St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City, NJ
April 29, 2018
Year B: The Fifth
Sunday of Easter
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Assistant Vinegrowers
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
The other day I
met someone who lives in Country Village, the same neighborhood down on the
city line of Jersey City and Bayonne where I grew up and where my parents still
live.
Talking
with this Country Village resident got me thinking about my childhood back in
the 1970s and early 1980s in that little section of the city with backyards and
stand-alone houses and curving streets that had been deliberately planned to
look and feel like a miniature suburbia – in fact, just in case we didn’t get
it, there are even streets down there named “Suburbia Drive,” Suburbia Court,”
and “Suburbia Terrace.”
It
was in many ways an idyllic place to grow up.
There
were a lot of young families and lots of kids.
Many of us kids
would troop off together each morning to Our Lady of Mercy School, just a few
blocks away but it usually felt like quite a trip, except on math test days
when somehow it felt like I got to school in no time at all!
Many of us would
go home for lunch (can you imagine?) where in my case, in the early years, my
mom would be home and have made a sandwich for me, which I usually ate while
catching a cartoon or some other show on TV – and then it was back to school
for the afternoon.
I do remember
wondering what it was like for the kids who stayed in for lunch. What fun was I
missing?
In the good
weather, after school all of us kids – even one nerdy boy who would have been
perfectly happy staying inside reading books and working on his stamp
collection – all of us played outside.
And, of course, in
the summer, in my memory at least, we were out from dawn to dusk, running
around, riding our bikes, playing, and, yes, occasionally fighting – all of
this watched over by attentive parents and other neighbors looking out from
their kitchen windows.
It was like
Mayberry right here in Jersey City!
It wasn’t perfect
of course. It wasn’t just kids who sometimes fought. The adults, too, would
have their disagreements and little feuds would get started, sometimes brief
and sometimes forever.
And, I’m aware now
that there were certain kinds of people who didn’t – and for several reasons
probably couldn’t – live in our neighborhood, but, all in all, my sister and I
were fortunate indeed to grow up when and where we did.
And, in those
days, throughout this city – and in communities throughout our country – it
wasn’t much different – lots of people outside: playing, talking, fighting, and
loving – developing and strengthening webs of relationships.
Today, though,
when I return to Country Village even on a beautiful summer day those same
streets are eerily silent – and the same is true in other parts of our city and
our country – as people have retreated behind their doors, behind their
screens, and those webs of relationships have frayed, and in many cases have
snapped.
We no longer play,
talk, or love – and most of our fights are now on cable news or social media.
We don’t know each
other anymore – and we can see the consequences all over the place, from the
meanness of our politics to the profound loneliness that so many of us endure.
This is not
the way things were meant to be.
Fortunately, if
everything works the way it’s supposed to, when we come here we get a
taste of the way things are supposed
to be.
I’ve talked to
enough of you to know that many of you – maybe even all of you – first came
here because you were hungry for community.
Certainly that’s
true for Sue and me.
And it’s for
community that we keep coming back, week after week.
These past few
months, and even just these past couple of weeks, our attention has been drawn
even more than usual to the importance of community – the importance of our
community – and just what makes our community so special and nourishing for us.
In the Church, we
use lots of different metaphors and images to describe the Christian community.
Last week, it was
shepherd and sheep imagery. By happy coincidence, that was the Sunday when our
own local shepherd, our bishop, made his final visit with us. And, as he always
does with the kids, he used his crozier – his shepherd’s staff – to humorously
but memorably act out his role of keeping the sheep together and sometimes
having to give a little poke when a couple of sheep begin to act out.
There’s a lot of
work involved in getting ready for a bishop’s visit. We try to make our church
look and sound its best. We make a few changes to the service. And, you may not
know that we’re also required to present our parish registers for the bishop’s
inspection – these mostly old and fragile books that record all of our
services, all of our Communions, and Baptisms, and weddings, and funerals.
I love pulling the
registers out of the safe and flipping backward through the pages, looking at
all the names – at first I know many of them very well and then gradually I
don’t recognize any of them anymore – and yet, somehow, all of us – the dead, living,
and the yet to be born – all of us are part of this sheepfold, all part of this
community.
Alleluia! Christ
is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Jesus is the Good
Shepherd, and we are the sheep who hear his voice and do our best to stay close
to him.
And now this week,
in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus uses a different metaphor, a different image
for our community. He says to his disciples, and to us here today:
“I am the vine,
you are the branches.”
Jesus is the vine.
We are the branches. And, in this metaphor, God is the vinegrower, tending and pruning.
I assume that God
could do this vineyard work solo, however, for whatever reason, God invites us
to be assistant vinegrowers, tending to the often delicate branches and even
grafting new branches onto to the Christian vine.
You may remember I
mentioned that last summer Sue and I went on a winery tour out in beautiful
Napa and Sonoma counties in California. At each stop the vinegrowers explained
the process of tending the vines and then transforming the grapes into wine.
I’ll admit that I
was only half-paying attention to all of that technical stuff (I was on
vacation after all – and the sips of wine began to catch up with me and didn’t
exactly help my focus) but I do remember how each branch is so delicate and
each grape is so precious – and it all requires so much care.
And as God’s assistant
vinegrowers, that’s the work we are called to do – and, fortunately, we don’t
need to know anything about agriculture to do it – all we need to know is how
to love one another – to love the branches we’ve known for a long time and to
love the fresh new branches just now being grafted onto the vine of Christ.
All we need to
know is how to love the branch that is Incarnation and how to love the branch
that is St. Paul’s.
As the author of
First John says in today’s beautiful second lesson:
“God is love, and
those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Alleluia! Christ
is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
After the bishop
makes his visit, he and the priest have a follow-up conversation about how
things went and what he observed during his visit, complimenting the good stuff
and making some suggestions for improvement.
It’s
a great opportunity to learn from someone not really part of this particular
community but who is an expert in what makes a healthy Christian community.
I don’t know about
you, but I felt really good about the bishop’s visit last week and, frankly, I
was looking forward to our conversation.
And, thank
goodness, he had a great time with us, and complimented us on all that we have
accomplished together.
He also made a
couple of comments about our community that are especially important and I want
to share them with you.
Reflecting on the
strength of our community here, he said it felt like all of the work we’ve done
out there in the community, has not only benefited the people outside our doors
but has also strengthened us sheep here in the sheepfold.
If you were here
at the 10:00 service last week, you’ll remember that we renewed our Baptismal
Vows and then the Bishop invited us to come forward to be blessed with Holy
Water. The bishop noted that not only did almost everybody come forward but
that you – we – approached him with open faces, joyfully ready, eager even, to
receive the good gifts that God gives us.
Finally, you know,
unifying two churches is no small job – and we still have some tasks ahead,
including today when we discuss our name – but the bishop said that he didn’t
really feel any anxiety here – that we know we still have work to do and there
will surely be bumps along the way – but we also love one another and know that
we are loved, no matter what.
So, while out in
the world – even in Country Village – we may not love or even know each other
anymore - our web of relationships may have frayed and even broken – but here,
here in this sheepfold, here on this branch, our community of assistant
vinegrowers is strong, and our bonds are getting stronger.
“God is love, and
those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Alleluia! Christ
is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Amen.
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