John5:1-15
Abide in Me
It has not been a good week for sermon writing, I just have to say that. It has been a week of 6’s and 7’s, not 2’s and 4’s. Nothing fits. I listened to part of the live broadcast of the Supreme Court hearing this week. The attorneys arguing the case were talking about presidential immunity. It seemed like the majority of the justices wanted to talk about everything but the case in front of them. I thought of Langston Hughes’s poem, Justice, in which he says: Lady justice wears a blindfold to cover the holes where her eyes used to be. News from Gaza is not any better. The UN uncovered a mass grave of 300 people near Nasser Hospital in the southern region. The news notwithstanding, the US approved sending more weapons to Israel. If it isn’t genocide it is ethnic cleansing, for the Palestinians it’s a fine line between one or the other. It’s a week of 6’s and 7’s.
Students on college campuses have created pro-Palestine tent cities. The administration of Columbia University responded by calling in the police. At the University of Southern California the administration has denied Ana Tabassum, the valedictorian, the administration denied her the opportunity to speak at the student graduation ceremony, the university’s highest honor. She is Muslim and she wears a hijab. The university chose her out of a field of 100 students to highlight academic freedom and diversity. Then the administration canceled her address and then the whole graduation ceremony. On Friday 11 members of the university committee on Muslim life resigned to protest the university’s decision. On the other side of the country, at Yale University, the student newspaper, Yale Times, reports that over 2,300 students, faculty, and alumni have signed a letter saying they will withhold all future donations to the university until it divests from military weapons manufacturers and expresses solidarity with the student protesters. Across the nation student organizers are online promising that the 2024 Democratic convention in Chicago will be like the 1968 Chicago convention 56 years ago, if US policy toward Gaza does not change.
It’s been a week of 6’s and 7’s. Yeats’ poem written in 1919 at the end of World War I seems apt. “Turning and turning in a widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart/ The center cannot hold. . . The ceremony of innocence is drowned/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
In such a world as this, Jesus says: abide in me.” I am the vine, you are the branches, abide in me. In 15 verses, the word “abide” appears almost a dozen times. If you love me, if you abide in me, you will keep my commandments and love one another.” The word “you” in this passage is plural. The kind of fruit we bear shows the kind of people we are; the kind of community we are. But Jesus is talking here about more than random acts of kindness–wonderful as such as acts are. The image of the vine and the branches is an image of organic unity. There is a symbiotic relationship between the vine and the branches. Together they produce good fruit that is pleasing to the palate and life supporting and healing.
I think that image of the vine and the branches gives us a picture of what Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, calls a gift economy in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. A gift economy is not a transactional economy. It is not an economy based on notions of scarcity and competition. It is not a zero-sum relationship–more for the vine means less for the branches. It is an image of life lived in sustainable ways producing good fruit. Was it Gandhi or Augustine who said the world has enough to meet everyone’s needs, but not enough to satisfy one person’s greed. The longer I meditate on this passage from John, the more I am convinced that Jesus is offering us an image of a share economy and a sustainable society. Didn’t he promise, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”
Whether we call it a “gift economy,” a “share economy,” or a “sacred economy,” these are all terms that people use, the idea is the same. We need to find new ways to build stronger communities. That’s the image of the vine and the branches. The root meaning of the word economics is “to manage the household.” In the modern era we have shrunk the size of the household. We learned the language of self-interest, return-on-investment, cost-benefit, efficiency, and this marketplace lingo. Things become goods and commodities and services become commodities and profit centers. We think of society as a game of musical chairs. There are more people than there are chairs, so we are constantly in competition to make sure that we are not the one left without a chair when the music stops. Those who can afford it rig the game and buy a reserved seat before the race even begins.
What a different image Jesus gives us. I am the vine and you are the branches, abide in me and love one another. When some catastrophe happens, floods, tornadoes, house fires, or severe illness strikes, people stop whatever it is we are doing and come to each other’s aid. We don’t wish for hard times, but when hard times come, we realize that we have a choice to make. We know in our hearts that we are bound together, and it feels right. It feels good to contribute to the Backpack project, and work at the Lord’s Diner, and support Camp Sunflower, and participate in the Pride Parade, to write or call our representatives. If we were to use biblical language, we would say that each of these acts are small miracles. They are miracles not because they defy the law of self-interest and all those rules of the marketplace. They are miracles because they teach us that another world is possible when the logic of the heart and the mind come together.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is still the truth about life lived well. As it was in the beginning, is now, and evermore shall be. Amen.