5th Week of Easter (W)
It's the summer of 1991. I sit on a five-gallon pickle bucket all day everyday pruning tomato vines. The hothouses line up like barracks, baking in the Mississippi heat. Each of the twelve houses, covered in thick plastic, flutter as a huge fan pulls the air through, cooling the plants. I start at the first house nearest the road and work slowly each week from the first house to the twelfth house, pruning the suckers that grow in the between the branches and the vine. They look exactly like every other branch of the plant. But cutting them away is a necessary step in the growth of the plant. Suckers drain moisture and nutrients from the vines. Cutting the branch that bears no fruit makes the whole plant healthier. At the end of the day, I sweep up the drying suckers and burn them at the edge of the field. Had I been Catholic at the time, I might've thought about baptism or confession, clearing up and cleaning out the trash that stunts good fruit from ripening. Had I been Catholic, I might've remembered the parable of the branch and the vine.
Jesus reveals to his disciples that he is the true vine and that his Father is the vine grower. His Father cuts away branches that do not bear fruit and prunes the ones that do. Then Jesus says to the disciples: “You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” Because I have revealed the Father to you; because I have taught you the way of salvation in mercy; because I have given you to one another as a Body; because I am the Word speaking the Word to you; because you have died with me and will suffer for me; because you will rise again with me and see the Father face-to-face; and because I am the way, the truth, and the life – because I have taught you, given you, shown you, led you, and because I love you, you are pruned, productively wounded and more than ready to bear the fruit of the Spirit that marks you as mine. The difference btw tomato suckers and the followers of Christ is that the suckers have no choice in their cutting. Or their burning. You and I do. You and I can confess what needs to be pruned. Is it the lie that I need to earn God's love and mercy? It is the lie that I can bargain for His grace? Or that I am right to pass judgment on sinners? Maybe it's the Original Lie that I can be a god w/o God? Or maybe it's the Great Deception of the Modern Age – I can love w/o truth? Christ is the true vine – the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And there is no love that can save w/o him. Whatever suckers there are stealing your spiritual nutrients, ask the Lord to cut them off. Ask him to be productively wounded. The sweeping up at the end of the day is fast approaching.
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