Easter 5

Easter V (John 15:1-8) “I am the true vine.”

Jesus is life.

Jesus just doesn’t have life. Jesus just doesn’t comment about life. Jesus is life.

Jesus is life because he is the incarnation of the logos- the very pattern, plan, purpose and source of life. There is no life anywhere on this planet or throughout the universe apart from its source. The source of all life is the co-eternal Son, the Beloved of the Eternal Father, Jesus.

Jesus uses an image drawn from nature to help us understand how he is life. Just as a branch derives its life from the vine so we derive our life from the Son. Apart from the Son we are in a process of slow death. We wither. We lose the vital nutrients we need to survive and thrive. Eventually, we die.

This is not our Heavenly Father’s plan for us. God the Father created us by the power and presence of God the Holy Spirit to live and move and have our being in a forever friendship with God the Son. As we abide in that primary relationship God designed into our very nature we enjoy a rich abundant journey of discovery and creativity.

Had Adam and Eve chosen to remain in union with the Son they would never have experienced separation, sin and death. They would still be alive today as a vibrant active and dynamic patriarch and matriarch for our species.

Sadly, Adam and Eve chose to separate from God. They broke the personal relationship God designed for them to enjoy. They chose to follow the way of impersonal power and knowledge. They shattered the original pattern of our species. They set us all on a path of self-will, fear and pride.

Jesus came to reset the original pattern. One thing God reminds us in Jesus is that life is personal. Life is about personal relationships. Jesus embodies the truth that the One God is himself a unified community of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

As Jesus came to seek the lost who do not want to be found so he came to reunify us to the very source of Life. The salvation Jesus brings is ontological not political. It is organic not programmatic.

Jesus is the true vine who reunites us to the vital force that raises the dust of the earth, the inorganic atoms and molecules of creation, into the light of life. That life at its source is eternal. It is eternal because it derives from the very nature of the Eternal. Moses, the prophets and the apostles learned from observation, experience and reflection that the essence of the Eternal is love. That love is personal, universal and unconditional. That love became a particular human being in Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is the glory of God who calls us out of the terror of the impersonal into the personal reality of the universe. Jesus is the glory of God who finds us and restores to us the original blessing of eternal life. Jesus is the glory of God who so fills us with himself that we become the glory of God ourselves.

We become the glory of God as we live and move and have our being in the Way of love Jesus embodies. That Way of love is the three fold path of worship on the seventh day the Father designed into the universe and our souls, active compassionate service to those in need, and personal growth and transformation.

We can only follow this threefold path of love as we abide in the pattern of love. The pattern is Jesus.

How do we abide in Jesus?

We make a choice. In fact, we make a series of choices.

The first and most potent choice is to be where God has designed us to be on the day he designed for us to immerse ourselves in eternal life. Worship at the altar of sacrifice on the appointed day is the font of every blessing. It is at the altar that Jesus quite literally infuses his own divine life into our souls through the blessed sacrament of his body and blood.

The second choice is to learn from the Divine Helper, the Holy Spirit to pray. Prayer is a conversation with God under the inspiration of God. The best and most fulfilling life giving prayer is the prayer Jesus himself prayed: Heavenly Father, not my will but Thy will be done.

We abide as we enter into the personal relationship God designed us to enjoy. The relationship fills us with life and immerses us in joy. Jesus is very practical in his teaching. Until he returns we will experience the duality of pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, productivity and stagnation, life and death.  Jesus also encourages us by telling us that as we abide in him, as we choose to live  in him and follow the Way he sets before us, we will experience the joy of salvation in the here and now of our journey through life.

Jesus sets the Way before as he says. I am the true vine- abide in me.