Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter – 23rd May 2021: Acts 8, 26-end; John 15, 1-8.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens and on Zoom

 

The image of Jesus as the True Vine is one that is highly emotive and attractive. I have an icon in my small collection which is the True Vine, η άμπελος. It means a lot to me, not least because it was a gift from our daughter a few years ago.

In this bucolic image from St. John’s gospel God the Father, is referred to as the gardener, or the vine-dresser, ο γεώργος, from which we derive the highly popular first name Georgios in Greek, or George in English. It is for good reason that King George III was called ‘Farmer George’ with his agricultural interests, but also a clever play on words.

As the image is developed there is the invitation from our Lord for a healthy participation in the life of the vine, meaning a healthy participation in his life, a sort of organic synergy, an invitation to be included. The word used is rather beautifully translated as ‘abide’ – but the verb μένω is used still in modern Greek for ‘live’.

‘Abide’ is quite an old fashioned word in English now – as indeed the word for someone’s house or home as ‘an abode’ but it is perhaps its more sparing use that makes it all the more powerful when we are invited to ‘abide in Christ’.

One of the most well – known hymns begins with these words:

‘Abide with me; fast falls the eventide’. The last verse is perhaps the most powerful,

 

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;

Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies:

Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!

 

Abiding in the life of Christ as a vine, is as challenging as it is comforting. The final verse of that hymn I just quoted talks of the cross – there can be no sharing in the life of Jesus, no participating in the life of Christ the True Vine, without the acceptance of the challenge of the cross.

There is no Christian faith that only rejoices in the empty tomb. There is no beautiful singing of alleluias without the sound of the hammering of nails.

 

Our challenge as Christians is to move on from standing at the foot of cross to sharing and living the life of our crucified and risen Saviour. This is the truly great challenge for all believers. The starkness and the brutality of the cross is blessed by the new life to be discovered in faith, where the wood of the cross takes root and blossoms into the wood of the vine, and blessed by Christ’s life, we abide in him, and bear fruit in his name. It is through faith that we are grafted into the tree of life, into the True Vine. In his letter to the Romans (Romans 11, 17 ff) St. Paul understands and develops this theme of being grafted, though he uses the olive tree as his image. By faith we are grafted into the life of Christ – but Christ, as invites all to have this faith in him.

It will not be so surprising therefore that the idea of grafting is associated with baptism into the death and life of Christ (see Romans 6, 3). No better authority for this could come to our aid than Article 27 of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion. These Articles are foundational in establishing the reformed and catholic nature of the Church of England in the 16^th century.

 

Article 27 ‘Of Baptism’ reads ‘Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or new Birth, whereby, as an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church…’

So by baptism we are grafted into the Church, and thus into the life of the crucified and risen Christ –  into the life of the True Vine.

 

It is into this life that the Ethiopian Eunuch is grafted, because he receives baptism. We are told of this in the Acts of the Apostles, and we are connected with that Ethiopian, not just as an historical record that we read about in Eastertide – but because we, like him, have been grafted into Christ through baptism. Imagine that – we are in the same community of believers as that Ethiopian, as we will be with all baptized now and in the future.

 

Philip has been sharing the faith with people in the towns and villages of Samaria when he is called to travel south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. It is described as a ‘wilderness road’ which should evoke some images of what we have been witnessing with the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Gaza. There have been tragedies on both sides of the conflict, but the thought of Gaza becoming a wilderness is not beyond possibility.

 

Philip sees someone – an Ethiopian Eunuch (we are told quite a lot about him) – who is reading a scroll, perhaps, or some parchment that contains the words of the prophecy of Isaiah. Philip is prompted by the Holy Spirit to go over and join in. He then says the words that perhaps are so meaningful to many of us who read our bibles regularly, or even from time to time. It is in the form of a simple but powerful question. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ (Acts 8, 30).

 

We should all stop and think at this point. How many times have we been reading through scripture and been left thinking – I don’t understand this. Now, it is not that I think everything can be explained in Holy Scripture, but it is very unhelpful to individual followers of the faith, or enquirers about the faith, if we put the bible to one side because we can’t make ‘head nor tail’ of it.

 

The Ethiopian says, ‘How can I unless someone guides me’. This must be one of our aspirations as Christians – not only to understand scripture better ourselves, but to be able to give hints and help to others. This is one of the principal tasks of the church – Scripture is a corporate possession, and its interpretation is the task of those who have been grafted into the life of the True Vine by baptism in faith. The Vine is none other than the ‘Word made flesh’ and those who participate in his life through the crib and the cross have the privileged task of helping each other in our reading, interpreting, and acting on the words of life.

One of the deep glories of the Reformation was the placing of scripture at the centre of Christian living, but not so that we can wield a book at people, turning the words of life into an instrument of torture, so to speak, but so that those who read the precious texts may have their lives transformed and abide with Christ.

 

It was in a hotel room in Seattle that the great actor David Suchet, best known perhaps as Hercules Poirot first picked up the scriptures with a serious intent. He had always felt his grand-father’s presence with him, and he says, “I always felt that he was with me as my spiritual guide. I felt him sitting on my shoulder. Then I thought to myself, ‘Why do I believe that and not believe in life after death?’ That got me thinking about the most famous person who they say had a life after death, Jesus.” It led David to the New Testament of the Bible, and to Paul. “I chose it because I knew that somebody called Paul actually existed, I knew that he wrote letters, and that they are there for everyone to see,” he added. David read Paul’s epistle, which says that salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ, and had a “road to Damascus” moment when Paul’s words chimed with him. “By the end of the letter, certainly by the end of the book, I was reading about a way of being and a way of life that I had been looking for all those years,” explains David. (quoted from the Daily Express newspaper)

 

Suchet may not have had Philip there to help him understand the scriptures, but since he became an Anglican Suchet has done so much – a vast amount in fact – to share the scriptures with other people. Each of us may just sit once in our lives and help someone come to faith through understanding scripture better. The numbers don’t matter. What matters is that we are faithful to Christ the True Vine who invites us to be grafted into his life, and to abide in him, as he abides in God the Father. This is the Good News. Alleluia.