The Gospel for this Sunday of Easter has the familiar story about the vine and the branches. Jesus, the vine, is rooted and stable and will always bring us all the nourishment we need. Trust the steadiness of Jesus’ gardener hand.
However, there is the small matter of being pruned. To prune a plant is to cut parts of it off. Jesus mentions it twice in the reading: Speaking as the vine, he says that the Father ... takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes, so that it bears more fruit. Ouch.
I had invited an arborist to ask his advice how to keep our shadberry trees healthy. As I get older, I want to be maintenance practical, note, maintenance free is never going to happen.
To my surprise, he shared that the commercial barrier that I have been using around all my trees was not a good idea. It prevents the roots from breathing and water getting down to the roots of the tree. He recommended that the weed barrier should come out of the ground and place no more than two inches of mulch around each tree. We would discuss later how to protect the trees from deer rubs in the fall.
Imagine I had worked for 12 years, spreading either tar paper, or wood chips, or newspaper, and fabric weed block to keep the trees looking neat and tidy. If only someone told me sooner. And it seems to be my fault that after 14 years my shadberry trees are looking straggley and not very healthy.
If only I were a better person, if only I had done the right thing, if only the world were different, if only I had been dealt a better hand in the game of life, or, or, or. If I weren’t so full of guilt I wouldn’t have to be pruned.
It is all my fault! Guilt is a major feature of human life. Everything goes wrong, it says, and it is my fault. So could there be a better way to deal with guilt?
First, decide whether you are bearing no fruit at all. None. If that is really and actually true, then get help from someone, because spiritually you are dying. Most of us do bear good fruit—it is just that we don’t remember that we do. I didn’t kill my trees, but they could be a lot healthier.
Second, with that understood, look at what pruning is. It is a way to make things better, make a better plant, a better tree, a better orchard. If you cut tired old branches from your Philodendron, for instance, it will begin to thrive again, not wither. Pruning encourages new growth and the overall health of the plant or tree.
Third, seen in that way, you and I do need to be trimmed regularly, don’t we? Maybe unconsciously we have been thinking that we ourselves are the vine, independent of Christ, not just a branch. The reason pruning would help is not that we should be punished, but that it promotes health of the whole person, the whole garden, the whole orchard—the mystical body of Christ.
Last weekend, with the help of some young hands, I pulled 50 weed barriers out of the ground while my young handyman shoveled mulch around each tree. We need to place out trust in the steadiness of Jesus’ gardener hand. Trust even while suffering. Let the body and blood of Christ, which was pruned to almost nothing, fill you and shape you.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends, that we can go ahead and say to the Lord, go ahead, trim whatever gets in the way! I am not the vine, I am a branch. My job is not to be perfect, it is to remain in Christ, and to let him do good within me.
