3rd Sunday after Easter
John 15:1-27 (adapted from Madsen)
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| Icon, Vine and Branches |
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 makes
pure that it may bear more fruit. You have already been purified by the power
of the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit out by itself
unless it is given life by the vine, neither can you unless you stay united
with me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains united with me
and I in them, 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 much
fruit and become ever more my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.
Live on in my love. If you take my aims into your will, then you will live on
in my love, o 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 one can have greater love than this, than that
they offer up their life for their friends. You are my friends if you follow
the task I have given you. No longer can I call you servants, for servants do not know what their 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 fruit 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.
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| Arthur Ernst Becher |
If people hate you, remember that they hated me
before you. If you belonged to people in general, they would love you as
belonging to them; but because you do not belong to them since I chose you out of humankind, people hate you.
Remember the word that I spoke to you: ‘A servant
is not greater than their 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 hates
me hates my Father also. If I had not done deeds among them, such as 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.
3rd
after Easter
May
8, 2020
John
15:1-27
The
air is both inside us and outside us. It is like a great ocean of light and
life, filling all spaces. We breathe it in and out in the rhythm of the waves.
We breathe in the Father’s light, His life, His love. And the whole future
existence of the earth depends on what we breathe out—darkness or light, death
or life, hatred or love.
We
breathe out light along with the quality of our awareness. Our awareness of the
spirit, of the divine, builds the future. We breathe out life when what we
create and upbuild toward the future outweighs those destructive forces that
are necessary to maintain life itself now. We breathe out love when we connect
ourselves to the universe and all its kingdoms in warmth, joy, and gratitude.
‘I am
the vine’, Christ says. ‘You are my branches. Without me, you can bear no
fruit’. Without Christ’s light and life, human life on earth will bear no
fruit, and thus will have no future. Without the fruit of his love, which has
become concentrated in the wine of his blood, our souls sicken. Without this
connection, our souls would die. The poet Hafiz describes it this way:
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| True Vine, Sjodin |
Why
all this talk of the Beloved…
Liquid
ruby-light we can lift in a cup?
Because
it is low tide
A
very low tide in this age
And
around most hearts.
We
are exquisite coral reefs,
Dying
when exposed to strange
Elements.
God
is the wine-ocean we crave—
We
miss
Flowing in and out of our
Pores*
Christ is our connector, the divine/human channel to
the greater ocean of the Father’s light, life, and love. He mediates the
light-filled air of life within and without. His being is the essence of
love—giving, circulating, connecting, maintaining. Connecting ourselves with
Him, through and in the symbolic reality of the wine, we are connecting
ourselves to the wine-red ocean of the Father’s life, to the Father’s loving
awareness. Connecting ourselves with Him we are connecting with our future.
*Hafiz,
“Why All This Talk?”, in Tonight the Subject is Love, by Daniel
Ladinsky, p.7
