God woke up this morning, looked at the congregation gathered
here and said, Ah! My Beloved! Good morning.
God loves you. God loves this congregation. Everything else comes
and goes, but God’s love never ends. I’ll tell you something you
already know: This congregation, so beloved by God, is struggling to
stay alive. Those are painful words to speak and to hear. We love
God, we love our neighbors and we have gifts for ministry. But with
all our love and all our gifts, we struggle to stay alive.
Paul wrote a letter to the church he had founded in Corinth because
that church was struggling to stay alive. The Corinthians had love
and gifts for ministry. They prophesied which means they taught
Christian ethics to their neighbors. When they gathered for worship
they felt the power of the Holy Spirit speak through them in
languages they did not know. They were educated and had all the
knowledge about God and Jesus that they needed. They loved God,
loved their neighbors and had gifts for ministry. But with all that,
they struggled to stay alive.
Paul wrote a letter to the church and told them things they did not
want to know: Your gifts for ministry will end. It must have been
painful for them to hear Paul’s words because they were
understandably proud of their gifts and their church. But Paul said,
eventually your ministry will end. Only God’s love never ends.
God is love. Only God never ends.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians 20 to 30 years before John wrote his
Gospel. But John remembers Jesus as having a similar message. In
chapter 15, Jesus uses the image of a gardener, vine and branches.
God the Creator is the gardener, Jesus is the vine and congregations
are the branches. Jesus spoke to the congregation of disciples who
travelled with him in Galilee, but the church in Corinth, this
congregation, and every other congregation is a branch.
The gardener prunes the vine and the vine branches. Some of the
branches are pruned away and they die. But they aren’t cut off
because they are bad or because they don’t have gifts for ministry.
The gardener loves the branches and wants the vine to have more
branches. The gardener prunes the branches because pruning
creates more and better fruit.
Many of you know this from growing petunias or mums You pinch
them back so they produce more flowers and remain shaped and
bushy. If you don’t prune them, they will produce flowers but if you
do prune them, they will produce more flowers and be more
attractive plants. Inexperienced gardeners may find it painful to
prune. You don’t want to cut away the plant that holds so much
hope. Experienced gardeners know that pruning is nurturing and
that the plant will be healthier and produce more flowers if some
branches are sacrificed. When we prune, we are trusting God, the
original Gardener, to provide new life.
God has created petunias and mums so that they need to be pruned.
I get it. But it’s much harder to accept God pruning people. I struggle
with God pruning people more than anything.
One of my young neighbors was married in March. Last week her
doctor confirmed what her home pregnancy test had shown. She
was pregnant. The doctor said she was eight weeks pregnant—and
that the baby had died two weeks ago.
That is harsh pruning by a Gardener who claims to love us so much.
And yet scientific research indicates that 30 to 50 percent of
fertilized eggs never make it to the stage of being implanted in the
uterus. That’s a lot of pruning! But that pruning isn’t painful because
those prospective parents would never know that an embryo
existed.
The pregnancy is official and can be known to the parents, once the
egg is safely implanted in the uterus. Of those pregnancies, 10 to 20
percent end in miscarriage before 12 weeks. That’s a lot of painful
pruning. The parents of these babies grieve.
Here’s another statistic. An estimated 70 percent of fetuses that die
during the first trimester do so because they have chromosomal
abnormalities. God the Gardener has developed a system of genetics
that prunes out the embryos that are not able to sustain life. While
parents grieve, perhaps God knows what he is doing.
To the parents, the pruning seems cruel. God seems uncaring;
maybe even brutal. But remember, this is the Gardener who prunes
away his own son. There is a painfully slim possibility that pruning
is for some greater good. Does God prune so that creation thirves? I
don’t know. I don’t understand.
God prunes the church. Many congregations that were thriving 50
years ago find themselves being cut back today. Look at any of the
major denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian,
UCC and even the Baptists and Catholics); the majority of churches
are being pruned.
No one wants to be pruned even if it is for the benefit of the vine. If
pruning is necessary, please God, don’t let our branch be one that
gets cut off. Pruning hurts. Church closings hurt. I understand that
by eliminating weaker branches, the whole church becomes
stronger and healthier. But understanding does not take away the
pain. Pruning hurts even when it is done to strengthen Jesus, the
vine. Pruning hurts especially when the one doing the pruning is
God almighty. We grieve for the church.
And part of grieving is being angry. I get angry with God when the
congregation that I serve is up there on the cross, dying with Jesus.
I take it personally. Why prune my church? Why can’t we be one of
the churches that thrive? Why should I care about being loved by
God? Is God going to just cut us off and throw us into the compost to
be fertilizer for other branches? Good for them! What about us? I
don’t have the answers.
My knowledge ends. My prophecy ends. My ability to speak ends.
God’s love for me and for the congregation I serve never ends.
I was in our Welcome Garden with Sherm recently and he pointed to
a plant and said, “I’m going to take that out this fall. That one has to
go!”
I said wait a minute! That’s my favorite plant! I love that plant! I love
the soft, pale green leaves and the delicate blooms.
But Sherm said, no. I’m taking it out and there’s another one, just
like it over there. I’m taking it out too.
What?! You can’t take both of them!
Yes I can, he said and I will. But see the cross over there? There’s
another one over on the other side of the cross and I’m going to
leave it. If we leave all three they will take over and kill the other
plants. Only the one on the other side of the cross will stay.
I will let Sherm prune the plants because he is the gardener, I trust
him and I can’t stop him anyway. Sherm and Ann take better care of
that garden than I would. They won’t do it my way and they are out
of my control. But I know that Sherm and Ann and I have a common
goal: we want what is best for the whole garden. I trust the Gardener
upstairs to work through the gardeners downstairs to do what’s
best.
The powerful love of the Gardener never ends. Love abides. To abide
means to take all our questions, grief and doubts and rest with them
in the love of the Gardner and Jesus, the Real Vine. Abiding in the
love of God does not take the pain away.
I can hear Jesus saying, Abide in me. Bring your pain and your anger
and live in my love. Abide in me as I abide in you. Branches and
congregations come and go. Only love abides.
A decade or so after John had written his gospel, he wrote a letter to
a struggling congregation. In it he said,
We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is
love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides
in them.
Friends, beloved of God, abide in God’s love.
Amen.