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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by Canon Mark Bonney, Treasurer on Sunday 10 May 2009
"I am the vine you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit" - John 15:5
"NO MAN IS AN ISLAND"
"I am the vine you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit" - John 15:5
There are a number of truisms about viniculture in today’s gospel – the need for care and pruning in particular, and they are well illustrated by a comparison between the vine that is to be found in my garden and that of the Canon Chancellor. His vine is pruned, cared for and bears fruit - - later in the year there will luscious bunches of grapes hanging on his garden wall that are even edible and tasty – the vine in my garden I am sorry to say rambles and sprawls along the Close wall – and I have yet to garner any fruit from it what so ever. I doubt if even the most vicious pruning will overcome its neglect and that fire and burning is all that it has to look forward to.. But viniculture is not what this morning’s gospel is really about – and in any gardening comparisons with my colleague I will only fade into utter insignificance.
We could have done with reading a few more verses of the gospel to get the full picture of where this image has its focus - just a few more verses tells us exactly what fruit it is that those who abide in Christ are to bear – and it the word that we so easily and nonchalantly bandy around – love: Jesus says in the next verse “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you, no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s live for one’s friends” And he repeats himself a couple of verses later “I appointed you to go and bear fruit,, fruit that will last…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
I find myself really moved by this image of the vine because of its image of profound inclusion – it speaks of Christ as ‘the vine’ – not the stem of the vine but the whole plant of which we are a part – the branches. It is very similar to Paul’s image of the Body of which we are variously different parts. By being branches of the vine we are in another Pauline phrase ‘in Christ’ – inseparable from him – and called and enabled to bear the fruit of love – a love that in the gospel Jesus has just shown through his washing of the disciples’ feet and for the gospel writer will be shown in Jesus’ glorious triumph on the cross.
As well as being incorporated into Christ and inseparable from him the spreading of the vine also speaks of the interconnectedness of all things and the call for the kind of love of which Jesus speaks to be spread abroad.
Just below and behind me is a very modest but significant display stand that is here for just a week and I commend it to you because it is rooted in this kind of love in action. It is a display for Christian Aid Week which begins today.
Christian Aid has brought relief to disaster areas and helped people challenge poverty and injustice for over 60 years now. It is an agency of churches in Britain driven by the gospel of good news to the poor and inspired by a vision of a new earth where all people can live in justice, peace and plenty. Christian Aid works to expose the scandal of poverty, helps in practical way to root it out, and challenges the systems that favour the rich and powerful over the poor and marginalised. Of course some of that can’t be done without sometimes getting involved in the messy political structures of the world – and sometimes us more comfortable Christians get twitchy about that, but we shouldn’t. I recall the phrase of Archbishop Helder Camera who said “when I work for the poor they call me a saint, when I ask, ‘why are they poor?’ They call me a communist”.
We can’t ask the question why are people poor and expect something to happen without touching the world of politics. The millenim development goals of are proof of that – and 147 countries have signed up to these; though the speed with which many of these goals are not being reached says something about politics too.
Christian Aid is a fine example of the love that the gospel of John proclaims. Love is relational – it involves others and of its nature moves outwards as do the branches of a vine – and God moves through his people, works his love through us, as we are branches of that vine.
One of Christian Aid’s great strap-lines is “we believe in life before death”. And that too is a message we read in John’s gospel – “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly”. In God’s world there should be no half-lived lives, and if we love as Christ loves and his love abides in us then we must take the opportunities we have to give others the chance of a full life. They are our brothers and sisters – we are all interconnected.
John Donne expressed similar sentiments in his famous meditation
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The bell certainly tolls for the 1 in 3 children in the developing world who have no proper shelter, or in the 1 in 5 who have no access to safe water: and for the 1 in 30 women who die in childbirth in the Sudan, and it’s worse than that in Southern Sudan..
“No man is an island”
We gather around this altar not as isolated individuals but as the Body of Christ “though we are many we are one Body because we all share in the one bread” – branches of the vine, disciples called to love and bear the fruit of love.
May we be given grace to live life in all its fullness, and be given the grace and courage to do all we can to give others the chance to have that fullness too – and all to the glory of the one and only living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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We could have done with reading a few more verses of the gospel to get the full picture of where this image has its focus - just a few more verses tells us exactly what fruit it is that those who abide in Christ are to bear – and it the word that we so easily and nonchalantly bandy around – love: Jesus says in the next verse “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love…. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you, no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s live for one’s friends” And he repeats himself a couple of verses later “I appointed you to go and bear fruit,, fruit that will last…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
I find myself really moved by this image of the vine because of its image of profound inclusion – it speaks of Christ as ‘the vine’ – not the stem of the vine but the whole plant of which we are a part – the branches. It is very similar to Paul’s image of the Body of which we are variously different parts. By being branches of the vine we are in another Pauline phrase ‘in Christ’ – inseparable from him – and called and enabled to bear the fruit of love – a love that in the gospel Jesus has just shown through his washing of the disciples’ feet and for the gospel writer will be shown in Jesus’ glorious triumph on the cross.
As well as being incorporated into Christ and inseparable from him the spreading of the vine also speaks of the interconnectedness of all things and the call for the kind of love of which Jesus speaks to be spread abroad.
Just below and behind me is a very modest but significant display stand that is here for just a week and I commend it to you because it is rooted in this kind of love in action. It is a display for Christian Aid Week which begins today.
Christian Aid has brought relief to disaster areas and helped people challenge poverty and injustice for over 60 years now. It is an agency of churches in Britain driven by the gospel of good news to the poor and inspired by a vision of a new earth where all people can live in justice, peace and plenty. Christian Aid works to expose the scandal of poverty, helps in practical way to root it out, and challenges the systems that favour the rich and powerful over the poor and marginalised. Of course some of that can’t be done without sometimes getting involved in the messy political structures of the world – and sometimes us more comfortable Christians get twitchy about that, but we shouldn’t. I recall the phrase of Archbishop Helder Camera who said “when I work for the poor they call me a saint, when I ask, ‘why are they poor?’ They call me a communist”.
We can’t ask the question why are people poor and expect something to happen without touching the world of politics. The millenim development goals of are proof of that – and 147 countries have signed up to these; though the speed with which many of these goals are not being reached says something about politics too.
Christian Aid is a fine example of the love that the gospel of John proclaims. Love is relational – it involves others and of its nature moves outwards as do the branches of a vine – and God moves through his people, works his love through us, as we are branches of that vine.
One of Christian Aid’s great strap-lines is “we believe in life before death”. And that too is a message we read in John’s gospel – “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly”. In God’s world there should be no half-lived lives, and if we love as Christ loves and his love abides in us then we must take the opportunities we have to give others the chance of a full life. They are our brothers and sisters – we are all interconnected.
John Donne expressed similar sentiments in his famous meditation
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The bell certainly tolls for the 1 in 3 children in the developing world who have no proper shelter, or in the 1 in 5 who have no access to safe water: and for the 1 in 30 women who die in childbirth in the Sudan, and it’s worse than that in Southern Sudan..
“No man is an island”
We gather around this altar not as isolated individuals but as the Body of Christ “though we are many we are one Body because we all share in the one bread” – branches of the vine, disciples called to love and bear the fruit of love.
May we be given grace to live life in all its fullness, and be given the grace and courage to do all we can to give others the chance to have that fullness too – and all to the glory of the one and only living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.