Fifth Sunday of Easter, 2024
I John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
Stuart Higginbotham
It may surprise you to know that the largest grape vine in the world is actually in England, at Hampton Court Palace. It has a circumference (the length around the trunk) of 12 feet with the vine branches themselves extending over 100 feet.
The longest vine ever documented in the world is the elephant creeper or snuff box sea bean vine, in the Mimosa family (the plant, not the drink). The longest recorded specimen, in India, clocked in at an amazing 1.5 km or almost one mile long.
It may also surprise you to know that the most tangled vine in the world existed at my grandparents’ house, in the back of their garden. I know because I helped clean it out. I believe it was a mix of blackberry, honeysuckle, and an unknown mutant that formed from the fertilizer of the sewer line that ran nearby.
Of course you know how vines grow: they stretch out with tendril shoots that seek something to hold onto. When it touches something, the pressure triggers a response called thigmotropism, and the vine clings to what it has touched. If there isn’t something sturdy to hold onto, it will impulsively grasp onto itself, tangling itself in knots and eventually collapsing under its own weight into what, in scientific terms, is called a hot mess.
That is where we find ourselves now, in a hot mess, and we have enormous spiritual work to do.
Our world feels rocked by social tensions. This week we saw increased protests on college campuses, even at Emory, where colleagues and students of mine were locked down when the disruptive efforts of outside, coordinated protest groups met the passion and concern of students, faculty, and staff over the ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza.
My dear friend Martha Sterne posted a note this week from a rabbi that said “It’s ok to be heartbroken for more than one group of people at the same time.” While my heart cries out that this is true, our world doesn’t seem to allow for such nuance and compassion at all. We feel shoved and manipulated into camps, tribes, or groups, setting up a zero-sum mentality that, in the end, allows for only one group to remain standing in the end.
There is much to be concerned about, even angry, and I empathize with those who are speaking out and demanding another way to approach our struggles than bombing tens of thousands of people in Gaza, rioting with gangs in Haiti, unleashing imperial visions in Ukraine, along with so many other painful struggles.
The brilliance–and extreme difficulty–of true civil disobedience is that you put yourself at risk to laws that you feel are unjust, exposing yourself to the consequences so that your own vulnerability–and even the harm done to you–can highlight the injustice for others to see. You don’t lash out in violence against someone else; rather, you nurture that alchemy of personal vulnerability and risk with the hope that hearts can be transformed and laws or patterns of behavior can be changed through your own willingness to embody that pain.
The world feels tangled in knots now, and while this isn’t the first time people have felt this way, it is how we feel now so we seek some way to make meaning, some way to find grounding in the midst of anger, fear, and confusion.
It is easy to turn on the TV to our news channel of choice, listening to curated content and paid commentators reinforce our preconceived notions and blindspots, making us believe that we really have everything figured out, while the media makes profit off of advertisements that try to convince us of products we need to consume, as we stay distracted. We really are tangled in a knot.
There’s a powerful prayer in the Franciscan tradition that speaks to our situation:
MAY GOD BLESS YOU with discomfort,
at easy answers, half-truths,
and superficial relationships
so that you may live
deep within your heart.
I find it so powerful that today’s Gospel reading is from John 15, which has been a foundational text for me. Jesus says “I am the true vine.” “I am the vine, you are the branches.” And eight times in this passage, the word “abide” is used, emphasizing over and over that ours is not a call to approach our practice of faith as a mere idea, but to see the deep reality of what it means to participate in the very life of Christ. Live in me, dwell in me, abide in me, exist in me, Jesus says.
Those who actually heard this teaching in the first century would have immediately resonated with it, because their culture was steeped in the mythos of Dionysus and other practices that also sought to nurture a union with the divine in the midst of the turmoils of life. They would have “gotten” this metaphor, and they would have found it very intriguing that Jesus Himself was seen as being the true vine.
This metaphor challenges us to ask ourselves in what are we rooted, in what do we find our deepest identity? To stay with the metaphor a minute, imagine yourself far out on that mile-long vine, in a thin place perhaps. We can easily begin to think that all that we see or experience there is the sum of what is possible. We can feel distant and removed, and of course feelings of anxiety can begin to set in when we feel we need something to hold onto. So, we reach out and see what is there.
Perhaps we feel something that seems solid, and we don’t realize that it is actually just someone being brash and arrogant in their narcissism. St. Paul and others warn us about being “puffed up.” So, we may grasp onto what is loud and the center of attention in hopes that we can find stability. But it is an illusion.
Or perhaps we actually begin looping back onto ourselves and feeling secure, reacting, and thinking that we can support ourselves in the constructs we have made, not giving any thought to how this is an illusion as well. And we find ourselves in a tangled mess.
So, what do we do? We have hard work ahead of us, and it begins with the soul-centering practice of following the vine back to the source. Slowly paying attention to where we are and running our fingers back down the vine and noticing how it gets thicker and more stable in certain areas. Follow the thickness as the vine gets more substantial.
Last week I had the chance to be interviewed by one of our youth, Joshua Hodges, at his school. The students came up with questions that included “How do you know you are hearing God’s voice,” and “What are distractions from hearing God’s voice?”–powerful questions. I answered that, as best as I can, I try to listen or look for signs that point me to two things: healing and wholeness on one hand and how I am being challenged to empty myself of my egoic grasping on the other. I think Jesus’s life looked like that: promoting healing and wholeness and emptying himself. And as for the distractions, I told him that fear is what blocks that experience of grace for me. So, when I feel afraid, how can I pause and pay attention and honestly assess why I am feeling what I am feeling and not grasp onto the first thing that perhaps makes me feel better?
These are powerful questions that we can engage as we work ourselves back up the vine to the Source. How do we hear God’s voice? How do we feel God’s presence? What distracts us from this awareness of God’s presence?
Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. . . Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” We do not exist on our own, and we are not nourished by our own efforts and accomplishments. We are nourished by our participation in Christ’s own life.
We are in a season where we must pay attention to what we use to find support and meaning. Being branches, we look for a place of support, and it is so easy to get caught up in the superficial, immediate reactions that reinforce that emotional space. And we loop back on ourselves and collapse under the weight of our own illusions. I think this is exactly what is happening right now.
There is a challenging element to this image as well that we need to pay attention to. The text says, whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. We must always remember that God will move as God will move, that God’s dream will unfold in this world and that dream is not strictly dependent upon us. We are dependent upon God, and our call is to practice our faith and align ourselves with the Spirit’s movement.
In our culture that is obsessed with constant achievement and growth, we do not really have space in our minds for a God who would break something down, a God who would let illusions collapse, but perhaps we need to recognize the consequences of branches gone wild, if you will. Perhaps we are in the midst of the dynamic of death and rebirth, and the death experience is so painful to our grasping and controlling mind.
So, this week, and maybe beyond, I offer you this image: Our Lady the Untier of Knots. It was painted around the year 1700, and it has been a source of devotion for centuries now for many who have yearned for the knots to be untangled in their lives. Interestingly, a copy currently hangs immediately off the elevator in the Vatican and every person who comes to see Pope Francis comes face to face with this image. How are our lives tangled, and how can our practice of faith nurture an untangling that trusts in the presence of God in our lives? Perhaps this image can give you hope as well–and even challenge you to do some of the deep spiritual work we are all called to do right now.
Please pray with me: Holy One, we look out on the world–we look at our lives–and we feel the constriction all around. In our most honest moments, we know that we have collapsed in on ourselves, reinforcing our own prejudices and ignorance, and trusting in our accomplishments and pursuits as the ultimate meaning in our lives. We are shaken up, and the time is right for us to take brave steps toward searching the root of our hope: You. Give us courage to pause, to stretch out our hands and slowly walk down the vine to the core of our being, which is your abiding presence. The soul work we are called to do is not easy, but these are days that call for what is honest, good, and true. Let us leave behind the shallow, the superficial, the vain, and the distracting. Let us rediscover ourselves in You, the true vine, which nurtures the transformation of our hearts, which is the only source of our hope. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts on a Contemplative Reformation 
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