themselves on the ground to scratch themselves. “The roll easily carried them too far onto their deep-wooled backs to be able to get up again, and within minutes in the summer heat, their struggling would bloat them to death.” Gases build up in the stomach, and as these expand it cuts off blood circulation to the body. Sheep die this way, and fast if it’s hot. So Ivan and his grandmother spent every daylight hour of the next 14 days patrolling the sheep and heaving them over onto their feet when they spotted the kick of hooves in the air.

It’s not just ticks that cause a sheep to turn bottom up, by the way. If an extra woolly or fat sheep happens to lie down in a small depression in the ground, and roll slightly to its side to stretch out or relax, the center of gravity in its body can suddenly shift so that its feet no longer touch the ground. It panics and starts to paw frantically, which of course, makes things worse. It rolls over even further onto its back and now has no hope of regaining its feet.[5] Sound like any humans we know? There’s whole days when I feel like this.

Unfortunately, there’s more: As I mentioned earlier, sheep get lost quite easily and want to wander into places that aren’t good for them. They are also easily panicked. In one story I read, a tiny Pekinese pup jumping out of a car parked was enough to send the 200 terrorized sheep bolting across the pasture, away from the 8-pound menace.

And finally, sheep are notorious creatures of habit. If left to themselves, they will follow the same trails until they become ruts; graze the same hills until they turn to desert wastes; and we will pollute our own ground – I mean, sheep will pollute their own ground until it is rife with disease and parasites. I’ll leave it to you to draw any parallels between sheep and humanity.

However, sheep have one saving grace going for them – they are obedient. They know and understand their shepherd’s voice, and they do what she asks. In addition, they won’t listen to the voice of a stranger. Another traveler to the Holy Land, W.M. Thomson, writes this, “The shepherd calls sharply from time to time, to remind the sheep of his presence. They know his voice and follow on; but, if a stranger calls, they stop short, life up their heads in alarm, and if the call is repeated, they turn and flee, because they know not the voice of a stranger. I have made this experiment repeatedly.”[6] Can’t you just see W.M. Thomson scaring sheep all throughout the Holy Land with his experiment?

Now, so far, you may have been going along with this metaphor of humans-as-sheep. You may agree that is a large part of the human condition to be easily unbalanced, easily lost, easily panicked and that we easily make a big mess of things.

At obedience, however, we tend to draw the line and say “That’s it. The metaphor is over.” Our modern American temper not only celebrates individualism, in which we bow to no authority other than ourselves, and in the process, the idea of obedience has lost favor. In crossword puzzles, the clue “act the robot” is supposed to yield the four-letter answer “obey.” To obey is to not think for oneself, to mindlessly go along. And it is true that the excuse “I was just obeying orders” has been used to justify many an unjust act. Obedience, then, is yet one more pathetic trait that we hope to cure ourselves of so that we can enter true spiritual adulthood.

Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun who took the traditional three vows that all nuns and monks take, one of which is a vow of obedience. But she is anything but a mindless robot. She is a woman alive with passion for the poor and with indignation at any institution – especially her own church – that propagates injustice. She is a champion of women's rights and environmental justice. She is considered a renegade, and I'm sure most of the Catholic hierarchy would wish she would just be quiet. But, Joan would say, “I can't be quiet. I took a vow of obedience.”

Chittister points to the fact that the word "obedience" is derived from the Latin word that shares its root with the verb "to hear." So listening and obedience are very closely connected. In fact, to obey, Chittister suggests, means to listen closely to the voice of God in life, and then to act on what we hear. Like sheep, we need to become so accustomed to that voice that we hear it clearly over the others that call to us. So we hear the voice that calls us to the good, to the just, above the voices that call us to power, to respectability, to cynicism, to fear, to despair. Unlike sheep, however, there’s a variety of ways in which we can hear that voice. We may hear it in quiet times, when our spirits is stilled -- whether that happens on a church pew or on the Muni or in a city park. We may hear it in Scripture and other holy books. We may hear it when we listen to ourselves, paying attention to that ache in our back and realizing it may be telling us something about the stress and tension of our lives. And, we hear the voice of God in one another: in the “members of our communities, both old and young; in the person we married, all of whose jokes we know by now; in underlings and children; old parents and boring in-laws.”[7] If we get really good at hearing, we can hear the voice of God in the person we most disagree with, who pushes our buttons, whom we find it hard to love.

To be obedient, then, means to cultivate the spiritual discipline of listening – to listen in such a way that we develop a sensitivity to the call of Christ within the context of our daily interactions.

Because, like sheep, we do need a shepherd. We do need a guide. We know we can drive ourselves a bit crazy – over cliffs, into ravines, onto our backs, kicking wildly, fearful of the least sound. Obedience – the willingness and ability to hear the voice of God when we’re feet up, when we’re heading for that cliff – obedience is what will save us. Obedience is what will enable us to stay on the right paths, the paths that lead to life. May we hear the voice of the shepherd even more clearly. And may it guide us to green pastures and still waters, to the overflowing table.

Amen.

__________

[1] Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (New York: Penguin Books, 1986).
[2] Ivan Doig, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978)
[3] William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press), 1975.
[4] Quoted in Barclay, p. 53.
[5] Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996).
[6] Quoted in Barclay, p.57.
[7] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1995).