Like an unruly vine, John’s Gospel can be a bit difficult to untangle at times. Written with the poetic flair and Hellenistic influences of the contemporary philosophical milieu of the late First Century CE, the text is filled with little pericopes that sound repetitive and can be stifling for those who prefer the more narrative approach of the synoptics. Yet, there are moments when John’s imagery breaks through the opacity of its style to give us a little nugget of profound insight worthy of significant prayer and reflection.
Such is the case with the famous “I am the vine, you are the branches” discourse in John 5:1-8. While I, like most people, have typically focused on the “remain in me” phrases and the images of the interconnectedness of the Body of Christ joined together by the unifying vine of the Lord, I was struck today by another line that is simple and perhaps without as much attention as it rightfully deserves. After speaking about how God is the vineyard owner, the one who grows, nurtures, and prunes the plant, Jesus says:
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Despite its initial mysterious quality, this otherwise enigmatic one-liner seems to be a powerful summary of much of our faith in God’s action in Jesus Christ.
First, the word that Jesus spoke was what, as we read elsewhere in John’s account, was spoken to him by God. Its source is divine and its meaning significant for all of humanity. Just as all action that takes place in the tending to and caring for the vines in a vineyard comes down from the instructions of its owner, so too the instructions passed on to us in the word spoken by Christ come from God.
Second, the word is itself a pruning tool. It cuts away the excess, the ego, the unimportant trivialities, the fears, the anxieties of this world, and creates a space in our lives for the growth of good fruit.
Jesus’s word, as we see in all the Gospel accounts, unsettled those who had something to gain by allowing the burden of unnecessary growth to weigh on the shoulders of others. Comparatively, Jesus’s yoke is easy and burden light.
The question that remains today is whether or not we allow the word of God to speak to our hearts and cut away the excess that burdens our spiritual growth. Can we accept that the message of God in Christ Jesus calls us to cut away that which weighs us down, hampers the production of good fruit, and prevents us from fulling living life? Or do we strive unceasingly to protect those burdens with which we are most comfortable, even if they are killing us physically, emotionally, or spiritually?
May we let the Lord tend the garden of God’s vine.
Today’s Gospel, which is something of a Christmas repeat from the Christmas Mass During the Day (that’s right, in case you didn’t realize this, there are in fact four different sets of reading for Christmas… it’s kind of a big deal!). It is the famous “prologue” of the Gospel according to John. It’s opening lines are some of the most famous lines in all of history: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And while this is followed most closely by what is likely the second most famous line from the Gospel of John “And the Word became flesh,” I’m not convinced that this is the most important part of this Gospel passage.
Those familiar with the famous Canticle of the Creatures of St. Francis will know that when he finally mentions humanity, after naming the elemental and non-sentient dimensions of the created order, the way in which human persons best live up to the expectations of God and live as they were created to be (much like the Sun lives as it was created to be by shedding light, the wind by bringing various forms of weather, etc.) is to be peacemakers and those who forgive. Peacemaking, this is the central vocation or responsibility of the human person in the eyes of St. Francis. In his Admonition XV, Francis again brings up peacemaking and, starting with the beatitudes, elaborates every so briefly on what it means to be a true peacemaker.
Yesterday’s comments about forgiveness ended with the anticipatory remark that forgiveness isn’t quite the goal in the Christian experience. Forgiveness is indeed important and there are, as we saw yesterday, barriers that make letting go and forgiving others difficult such as the seductive quality of holding on to anger and victimhood. Yet, while overcoming those difficulties is an important process, its completion in forgiveness is yet another step in the journey of Christian living — not simply the end.
This is who we are called to be. We are not supposed to simply invoke Christ and His Church to serve our own desires and will, but follow in Christ’s (albeit difficult) example. As my Franciscan brother preached this morning in the campus chapel, it is not a matter of God’s justice or mercy, but the intertwined reality of God’s justice and mercy. The operative word here is: God’s! As in, not our notion of justice and mercy but God’s notion of those attitudes.
It has been a while since I’ve spoken specifically about Franciscan Spirituality as it relates to the title of this blog, Dating God. At the core of this theme stands the belief that one way to understand the Franciscan spiritual tradition is to imagine one’s relationship with God as like a dating relationship. Sure, it sounds a little odd, but then again when we look at any metaphor used to describe human-Divine relationship, each comes across as odd and certainly incomplete (God as: Father, Mother, Spouse, Lover, Friend, etc.).
