Acts 8:26–40
Psalm 22:25–31
1 John 4:7–21
John 15:1–8
Year B
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
I have known children who are avid readers, committed baseball players, and generous spirits.
I count among my friends youth from CtK who genuinely seek the best from young children, and who spark loving relationships, fun, and faith.
Dan Hein is working on an Eagle Scout project that is collecting food for Marguerite’s place.
Mel Graves consistently staffs our nursery which welcomes anywhere from a few to ten children each Sunday.
Ryan Blecharczyk put together a wicked cool set of slides and videos that helped to frame our Easter Vigil.
Together these three amigos form a trio of high school youth that with adults each Wednesday serve as guides for confirmation age youth. They participate in skits, quiz shows, staffing the slide shows, emceeing, and small group leadership.
And you know what I say about all this? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You know that saying, don’t you? It speaks about the connections in families, where children learn the most about how to live in the world from those they respect the most, primarily their own parents and extended family. It means that Lori and Hubie Hein, Linda and Gary Graves, Staci and Joe Blecharczyk, even to their own great surprise, must be doing something right.
Today we are being asked to consider how we are fruit, and how we are to bear fruit. The tree, or vine is Christ. The grape vine is as common in the Middle East as anywhere. You see it in many small yards, and covering fields. Grape leaves wrap around all sorts of meat and rice in cooking. And fresh fruit there as it is here is more local and succulent,. On my trips to see friends and make connections to our brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, as I have had the best figs, dates and apricots ever. Two years ago at this time of year, I was introduced to something that in Arabic is called askidenya which in English is a known as loquats that as I am talking about them now make my mouth water.
Kari and I had a small grape arbor in one of our first homes in Illinois. Pruning is essential for the health of the vine, so that new growth can be promoted. It is amazing how much you can cut, so that in the early Spring you are left with just a small spindly grape stick, with a few stubby branches. Then after a few months of summer growth, the vines make a natural roof and the once stubby are now gangly branches which have sub branches and sub-sub branches spread all over, sprouting juicy and tasty fruit. And if you take the time to trace the end of the line all the way to its source makes you realize how Jesus’ saying about abiding in the vine is a very apt metaphor.
Remember, the apple (or grape) doesn’t fall far from the tree.
So I say pay attention to how our community bears fruit. Keep close to the source of our well-being and the inspiration for our activity, which is abiding with Jesus, or as we might say in modern-day lingo hanging with Christ.
If we are hanging with Christ, looking to see with his eyes, to hear with his ears, to be of the mind of Christ Jesus, then we are always looking outside of ourselves to those in great need. We do not grow weary or fatigued by compassion, to the contrary we are driven by it. And while we may sometimes feel like a stubby little branch faced with the world’s woes, we are actually strong and powerful as we derive strength and nourishment from the vine, from the gardener, and clinging closely to other branches. We are truly growing gangly and beautiful at the same time, mindful today that we are invited to take action toward alleviating poverty and hunger in our Offering of Letters campaign today.
Conventional wisdom says that one person writing a letter may not make must of a difference. However, in the next weeks, thousands and thousands of Christian communities are gathering letters to send to Congress. And believe me, our elected representatives will notice these piles of papers from their constituents. They will note that we are asking them to improve our nation’s efficiency and commitment to foreign aid. Through our action, taking a pen to paper, we can influence a change in the way programs work for the world’s poorest.
Streamlining the current mechanisms for aid will help. Setting measurable goals is laudable. Investing in the globe’s future will reap returns on our own nation’s viability. Foreign aid channeled through non-governmental and faith-based organization works, getting millions of children in school, getting mothers to immunize their babies in newly built health facilities, and helping farmers learn new strategies to improve their crops. Since 1990, more than a billion people have gained access to clean water.
In reading and hearing the gospels my whole life, I never heard Jesus say “give up.” I never heard Jesus say only look out for your closest family members. I have heard Jesus say those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. I have heard Jesus say whenever you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.
I came into Christ the King today and what happened is similar to most weeks. I feel stronger and more encouraged by your company. I see the tables ready for children and adults to take pen in hand. I see quilts hanging all over the place, knowing how the donation of scraps from many places and the work of a handful of dedicated women will send a message that Jesus cares throughout the globe and to troubled girls at Antrim Girls’ Shelter.
I came into Christ the King today and no matter how I feel about my week prior, whether I go the grass cut or exercised enough, or how much or how well I gave honor to my mother, as together we gather to be fed by the good news of Christ’s promise of life, we become reconstituted as living branches in a garden that is tended and watered.
In you I see all sorts of fruit out there, nuts, too, flowers, too, activists, all gathered around and flowing from the tree of life, which is the cross, which sprouts a community whole and well, and eager to bear fruit.
You know what they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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