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Dead Wood, Ripening Fruit:
Manifest Love
I think I could have as easily entitled today’s sermon “Taking God’s Metaphor’s
Literally” Or I could have called it “The Difference Between Jesus and His
Disciples.” I don’t suppose that we will ever know at what point Jesus may have
known He was Divine. I suppose that there are theological arguments about the
point at which Jesus became God that would not be too dissimilar to the
theological arguments about when a human embryo becomes a human being.
The reason I start off with this transgression is that I’m struck by the
differences of the reading from 1John and the content of the Gospel of John. In
some ways they are singularly alike. They are talking about love, first and
foremost. We are given a sense in the first sentence of John 15 that Jesus had a
clear understanding of the Unity of God’s creation. It sounds like he also
understood clearly his position as a placeholder in the human relationship to
God. Jesus is “the vine, the true vine”. Jesus’ parent is the gardener, cutting
the dead wood away. There is no namby pamby sweet talk about the fate of the
dead wood – it is dispensed with – burned, not left even to slowly decay. Ash
can be much more useful than a bunch of woody sticks. Ash can be used to
re-enrich the soil or to make soap, but the dead vine is not so useful.
Juxtapose cutting and burning to the Epistle’s words “There is no
fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with
punishment” (1John 4:18). Hmm, so this slashing and burning isn’t punishment?
Well, no, in fact, I think it isn’t. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but love,
the kindest of love, has the courage to look realistically, to discern, to
discipline. Real love raises eyebrows and ruffles feathers and cuts and burns
dead wood. Why? So that nourishing, rich, abundant fruit can ripen and feed and
produce more. So that Creation can trump desolation, destruction, and even
deadness.
Whose job was it in your home to do the disciplining? In “Leave it
to Beaver”, didn’t that job fall to the father? Literally it was left to
him, ‘til he came home from work at night. But in my home it was often, most
frequently, my mother’s job. It was also my job, more than my mates, when we
were raising our daughters.
Today is Mother’s Day. Oh how sentimental it has become.
Sentimental and commercialized, taken away from its origins in a way not
dissimilar to the fate of Christmas. The history of Mother’s Day goes back to
Julia Ward Howe who wanted a Mother’s Day of Peace. Listen to these words of her
Proclamation written in 1870:
Arise, then, women of this
day!
Arise, all women who have
hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not
have great questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come
to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken
from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy
and patience.
We women of one country will
be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to
be trained to injure theirs.”
From the voice of a
devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not
the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate
possession.
As men have often forsaken
the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may
be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as
women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take
counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live
in peace,
And each bearing after her
own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and
humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of
nationality, may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and
the earliest period consistent with it objects, to promote the alliance of the
different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the
great and general interests of peace.
( www.prism.net/user/fcarpenter/howe.html )
Julia did
not get her wish; it didn’t become a National Holiday in her time. But the
daughter of a contemporary, Anna Jarvis, made a similar effort nearly forty
years later and it was successful. Mother’s Day was about mending rifts – in
its own way it was about sorting that which could no longer produce life – both
the literal war dead and the metaphorical, even the potential death of war from
that which, if it remained attached to the vine of life, of love, could produce
abundant fruit.
Jesus calls us, men and women alike, to ratify our relationships.
We are called to radically alter our lives and understandings and to never
forget that we were loved first, before we were called to love others. Yesterday
I had another day that fell into the comedy of errors category, a day spent
driving in circles. One of the blessings of the day was a CD of gospel music I
found in my Jewish friend’s car. The very first song, “No Charge” sung by
Shirley Caesar poignantly summed up what it costs to love. It is a song of a
little boy who draws up an invoice for the services he has rendered to this
mother that week: $4 for mowing the grass, 25 cents for watching his little
brother, and on the list goes until the total reaches nearly $15. The mother
takes his list, turns the paper over and writes “for carrying you inside me and
protecting you while you grew for nine months, No Charge.” She continues on
through the litany of life, and after each she writes “no charge”. Then the song
moves into a reflection of Jesus’ love for us, his suffering for our sins, his
death for our life, and again the words “no charge”.
It is here that I feel like I must take the metaphor literally.
Jesus died to life as we knew it to come back, to arise, to manifest love. Jesus
surrendered the very vine of his life to the dead wood of the cross to bear
fruit, to bring forth love in an unending production of creation. I have to
believe that Julia Ward Howe would be speaking up loud and clear if she were
alive today. Our war causalities in Iraq are around 2000. Before the World
Trade Towers were destroyed the U.S. had brought the death of more than that
many children alone in Iraq. Before we dropped a single bomb or shot the first
shot, our economic sanctions had meant that children in Iraq could not get the
medicine they needed, they couldn’t even get plastic tubing for delivering
oxygen.
It is Mother’s Day; a holiday in the United States. But Jesus’ in
the final months of his life came to know that his lessons about love were not
intended just for the Jews; I must think that the history of Mother’s Day is not
meant just for Americans. We have his words today, “This is my commandment:
Love each other.” Let us take these words to heart. What thing, no matter how
small, can we, individually, do today to manifest love? I ask of each of us that
we do it. Do it and every other act of love we can. But I don’t ask this of you
as an angry or distraught mother, I ask this of you from the deep place of
tenderness that was God’s gift to us, that God loved us first and that Jesus
tells us of God’s deep love, of the gift of joy, that Jesus tells us we are not
God’s servants but God’s friends. I implore us to take the time today, every
day, to remind ourselves in the ways that work for each of us, that we are loved
first, that God has called us friend. My friends, let us go out into the world
remembering that it is God that burns the dead wood and Jesus that offers life
and us that make the decision to stay in the vine. Let us keep foremost in our
minds Jesus commandment to us, “Love each other.” Amen.
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