John 15:1-8
Easter 5 - Year B
To be pruned or cleansed by words that point us to G*D limit a grandiosity of unlimited giftedness and to narrow the possibilities to the realities of the limits of our time and space and resources. There is in this a sense of maturing.
I ran across a group in the Episcopal church that is call the Vine and Branch Society [MISSING URL] that advocates for responsible use of one's accumulate assets through the making of bequests. Eventually we are all pruned, real good, and applied as fertilizer spikes. (Of course we in the USofA do try to slow that process down through our attempts at embalming. Is this to increase the market share of quick acting chemicals to take the place of the slower organic processes?)
So how much pruning do you need. If you need it all the way to death, for what are you being pruned? Is there a limit to the pruning process that keeps that image limited to this side of the grave?
A blessed maturing to you. May you be well pruned.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
Long, long ago and far, far away there were two fruit trees in a garden. One was taken and one remained. Retribution, revenge, and punishment didn't seem to patch things up. After many adventures we come to a vine growing from the same garden source. Finally restoration came along and had victim and assailant talk together.
How is restoration of trust, hope, love, and the rest worked out? Well, from the taking of fruit to the giving of fruit, of course.
In this reversal all concerned found life a much more renewable resource than previously thought. Instead of coming up against a flaming angel a new angle became available - leading and being led toward GOD and thus moving behind the guardian of the trees, inviolate and pillaged, finding a way for a storyline of welcome rather than warning.
Bear fruit, restore the losses of the past. Become a disciple, restore the focus of the future.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
To know and to be known, inside out, is a great pleasure and a great threat. As we look at these passages we wrestle with boundarys of intrinsic and shared worth.
What abides in you? An alien waiting to punch through your chest? A waiting prodigal parent? Can you abide being abided in? What then of myself? Do I live or am I but alive when lived through?
As G*D abides in me am I to so abide in others? What does that do to my control of self and others? Does being loved mean I get what I need as an infant, I get to reject it in adolescence, I can always come back to it? Is love contingent upon my response?
Where does this come into play with faithful mothers and over-protective mothers and hurtful mothers? What about the mother part of each one of us, whether biologic mothers or not?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/may2006.html
Four words - one from each pericope for this Sunday:
Baptized - yes, even eunuchs
Family - yes, even Iraqis
Born - yes, beloved of G*D
Abide - yes, G*D in creation, creation in G*D
There is a multitude of ways we interact with the world around us. Among the biggest choices are those of what we prevent and what we nurture.
For those within a Christian tradition, here is a strong statement about choosing nurture over prevention: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and reject non-Jesus people are liars."
To abide, to be born from that abiding, to be family beyond limits, to be baptized into a way of life leaves little escape from a command toward wholeness: "those who love G*D must love their brothers and sisters also - their common environment, their belovedness, their family relations, their belonging past all divisions.
- - -
look - water
rippling with life
reflecting glory
look - enemies
still family
ancestral descendants
look - home
abiding here
abiding everywhere
look - love
born and reborn
and born forever
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
We have a friend who comes to prune bushes because we can't bring ourselves to cut off enough to be beneficial. A quick look at derivations pushes the verb "prune" back to a round and rolling wheel. When left unpruned all the little fiddly bits start sticking out, impeding progress.
A second word to play with in this regard is "abide". It heads us back to wait, trust, believe.
Between active pruning and active waiting we find the creative tension that will allow us to move past condemnation of the pruning process or the waiting. In our current United Methodist iteration there are those who would castrate or prune the GLBTQ community from a larger vine, with nary a thought for the gift of fruit they bear. There are those of the GLBTQ community who would closet or prune the fruit of themselves from a larger vine. We have gone through this cycle before with various power plays – poverty, slavery, women, doctrine, culture, tradition, etc.
A Malvina Reynolds song, Magic Penny, with these lyrics, "Love is something if you give it away, you end up having more" brings us a new look at this passage. Imagine if it is love that is pruned in order to have more love (what does this do to the image of burning up branches?). Imagine if we waited for the fruit of love we have trusted to grow into the action of belief (what does this do to the image of a parochial glory?).
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
By this is G*D revealed - that good fruits appear through people's lives. There is no doctrine or higher thought that can substitute for direct action. Nothing less than giving evidence of growing will do. This is not something that can await another day or a sufficient guarantee of results.
Here at General Conference there is a sense that we are dealing with an utopian situation, we legislate as though the whole world awaits our decision as an undoubtable revelation of salvation, health and wholeness, for all and for all time. Again the very presence of G*D gets in the way of a reasonable next step in favor of some unattainable ultimate. There is no humility available in deciding by a majority vote. There comes only resolve to not have our time-bound idea be beaten next time around.
It is most difficult to wait for fruit to appear when people are literally dying because of the felt theological pain of those who use the Bible (any revelatory mechanism) as a chain for others, a Procrustean bed with them as the ideal.
Who does not abide within the gift of creation? This is not the kind of abiding that can be legislated. To limit abiding to a particular take is to miss the entire point. There are none that cannot bear more fruit, more G*D, more self.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/easter-5-year-b-by-this-is-gd-revealed.html