Sermon for the Feast of St. Mark, April 25, 2010
“I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing . ”
WHAT does your Savior expect of you? It's all well and good to say that faith in Jesus renders us salvation, but is that it ? Can we boil the entire Gospel down to believing the accounts and getting into heaven ? If we do that, we haven't read the Gospel. There's a whole lot more.
St. John is the only Scriptural writer who gives us the extensive teaching of Jesus at the table of the Last Supper. It was a rich and important series of instructions for us all. We know that we are dependent on Jesus, but how much more dependent can we be than to be branches that have been cut off some other plant and grafted onto a living trunk, our v-cut base tied into a gash cut into that other stalk until the living substance of our new source flows into us and through us? He said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” That's the start. We have life because we are grafted onto Christ.
Then it's quite clear what kind of plant this is: a grapevine . Vines may be lovely in their way, but they have really only one purpose, and that is to bear fruit . Table grapes and wine were necessary parts of a Palestinian diet and vineyards meant life and a certain amount of pleasure to the Jews. They all knew how to grow grapes and to make their crops abundant. Jesus says His Father is the “ husbandman ” or farmer , who inspects the branches to see which ones are bearing fruit. If a branch is fruitless it will be removed, pruned from the trunk. Is there more to the Christian life than faith? Of course —the faith must lead to something He calls fruit : a gift, a good deed, a life lived differently, your witness, changes in your family, more branches bearing more fruit. This prospect can be daunting, considering the lives of great saints and thinking what puny runts we are, but remember that your life and its product are not drawn from you. You are connected to God the Son who can do all these things using a dull tool like you or me. He won't do them Himself, however: He wants to do them through the branches, through us.
If we don't “ abide ” in Him, we lose our power to do any good thing. Abiding in Him means we stay close to Him, pray to Him, keep ourselves clean of impurities, and don't offend our Savior by worship of other little gods. He's looking for much fruit from us. Not only can't we bear much fruit without Him, we die. The branch that isn't really drawing life from Him will wither and be cut off to burn. But if our lives are drawn from His, our fruit will necessarily be abundant and the things we pray will be granted us.
Jesus makes a point here that He makes in other places, that if we say we love Him, we ought to obey His commands. What are the commands of Jesus? Believe in Him, be Baptized in that faith, eat and drink His Blessed Sacrament, abide in Him, pray often and with faith, pick up our crosses and follow Him, go into the world and make disciples of all people. And one more: love one another as I have loved you . These are not suggestions, nor can any of us accomplish them by ourselves. But He concludes that obedience to these commands means we love Him, and disobedience means we don't. Love is a muscular thing to God, not just a mild fondness. Love at the level He means is defined by the cross. It's sacrificial, all in, unlimited, deep and completely unconditional. If we love Him in that way, our obedience to what He commands will follow accordingly. When we love each other that way, nothing can stop us.
St. John wrote his Gospel account as probably the last of the four, late in the 1 st century. It's also probable that the first of our written accounts was by the pen of a disciple named Mark. He is called John or Mark, for he had both names, the son of yet another Mary, a rich Jerusalem resident, and he was also cousin to St. Barnabas. Where he first comes into the story may be at the arrest of Jesus, where a young man has his cloak torn from him as he runs away—this fact recorded only in Mark's version. His mother's house became a place of assembly to the new church born at Pentecost and the young man Mark became devoted to the Apostle Peter. When Barnabas and the strangely converted St. Paul set about to sail abroad with the Gospel, Mark bravely joined them, but then turned fearful, and he relented when they landed in Asia Minor. Later Paul would refuse to take him along, which caused a rift with Barnabas who used the young disciple thereafter. Later Mark would redeem himself with Paul, and was attending him in Rome during Paul's incarceration. Finally, Mark traveled with Peter in Babylon, and with Timothy in Ephesus. Beyond the Bible's record, tradition tells that he went to Egypt and founded the church at Alexandria, suffering martyrdom there where one of the great early churches grew from his work.
Fruit : a branch grafted into the vine of Jesus Christ drew its life from that powerful base and produced great fruit in Mark. What better legacy could one have than the inspired testimony of the life of Christ, read every week throughout the world, attesting what the disciple lived by, saw, handled, heard in his own ears, witnessed in the Apostles of Christ? Quite possibly two of the other Gospel accounts relied on the framework of his book for the basis of their accounts, and the fourth, St. John's, trusted that we already had Mark's account so he could spend time recording other matters, teachings and acts of Christ. By any reckoning, Mark led a fruitful life.
Fruit is not borne out of fear. We may need the image of branches cut off and burned to understand what happens to those who neglect the life in Christ they have been given. There can be those who offend the vine through lives of disobedience who display no love for Him who saved us and given us life. It can be useful for us to acknowledge the end of some course of sin we struggle with that, lacking a better argument, we can be dissuaded by conjuring up a vision of hell, eternal flames, and old age lived without God and watching death approaching. But the object of such knowledge is not to live in fear, but that fear turn to love as the true motivator of our obedience. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom , but the end of that wisdom is complete love: love of God with all we have, love of others as we love our own lives, and love toward our fellow Christians that is unbounded.
Jesus gives two rights to the world outside the Church, so that its inhabitants may judge according to what they see in us. Right after He sites His new commandment to love each other, He says, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35 The anxious world looks on, hoping that Christians truly have the answer to everyone's problem of alienation from God. If they look at us and see love, relationships that work despite differences, respect toward one another that supersedes competition, noble acts of service and a willingness to die in another's place; they will conclude that we are indeed Jesus' disciples. We're acting like He acted. They will then know that we are His.
A few moments later on that same night, as Jesus prayed to the Father for glory to be renewed and grace to abound, He prayed: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. ” John 17:21 The world will watch us, wondering if the claims of Christ are real, if He truly was the Son of God. Then they will see Christians either united by faith and love, or divided by sin and scorn, and draw their conclusion: Christ comes from the Father or He doesn't.
Our fruits result in more than we imagine. If the world is watching us, for signs that this religion just happens to be truth and light for the world, and the world is drawing conclusions about Christ based on the lives we lead, then these lives may mean life or death to many. My fruit may be heaven or hell to somebody who knows I am a Christian and is watching me.
But am I a minister? You may be asking. Am I supposed to bring people to Christ? How do I do that? St. Paul, in today's Epistle, makes it clear that we do not all have the same office, but that the tasks required by the Church are divided up by God. “He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ…” He gave, I might add, some altar guild ladies, some ACW officers, some vestry, some gardeners, some mothers and fathers of children, some good neighbors, some musicians and singers, and so on. We each have roles to play and lives to life and examples to show others. Notice that the expectation of the world on us to convince them that Jesus was sent by the Father and that we are his true disciples is not based on our office in the church but on our love and unity. Everyone can exhibit these. Everyone may have and use these gifts.
St. Paul continues, after listing his various holy occupations, “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We come by faith into unity, and by the knowledge of Jesus into love. Faith should not divide us. We have some differing beliefs from Baptists, Roman Catholics and others. But the major truths of every Christian unite us around Him and resolve the difficulties through a generous portion of love. And that love is borne out of knowledge of just Who Jesus is. To know Him is to love Him . He said that those who didn't love Him did not know Him or His Father. If you want to love Jesus, just learn more about Him.
We are branches on a vine. We live by that vine, and we love by that vine. It's one great vine and many branches, but we draw all our life from Him and from no one else. If we draw His life into our own, and don't resist its grace, we'll bear fruit and others will be drawn to Him by the lives they see in us.
PFH+