Acts 9:26-31

Earlier in the book of Acts, we hear of Saul (later known as Paul), persecuting Christians in Jerusalem.  When he went to Damascus to do more of the same, he experienced a marvelous conversion.  It was several years before he returned to Jerusalem, the site of his earlier persecutions.  That visit is described in today’s reading.

1 John 3:18-24

As we continue to read from the first letter of John, we remember that the author is dealing with some members of the community who have defected.  They seem to have believed that, as long as you have faith in Jesus, it doesn’t matter what you do in daily life.  In today’s passage, the author directly refutes that position. 

John 15:1-8 

Bishop Untener’s Homily

This passage in John’s Gospel about the vine and the branches is one of the most beautiful in all the Gospels.   

The first thing to understand about it is that the image of pruning is meant to teach us about how kind and loving God is toward us.  We may not think that way at first, because it talks about taking away the branches that don’t bear good fruit.  But that is a kind and loving thing to do.   

This came home to me in a striking way a couple of years ago when I gave a retreat for the monks in a Trappist monastery in California.  You know who the Trappists are – monks who live an extremely ascetical life and who, among other things, observe perpetual silence.  They only speak to pray... and also in necessary situations.  In most normal 24 hour days, they speak aloud not a word, except to pray. 

These monks live in the Benedictine tradition which is summarized in the Latin phrase, “Ora et Labora” – which means “Prayer and Work.”  They earn their own way by working, and they pray day and night. 

In this particular Trappist Monastery, their work was cultivating walnut trees and plum trees.  They lived on a vast acreage with thousand of walnut trees and plum trees – the latter the kind of plum trees that produced fruit that was especially good for prunes.  That was how they made their living. 

In the course of the eight day retreat I got to know one of the older monks whose specialty was pruning the plum trees.  There were thousands of them, and he spent all day out there every day deciding which branches were the ones that should be “pruned” in order to make the tree more capable of producing good plums.  He was their expert “pruner”.  A machine can’t do that.  You have to look over the tree and decide what’s best for the tree, and then do the pruning that helps the tree.

I used to walk out there in the afternoons while he was working and watch him at work.  We became good friends – he could talk to me because I was the retreat master.  

One day, after we had gotten to know each other pretty well, I said to him, “You must be able to do a lot of praying and feel very close to God when you’re working out in the peace and quiet of this orchard.”  He stopped and – I remember the moment well – a tear crept into his eye as he said, “Oh, indeed I do.  I love these trees and I know them well.  I always think of John’s Gospel when Jesus talks about the fact that he is the vine and we are the branches, and that the Father prunes away the branches that are in the way. And while I’m pruning I say to the Lord, ‘Thanks for doing that to me.  You have pruned me, and shaped me, and helped me become what I never could have become without you.  I’m not perfect, and I know I need more pruning, but you are always there to make me more into your image.’  The Lord has done wonderful things for me, and I’d be nowhere without it.”

I’ve never forgotten that, and this Gospel passage has always meant more to me because of it.  It’s about the goodness of God, the love of God, for each of us. 

I hope that you and I can be more conscious of that, and thank God like that old monk did.  Even if there are some sufferings in our life, God can turn them into something helpful.  God is always taking care of us, and doing some pruning, and shaping us more and more in his own image. 

Now and then we should turn to God and say, “Thank you for taking such good care of me, in ways I don’t even realize.  You’ve been good to me, and I’d be nowhere without you.”

It’s a good prayer, and I learned it from that monk.

Originally given on May 21, 2000