What is your fruit?
Sermon for Easter V, 2024, delivered at the Church of the Transfiguration, New York, New York. Text: John 15:1-8 When I read this morning’s Gospel for the first time in preparing this sermon, I appreciated the wonderful examples that Jesus gave of the vine and the branches, and the fruit that is produced from them to describe relationships. The examples worked and made a lot of sense as I read along, and then I got to the line “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” And the loveliness vanished. It is not unlike the passage earlier in John 14 where he says that no one can come to the Father except through him. These passages have been read specifically to enclose, exclude, rarify, and separate those in the group from those who the group doesn’t want to be around. That reading leaves me uncomfortable and unsure, because I also read in John 4 about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.