FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER B

[cappie]

As with the Good Shepherd in last Sunday’s Gospel I do not find the image of Jesus as a vine instantly accessible. Just as I (and possibly you) do not spend much time shepherding sheep or watching shepherds, I also do not tend a vineyard and have never done so. But most of us have, or have experience of, a garden. So even I, who can just about tell a rose bush from a gum tree, can understand the concept given to us today.

Shepherding sheep and growing grapes were essential work for his audience, providing necessaries of life – food, wool, wine. This was not a ‘hobby’ or the provision of a pretty space in which to relax, like modern gardening. Wine was (and is) a sign of the richness of God’s creation, something to be shared in festivity, deliberately intoxicating. Jesus used wine in so many parables and pictures (and indeed in the institution of the Blessed Sacrament) that we cannot fail to see how important it was to him and his contemporaries. It was also safer to drink than most water. 

So, first, the vine was at the heart of life for Jesus’ listeners; the care of the vine and the vineyard was a socially significant skill.

This image of the people of God as “God’s vineyard” is an old one, going back to the Jewish psalms, as well as other places in the Old Testament. Listen to part of Psalm 80: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.” Again, notice that it is God who is doing all the planting here, not us. And think of all the other I AM statements found in the Gospel of John: “I AM the light of the world,” “I AM the gate,” “I AM the resurrection and the life.”

All these I AM statements in the Gospel of John point to the reality of God’s availability.   

In today’s gospel, Jesus addresses us twice with the phrase “I AM the vine.” There is a promise here. “I AM the vine, and you are the branches.” Jesus is asking each of us to simply be with him.  

The promise of Jesus, the Vine, the Gate, the Light, is abundant life here and now, not just in some future time. God is doing more in our lives than any of us are aware. God in Jesus is simply inviting each of us to take the time to notice. But the trick, of course, is to let God do what God needs to do and for us to get out of the way. Jesus is truly clear on this point when he says: “I AM the vine, you are the branches.” That is what remaining in the power of the Word is all about, not placing impediments in God’s way by trying to do for ourselves what God wants to do for us: reshape our hearts, bodies, and minds to receive the forgiveness being offered.

Hopefully, we can hear Jesus’ words as the beautiful invitation it truly is: “Make your home in me as I make mine in you.”

Second, as is often remarked, Jesus wrote no books; he left no buildings or monuments. He did something far less ostentatious, but, as things turned out, much more significant: he built a new type of community which is still reproducing and regenerating. This vine is an illustration (not a theory) of community, and of the type of community that the church is to be: ‘fruitful’.

Being fruitful is not the same as being successful, a familiar trap for the Church into which we repeatedly fall. Jesus did not ask us to be successful, but to be fruitful. Success is about strength, control, and respectability; it brings rewards and even fame. Fruitfulness can involve weakness and vulnerability; it always comes from change (as with the vine), or even apparent death (as with the seed in the ground); it often goes unrecognised and unrewarded. It is often mysterious and counter intuitive. And like the making of wine, it is a small predictable miracle, if only we will be faithful and wait.