It has been well established that I am not a gardener. I love gardens, I love planning gardens, buying plants for gardens, watching things grow but when it comes to tending the garden I kind of fail.  I do  know  as anyone who has ever tried to grow something that just because we want something to grow doesn’t guarantee that it will. We also know that getting our roses to bloom our raspberries to bear fruit means cutting back the canes; that encouraging the growth of the tomato plants means pinching off the gangly stems; that getting a second bloom from the impatiens, or the pansies, or the sweet peas and zinnias, means cutting back the early flowers. If something is growing where it doesn’t belong, we pull it out and call it a weed. If something is dead, or not growing well, we cut it off. If something is too big, or too small, we move it, stake it, tie it back. Unless we are talking about my garden where the word wild is the operative word. But I am hoping to work on my taming.   Sometime you need to tame. I have some lilac bushes under the windows of the house, I guess they got just a little on the large unruly side as  they were acting kind of like curtains.  It was decided that they would get a little pruning. After some research it was discovered that they could take a lot of pruning and the job left just some sticks on roots. I was sure that was the end of it. But they grew back with a vengeance.   

This is what John’s gospel describes of God and the disciples’ learning process.  

Gardening is not an armchair activity, and neither is faith. There are choices to be made. It is difficult work.
 

I Am the true vine and my father is the vine grower.   Every branch which bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.   The branch grows strong in the vine and tended to by the vine grower.  We are not separate from the vine we are a part of it. 

In a vine, branches are almost completely indistinguishable from one another; it is impossible to determine where one branch stops and another branch starts. All run together as they grow out of the central vine. What this vine image suggests about community, then, is that there are no free-standing individuals in the community that we are all connected.  

Here those words “ I am the vine Says Jesus, “ Abide in me.” Could he have possibly come up with a more intimate, more intense metaphor for our relationship with him? Christianity is more than a list of great ideas, a set of religious principles. Christianity means to be in a relationship with Jesus and God.

 It is not something we do it is something we are.

1^st John drives this home. As one theologian interprets the text. People who walk about prattling on about how tight they are with God, then fail to walk God’s way of love with their sisters and brothers are liars.”  We are not just to think about love, we are to embody love.

Jesus is the vine God is the vine grower and we are the branch and we each bear fruit the gifts we bring to God and his service.  God challenges us to grow and those are things which cause us to change to push our growing edges.  To examine how we are a part of the vine. 

The Scripture also speaks of pruning. 

 We can ask ourselves   what is it in our lives that we need to prune away so that we are able to send out new shoots and let new vines bear fruit.  In asking this question  We may find that we have some pruning to do in our lives. What are we doing to help ourselves to bear more fruit to grow.   What are we doing as a church as a community that professes its faith?   Are we sending out new shoots?

The danger is to fall back on the old deadwood sayings. “we’re to old we’re to small. The negative We are. 

 It is as that Great Philosopher Yoda a character created by George Lucas for the Star Wars films who said. While giving Jedi training to Luke Skywalker,  "Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes, even between the land and the ship." (submitted by David K. Miller)

 "Size matters not. Look at many of the congregations within the church today. . Judge them by their size do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For our ally is the Spirit of God and a powerful ally it is. Life gives it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the God around us between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere.

When the church canonized St. Clare, the young woman who was the friend and spiritual companion of St Francis in Assisi, her dossier read, “Her very life was for others a school of instruction and doctrine. 

In this book of life others learned the rule of life in this mirror of life others beheld the path of their own life.