Saturday, May 17, 2014

4th Easter 2007, Undercurrent of Joy



4th Easter
John 15: 1-27

I AM the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean, so that it will be even more fruitful. You have already been purified by the power of the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit out of itself unless it is given life by the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you stay united with me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains united with me so that I can work in him, bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not remain united with me withers like a branch that is cut off. Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words live on in you, pray for that which you also will, and it shall come about for you. By this my Father is revealed, that you bear rich spiritual fruit and become ever more truly my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Ground your being in my love, just as I have taken the aims of my Father into my will and live on in his love.
These words I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is the task I put before you: that you love one another as I have loved you.
No man can have greater love than this, than that he offer up his life for his friends. You are my friends if you follow the task I have given you. No longer can I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I call you my friends because I have made known to you all that I have heard from my Father.
You did not choose me, but I have chosen you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruits should live on after you, so that what you ask the Father in my name he should give it to you. I say to you out of the fullness of my power: Love one another.
If the world hates you with hatred, remember that they hated me first. If you belonged to people in general, they would love you as belonging to them; but you do not belong to them, because I have chosen you out of mankind. That is why people hate you.
Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master’. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have held on to my word, they will hold on to yours also. Everything that they do to you they will do as though they did it to me, for they do not know Him who sent me.
If I had not come and had not spoken to them, they would be without sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who turns in hatred against me turns in hatred against my Father also. If I had not done deeds among them, deeds which no one else has ever done, they would be without guilt. But now they have seen me, and have still hated both me and my Father.

But it was to fulfill what is written in their law: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
But when the Comforter comes, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bring knowledge of me and will be my witness. And you also will be my witnesses, because you have been united with me from the very beginning. 


4th Sunday after Easter
April 29, 2007
John 15: 1-27


A grapevine has deep roots. They draw up water and minerals, life and strength, from deep in the earth. As a living being, the vine directs life and strength upward into the branches, the unfolding leaves, the developing fruit, so that each part can fulfill its task.

At Easter, Christ descended into the depths. He rooted Himself forever in the earth, becoming the Vine of Life through which all life now rises and flows. We are the branches of His life.

Poets sometimes sense this joyous undercurrent of life that streams through all things. Wordsworth says:

                        …And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought
And roll through all things.[1]

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.[2]


By sending His life into and through us, Christ makes possible for us a depth of joy. He gives us strength to fulfill our life’s tasks. He makes it possible for us to become fruitful in the ways of love.








[1] William Wordsworth, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” William Wordsworth: The Major Works, Oxford Classics, p. 134
[2] Ibid. p. 132 

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