Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
May 10, 2015
Scripture: John 15:9-17
What kind of fruit will not spoil? Fruit, by its very nature, is delicate, transient. Precious because it will not last: find a perfect peach in July, sun ripened and juicy, and you’d best eat it right away; savor the juices as they run down your chin; fill up your mouth with the honey sweet pulp. Tomorrow, it will turn mealy and brown, infested by fruit flies and no good for anything but the compost pile. Go raspberry picking in September: fill up your trays with those oh-so-delicate, ripe, red berries and get ready for a feeding frenzy: eat them on oatmeal; in English trifle, in smoothies, on salads, or mixed with cream. For days you feast on the tender/juicy fruit, in a race to consume all the sweetness before the berries turn to mush. There’s no saving them ‘til next Tuesday, or until the Sunday after next when you have guests coming to dinner – as lovely as it would be to share the fruit of your harvest. Oh, no: best to throw a raspberry feast right now or not at all. Fresh fruit does not last.
So what could Jesus possibly have meant, when he directed his followers to bear fruit that will last? What kind of fruit did he have in mind? Jesus: who had such a way with words; Jesus: who used ordinary things like barley loaves and fish, copper coins and sheep to paint the most extraordinary pictures of Divine Love. “The Reign of God is like a mustard seed,” he said. “And like a woman who has lost her last coin.” “It’s like a pearl buried in a field…” Jesus knew how to turn a phrase.
But this time, one wonders if he has missed the mark. Whether he might have found a more appropriate metaphor, like, ‘build a stone wall that will not crumble.” Stone – now there’s something that lasts. Maybe he was merely distracted. After all, he’d just shared his last supper with his friends. He had washed their feet, cradled them in his hands and tenderly wiped away the grime that must have accumulated as his disciples walked with him from town to town, listening to him interpret the scriptures; watching him welcome and bless and heal; witnessing God’s Love in the Flesh. Jesus knew that his time was short, and this: this was his last sermon. His Farewell Discourse, his final instructions, the Big Finale before he was taken away: betrayed, arrested, beaten…crucified. Maybe he’d gotten his metaphors a bit mixed up, as he contemplated his own death, like yesterday’s peach, fallen to the earth.
Then again, maybe he knew exactly what he was saying. Maybe we just have to stick with the story all the way to the end: after the fruit falls, after the tender flesh spoils, when there is nothing left but the pit sunk into the dark dirt, that pit might just put down roots; shoots unfurl and reach for the sun. Buds turn to blossoms, and blossoms, in their season, turn again to fruit: fruit, which is precious, after all, not because it is sweet or tender, but because it contains the seed.[1] Seed for tomorrow’s fruit, just waiting to germinate. And we: we are the gardeners.
Jesus said, “Remember the root command: Love one another.” That’s Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of verse 17. And it works here, unearths the substance of this initially puzzling image: The root command, the one that anchors us in place; the one that feeds the plant that produces the fruit that contains the seed: love one another. Love one another, and bear fruit that will last.
But that word ‘love’ can be as pesky as the whole fruit metaphor, used and misused, romanticized by Shakespeare and commercialized by Hallmark and Godiva. Yes, I love a box of dark chocolate covered cherries, but I don’t think that’s the kind of love Jesus had in mind. He used the word agape – which means other-focused love. Love that expects nothing in return. Nine times he uses the word. In this, his last sermon, Jesus’ last opportunity to coach his students, he tells his disciples to agape each other: to pay attention, to abide, to occupy the space that Jesus occupied – like taking his seat on the patch of grass where he had sat and listened with love and grace to countless folks. To agape someone is to focus on her, to savor his story, as though it was precious, and might not last.
A week ago Saturday, the Rev. Day McCallister and I co-facilitated a ‘Sacred Conversation on Race’ with folks who attend churches in the New Haven region of our denomination, the United Church of Christ. As we began, we said this: Conversations about race and racism are hard; they touch tender places in and between us. Along the way, we can find ourselves feeling anxious or defensive. So as we enter this sacred space, we invite you to “lean in with wonder.” To try on someone else’s experience; to wonder what it would be like; to be curious. In other words, we invited folks to agape one another, to practice other-focused love, especially for those on the margins.
I recently had the privilege of witnessing this kind of love as practiced by a Saugatuck member; I share the experience with her permission. Rose Jordan just spent some time in Baltimore, Maryland, attending Johns Hopkins Hospital. Earlier this week, over glasses of iced tea, she told me story after story about the people she encountered there: a gifted surgeon who began life in the United States as an undocumented Mexican immigrant; a physician from Iran, who was working to save lives here, even as the U.S. plans drone attacks on his home country; an elderly African-American woman who had suffered a stroke, and who spent the night surrounded by attentive staff and then by her eight devoted children. As Rose described each person, I was struck by the way that she had leaned in with wonder: had found herself swept up in the lives of those she met, until they, not she, became the focus of her trip.
It takes grace to love like that – and guts, to allow others to work their way into our hearts and shift the way we see the world, to allow seeds of empathy to take root, and grow. This kind of love is not so much an emotion as it is an intention, an act: Agape is as tangible as crying someone else’s tears; as concrete as walking down someone else’s street; as risky as standing up for someone else’s life. That’s what Jesus said.
The day before I visited with Rose, I learned that someone has been driving around Westport, after dark, anonymously tossing fliers onto driveways. Single sheets of white paper sealed in zip-lock bags and weighted down by pebbles, the fliers read, #WhiteLivesMatter. At first, this may sound innocuous. Lacking context, one might wave it off. “Sure, White lives matter. ALL lives matter.” But there’s more to the story. The line #WhiteLivesMatter emerged as a response to the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which first started trending on Twitter right after the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, a verdict that conveyed to many, that Treyvon Martin’s life did not matter. BlackLivesMatter started out as a kind of love letter to the Black community, a word of assurance in time of grief.
There is a lot to unpack here, and I hope we’ll do so together, over time. But here’s a place to start: we can lean in with wonder, focus not on our own whiteness (for those of us who are white) but on the pain of African-American communities that are feeling systematically diminished and dehumanized. Put in context, #WhiteLivesMatter makes it sound as if white folks are the ones who are under siege. But in this culture, our dignity has not been threatened; our health, our access to education, our safety have not been jeopardized, as has been the case in communities of color. In the words of one clergy colleague, “It’s not true that all lives matter, until Black lives matter.” There is much work to do; many stories to learn; systems to change, seeds of love and empathy to plant.
I’m telling you all this, because I think it has something to do with who we are at Saugatuck Church and what fruit we bear. I’m telling you because I believe that we can be a community that practices agape, other-focused-love; that we can (and already do) lean in with wonder. We can be among those who weed out the fear and bigotry and plant those seeds of empathy, because we know something about the love of Christ. This is not easy work, this loving one another, but as I tell my children, “We can do hard things!”
In fact, yesterday, at the Homes with Hope Castles in the Sand event, Saugatuck Church won a golden shovel for the Most Ambitious Project! We sculpted an entire neighborhood, complete with harbor, bridge, lighthouse, church, mosque, temple, labyrinth, park benches, woods, beach and homes…
What could be more appropriate, as we lean into our own future, than to embrace our role as builders, as gardeners here in Westport, to plant those seeds of empathy and love, hope and wonder; to allow them to sink deep into dark dirt, where they can put down roots; until shoots unfurl, buds turn to blossoms and blossoms, in their season, turn again to fruit. Ambitious? You bet! But Christ calls us to this work, called us to bear fruit – precious, seed-bearing, life-renewing, fruit. There’s no waiting ‘til next Tuesday, or until the Sunday after next. Oh, no: best to throw a feast right now. Best to gather the people, ALL the people: to hear the stories, pass the bread, offer the cup, share the love, eat the fruit, toss the seeds… and watch them grow!
May it be so. Thanks be to God! Amen.
[1] Rev. John M. Edgerton, “Vine and Branches,” sermon preached at Old South Church, Boston, May 3, 2015.
Scripture
John 15:9-17 – The Message
9-10 “I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.
11-15 “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
16 “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. [fruit that will last.] As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.
17 “But remember the root command: Love one another.