Of jungles and gardens
Commentary
Object:
After Margaret Mead, the world-renowned anthropologist, gave a presentation at a university, she hosted a time of questions and dialogue. One student asked her what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in any given culture.
This student, like most in the gathering, was expecting Ms. Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. Her answer surprised them all. She said that the first sign of civilization was represented, in her mind, by a healed femur. The femur is the human thighbone. At the look of uncertain stares, Ms. Mead went on to explain.
In the law of the jungle, she said, broken femurs never get healed. When a person in the jungle suffers a broken leg, he is left to die. On his own, no one ever survives a broken leg long enough to have the bone heal. So, said Ms. Mead, where someone takes the time to protect the one who fell from further attacks, carefully binds up the wound, guards the safety of the one who cannot defend himself, brings food and medicine to the sick, and refuses to let the discouragement of pain lead to suicide ? this is where civilization starts.
Margaret Mead’s picture of the birth of civilization is very powerful. It reminds us of the portrait of the “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah, read by the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s lectionary passage. In a world of brutality and corruption, violence becomes the noxious air we breathe and the toxins we drink. But then, enter the Servant of God, says Isaiah. With faithfulness he brings protection and justice. Suddenly the law of the jungle no longer makes sense.
Acts 8:26-40
Isaiah’s prophecies are filled with wonderfully lyric poems and hymns. One of the most powerful among these has become a key Christian testimony, as our reading from Acts today reminds us. The Ethiopian eunuch, traveling home after a vacation in Jerusalem, reads from a souvenir scroll he bought in the market. The words are beautiful, and he wants to know what kind of man would elicit such a powerful poetic paean. Suddenly Philip is there, connecting and interpreting.
The four “Servant Songs” in Isaiah were first identified in a commentary on the prophecy by Bernhard Duhm in 1892:
Obviously Isaiah’s “Servant Songs,” powerful as they are, beg to be interpreted, just as the Ethiopian eunuch asked. Christians, as Philip notes, quickly found in these passages a kind of messianic blueprint describing the coming, anointing, teaching, ministry, suffering, and death of Jesus. There is no question but that the hints at divine initiative and personal character and contextual backlash all fit hand-in-glove with the events of Jesus’ career. Immediately this gives new hope to the eunuch. His vacation has become a religious pilgrimage, and he returns home with a new religion that will forever change his life.
1 John 4:7-21
John’s teachings appear to be a reaction to early gnosticism. Gnosticism was a philosophic worldview that often parasitically attached itself to various religious expressions, twisting their key concepts in complex and mystical directions. During the second century, a number of gnostic communities sprang up in the Christian church, particularly in its eastern regions. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) and his pupil Origen (c. 185-254) were among the most articulate spokespersons of gnostic-influenced Christian theology who remained within the orthodox faith. Irenaeus (c. 140-c. 202), Tertullian (c. 160-c. 220), and Hippolytus (170-235) all wrote extensively against the heresy of gnosticism, and their explanations often parallel John’s earlier teaching on these things.
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics ? non-relational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew Scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all) have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’ congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest...” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to...” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence...”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance which diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that John addresses. Some gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened, they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which were dividing at least this one congregation and threatening the gospel that John knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instructions. Right at the start of his short lecture, he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is also the true creator God (1 John 1), and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder (1 John 1:6-10). Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble (1 John 2:9-11).
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that he is the divine Son of God who actually became flesh and blood (1 John 2:20-23). Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher, and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not (1 John 4:1-3).
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh and blood and spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we ought also to care about each other (1 John 3:7-24). Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also to fully engage in each other’s lives for help and encouragement and care (1 John 4:7-21). In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother (1 John 4:19-21). Christianity does not remove us from pain but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and tortured existence with us, and ultimately crucified him (1 John 5:1-12).
Thus, salvation is both physical and spiritual. We are already “children of God” (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the creator (1 John 3:2-3). Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of “Light” over against the “Darkness” that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John’s teaching (“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”), often considered cryptic or ill-placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus “antichrists”) of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, was merely self-absorbed childishness, where “I” stands at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job in that location, and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
John 15:1-8
“Abide in me as I abide in you... I am the vines, you are the branches...” These are among the most familiar of Jesus’ words. We all know the metaphor and what it means. But living it is quite another matter.
Some years ago a psychologist named Aldrich published a fascinating article. He had worked in social services, spending most of his time with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
He came to the conclusion that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to the initial shoplifting incident. Some parents confronted their children with words like this: “Now we know what you’re like! You’re a thief! We’re going to be watching you now, buddy! Don’t think you can get away with this again!”
The other group of parents usually said something like this: “Tom, that wasn’t like you at all! We’ll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it’s done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong. But we’re sure you won’t do it again.”
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best.
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God’s delight in his children. More than that, when we remain connected to Jesus we are the “friends of God,” and those who bear the fruit of God’s own life in us. As God, the great gardener, looks with tender eyes at us, producing the goodness of heaven’s life, so we are encouraged to view others with grace.
So it is important, when reflecting on today’s gospel reading, not just to focus on the possibility of God the gardener cutting away branches. It is even more important to emphasize the beauty of the garden God desires, and the manner in which Jesus calls us friends, and treats us as if our lives have significance.
Application
One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company’s top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan’s desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, “Let’s just wait a little bit longer.” And Joan said, “Give it one more try.” And Joan said, “I never would have hired you if I didn’t think you could handle it!”
The woman’s voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, “Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!”
Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Isn’t that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn’t seem to make it on our own?
Alternative Application
John 15:1-8. If we “abide in” Jesus, if we are branches that remain attached to his vine, it is just as true that Jesus abides in us. The relationship goes in both directions. Those who abide in Jesus find Jesus abiding in and with them.
Henry Francis Lyte was only 54, but several years of illness had kept him from functioning to full potential in his congregation in a small fishing village. His limitations seemed to have fostered problems in the church. At one time worship services were crowded, and over 800 children were taught by 70 teachers in the Sunday school program. At one time he knew the names of every boat in the harbor and every man who walked the docks. At one time his tireless care and enthusiasm drew even skeptics to Christ.
But now he was failing rapidly. His doctor told him to quit the ministry. His congregation was falling apart. And here he sat on a bluff above the sea, wondering what message to bring for his last Sunday evening sermon.
The points and outline wouldn’t come. They were crowded out by the cares and troubles that surrounded him. But then a prayer began to form in his mind that softly caressed his vision back into focus. The prayer began to sing itself. And by the time his people gathered for worship, a new hymn called them into the presence of God.
Henry Lyte died a few months later. But he died a blessed man. And people in churches around the world know that, each time they open their hymnbooks to sing his prayer: “Abide with Me!”
This student, like most in the gathering, was expecting Ms. Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones. Her answer surprised them all. She said that the first sign of civilization was represented, in her mind, by a healed femur. The femur is the human thighbone. At the look of uncertain stares, Ms. Mead went on to explain.
In the law of the jungle, she said, broken femurs never get healed. When a person in the jungle suffers a broken leg, he is left to die. On his own, no one ever survives a broken leg long enough to have the bone heal. So, said Ms. Mead, where someone takes the time to protect the one who fell from further attacks, carefully binds up the wound, guards the safety of the one who cannot defend himself, brings food and medicine to the sick, and refuses to let the discouragement of pain lead to suicide ? this is where civilization starts.
Margaret Mead’s picture of the birth of civilization is very powerful. It reminds us of the portrait of the “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah, read by the Ethiopian eunuch in today’s lectionary passage. In a world of brutality and corruption, violence becomes the noxious air we breathe and the toxins we drink. But then, enter the Servant of God, says Isaiah. With faithfulness he brings protection and justice. Suddenly the law of the jungle no longer makes sense.
Acts 8:26-40
Isaiah’s prophecies are filled with wonderfully lyric poems and hymns. One of the most powerful among these has become a key Christian testimony, as our reading from Acts today reminds us. The Ethiopian eunuch, traveling home after a vacation in Jerusalem, reads from a souvenir scroll he bought in the market. The words are beautiful, and he wants to know what kind of man would elicit such a powerful poetic paean. Suddenly Philip is there, connecting and interpreting.
The four “Servant Songs” in Isaiah were first identified in a commentary on the prophecy by Bernhard Duhm in 1892:
- Isaiah 42:1-9 — Yahweh identifies and commissions his special envoy who will bring justice among the nations through quiet ministry to the marginalized and the disenfranchised. His work will be successful because the great Creator has chosen this one to be the agent of divine renewal.
- Isaiah 49:1-13 — The Suffering Servant testifies of his unique call and commissioning. His voice and message are then confirmed by successive oracles in which Yahweh speaks, announcing that his servant was ordained for this ministry from before his birth, and that both kings and outcasts will experience divine favor through the work of this one. The outcome will be a restoration of joy to the entire world, which has too long suffered under the consequences of evil.
- Isaiah 50:4-9 — Now the voice of the chosen one is heard even more clearly. The entire poem is in the first person, and is a reflection on both divine anointing for the tasks at hand and also the early backlash of those who do not want Yahweh to disturb their evil machinations. The confrontation thickens between good and evil, and the Suffering Servant stands at its vortex.
- Isaiah 52:13--53:12 — The last and longest of the poems personifies the Suffering Servant most clearly. Here the focus is less on the grand justice that will result from his ministry, and more on the agony that he will endure to accomplish his assigned task. What began as a shout of confidence and joy in the first song has now turned dark and almost defeatist here. Only the final lines of this song serve to remind us that Yahweh is still in control, and that these things do matter for eternal purposes.
Obviously Isaiah’s “Servant Songs,” powerful as they are, beg to be interpreted, just as the Ethiopian eunuch asked. Christians, as Philip notes, quickly found in these passages a kind of messianic blueprint describing the coming, anointing, teaching, ministry, suffering, and death of Jesus. There is no question but that the hints at divine initiative and personal character and contextual backlash all fit hand-in-glove with the events of Jesus’ career. Immediately this gives new hope to the eunuch. His vacation has become a religious pilgrimage, and he returns home with a new religion that will forever change his life.
1 John 4:7-21
John’s teachings appear to be a reaction to early gnosticism. Gnosticism was a philosophic worldview that often parasitically attached itself to various religious expressions, twisting their key concepts in complex and mystical directions. During the second century, a number of gnostic communities sprang up in the Christian church, particularly in its eastern regions. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) and his pupil Origen (c. 185-254) were among the most articulate spokespersons of gnostic-influenced Christian theology who remained within the orthodox faith. Irenaeus (c. 140-c. 202), Tertullian (c. 160-c. 220), and Hippolytus (170-235) all wrote extensively against the heresy of gnosticism, and their explanations often parallel John’s earlier teaching on these things.
Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics ? non-relational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew Scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all) have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’ congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest...” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to...” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence...”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance which diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that John addresses. Some gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened, they are not.
In the face of these teachings, which were dividing at least this one congregation and threatening the gospel that John knew so well and had taught for so long, John gives some very pointed instructions. Right at the start of his short lecture, he affirms that the God of the Old Testament is also the true creator God (1 John 1), and that there is no cosmological dualism in which good and evil coexist in the eternal forms of spirit and matter. Evil is not an inherent part of human identity; it is an intruder (1 John 1:6-10). Nor is evil automatically connected only with the material dimension of human existence; our spirits can be sinful, just as our hands can be engaged in things that are good and right and noble (1 John 2:9-11).
When focusing on Jesus, John declares without qualification that he is the divine Son of God who actually became flesh and blood (1 John 2:20-23). Jesus is neither a holographic spiritual projection into our world, untouched by material plight or passionate feelings, nor an adopted superman who is so divinely charged that he no longer fully participates in the experiences of the rest of us. This counters the gnostic ideas about their supposed divine teacher, and turns the testimony of the incarnation into the critical test for defining which teachings are true and which are not (1 John 4:1-3).
Furthermore, since God cares about us as fully integrated flesh and blood and spirit creatures (after all, we are brought into being by the true and good Creator), we ought also to care about each other (1 John 3:7-24). Since God loved us so much that God entered our world in the person of Jesus, we ought also to fully engage in each other’s lives for help and encouragement and care (1 John 4:7-21). In fact, the test of love is whether one has learned to care about the physical needs of a sister or brother (1 John 4:19-21). Christianity does not remove us from pain but causes us to enter into it on an even deeper level, just as it brought Jesus into his stormy and tortured existence with us, and ultimately crucified him (1 John 5:1-12).
Thus, salvation is both physical and spiritual. We are already “children of God” (1 John 3:1), and we are also becoming more fully the family of the creator (1 John 3:2-3). Love is the highest moral good, the truest expression of “Light” over against the “Darkness” that evil and sin have brought into our world. This is why the last line of John’s teaching (“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”), often considered cryptic or ill-placed, is actually the summation of the entire teaching. It is the idolatry of self or spirit that misled these false teachers. They were neither superior spiritual gurus nor better human beings than those who did not believe in their proto-gnostic teachings. In the end, they were false messiahs (thus “antichrists”) of the cult which, in its most dastardly expressions, was merely self-absorbed childishness, where “I” stands at the center of the universe. John believes that God does a better job in that location, and that our lives are meant to radiate the divine glory wherever we find ourselves. After all, “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
John 15:1-8
“Abide in me as I abide in you... I am the vines, you are the branches...” These are among the most familiar of Jesus’ words. We all know the metaphor and what it means. But living it is quite another matter.
Some years ago a psychologist named Aldrich published a fascinating article. He had worked in social services, spending most of his time with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
He came to the conclusion that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to the initial shoplifting incident. Some parents confronted their children with words like this: “Now we know what you’re like! You’re a thief! We’re going to be watching you now, buddy! Don’t think you can get away with this again!”
The other group of parents usually said something like this: “Tom, that wasn’t like you at all! We’ll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it’s done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong. But we’re sure you won’t do it again.”
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best.
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God’s delight in his children. More than that, when we remain connected to Jesus we are the “friends of God,” and those who bear the fruit of God’s own life in us. As God, the great gardener, looks with tender eyes at us, producing the goodness of heaven’s life, so we are encouraged to view others with grace.
So it is important, when reflecting on today’s gospel reading, not just to focus on the possibility of God the gardener cutting away branches. It is even more important to emphasize the beauty of the garden God desires, and the manner in which Jesus calls us friends, and treats us as if our lives have significance.
Application
One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company’s top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan’s desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, “Let’s just wait a little bit longer.” And Joan said, “Give it one more try.” And Joan said, “I never would have hired you if I didn’t think you could handle it!”
The woman’s voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, “Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!”
Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Isn’t that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn’t seem to make it on our own?
Alternative Application
John 15:1-8. If we “abide in” Jesus, if we are branches that remain attached to his vine, it is just as true that Jesus abides in us. The relationship goes in both directions. Those who abide in Jesus find Jesus abiding in and with them.
Henry Francis Lyte was only 54, but several years of illness had kept him from functioning to full potential in his congregation in a small fishing village. His limitations seemed to have fostered problems in the church. At one time worship services were crowded, and over 800 children were taught by 70 teachers in the Sunday school program. At one time he knew the names of every boat in the harbor and every man who walked the docks. At one time his tireless care and enthusiasm drew even skeptics to Christ.
But now he was failing rapidly. His doctor told him to quit the ministry. His congregation was falling apart. And here he sat on a bluff above the sea, wondering what message to bring for his last Sunday evening sermon.
The points and outline wouldn’t come. They were crowded out by the cares and troubles that surrounded him. But then a prayer began to form in his mind that softly caressed his vision back into focus. The prayer began to sing itself. And by the time his people gathered for worship, a new hymn called them into the presence of God.
Henry Lyte died a few months later. But he died a blessed man. And people in churches around the world know that, each time they open their hymnbooks to sing his prayer: “Abide with Me!”
I need your presence every passing hour;
What but your grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who like yourself my guide and strength can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me!
