Fifth Sunday of Easter

Fifth Sunday of Easter

I think all of today’s readings, not just the Gospel, have to do with discipleship, what it is to be a disciple of this Jesus person died and risen, together with and alongside other disciples, and how we go about being that.

“The Vine and the Branches” continues our meditation on who and what Christ is in relation to us and what this makes us in consequence of the Easter story and Christ’s continuing presence. Indeed it makes for a relationship which is even closer than good shepherd and sheep, or Healer and Saviour, or Keystone or Cornerstone. All those images still keep the parties outside each other, whereas vine and branches share the same sap, live off the same life. Indeed this image makes us part of Christ: the branches are part of the vine, part of the total Christ, like with St Paul’s image of the Body of Christ. This also fits the Old Testament background. In the Old Testament, and in the Synoptic parable of the tenants in the vineyard, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel. The messianic people, the people who make their home in Christ, who remain in Christ and Christ in them, constitute the total Christ, the Vine, the new Israel. But something is added, namely the identification of the individual Jesus with the disciples, to such an extent as kind of forming one organism with him, like one body, all part of the one Vine.

So it is a relationship of strong intimacy, making our home with or in each other, remaining in each other, not cutting ourselves off. But this is a relationship which is anything but self-enclosed. The point of vines and branches after all is grapes. Making our home in Christ, remaining in him, is the secret of living a fruitful and meaningful life, or bearing much fruit and also in Second Reading terms of loving one another – a relationship which is with the other branches as well, eh, as we remain in the Vine and draw on nourishment from the Vine, as we face up to the various challenges in our lives, interpreted as ‘prunings’, which lead to the production of even more fruit.

But what is this remaining in Christ, making our home in Christ?

I think on the first level, it is continuing to be committed to Christ, to believe in the name of God’s Beloved Son Jesus Christ as the second reading says. But we need to understand properly what this belief business involves. Belief is more than just happening to think something or saying something to myself in my mind or even out loud. My beliefs determine what is reality for me, and are revealed quite as much by how we act in situations where the belief is relevant – or even more so. The consequence being that I can make discoveries as to what I really believe. Believing in Christ then = Christ is part of my everyday reality, part of the everyday reality of my life. Belief-in is even stronger than this. Belief-in = reality for me to which I am committed, part of what I stand for, who I stand with, or stand in to use today’s preposition, part of my sense of and the reality of who I am. It is out of this that the fruit comes, and our love for each other.

This at least is part of the story. We can get some more by going back into the Gospel imagery. Staying in the vine is staying in contact with all the nourishment that being in the vine provides. How in our Christian lives do we get to be nourished? At this point it becomes Eucharistic, though not just Eucharistic and not just sacramental: all the ways in which we get to be nourished, including in our lives together, in the Vine. It’s our praying, both together and individually. It’s our meditation on the Scriptures (“If you remain in me, and my words remain in you.” And the words also do some of the pruning.). It’s the nourishment from the liturgy of the Eucharist. But it is also from our lives together, participation in various groups,, in the family, and our hospitality to the stranger and the widow and the orphan, or just looking out for each other – like Barnabas and the brothers in the first reading. In other words, all the various nourishing but also pruning and challenging bits in our lives. Including in the sacrament of marriage, which is not just the initiating ceremony, the sacrament is the sacred space of the relationship with each other and with the children, a place where grace is accessed and the kingdom of God dwells. This is also part of it.

The challenge in our parish communities of course is to get the vine all working properly, this Vine which is Christ, nourishing all the branches so that everyone in the parish gets proper nourishment, branches bears much fruit, people growing more and more into the disciples and children of God that they are capable of being.

This discipleship business, as it happens, has been very important in my life, both professionally and personally…

Seminary formation had three goals, Humanity, Discipleship, Leadership, to be achieved via academic, pastoral, spiritual and human formative programs. Each is in the heart of the others of course, both the goals and the means. But for me always it has been discipleship which has been the key. You can have all kinds of human problems and still be something of a disciple; but discipleship, eventually, is so that we may have life and have it to the full. Similarly with leadership. One can be a leader without being much of a disciple, but not a Christian leader: beyond all the human stuff and the natural abilities and management and leadership techniques, there is yet a Christian way, a Jesus way of doing power, having authority and exercising leadership (cf. last week, Good Shepherd Sunday). Besides, it is discipleship which makes us the sons and daughters, the dear, lavishly loved children of the one who makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall; and eventually, for bearing fruit in our lives whatever lives we lead it’s the discipleship which counts anyway (cf. the last two sentences of the Gospel).
Personally, it has also been important in dealing with the issues of clericalism and celibacy. The clerical existence with its sometimes peculiar aspects is sometimes functional in respect of ministry, sometimes non-functional, sometimes dysfunctional, and can do strange things to one’s personality structure if one is not very careful if taken too seriously. I’ve long ago decided not to take it at all seriously. As for celibacy: the ideology of celibacy has never worked for me: I long ago gave up on celibacy and decided to be a Christian instead!

I’ll finish with a short reflection on the first reading, Saul trying to join the disciples, managing eventually with the help of Barnabas, the brothers looking out for him and bundling him off out of harms way when he gets into trouble. Discipleship is not just individual, me and Jesus, it’s communal – even for St Paul, who sometimes seems to be the paradigm of a rugged individualist in service of the Gospel. Later on, Barnabas goes and seeks him out, gets him back from Tarsus, takes him to Antioch where he and Barnabas become an integral part of a thriving Christian community. After that, Antioch becomes his home church from which he and Barnabas depart on their missionary journeys and to which they return. It is not just as individuals but as part of the one organism, looking out for each other, that we produce fruit, even for St Paul. And indeed this was part of St Paul’s initiating religious experience, the experience on the road to Damascus, where the risen Lord appears to him and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (So it is probably no accident that it is St Paul that makes such use of the Body of Christ imagery.) There is no way, then, that we can separate Jesus from our fellow disciples, all drawing nourishment from the one vine, eventually all nourishing and being nourished by each other. We can’t separate them out, any more than could St Paul.

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