This morning we're going to spend some time with Jesus' teaching about the Vine and us the branches. You know, the power of Jesus' teaching and storytelling came from the fact that it was based in the daily lives of his listeners. He used examples, metaphors, that they would have immediately related to personally. So, we have a bit of a problem when we approach the scriptures, for I doubt that many of us here have had firsthand experience with fruit-bearing vines. To help us out, I'm going to share with you a story about vines that I heard recently, so that Jesus' words can really come to life for us today and give us that new life that is always Good News.

As many of you know, during the first two weeks of May, I was a delegate to our denomination's General Conference meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. Each of those long days of business began with worship at which one of the bishops of the church preached. On Friday of the first week, the word was brought by an old friend of mine, Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, now the episcopal leader of the Arkansas Area.

Bishop Huie grew up in Southwest Texas, and her sermon that day was on the very gospel passage we have heard this morning about Jesus the vine and we the branches. I want to share with you this morning the story she told us as she opened her sermon. And to try to bring it alive, I will tell it in her words:

"One of my fondest memories of my childhood is picking grapes with my grandmother, and my mother and my sister. Every summer my mother and grandmother made dozens and dozens of jars of grape jelly and many bottles of Methodist wine . . . grape juice. During the years of my childhood, there was an abundance of grapes, mustang grapes, in deep South Texas. Now let me tell you that deep South Texas is a semi-arid land with lots of what we call brush country. That means that it's land that's better habitation for cattle and goats than it is for people. Mustang grapes ripen in mid-July. In July in South Texas the sun is on fire at ten o'clock in the morning. The humidity is ninety percent. And underneath those grapevines the air is as still as a newborn baby's breath when she is sound asleep. That's when it's time to pick grapes.

After walking a mile or two through the pastures, my mother and my grandmother would choose an area thick with grapevines and begin filling their buckets. Now, mustang grapevines are rare beauties. There are thousands of little branches and leaves all tangled together. They sprawl over oak trees and mesquite trees. They find themselves spreading over palm trees or fence posts or fences. They seem to go every which way, and no way at all. They actually are very messy-even chaotic. Their branches keep reaching up and up and up out to the sun, and they make this great canopy that's a home for all kinds of creatures, squirrels and blackbirds, red birds and Mexican orioles. The central vines are big woody stems, tough. They dangle to the earth and they are the ones that provide really good ground cover for the big animals, like deer and javelina and wild turkey. The roots go deep, deep into the earth tapping into water sands below creeks that often run dry.

Break off a branch from the vine? Thirty minutes of Texas sun, it is limp and lifeless, just more dead wood for the next big rain to wash on down the creek. Connected to the vine, the branches grow and they blossom and they scent the spring air with this sweet, delicate fragrance. And even in the driest of years, they will produce plump, tart grapes."

Thanking Bishop Huie for that description, we call to mind now how Jesus said: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me as I abide in you. Those who abide in me will bear much fruit."

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that mustang grapevine can teach us much about life in Christ, about our relation to the source of life, about who we are and about what it is that keeps life alive in us, through times of spring rains and times of driest drought. Through the balmy summer seasons of our lives, when it's easy to bloom and grow, and, likewise, through those times of withering summer sun, when it's all we can do to hold on and pray that enough nourishment will come up from those deep-reaching roots to keep us going for another day.

What can we learn? First, the roots must go deep, deep to that source of living water which is Christ Jesus. You know, folks, in places where there's lots of rain, lots of water, trees grow that have root systems that spread out close up to the surface of the ground. But in arid, desert places, like Southwest Texas, and where I grew up in Arizona, and where Jesus lived and taught, and even here in Southern California though we try to pretend otherwise, in places where's there's not much rainfall and you can never count on it to come anyway, roots must go very deep, because down in the earth there is water stored, water available for those driest times.

And don't we know that as we go through this life there are times of ease and plenty when we're OK skimming the surface, grazing, taking little bits of nourishment from here and there and we're happy, we're getting along just fine. But then, you know, times of drought will come to us all, times when sorrow and grief and failure just seem to dry up every source of life we thought we had. And in those times, we must also have roots that grow deep, deep enough to connect us to the living waters of Christ Jesus that will sustain our life through the darkest seasons.

There's something else we can learn from the vines. The main stalk of the vine and the oldest branches are just as important as the new little shoots at the end. Now, I'm not trying to be anti-youth here, but rather to put in a word for age and longevity. Old vine trunks are gnarled and tough and messy. And in a society which seems to value youthfulness at any cost, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are squandered to maintain the appearance of youth, surely there's something to be said for that old main trunk that sustains life. That is the source of wisdom and continuity, that no longer by itself produces grapes, but without which no harvest could come.

Now let's add this. From that trunk grows an ever-expanding canopy of branches, new, newer, newest, reaching out and out and out in an ever-expanding web of life. It forms a very large nest in which all kinds of God's creatures can find shade and protection. It produces grapes that are plump and tart and juicy, grapes which then, in turn, provide sustenance and pleasure to all who partake of their fruit and juice. The water from the living source has been transformed into fruit which gives life to God's people and, in turn, provides the nourishment for mission and ministry far beyond the vine and the vineyard itself.

The vine does not live for itself. The branches do not live for themselves. Together they live to bear fruit, and as the branches of the vine of Jesus, our fruit is the witness we bear in the world, the difference we make in the lives of others of God's children.

Now let me just add one more observation today. Think about this. If you look hard at a grapevine, any kind really, once you move out from that old gnarly stem, it gets harder and harder to see where the vine ends and the branches begin. Oh, it's possible to distinguish the oldest part of the vine and then the very newest branches way out at the tips. But you know, in that great middle, at the heart of it all, where the branch has been connected to the vine for so many, many years and that branch has produced more branches and those branches have produced more branches, it's hard to tell which is vine and which is branch.

So it is with our life in Christ. "Abide in me," says Jesus, "as I abide in you." The longer we do it, the more Christ-like we become, the more the light of Christ shines in and through us, the more we become the hands and feet, the heart and presence of Christ in the world. When the world looks, is it seeing the Vine or the branch? The longer we're at it, you see, the harder it should be to distinguish us from the Christ who gives us life.

Eugene Peterson's contemporary paraphrase of this passage makes it clear. Listen again: "I am the vine, you are the branches. When you are joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. . . . Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love."

Sisters and brothers, may this time of worship and reflection on the Word be for you each week a long drink of the waters of life. May your roots reach deep and find the source of life abundant. May your connection here with the other branches, old, new and newest, remind you that you are never alone. And then, may you bear fruit, that the world and all its peoples might taste and see how good and sweet is the love of our God. Amen.