sermon – Page 17

What Can You Bear?

May 19, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Christ promises the Spirit will lead us into all truth when we can bear it: let us pray that we say we’re always ready to bear whatever is needed for the life of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year B
Texts: John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15; Acts 2:1-21, referencing vv. 41-47

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“I still have many things to say to you, but you can’t bear them now.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth.”

What hope this promise gives us for the life of the Church, the life of the world! Jesus knows there are so many more things those who trust in him need to know if they’re going to follow the way of Christ. So many more challenges, so many more questions.

So he says, “there’s a lot you can’t bear right now, but the Spirit will lead you into all the truth.” And this promise has been fulfilled over and over again.

With the guidance of the Spirit’s wisdom, Christ’s Church has changed.

In our own recent history, the Church finally declared definitively that no human being could enslave another, that all God’s children were precious in God’s sight. Just fifty years ago many in Christ’s Church restored women to any and all leadership positions in the Church. And more recently, many Christian churches have been led by the Spirit to not only welcome LGBTQ+ siblings but embrace and cherish them as God’s beloved children.

The Spirit moves and shapes and teaches things now that at one time the Church wasn’t ready to bear.

But were we really not ready? Or just unwilling?

Did the Church, shaped by the sacrificial love of God at the cross for all humanity, really need over 18 centuries to recognize all humanity as equal and beloved in God’s eyes, and finally forbid human slavery? There were Spirit-led voices throughout those centuries who called for this. But the whole Church just wasn’t ready until the 19th century?

Jesus and Paul raised up women as leaders in the community. Paul had women colleagues who were heads of faith communities. By the end of the first century, the Church backed away from that, and became deeply patriarchal. Did we really need another 1,800 years to reverse that sellout? And even now, those Christian churches who have women as leaders are definitely the minority. Does the vast majority of the Church still get to say they’re not ready to bear women leaders?

And did the Church of Christ’s radical love need 2,000 years to recognize their LGBTQ+ siblings as beloved children of God? Such children have been a part of God’s rich diversity for as long as humans have existed. We weren’t ready to bear that until now? And again, Christian churches who do embrace these siblings are the small minority.

If Christ’s promise is that the Spirit will teach us new things when we’re ready to bear them, and the Spirit clearly taught people for 2,000 years things only recently accepted by larger groups, then are we hiding behind the wall of “we’re not ready to bear such things?” Maybe we just don’t want to do them.

Because if you look at that first Pentecost, the early Church seemed ready to bear some amazing things right away.

People were filled with awe at the signs and wonders the believers did. The community was transformed: they each sold everything they owned and shared all their wealth in common. Everyone had what they needed. And they worshipped together daily in the temple, and shared meals with each other. And every day more and more became a part of the community. Can you imagine us living that way as this faith community?

So they were ready to bear such a communal life, and now, 2,000 years later we’re not?

The truth is, we can actually see the seeds of this in the book of Acts itself. This new way started falling apart. Disputes started to happen, some people didn’t get enough food, some hid away their money.

So even the early Church struggled with bearing what the Spirit taught. They grasped it at first with joy. But it became more and more a burden to keep up this new way.

Clearly humans easily say “we’re not ready,” when the truth is more that we don’t want to.

So, on this day of Pentecost, what is the Spirit trying to lead us into, to teach us, that we’re dragging our heels on? There are lots of things to consider, but we could start with how we live in this world as a community of faith.

There’s a group here working on how Mount Olive can better know our indigenous neighbors and walk alongside them. If you’re interested in helping shape that conversation, there’s room at that table. But what are we willing to bear? Would we consider reparations as a regular part of our budget? If the Spirit raises challenging paths, would we be open to her guidance? Or are we not ready at this time?

Nearly every day during the week neighbors of all God’s diversity come through our doors for help: African Americans, African immigrants, Native Americans, new neighbors from all the countries south of our border, and we offer help. If you’re able to help during the week as we engage with these neighbors, we’re always in need of hands. But what are we willing to bear beyond that? What might the Spirit be calling Mount Olive to be and do as a community in this city to bear Christ’s love with all these neighbors? Are we willing to hear the Spirit’s call, wisdom, teaching, if it leads to new challenges, financial, physical, social? Or will we say once again, “maybe we’re not ready yet.”

Jesus’ promise is not an excuse to avoid growing, changing, becoming Christ.

Our task at Mount Olive is to keep listening to the Spirit together and then talking with each other, discerning what paths might be opening up in lots of areas. Because the Spirit will be inviting us to serve in our life in this world. To learn new things. Face new challenges. Be transformed into what God needs us to be.

So let’s commit on this Day of Pentecost to seek conversations amongst ourselves as much as we possibly can and listen to the Spirit together. And let’s also commit to helping each other listen to where the Spirit might be calling us each individually to take a different path, to be shaped by the Spirit’s wisdom, because that’s part of Jesus’ promise, too.

Most of all, on this day of Pentecost, let us pray.

Let us pray that we are always ready for the next thing the Spirit needs us to hear and learn. Let’s even boldly pray that the Spirit ignore whether she thinks we can bear something or not. That she let us stumble or fall rather than hold back guidance because we’re afraid or unwilling. Let’s ask the Spirit to remove the words “we’re not ready for that,” and teach us to say with joy, “ready or not, here we come.”

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Unrecognizable

May 12, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

If you truly are made holy to love and live as Christ, you will be a threat to the world, like Jesus was; but you will also be a part of God’s healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 17:6-19

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

God came to us as a human and was unrecognizable.

Jesus is God’s creating Word in our human body, and we didn’t recognize or want him. John says, “The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. The Word came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (1:10-11)

And in this prayer on the night of his betrayal we heard today, Jesus names that. “I don’t belong to this world,” he says. And since God’s Word in our flesh was so unrecognizable to us, so problematic, so challenging, we had to get rid of him.

But the real problem is that in this prayer, Jesus trusts the same is true of us.

In this beautiful mystery of a conversation within the life of the Trinity, Jesus the Son says we also don’t belong to the world because we are Christ. We are shaped into God’s life and live as Christ’s love in the world. So the world won’t recognize or accept us either, Jesus assumes. That’s why Jesus asks that we be protected in this alien world.

I just wonder if Jesus is right about us.

Are we actually unrecognizable to the world?

Jesus absolutely was. His teaching, radical interpretation of Scripture, insistent boundary-breaking for the sake of God’s love, his welcome and inclusion of all, especially those on the margins, was so offensive to the authorities he had to be taken out.

But is there anything about our lives, about how we live in our neighborhood, or at work, or in relationships, that looks so much like Christ people just don’t know what to do with us? Does your love of God and love of neighbor so change you that people can’t relate, or are bothered or annoyed, or even angry at you? Does my life in Christ mean any risk for me at all?

We spend so much energy and attention on what others think of us, as if it would be horrifying if our life in Christ marked us as different, as if we fear that.

So the first question is, do we even want to be different like Christ?

It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? This community cares deeply about this world and the pain and suffering in it. We often wonder how we could help with any number of problems, from our racist systems to a societal structure that reinforces poverty and homelessness and inequality to our desperate helplessness in the face of war around the world.

Jesus says you and I can make a difference in our own places. That the more we look like Christ, love like Christ, the more we find the path Jesus first walked, we can heal what is wrong with our world.

And it sounds good until you have to make a stand. Or I have to talk to someone who disagrees with me. Or you have to reach out to your legislator. Or I need to actually love a neighbor I don’t even like. Or you have to recognize your own latent racism or sexism or classism, and actually try to change it, break it down. Or we have to make decisions that risk our wealth and security.

The cost of being Christ, the cost of loving, the cost of kindness, the cost of sacrificing some of our well-being, the cost of being seen by others as strange or naïve or just wrong, it’s a high cost.

But there’s good news. You have Christ’s grace in the Spirit to be changed, if you want it.

The Son speaks within God’s life and says, “I’m sending them out into the world, just as I was sent.” And Jesus adds, “so make them holy in the truth, in your Word.”

Remember, Jesus is the Word-made-flesh. And Jesus said, “I am the truth – it’s not abstract, truth is alive in my very being.” And, for Jesus, being holy is always love of God and love of neighbor. So here Christ says, “we’ll make that happen in you. You will become me. You won’t hold the truth as a weapon or fight over it, but you’ll embody it, live the truth of God’s love for all.”

If we want it, God will do it.

And when that starts to happen in you and me, the other part of this prayer helps deal with the cost.

Because when it starts to happen, you and I are going to start standing out in the world, looking different. We’re going to become more like Jesus and less recognizable as people who belong to this world. We’ll rub people the wrong way. We’ll risk our security and our ease of living. We’ll learn the feeling of going against the stream, we’ll increasingly realize we need to do something different, make new choices, live another way.

And when that happens, it will be hard. It will cost. But the joy is that Jesus asks here that you are always cared for in God’s arms. No matter what happens, even death, you don’t have to be afraid of becoming Christ, because God is with you.

And when it happens, when you and I become Christ as we were called to be in Baptism, we’ll become a real problem for this world. Like Jesus. And that’s the Triune God’s hope for the healing of all things.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Cloudy, With a Chance of Fullness

May 9, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Jesus left at the ascension, so that we could learn to look for Christ everywhere.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you had stopped by here on Monday, April 8th at around 2pm, you would have seen something unusual: Jim Bargmann and I, standing out in the parking lot, staring up at the clouds.

No, we weren’t looking for Jesus. That, of course, was the day of the eclipse and though we knew we weren’t in the path of the totality, we were still hoping to see something. Anything. But, as many of you probably remember, we couldn’t see it here at all. In fact, the clouds were so thick and covered so much of the sky, we couldn’t even tell where the sun was! We watched and we waited for a break in the clouds, and we shared photos from our friends and family who were seeing this amazing thing. But in the end, all we saw was clouds. And after a while we headed back inside, feeling disappointed. And a little bit empty.

And I was thinking about that experience as I was imagining Jesus’s ascension.

Now, we don’t know what the weather was like that day. We aren’t given many details but we do know that there was at least one cloud. Because in the account in Acts, we are told that “as [the followers of Jesus] were watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Now, we usually picture it as one of those huge, fluffy, white clouds that is just the perfect compliment to the gorgeous blue sky on a sunny afternoon. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was more like the day of the eclipse, overcast and threatening rain, with gloomy gray clouds covering the sky?

I know that’s statistically unlikely, given the arid climate of Jerusalem. But, imagining the Ascension happening under gray skies, helped me connect with the underlying melancholy of the event. Of course that wasn’t the only emotion, and seems not even to have been the primary one. After all Luke’s account in the gospel tells us that the followers returned to Jerusalem with great joy! And we’ll get to the joy. But I think we can safely imagine that the great joy was also at least tinged with a bit of sadness.

That there was glory, yes, but something gloomy too.

Jesus was leaving. The incarnation was over. And that’s so hard because even death itself couldn’t end the incarnation! That’s what we’ve been celebrating for forty days now – that death wasn’t the end of the incarnation. But this was. The Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, who died and rose again, was going away.

The clouds covered up the sun, and we are left in gloomy gray, staring up at the sky.

It’s a feeling we know well. When someone important to us, important to our community, leaves, it can feel just like straining to see the sun on a cloudy day. A feeling of missing something. A feeling of emptiness and longing.

It’s easy to imagine the followers of Jesus feeling that emptiness, that longing as they stood there looking up at the sky. As they realized that Easter really is over, and the long wait of Advent was beginning. No wonder those two white-robed figures had to prompt them to quit their staring and get back to living. They couldn’t tear their eyes away – they just wanted one more glimpse.

But, of course, the sun is still there even when you can’t see it.

Jesus may have left, but he wasn’t gone. And no clouds can cover up or take away Christ’s promise to abide with us, to be with us “always, to the end of the age.” No matter how empty we feel, Christ fills us. After all, Christ is fullness, as Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians, the one “who fills all in all.” Who fills our broken and empty hearts with abundant and everlasting life – who fills us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit – with love and peace and great joy.

And this fullness isn’t only within ourselves, but Christ is the fullness that is so full that it fills the whole universe. Christ fills everything, is accessible everywhere!

I apologize in advance for this cringey comparison – but one way to imagine it is that Christ being lifted up in a cloud is a little bit like Christ being uploaded to the cloud. Okay, I know that’s a groaner, but go with it for a moment. I create a file on my device – and the only place I can access it is on that device, the place where it is saved. But once I upload it to the cloud, then it’s saved to the network that connects the world and that means I can get to it from anywhere. Christ is the network that connects us to everything – to God, to creation, to one another, even to ourselves.

And that’s part of what the Ascension, the end of the incarnation, the uploading to the cloud, helps us to understand.

Because there is one drawback to incarnation.

It’s singular. It’s particular. It draws our focus to one person and time and place, and that’s amazing because it helps us see the Triune God who is beyond person, time and place. But that focus on the one singular person of Jesus, can blur our peripheral vision, and blind us to the truth that Christ is everywhere, the fullness that fills all people and all things, present and accessible and living from one end of creation to the other. As long as Jesus was here, walking and talking and eating and healing and loving as one particular person, it was a little bit harder for us to see Christ anywhere else.

Jesus left so that we would learn to look for Christ.

So that we could learn to see Christ in everyone, in everything. So that we could experience the fullness of Christ.

And that doesn’t keep us from staring up at the clouds sometimes – desperate for a glimpse of the sun.

That doesn’t keep us from singing “Come, Lord Jesus” again and again until our throats are raw. It doesn’t keep us from feeling empty, even as we are being filled by fullness. In our longing, we are still clinging to the promise that Christ will return. As those two robed figures said to the disciples: “This Jesus, this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go.” Christ Jesus will come again.

But what do we do in the meantime? We look for Christ, not just in the clouds, but in the dirt and in the mirror and in each other. We learn to see Christ – especially in those places we least expect, and in those people who are the hardest to love. We let ourselves be filled with the fullness of the one who fills all in all, so that we can be Christ’s eyes and hands and love in the world.

We do what we always do in Advent.

We watch and we wait for a break in the clouds.

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Unexpected Friendship

May 5, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Jesus’s command to love one another invites us into unexpected friendships, including the friendship between God and creation.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Dear friends, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus does something pretty unexpected in the gospel reading today.

Here in his last hours with his followers, he says to them: “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends.” Something has shifted in their relationship, and Jesus names it. “We care about each other. We’re close. I’ve trusted you with everything. We are friends.”

But, it seems like an odd kind of friendship. Not only because we know that these “friends” won’t really act like friends in the chapters to come, but also because of the way Jesus describes friendship: “you are my friends if you do what I command you” – which doesn’t sound like friendship. Following commands, that sounds like what servants do! So which is it – friends or servants? Both? Somewhere in between? What’s going on?

I often feel, when I’m studying or preaching from the gospel of John, that you really need a PhD in Greek and in ancient philosophy to understand what the heck is going on. In this case, it’s really important to understand what friendship meant to Jesus. And, I don’t have a PhD, but from what I understand, the simple version is this: people in the ancient world took friendship very seriously.

Friendships came with serious expectations.

It was sometimes even ritualized with a ceremony involving solemn vows and an exchange of symbolic gifts – basically a wedding, but to celebrate a friendship. Because, just like marriage, friendship meant a serious commitment: to help and give and speak and act in each other’s best interest for the rest of their lives.

And what’s more, friends were expected to be patient and kind. They did not envy or boast. You see where I’m going with this? They weren’t arrogant or rude or irritable or resentful. Friendship bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things and never ended.

Friendship was love.

Literally the Greek word for friendship is “philia,” which just means love.

I imagine that the people of the ancient world would be mystified at our modern dilution of the idea of friendship. You can become “friends” on Facebook by clicking a button? That’s it? What do you mean you’re “just friends?” What is “just” about committing yourself so deeply to one another, that you would even die for each other?

Because that’s how Jesus describes it: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Jesus isn’t so much imparting new spiritual wisdom here as much as he is quoting the common wisdom of his day. Aristotle wrote something very similar – almost word for word- about laying down one’s life for one’s friends almost three hundred years earlier. For centuries, ancient philosophers had described the ideal, the truest friendship as love, self-sacrificial to the very point of death.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is preparing his friends for. He is about to lay down his life for them. For love. For friendship.

And he wants them to love in the same way. That’s the really unexpected part.

Because, you know, the interesting thing about the word for “friend” in Greek is that it has both an active and a passive meaning. A friend is simultaneously the one who loves and the one who is loved, the lover and the beloved. There is an equality and a mutuality built into the very word.

That’s what Jesus means when he says “I do not call you servants any longer.” Jesus is showing how friendship, how love, breaks down hierarchy. It started two chapters earlier when Jesus washed their feet, flipping the expected hierarchy of master and servant. And here, he destroys it completely. No servants. No masters. Just friends.

And not only in this inner circle, but on a cosmic scale as well.

No longer is it going to be God up here and creation down here, with God the subject doing the loving and creation the object being loved. The truth revealed in Jesus, God-with-us, is that it’s both God and creation, both loving and being loved, both subjects and objects of the passion and pleasure and pain of love. Jesus reveals God’s desire for mutual love – deep and abiding and unexpected friendship.

And this unexpected friendship between God and creation keeps creating more unexpected friendships, keeps sowing love in places where love seemed impossible.

We see it in Acts, with Peter and Cornelius.

Friendship between them should have been impossible – a wealthy Roman military leader and a poor Jewish fisherman. Come on. How could they love each other? How could they be vulnerable enough to allow themselves to be loved? But the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them all. The love of God was bigger than every hierarchy and cultural barrier that separated them. Cornelius invited Peter. And Peter stayed with Cornelius and welcomed him, the very first Gentile to be baptized. They loved each other. And became friends. An unexpected friendship that changed the course of Peter’s life. And changed the course of the church.

And that’s exactly what Jesus wanted for Peter, when he called him his friend. And wants for all of us.

He wants our joy to be complete – the joy of unexpected friendship.

I hope you have experienced this joy already. I hope you’ve had a friendship that seemed to come out of nowhere–that overcame the barriers of our world that seeks to sort and divide. A friend who, as another ancient philosopher put it, doubled your joy and divided your grief.

We believe that God’s friendship with creation, God’s love poured out for us and our love poured out in return, can create friendships – true friendships which otherwise would seem not just unexpected but impossible. Between those on opposite ends of the hierarchy. On opposite sides of borders. On opposite sides of front lines.

And in our world, we are desperate for more unexpected friendships.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the mutual love of the Holy Spirit to break down the hierarchies that surround us – that never seem to change and keep us part. To break down every way that we let gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, ability, religion, and politics keep us from loving each other.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of God who became vulnerable, who invites us into mutual vulnerability. The love that risks being known and being hurt, that trust others with what is most tender in ourselves.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of Jesus–who laid down his life. The love that teaches us to lay down our own wants and desires and comforts out of care for each other. That trades happiness for joy.

That’s why Jesus commands us to love one another.

Not because we are servants to be commanded. After all, if friendship has broken down hierarchy, then commands aren’t really commands, are they? And in case, love can’t be commanded. Love must be given freely or it isn’t love.

Rather it is the will of God, the hope God has for humanity, that we love one another. And it becomes a self-fulfilling statement. When Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command,” what he is saying is this: “If do what I’ve said, if you love one another, then you will be loved and loving – active and passive – beloved lovers – in a word, friends.”

Unexpected friends, let us love one another. And our joy will be complete.

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Never Apart

April 28, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You cannot be separated from God’s love in Christ by anything, so trust your connection to the Vine and God’s ability to grow fruit in you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 15:1-8; 1 John 4:7-21 (with a call out to Romans 8)

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Nothing. This promise of Paul for you and for me is our greatest hope in this life and for the life to come. Neither death nor life, nor the present, nor the future, nothing in all creation can separate you from God’s love for you in Christ.

But here’s a new thought today: if nothing can separate you from God’s love, then you can never be cut off from the Vine that is Christ Jesus. All the fruit of love and life that God dreams to create in you is possible because you’re never apart from the Vine.

Jesus says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” That’s not a warning, it’s a promise and a hope.

And you know this connection already, if you listen.

First John says today that because God’s own Spirit lives in you, you know you abide in God and God abides in you. You’re part of the Vine, as Jesus said.

So, do you have any trust in God at all? Your doubt and confusion are irrelevant. The smallest spark of faith is a sign that God’s Spirit lives in you.

Have you ever felt God pull you into some path, show you someone you could care for? Have you ever noticed you had a gift that seemed God-given? Have you ever had a moment where you felt God was with you? Then you already know God’s Spirit, and God’s Spirit is in you, and you abide in God and God abides in you. And that means you will bear great fruit.

Fruit is the beautiful image that sparks our joy, shapes our imagination, inspires our words and actions.

Fruit can’t grow without a connection to the vine or branch, down into the roots, into the soil. And Jesus and Paul both love to describe the life in Christ we’ve all been called to live as fruit. That’s huge. Your Christian life isn’t a job to do, a series of duties that weigh on you. Loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself isn’t something you have to work hard to do.

The Christian life, your following Christ, your love in the world, is fruit. It grows from your life that is connected to the roots, the branches, the sap of God’s love and grace. Since your baptism you have been joined to this Vine. And nothing, nothing can separate you from God’s love, God’s sap, God’s roots.

That means you will absolutely bear fruit. Isn’t that amazing? All the love you know God hopes you can share, all the Good News of God’s grace you wish everyone knew, all the calls to follow and love and care for others and do justice, all this is fruit. God grows it in you and me, and blesses the world.

And don’t worry about Jesus’ words about pruning.

Pruning doesn’t destroy the vine or tree. Pruning cuts away the parts that aren’t bearing fruit anymore, or never did. The parts that take energy and life away from the fruit.

God’s pruning helps you remove the things that fight against God’s fruit, the ways of thinking and doing and speaking that try to dry out the juice and keep the fruit from bursting into the world. That keep you and me from bearing the fruit of love. When we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, God prunes while forgiving.

You could pray for pruning with joy and trust. If you know things in you take away from bearing fruit of God’s love, ask God for help to get rid of them, toss them in the pile of old branches. So nothing can get in the way of love of God and neighbor flowing through you.

And trust the sap is flowing strongly for you to live your Christ life.

When you struggle with your calling, your following, take a pause and listen for God’s life flowing in you. It’s there. Nothing can separate you from God’s love.

When you fail to love, or despair at your inadequacy to heal the problems of injustice and oppression, take a breath and feel deep down to your roots, to where God’s love and hope are. Don’t beat yourself up for your failure, or your fear, or your doubt, trust this: what God needs you to bear as fruit of love and justice and peace in your life and in this world will happen.

And when you don’t have any idea what the next step on the path is, trust the Vine. Nothing can separate you, so trust the way will be revealed. God’s sap is flowing in you and giving you wisdom and possibility. God will ensure you know where to go, what to do, when to do it.

But remember to nurture your connection to the Vine.

Nothing can separate you from God’s love in Christ, from Christ the Vine.

But it’s harder to sense that connection if you distance yourself from God and the community of faith. It’s harder to hear the Spirit’s movement without others to encourage and notice. It’s harder to feel God’s strength if you live away from God’s voice and gifts.

You strengthen your connection to God’s roots by seeking and hearing God’s Word. Sharing in the Meal that gives you forgiveness and new life, new sap for your fruit. Staying connected to others who are also joined to the Vine, for encouragement and support and love. Jesus’ words today are a gentle reminder to nurture your unbreakable connection as intentionally as you can, so you know it better.

I am the Vine, you are the branches, Jesus said. And you will bear great fruit.

That’s a promise. Through you, it will mean hope for the world.

Because nothing can separate you from that Vine. And with God’s love flowing into you, nothing can stop the fruit of your life in Christ from bursting into the world with life and love.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen