5 Easter - John 15:1-8

Wednesday night I met with a premarital couple on Zoom, just like seminary never trained me to do.

The first fifteen minutes were a comedy of errors as their wifi signal went in and out like a burger.

After several false starts, and shifting to a different location and device, they finally finished telling me their love story.

Once the connection was secured, they spoke of their gratitude for this last year: for them, lockdown was a welcome gift.

Not only did they reconnect with one another, they were forced to spend more time with their own and each other's teenage kids.

After twenty years as dear friends who were married and then divorced to other people, their love has grown and ripened with the gift of time together.

After an hour with them, I had a new appreciation for today's gospel reading.

Having wine but no wifi, Jesus uses the image of a grapevine to tell his disciples: secure the connection first.

Abide in me; the verb can also be translated stay or remain.

If you get cut off, no matter how compelling your story is, it won't make much difference to someone who can't hear it.

The first question we ask of faulty electronics could be asked of faith as well: Have you plugged it in?

Are you connected?

Are you receiving a steady signal; are you worshiping, reading, resting, praying—listening and not just giving God a list?

Do you spend time just hanging out with God, letting affection grow naturally, or are you too busy trying to save the world because God isn't following your timeline or specifications?

This is a lesson I'm still trying to learn, and Deborah Smith Douglas suggests I'm not alone.

She writes:

The focus within much ... Protestant life has typically been on "producing much fruit" rather than "abiding in Christ."

We seem readily to appropriate the aspect of Jesus' metaphor that best affirms our own core values—productivity and effectiveness—while ignoring the contemplative element of "abiding" in God.

We tend to be preoccupied with the urgent needs of the world that require us to "bear much fruit."

There is a perilous tendency in Christian activism to cut ourselves off from the vine.

In our passion for justice, in our impatience for change, what we may fear most is being able to "do nothing."

Believing that "faith without works is dead" (see James 2:17), we can come to believe that social change is more urgent than (and can without cost be severed from) contemplative contact with the Source of all life.