Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B, April 29, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L.Werntz

O God of the wilderness roads, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it.

During the Great Fifty Days of Easter, our schedule of scripture readings, called “The Revised Common Lectionary,” eschews readings from the First Testament of our Bible in favor of stories from the Book of Acts, which is the sequel or companion volume to the Gospel of Luke. Many of you know that I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I appreciate that readings from Hebrew Scripture are not explicitly being employed to prop up resurrection narratives (the way I think they get used to prop up Jesus’ birth narratives during Advent). And I love the portions of the fantastic stories from the Book of Acts of people who were completely carried away by the inspiration of spreading the Good News that even the most horrific death had not destroyed the mighty Love of Jesus in God. However, without reading the wisdom of the Tanakh – that is, the Torah or the Prophets or the Writings of Hebrew scripture – we risk not understanding the content and context of this Good News.

The content of the Good News was justice and peace, of healing and freedom from oppression, of radical inclusion and love of the God of Israel, embodied by Jesus, and joyfully experienced by his followers. The context of the Good News was the steadfast love and faithfulness of God so relentlessly proclaimed by the scriptures that are in the first or older testament. Without such a proclamation included, we risk imagining that the Good News begins in the first century of the Common Era. The stories in the Acts of the Apostles are also tragically littered with defamatory statements made against Jews who were not willing to join the Peter, Paul, and Mary band (or the less famous Philip, Barnabas, and Lydia band).

In our first reading today, we heard about Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. This is a great story. And my favorite line is what in our translation is in parentheses: “this is a wilderness road.” That’s the line that invites you and me to understand that we have something in common with these characters, because we too are on a wilderness road, aren’t we? You might know that eunuchs and anyone with a physical irregularity were prohibited from serving as priests according to Leviticus (21:20) and from being admitted to the assembly of the Lord, according to Deuteronomy (23:1), and Christians have perpetuated similar prohibitions. But the Prophet Isaiah declares that God will (and does) honor faithful eunuchs. So if I were selecting a reading from the Hebrew Bible for today, I might pair the Acts story with Isaiah 56, which says: “Thus says the Holy One: Maintain justice, and do what is right…do not let the foreigner joined to the Holy One say, ‘The Holy One will surely separate me from the people of the Holy One,’ and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Holy One, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

I love Philip’s question to the Ethiopian eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” It’s a great question because biblical scholars throughout the ages have debated the meaning of this passage from Isaiah without coming to agreement, but Philip is confident that he knows. Philip understands it to be about Jesus. But that takes, what Walter Bruggemann calls “an immense act of imagination” to manage the long discontinuity between this old poem from the sixth century before the common era and Philip’s recent memory of Jesus. It’s not that this part of Isaiah 53 cannot legitimately remind someone of Jesus, it’s just that it’s highly problematic for the church to claim that Isaiah’s intention is somehow intentionally pointing to Jesus. [1] Don’t get me wrong, I like immense acts of imagination, I just think we should be generous and honest about them (for the love of God)!

And speaking of the Love of God, the first letter of John (not a letter and debatable about whether it was written by someone named John). It’s really an anonymous essay that reminded people of the Gospel of John. It was written to address two problems: the first was the idea that Jesus was not really human, didn’t really suffer, and only seemed to die. The second was that people weren’t behaving toward each other in ways that were worthy of the calling to which they had been called. John was not writing about abstract theological concepts or emotional affect, but about the humanity of Jesus and about the community’s actions that were inconsistent with right-relationship and peace. This essay was written to instruct and encourage the community.

John writes to encourage Jesus followers to remember that love is from God, that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; that whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. Love is not self-generated – it comes from God for the purpose of moving through us. John is saying, “Don’t block it or hoard it or try to save it or bottle it. Let it flow through you.” John is saying, “we know what Love looks like because of Jesus from Nazareth.” Love looks like washing one another’s feet. It looks like seeking and finding the dignity in one another (and in ourselves). It looks like treating one another with respect, which means sharing our food, our clothing, our shelter, our time, our money. The Love seen in Jesus from Nazareth is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and devotion, not just in his death, but in his life. To focus only on his death is to completely miss the fullness, the completeness of his life and love. This essay of John is not encouraging the community to follow Jesus by lining up for crucifixion but to outdo one another in acts of compassion and mercy toward their siblings in the community, loving friend and enemy.

Perhaps, then, when we encounter a text like today’s Gospel, we could employ an immense act of imagination and view the Gospel lesson for today through the loving lens of the First Letter of John. Instead of reading this as historic or contemporary justification for splitting off undesirable groups or members of community, as a proof text for excommunicating or shunning, perhaps we could read this as Good News of how the loving vine grower cares for the vines. Because really, exiling or shunning people is not loving, and justifications of exiling or shunning just demonstrate impoverishment of spirit. We could be generous and imagine that Jesus is the true vine and, at the same time, know that Jesus is not the only true vine belonging to the vinegrower.

Here’s where I think we should begin our immense act of imagination: with the idea that this is a teaching about us as a vine, and the idea that bearing fruit means demonstrating love. I can easily admit to you that every branch inside of me does not bear fruit. And I can easily admit to you that there are fruit bearing branches in me that could benefit from pruning to make them bear more fruit. I can appreciate the removal of dead and withered branches in me, you know the trash that gets in the way of loving. I would love to have it cleared. I can give thanks for what has been cleared and burned, used as fuel to warm or cook, or just to create a beautiful fire to watch and wonder. I can believe that I cannot bear fruit by myself; that I need Love in order to be able to engage in loving actions, and that being a disciple of Jesus, for me, has been the way to glorify the Holy Name and to grow in love. I can believe that I need to remove the log from my own eye before I attempt to get a speck out of another’s eye (that’s from different Gospels, [2] but it sounds like Jesus doesn’t it?) And I think it applies to the interpretation of this text from John) for the community – for this parish, for the Episcopal Church, for Christians of all sorts.

Here in the Gospel of John, Jesus is saying that fruitbearing (or loving actions) will appear whenever you (you all) abide in love and love abides in you (you all). (“Whenever” is a better translation than “if.”). Whenever you all live in love and love lives in you, request whatever you wish (or “resolve or require” together) and it will become you or “come into being for you all.” [3] It’s not so much about getting something, or getting whatever you ask “done.” It’s about us all becoming more love in Love, the eternal and relentless Love of God. Let’s become that. Let Love become us.

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