Easter 5 B

I’m going to bet that you have a story about an amazing coincidence about some connection that you discovered between you and someone else. You know, a story that makes you saw, “Wow. Small world.”

[Milwaukee story]

I really like to find these connections when I talk with people — probably too much. I have to confess that sometimes when I should be listening to someone’s story or concern, I’m desperately trying to think, now… who do I know that also grew up outside of Pittsburgh? It’s a bad habit.

Connections, though, are much more than just something interesting as a hobby or a habit in scripture. The readings today remind us that connections are at the heart of what God is doing in our lives.

In the Gospel of John, that we’ve heard today, Jesus describes his relationship with his followers as being like a vine and branches.

Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. We don’t just know about Jesus, or simply decide that we on Team Jesus. We don’t just ‘accept’ Christ as our Savior, slap a Jesus fish on our car, and go about our merry way.

We abide in Jesus. We live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us.

And especially this word ‘abide’ sounds so nice and comforting that you may want to just dwell on this image for a nice long while. Take in the security and intimacy of living a life attached to God — there in God’s garden — and bearing fruit in the process.

Abiding in God is indeed a comforting promise. But the truth about the vine is a little more complex than just that.

We are the branches connected to the vine…along with all the other branches. Whether we like it or not. Being connected to the vine means being connected and belonging to all the other branches. The vine does not belong to just one branch.

Jesus is not just our little personal savior. Belonging to Jesus means belonging to the entire body of Christ. Maybe the reason I love those moments when it feels like a ‘small world’ is because, in fact, the world is large. Larger than I can imagine. Larger that I can control.

The truth is that being connected to the Vine is not always so comfortable. Because it means being connected to people and places of great pain. Places like Baltimore & Nepal.

I have to confess that I cannot stand to watch news on TV. It would be really easy for me to tune out and ignore my connections with hurting places. “Why would I want to watch or read or think about the devastation of an earthquake thousands of miles away?” If I was just my own potted plant, off in a shady part of the garden, then the anguished cries of people half way around the world wouldn’t have to mean much to me. But not so, connected to the Vine. As a branch, I am deeply connected to every other branch. When any of God’s children are threatened, so am I. I can turn off the TV, but I cannot turn off my connection to those who suffer.

Of course it’s not just distance that seems to separate. We are all connected to those who may live close to us, but have a different culture, or who speak a different language. We are connected to branches we didn’t think had anything to do with us:

The incredible story from Acts that we heard for our first reading today is an example of this. It’s the story of the meeting between the Ethiopian Eunuch & the disciple Philip, or as one of my professors described the different identities of these two, a …

… Greek gentile apostle Philip crosses paths with a black Jewish bureaucrat serving an African queendom. (Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D.)

Two people who might not think they had anything to do with each other. And besides this, this Ethiopian man that Philip meets was a eunuch, so in addition to the distance caused by their races and nationalities, he was in some ways — and you might have to think about this — literally cut off from the children of Israel, even though he worshiped the God of Israel. I don’t mean to belabor the point but I think it’s important to recognize this man from Ethiopia was not just a foreigner, he was also a racial and sexual minority in Jerusalem.

And yet the Vine connects him and Philip. The Spirit sends Philip to him to join in conversation about Jesus, about how Jesus can be found among suffering, among violence and humiliation. And about how Jesus can be found between the two of them, tying together these seemingly separate branches of the vine.

In the same way, the Spirit is calling us into connections, real connections, with people who are far away from us, and people who are different from us. It begins with prayer, or course, but I think it pulls us further — into conversations with newcomers and strangers. Into working together for justice in our nation and relief efforts for those suffering from natural disasters, just to name a few.

The Spirit continues to pull us because the Vine’s connections are deep. It’s a connection deeper than can be grasped through our TV’s … For now the news brings pictures of unrest in Baltimore, but because we abide in Jesus the vine, we don’t just ask about riots, we ask about everyday violence and the lived experience of every branch of the vine — even when they aren’t televised. We are called to encounter these branches. Maybe especially the branches — the people — that are pushed down or called names. Maybe especially the people that make us uncomfortable.

But there, even there, out on a limb, still the promise remains: Jesus abides in us. Jesus feeds us and nourishes us with the words of life, and Jesus nourishes us with himself, his own sacrificial love, so that we might bear fruit. And together, we do. In our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, alone we have connections with people who are already working on the ground in Nepal, bearing fruit by drawing on an established partnership with the Nepal Evangelical Lutheran Church to provide emergency supplies to those affected by the earthquake. That’s a branch of the vine I didn’t know existed before this week. We are also connected to the branches in the city of Baltimore where, this week, members and clergy of Lutheran congregations hosted prayer vigils and met with local leaders to discuss positive change in their neighborhoods. Together we can bear fruit.

I’m going to bet that you will come across someone in your life this week or next with whom you have absolutely no coincidences. No shared family members or alma maters. You won’t watch the same TV channels, and you may not even agree on the weather. I’m going to bet that you’ll encounter someone with whom you will seem to have nothing in common — except you will be connected.

Just as miraculous as any small world coincidence, God has grafted us together as branches on the Vine. Our interconnectedness may be uncomfortable and unfamiliar sometimes, but it is God’s doing. It’s how we bear fruit. It is how God nourishes us. It is how God abides in us.