This morning, four young people will join our church by professing their faith in Jesus Christ.  They will promise to be faithful members of this congregation by sharing in its ministry through their prayers, gifts, study, and service.  Every member vows the same.  At some point, every member promises to follow Jesus Christ.  And at some point, every member promises in reliance on the Holy Spirit to be a faithful member of the church.  It’s like getting married.  You can’t marry without making promises:  “Forsaking all others, I promise to be your loving and faithful spouse in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow . . .”  Likewise, no one joins the church without promising to follow Christ in fellowship with the church.  

Each year, it falls to a group of our elders to assess how well members are keeping their promises.  It’s an inexact practice.  No one wants to do it.  Who are we to judge?  How can anyone say how well anyone keeps promises like these?

It reminds me of the guy who joined a monastery. It was an old school monastery, very strict. He had to take a vow of silence, but every seven years, he was allowed two words.  After the first seven years, the abbot brought him in and asked what he had to say.  “Cold floors.”  The abbot nodded and sent him out. 

Another seven years passed. “How’s it going, the abbot inquired.”

 “Bad food.” The abbot nodded and sent him out.

Seven more years pass. Again he’s brought in for his two words. “I quit,” he says. 

“That’s not surprising,” the abbot tells him. “You’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”

Failing to see as God sees, whenever we judge faithfulness we are thrown back on mundane measures.  Your elders ask plain questions about names on the membership roll:  Have they been to church?  Do they have a gift of record? Typically, reviews go something like this: “I think I saw Mrs. So and So at Christmas. Wasn’t she here last year when her kids were home from college?” I think I saw her then.”

“Susie used to teach Sunday School.  I remember when she taught fourth grade.  When was that? It’s been a while.”

Whatever happened to Bill and Jackie? I used to see them all of the time. They were always here.  When did they stop coming?”

And so it goes.  Phone calls are made. Records are double-checked.  Letters are sent. Visits are made. And then laments are heard about how “we should have done more,” until finally a vote is taken: “Remove from the Active Roll.”  With sadden hearts, disciples slip into the nether world church demographers label Mental Member.  In America, there may be as many as six million Presbyterians who are mental members, people who were once active but are no longer.

Old Timers called this painful process, Pruning Deadwood. I suspect the designation stems from today’s text, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.” 

Personally, I’m troubled by the equation of church membership and the kingdom of God. I’ve known people who seldom darken the doors, but exhibit the marks of Christ.  Likewise, I’ve known church goers who’ve made me wonder if we serve the same God.

The Reformers distinguished between the visible and invisible church.  Calvin, among others, reasoned that the invisible church is known only to God.  “To know who are His,” Calvin wrote, “is a prerogative belonging solely to God . . . Those who seem utterly lost and quite beyond hope are by his goodness called back to the way; while those who, more than others, seem to stand firm often fall.”  Calvin took this to mean that “we ought to treat like brothers and count as believers those whom we think unworthy of the fellowship of the godly. . .”

As a matter of church discipline and principle, when Sessions “prune deadwood” or transfer members to inactive status, judgment is reserved   regarding salvation.  Judgment belongs to God alone.  That said, Calvin rightly understood that we need the visible church, the body of believers constituted by word and sacrament. “Our weakness,” he wrote, “does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives.” Or, as he warned, “it is always disastrous to leave the church.”

 

“I am the vine, you are the branches.”

I have never grown grapes, but I understand it takes four years before newly planted vines yield fruit.  During their first year, vines put down roots.  And grape vines grow deep roots—thirty to forty inches deep.  In their second year, vines grow stock.  Stock is the thick trunk of the vine. Stock supports the vine’s branches and heavy fruit.  In the third year, vinegrowers prune the branches.  There’s no fruit without pruning.  In the fourth year, if all has gone well, there is fruit.  It takes four years before grapes are harvested.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”

There are no vineless grapes.  Faith which produces fruit is created through the week in and week out work of abiding in Christ—worship, study, prayer, fellowship, tithing.  There are no vineless grapes.  We bear fruit when we abide in the vine.  The Vine is Christ.  And Christ promises that where two or three gather in his name, he is in the midst of them. 

Faith is not a solo act.  To be joined to Christ, is to be joined to Christ’s people.  We need each other to follow Christ.  There are no vineless grapes.

 

Some years ago researchers at Amherst College did a fascinating study. They studied squash.  Not the kind played with a racket—the kind you eat in the summer. I love summer squash.  I don’t like it when it gets too large, because it’s tough.  But when it’s about hand sized or smaller, it can’t be beat—a few onions, some pepper, a little oregano, some butter.  Good stuff.

Believe it or not, the Amherst researchers wanted to know how much pressure squash exerts when it grows.  Why they wanted to learn this I do not know.  But they did. So they planted squash and let it grow to the size of a person’s head.  They then put a band around the fruit to take pressure readings exerted by the growing plant.  The researchers expected that the squash might exert as much as 500 pounds of pressure, which considering the consistency of squash, seems pretty high.  Sure enough, within one month they were proven right.  The squash registered five hundred pounds.  But the squash didn’t stop growing. It got bigger.  Within two months it was exerting 1,500 pounds of pressure and when it got to 2,000 pounds they had to reinforce the bands measuring its force.  When the pressure readings reached 5,000 pounds, the experiment ended, not because the plant quit growing but because the reinforced measuring device broke.

When the researchers sliced open the squash, they found that it was full of dense fibers, which of course made it unfit to eat.  They also discovered that that plant had sent out over 80,000 feet of root.

Where do you get your strength?  Where are you putting down roots?  “I am the vine, you are the branches. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”

Is it all that important? I mean, Jesus wasn’t talking about going to church or church membership.  There were no church rolls in those days.  Jesus is telling the disciples what he expects of them when he is gone.  “Abide in my word,” he says. “Keep my commands.  If you keep my commands, you abide in my love.”

Turns out that Jesus wasn’t talking about church membership at all. He’s talking about the kind of love disciples should have for each other.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Jesus is talking about more than names on a membership roster.  Jesus is talking about life that flows from his veins and through those who abide in his love.  Jesus is talking about branches that produced grapes because they are rooted in him and in the company of believers.

For years, Paula and I planted gardens.  As life has gotten busier we now buy our tomatoes rather than grow them; but for many years, every spring we turned soil, planted seed, fought weeds and bugs and enjoyed fresh Silver Queen corn and Better Boys tomatoes.  Paula used to get on my case because I wasn’t so good at weeding. Fact was, I hated it—fighting mosquitoes, no-see-ums, the heat. It was back breaking work, but I liked the results. 

“Abide in me.”  There’s nothing automatic about following Christ and bearing fruit.  I wish I could tell the four young people joining our church that it’s that simple, but I’d be telling a lie. To follow Christ we say Yes to love’s command, not to the Hollywood version with the Disney ending.  We say Yes to a cross shaped life.  A cross shaped life invites us to put others first.  A cross-shaped life invites us to give others second chances when it stands to reason not to.  A cross-shaped life invites us to get over ourselves and to get involved in an often messy and large world.  I suppose there are people who do that without benefit of the church.  But if you want roots that will weather drought, if you want roots that will stand up to heat, you must be nourished in the sometimes not so glamorous soil of the church.

 

The third article of the Creed we will recite in a few moments is the shortest but no less important that the first two: “I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church . . .” 

“I believe in the church.”  The church is not first and foremost made of bricks and mortar or even a tradition as storied as Government Street’s.  The church is constituted where two or three are gathered in Word and Sacrament.  The church is not God, but God is known here not because we are good or special people but because God reveals himself among the ordinary likes of us. 

In our time, being church may be our single greatest challenge.  If there was a time when we were a nation of joiners, that day has past. If there was a time when institutions mattered, that day is passing. Increasingly, we are a nation of individuals. We prefer to “bowl alone.” The testimony of the four young people joining our church morning is a counter claim.  Their profession affirms that faith begins in community and continues in community. We assigned each confirmand mentors for that very reason.  And we surround today with our prayers and presence to remind them that they are not alone.

There are no vineless grapes.  We are the Lord’s vineyard. We are the Lord’s planting.  “I am in the vine,” says Jesus, “abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”  Amen.