Pr. Craig Mueller
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2021
Out on a Limb
I love the image. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Whether a limb, a branch, a bough, or a twig, we are connected. Everything belongs. Everyone belongs. And we draw our juice, our sap, our life from Christ, the vine.
I’m going to go out on a limb, pun intended. We are conditioned to think of ourselves first as individuals not as a community. More concerned for self-interest than the common good. We act like Charlie Brown Christmas “trees”. A branch by itself. Cut off from the tree. A few decorations here or there, so we can look as good as we can.
And we’ve got a problem. What we once called partisanship is sometimes now named sectarianism. Usually reserved to describe hostility between groups like the Sunnis and Shia in Iraq, we now see other branches on the tree—neighbors in this country—as enemies. It’s not just about ideology anymore. The other political party is seen as the enemy—as alien and immoral. And the fruit hanging on our trees isn’t love but hatred.1 I may be going out on a limb now. There are a lot of threats to democracy these days. And there are a lot of justice issues to be passionate about. But we are also part of the demonizing and silencing of those on the other side of the political spectrum.
Vine and branches. It’s about relationship. Native people speak of “all my relations.” We are related to vines and trees. We are related to those two legged, four legged, winged and those that crawl and slide. And we are connected to those most different from us, not only those for whom we raise our prayers and voices for justice, but related to those with whom we disagree sharply. For many personal, religious and political reasons I struggle with evangelical Christianity, for example. Yet we are branches on the same tree. And we all name Jesus as the vine that connects us.
If we keep growing in faith, if we keep expanding our horizons, there are always more and more branches on the tree. More religions and spiritualities to discover. More kinds of people to meet and learn about. The movie Nomadland introduces us to communities most of us never imagined. Nomads—unable to live on savings and Social Security checks—move into RVs, trailers or vans. They travel to places for temporary work, like an Amazon fulfillment center. They are truly out on a limb. Misunderstood. We watch Fern, the main character, as she finds community among surprising people and circumstances. When a teen-ager asks Fern if she is homeless, she replies, “No, I’m not homeless, I’m houseless.” Fern is rooted in who she is. And home is something she carries within her.
Vine and branches. And pruning! That’s in the gospel, too. Gardeners trim for the sake of growth—that plants may thrive. Pruning is cutting back. Trimming limbs and branches. And pruning is painful. Not only in our gardens but in our souls.
Why the spiritual pruning? Jesus says it is for the sake of bearing fruit. We think of Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit. Or the fruit of bringing more and more people to faith. Yet in John’s gospel, bearing fruit is about love. Washing feet. Serving others. Laying down your life for the sake of another.
We’re not out on a limb by ourselves. We are grafted to the Vine, the source of a divine love that is expansive, unconditional and life-changing. And our first reading—the story of the Ethiopian eunuch— is an awesome story to make the point. But first consider that through human history it seems there always needs to be an enemy. A scapegoat. One example today is transgender people, especially youth and their rights in society.How ironic that those who protest government overreach are the ones leading the hateful movement against those who identify as trans.
Consider the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. It’s not often we get a queer character in the Bible! I don’t think I’m going out on a limb. The Ethiopian eunuch is queer. Sexless. Some say he would fall under the category of transgender. In biblical times there was no conception of the modern sense of LGBTQ. But the E word they knew. Eunuchs. According to the Torah, eunuchs had no place in the community. They could not have children and remember, the family was everything. And if eunuchs went the Temple, they wouldn’t let them in! Not exactly what the author says in First John: you cannot love God and then hate your sibling.
But there’s more to the Ethiopian. He’s black and considered from the far end of the known earth at that time. And though a man of rank and privilege in his own land, to Jewish Philip, this man is a foreigner! How queer, how strange, that that the Ethiopian eunuch (sorry for reducing him to those words but he has no name in the story) approaches Philip as a spiritual seeker.
The seeker had been reading Isaiah about a lamb led to slaughter, about another one cut off. No family, no children. Jesus, the crucified one. Maybe the man read on a few verses. Scripture isn’t always consistent. Maybe he came across the verse in Isaiah that said that eunuchs—considered dry trees— are indeed welcome in the house of God.
Like a limb cut off from the tree, this courageous man senses that he too can be grafted to the vine. That even as an outsider he worthy to be in the community. And he says to Philip, “Here is water. I may be going out on a limb here, but what prevents me from being baptized?”
The answer is nothing. No human rules or regulations. No scriptures or codes. Nothing prevents God’s extravagant welcome from gushing forth like a mighty stream. Cleansing and renewing and creating new life.
For in baptism we are grafted to Christ the tree of life. He is the vine that nourishes us with bread and wine. And with all we need to grow and thrive.
What prevents us from letting go, from losing our lives, from going out on a limb and bearing the fruit of love? That more and more people can be grafted to the vine. We share our DNA—our sap, if you will, in the Lakeview Lutheran Parish, as one example. Not for what we can gain, or the other congregations can gain. But for the sake of mission. For the sake of those not yet among us.
We abide in Christ. And Christ abides in us. There are other branches on the tree. Some weak and withering. What prevents us from going out on a limb, raising our voices and taking risks for all those rejected and forgotten? Nothing. For the gospel is not merely for our personal salvation. It is for the good of all the branches of the tree. The fruit of Easter.
1Nate Cohn, “Why political sectarianism is a growing threat to democracy.” New York Times. April 19, 2021.