God the Vinedresser -- Sermon for Mother's Day 2006

Sometime in the late Fifth Century, the area of the Roman Empire called "Gaul," what we now know as "France," suffered a drought and, while there doesn't seem to have been wide-spread famine, there was apparently some belt-tightening required. After the drought had continued for several years, a local bishop decided to hold special prayers after the Spring planting was completed. He called for three days of fasting, prayer and supplication just before the Feast of the Ascension; these fell on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday since the Ascension is always celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth actual day after the celebration of Christ's Resurrection. He called these "Les Jours du Rogation," Rogation Days.

"Rogation" is a funny sort of word that we don't use very often, although we know it as part of the word "interrogation," which simple means "asking." The Rogation Days were set aside to ask God to bless the farmers and their farms, to ask God to grant a fine harvest from the seed which had just been planted, to thank God for the bounty of the earth anticipated in the Fall.

Rogation Days seemed like such a good idea, that they were adopted not only in that Bishop's diocese but throughout the French church and, eventually, throughout western Christianity. They seemed like such a good idea in fact that the Sixth Sunday of Easter, which is next, which immediately precedes them, was taken over by this activity of seeking God's blessings on farms and harvests, and came to be called "Rogation Sunday." Today is not Rogation Sunday – next Sunday is and, since I won’t be here next Sunday, I thought I’d give you that little bit of church history today.

Actually, what made me think of Rogation Sunday this week is that our Easter season lectionary this year is a little bit out of alignment! The lesson I just read from St. John's Gospel, in which Jesus describes God the Father as a vintner, a keeper of a vineyard, and the pruner of grape vines, is the traditional Rogation Day lesson, but this year, for some reason, we find it in the lectionary for today.

Today also happens to be Mothers' Day. As I thought about the juxtaposition of the image of God as vine dresser with the reality of motherhood, I was reminded of a time in my life when pruning and maternal (or actually grand-maternal) activity coincided.

It was the summer of my tenth year. I was spending it, as I had spent many Summers, with my paternal grandparents in Winfield, Kansas. My cousins Bob, a year older than I, and Randy, a year younger, were also there. We decided we wanted to build a tree house and so we asked our grandfather if we could and he said we could, so we did.

Apparently there was some miscommunication. I'm not sure what tree Granddad thought we would build our fort in, but we knew exactly where we wanted it .... in my Grandmother Edna's prize cherry tree! That was a great cherry tree. Grammy made all sorts of things from the fruit of that tree ... she made cherry pies and cherry cobblers, canned cherries, cherry preserves, even a cherry cordial (for medicinal purposes only, of course, as befit a good Methodist).

Well, building a tree house in the cherry tree required a good deal of pruning .... pruning my grandparents described as "butchering." Grammy was just about as mad as I ever saw her get. It seems funny to me now to look back at the vision of a 4'11" white haired woman administering corporal punishment to three large pre-teen boys ... but she did it and, believe me, it wasn't funny at the time.

Not quite a year later, Grammy admitted she had to apologize to us because, it seems, that cherry tree had been in need of a rather drastic pruning. The next Spring cherry harvest after our tree house construction was the largest she had ever had. Bushels and bushels of cherries ... lots and lots of pies and cobblers and preserves and, I suppose, gallons of that medicinal cordial.

And that, of course, is the point of pruning: to encourage the production of more and better fruit. Which brings us to today's Gospel lesson in which Jesus says, "I am the vine. You are the branches. My father is the vine dresser and he's going to cut some of you completely away and the rest of you he's going to trim back a bit and encourage you to produce spiritual fruit."

I know nothing about the care of grapevines, which is the image our Lord uses here. So I went on the Internet and found a Web Site that details the care of grapevines. According to this Web page, the pruning of grapevines is a cyclic three-year process. If you want to prune, it says, you must follow a three-year plan. The first pruning comes right after planting; the vine is pruned back to one to three buds. The second Spring, after the shoots are 6" long, you select the strongest shoot to form the permanent trunk. It lives. The rest get cut off. The survivor is anchored loosely to a post and allowed to grow. The second Summer, the vine dresser selects the strongest branches and ties them to the trellis. In the third year, four canes are selected to grow; these will produce the fruit for that year. After the third year, in late winter, the vineyard keeper cuts out the old canes and replaces them by tying new canes to the trellis. This process is then repeated year after year, cutting out old unproductive canes and allowing strong new canes to grow to produce a strong vine which will yield good fruit. .

The goal of motherhood is the same: to produce a strong child who will yield good fruit. This requires the skillful pruning back of habits, behaviors, and attitudes that are nonproductive or, worse, inhibit the growth of good fruit.

The fruits God the vine dresser seeks to be produced by the branches of his vine, that is to be produced by you and me, are well-known to us. St. Paul listed many of them in his epistles: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23); "all that is good and right and true" (Eph. 5:9); and "every good work" (Col. 1:10). The fruits a mother seeks to find produced by her children are the same.

As I thought about God's work, and a mother's work, in terms of this "pruning" metaphor, I could contrast the production of my grandmother's cherry tree, and other fruit trees she had in her garden, with the apple trees Evelyn and I used have growing on the back part of our property in Kansas. We ignored those trees: we didn't water them, fertilize them, or pay much attention to them... and we certainly didn't prune them. Grammy Edna's trees produced wonderfully full, sweet, luscious fruit; our apple trees produced shriveled up, bitterly tart, tiny wild fruit. A mother's work, like God's, is to produce the spiritual equivalent of my grandmother's cherries.

But, one must speak a word of caution about the vine dresser's (and a mother's) expectations. Charles Ryrie, the American evangelical Bible scholar, wrote about Christians bearing fruit in his book So Great Salvation. First, he says, "Every Christian will bear spiritual fruit. Somewhere, sometime, somehow." But, he cautions,

This does not mean that a believer will always be fruitful. Certainly we can admit that if there can be hours and days when a believer can be unfruitful, then why may there not also be months and even years when he can be in that same condition? Paul exhorted believers to engage in good works so they would not be unfruitful (Titus 3:14). Peter also exhorted believers to add the qualities of Christian character to their faith lest they be unfruitful (2 Peter 1:8). Obviously, both of those passages indicate that a true believer might be unfruitful. And the simple fact that both Paul and Peter exhort believers to be fruitful shows that believers are not always fruitful.

God knows this and so, like the vine dresser who tends the vineyard and prunes and trains the vines over a period of years, God is patient. So to must mothers (and fathers) be patient. It may take some time, perhaps a long, long time, for your efforts to pay off, but pay off they will.

Ryrie goes on, "a certain person's fruit will [not] necessarily be outwardly evident. Even if I know the person and have some regular contact with him, I still may not see his fruit. * * * His fruit may be very private or erratic, but the fact that I do not see it does not mean it is not there." God sees whether there is fruit; mothers can sometimes see it when others can't. Don't be too critical of the way another mother or father seems to be rearing her or his children; perhaps they, like God, can see some fruit you cannot. And Mom and Dad ... you may not even be able to see the fruit; don't despair -- keep on with your best efforts, with the hard work of tending and pruning -- perhaps only God will see the fruit of your labors produced by that child, but see it God will.

Finally, cautions Ryrie, "My understanding of what fruit is and therefore what I expect others to bear may be faulty and/or incomplete." Most lists that we humans devise are too short, too selective and too prejudiced; even St. Paul's lists couldn't include everything. "God," says Ryrie, "likely has a much more accurate and longer list than most of us do." God's children, you and I, I think, probably surprise God from time to time with the fruits we bear; I know for certain that our children surprise us. Moms (and Dads) be open to the surprises you'll get from your kids -- they may bear fruits you can't even dream of!

This great old Victorian stained-glass window of ours here [referring to a large window behind the church's altar] is an illustration of St. Paul's sermon to the Athenians in which he tells them that their altar “to an unknown god” is really an alter to God in Christ. In that sermon Paul says, "We are all God's offspring." He is, thus, reminding the Athenians of the words of their own philosophers, but he is also stating the great and wonderful truth of Christianity ... that we are not merely creatures, but children of God. So it is in any and every parent-child relationship that we see some of the qualities and characteristics of the relationship that God wishes to have with us.

John Killinger, a now-retired Methodist seminary professor, has written several books, one of which several of us studied a few months ago as we were learning about prayer. One of his books is Lost in Wonder, Love and Praise includes this affirmation:

I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, who was born of the promise to a virgin named Mary. I believe in the love Mary gave her Son, that caused her to follow him in his ministry and stand by his cross as he died. I believe in the love of all mothers, and its importance in the lives of the children they bear. It is stronger than steel, softer than down, and more resilient than a green sapling on the hillside. It closes wounds, melts disappointments, and enables the weakest child to stand tall and straight in the fields of adversity. I believe that this love, even at its best, is only a shadow of the love of God, a dark reflection of all that we can expect of him, both in this life and the next. And I believe that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a mother who lets this greater love flow through her to her child, blessing the world with the tenderness of her touch and the tears of her joy.

So on this day we ask God the vinedresser to bless all mothers as they go about tending and pruning their children, encouraging them to produce the good and healthy fruits of love, forbearance, patience, good works, righteousness, and all the rest. Amen!

"Yes, but...." -- Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday (Easter 4, May 7, 2006)

We’ve been here before. We are here every Fourth Sunday of Easter. We come here and sit with Jesus and we hear him say, “I am the Good Shepherd” and we say the 23rd Psalm and we try to figure out what it means, what Jesus and the biblical authors are saying to us in all this metaphorical sheep-and-shepherd stuff.

The problem is not with Jesus’ metaphor. The problem is with us urban, high-tech, sophisticated twenty-first century Christians that we are. When we encounter the rudiments of the Christian Faith in Holy Scripture, they are presented to us in agrarian metaphors that are simply foreign to us. So when we come into church on Good Shepherd Sunday, and Jesus goes to great pains to describe his relationship with us as that of a shepherd to his flock, most of us are completely lost. The only shepherds we have ever met have been characters in Sunday School pageants, and we are more likely to encounter sheep as a sweater or as an entree than as a bleating animal on a farm.

There is a rather quaint custom of referring to the clergyperson and congregation as shepherd and flock. Indeed, this is the meaning of the word “pastor” frequently applied to parish clergy – a term, by the way, that I don’t particularly care for. My professor of pastoral theology at Church Divinity School of the Pacific was Fr. Charles Taylor suggested that that metaphor has given rise to the practice of clergy treating the congregation as lower-rank animals for whom the shepherd has responsibility. He argued that we abandon the idea of referring to the priest as “pastor” or shepherd, and refer to him or her instead as a sheepdog. In one of his books, Charles wrote: “The sheepdog image reminds us that laity and clergy are animals on the same level, while maintaining the insight that they are different. It also points to the fact that both sheepdog and sheep are under the leadership of the same high being: The Shepherd.”

In his metaphor, Jesus describes not only himself, but the flock. In other words, we ought to pay attention to this Gospel lesson not only because of what it tells us about Jesus, but because of what it tells us about the church, about ourselves. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus envisions a church characterized by unity.

As we Episcopalians look forward to our General Convention, we may well ask ourselves: How do we measure up? Canon Harold Lewis of the Diocese of Pittsburgh has observed:

In the Episcopal Church a generation ago, the most serious divisions we faced were between those described as the "low and lazy," the "broad and hazy," and the "high and crazy." The Morning Prayer crowd found those of a more sacramental bent a little extreme, perhaps. The Anglo-Catholics, on the other hand, believed the Evangelicals to be somehow deficient. But there was nonetheless a mutual respect. There was ample room in the fold for a variety of sheep for whom Jesus was the bishop and shepherd of their souls. But things have changed. Today, Christian sheep seem more intent on differentiating themselves from other Christian sheep than they are with following the same Shepherd. They create little folds here, and little folds there, each of which has its own "true" leaders, each believing that its interpretation of the Shepherd's voice is the authentic one. Words like "heretic" and "apostate" have been rescued from obscurity, and Christian sheep are hurling them at other Christian sheep with what we used to call gay abandon. The fold now seems to be divided between the so-called orthodox and unorthodox sheep; between traditionalist and revisionist sheep, even sheep accused of Biblical literalism and others labeled as secular humanists.

***

The flock (or combination of flocks) known as the Episcopal Church seems more scattered than usual. Sometimes its members seem to be milling about like sheep without a shepherd. The office of bishop, long the symbol of unity in the church, which St. Cyprian described as the glutinum, literally the glue which kept the church together, now often seems to be a symbol of disunity. Bishops are being barred from entering churches in their own dioceses, and in at least one case, a Bishop was refused the Body and Blood of Christ at the communion rail! Too often, clergy have forgotten what it means to be set apart, consecrated for service. The pulpit, in some instances, has become not so much a place from which the gospel is proclaimed, but a place from which the clergy see fit to regale the people of God with stories of their own personal struggles. Too often, our parishes have become places, not where people bring them "selves, and souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice," but a place where they bring instead them baggage of every kind, in an effort to work out their issues, sometimes at the expense of other members of the community.

I think Canon Lewis is right. Our part of the flock of Christ has been infiltrated by and is increasingly being torn apart by those who have agendas other than the spread of the Gospel. I think that what Canon Lewis is describing is what a modern metaphor might call “wolves in sheep’s clothing” or in some cases “wolves in sheepdog’s clothing.”

But wringing our hands and bemoaning division is not going to do any good. What we have to do is take responsibility and start acting like another kind of animal one finds in the sheepfold these days: Llamas.

As many of you know, I'm originally from Nevada. One of the big ranching activities in Nevada is sheep ranching. There are large flocks in Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Montana.... it's a mountain desert sort of activity. One of the biggest problems sheep ranchers have is coyotes; they kill sheep, especially lambs. There are a lot things you can do to keep coyotes from taking your lambs. You can use good sheep dogs, odor sprays, electric fences, and “scare-coyotes.” You can sleep with your lambs during the summer; you can corral them at night and herd them at day. Nonetheless, you'll lose scores of lambs – I know of one rancher who lost fifty in one year alone. But the sheep ranchers have discovered the llama – the aggressive, funny-looking, afraid-of-nothing llama...

Now sheep are stupid ... I don't know if llamas are dumber than sheep or smarter, but whichever, llamas don't appear to be afraid of anything. When they see something, they put their head up and walk straight toward it. Apparently llamas know the truth of what the writer of the Epistle of James writes: "Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you" (4:7). Their heads-up, check-in-out behavior is an aggressive stance as far as the coyote is concerned, and they won't have anything to do with that ... Coyotes are opportunists, and llamas take that opportunity away.

Those among us who stir up division are like those coyotes, opportunists looking for a chance to tear apart the flock. Often, there is a kernel of truth in what they have to say but, somehow, they have taken that bit of truth and twisted it, so that that little bit of truth becomes infected with a lie. This is the way the devil worked with Jesus. Think, for example, of his forty days in the desert. Every one of the devil’s temptations was based on a correct assertion. Jesus way of answering those temptations was to acknowledge the truth in what the devil said, but challenge the twist. “Yes, Satan, it's true that I could make stones into bread, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that God’s angels would protect me from death, but....” “Yes, Satan, it's true that I have been given dominion over the kingdoms of earth, but....”

That “yes, but...” attitude is the posture of the Llama. Their heads-up, check-it-out behavior is “yes, but....” behavior. That is how we can answer those who preach division, “Yes, part of what you say is true, but ....” The llama attitude follows the example of the Good Shepherd.

Let me end with the story of a young woman, a preacher's daughter, who was the pride of her little rural community. She was the first to go off to college, and it was to a prestigious Ivy League institution, at that. When she returned for Christmas vacation, her daddy asked her if she would read the Twenty-third Psalm during the service. She mounted the podium, and with all the erudition and elocution she could muster, she enunciated the familiar words. But the people were totally unmoved, and she could tell they were unimpressed. She felt so humiliated, she couldn't even finish and left the podium. Then an octogenarian woman who did not even have the benefit of an elementary education, mounted the podium, and she recited the psalm with such passion and fervor, that the people were moved to tears. When she finished, there was not a dry eye in the house. The young woman complained to her father how unfair it was that this uneducated old woman could have such a profound effect on the congregation, while she herself had done so poorly. Her father answered, “Yes, child, you may know the psalm, but Sister knew the Shepherd.”

“Yes, but....” The Llama knows and follows the Shepherd. Be a Llama! When someone tries to draw you into one of those conflicted, divisive situations, follow and emulate the Shepherd!

“Yes, but....”

Have You Anything Here To Eat? Sermon for Easter 3 (April 30, 2006)

If you have ever watched the Food Channel’s Japanese cooking competition show called Iron Chef, you knew that it begins with a screen graphic showing a quotation from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, an 18th century French politician who once said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." The 19th century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said something similar, "Man is what he eats."

These observations have been distilled into our modern idiom: "You are what you eat" is a saying one hears or reads pretty regularly. And it's true. Eating shapes our identities, defines who we are. A particular food and drink may highlight ethnicity, nationality, or age: tacos, lasagna, Coca Cola (over fifty), Pepsi (under thirty,) hamburgers, sushi. Food and drink defines the great holidays and important celebrations of our lives: champagne on New Year's Eve, turkey at Thanksgiving, plum pudding at Christmas, hot dogs on the Fourth of July, eggs at Easter.

An ordained colleague of mine once commented that the Sacramental presence of the Eucharist has shifted location in the modern church. Once the table-fellowship of the church was centered on the altar; now, he said, it is found elsewhere depending upon denominational tradition. For Baptists, it is now found in the fried chicken dinner; for Methodists, in the potluck supper; and for Episcopalians, at coffee hour. He was kidding, of course, but there is an element of truth in his humor.

Gathering for a shared meal, of whatever kind, is a fundamental part of the human experience. We must eat together to be human and to become human. We must also, it appears, eat together to know God. President Woodrow Wilson, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, once noted that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. "No one," he said, "can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach."

Food plays a very important role in the great story of God and God's people told in the Scriptures. Eating and drinking can be the occasion for sin, for separation from God and from others. Remember, the misuse of food, the fruit of a tree, caused the human fall into sin. A difference over which kind of food was a better offering to God, vegetable produce or animal flesh, led to the first murder, Cain's killing of Abel. The Hebrews rebelled against God in the wilderness because of their doubt as to whether God could feed them. Satan's first temptation of Jesus was to urge him to ease his hunger by turning stones into bread. Judas was revealed as Jesus' betrayer when he dipped his bread in the dish after Jesus.

On the other hand, many of the good and wonderful parts of God's story involve food and drink. There was a second tree in that first garden, a tree giving eternal life. Abraham entertained angels unawares, providing food for them and learning that he and Sarah will have a child whose descendants will be a blessing to all humanity. God, in spite of that rebellion in the wilderness, fed the Hebrews with manna and quail, and quenched their thirst. Jesus took one boy's picnic lunch and fed five thousand men, together with their wives and children. The culmination of God's plan for humanity and, indeed, for the entire creation is described as a great feast which last forever and to which all humanity is invited.

Today we have a Gospel lesson in which food plays an important part: Jesus "showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence." (Some ancient manuscripts say that they also gave him a piece of honeycomb which he took and ate; the Authorized Version includes this reference.) And this is not the only post-Resurrection appearance in which food plays a part. We have already heard the story of Cleopas and his companion, to whom the Lord was revealed in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:30-32) In another post-Resurrection appearance, John records that Jesus cooked a grilled fish breakfast for the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:9-13) The traditional interpretation of these incidents, particularly the one we heard of in today's Gospel, is that they were meant to demonstrate to the apostles, and are recorded in Scripture to demonstrate to us, that Jesus' Resurrection was actual and physical, not merely a ghostly appearance.

I'm sure that's true, but I have always thought that the particular incident we heard today has an additional significance. Jesus, asking this question, "Have you anything here to eat?" sounds like a teenager coming home from a hard day at school, a construction laborer returning from the site, a farmer coming into the kitchen after hard work in the fields. It has always seemed to me that there is a suggestion in this that Resurrection, redemption, salvation is hard work! You and I and the rest of our race are so darned stubborn, we are so obstinate in our sinfulness, that saving us must have taken a lot of energy!

One supposes that God could have accomplished the work of redemption in anyway God chose, including just waving his almighty arm and being done with it. But, as Frederick Buechner noted in his book Listening to Your Life, that isn't God's way. God does not wish to be up on high, separated from God's people. In Christ, God has "pitched his tent among us"; God has dwelt with us where we are and as we are. As Buechner put it: "[Jesus] never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks." Real life questions like, "Have you got anything to eat?"

I believe that that is a question Jesus continues to ask. Just as he stood in that room and asked it of the first disciples, he stands in this room and asks it of us. Last week, we received the materials for The Bishop’s Annual Appeal through which Episcopal Community Services is funded. Among the many ministries ECSF supports are a variety of food banks and feeding programs, including our own Free Farmers Market. As I read through those materials, it occurred to me that in the need of hungry people here in our diocese, here in our town, Jesus stands in our midst and asks us the same real life question: "Have you got anything to eat?"

And the answer to the question must be, "Yes." And what we have to offer them is not simply our money, which is what the Bishop’s Appeal is asking for, but what our money represents – ourselves, our life and labor. "You are what you eat," said Savarin and Feuerbach, but the idea was not original to them. In the Eucharistic prayers of every Anglican prayer book are the words penned by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549:

We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.

Many centuries earlier, St. Augustine of Hippo said,

You are the body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be blessed, broken, and distributed; that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of the eternal charity.

In answer to the question always asked by the Risen Christ present in the suffering of the Poor, "Have you got anything to eat?" we must always respond with sacrificial giving: "Yes. We have ourselves to offer, to be blessed, broken, and distributed." I encourage you to respond generously to the Bishop's appeal on behalf of the hungry whom ECSF, Free Farmers Market, and other ministries feed and, whenever you can, to all those in whose need Christ stands asking, "Have you anything here to eat?"