Better Vines and Gardens

Grapes are popular in the Middle East; have been for thousands of years.  In Palestine, a young vine is not allowed to fruit for the first three years.  When mature, it is pruned in December and January.  It bears two kinds of branches, one that bears fruit and one that does not.  The branches that do not bear fruit are pruned back, so that they will drain away none of the plant’s strength.  The vine can not produce the crop it is capable of producing without this drastic pruning.

The wood of the vine also has the curious characteristic that it is good for nothing, because it is too soft.  So farmers simply destroy it by piling it up and burning it in bonfires.

Jesus knew all this.  And he notes that his followers are just like the branches of a grapevine.  Some of them are lovely fruit-bearing branches of Christ.  Others are useless because they bear no fruit at all.

Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower” (v. 1).  God is the source, the creator of all things, the owner of the vineyard.  Jesus is the living connection to the source, and the connection is made through love.  We are the branches.  Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you” (v. 4).

Now we know this connection can be broken.  Like the fragile intravenous line of life, the line of love can become clogged.  We can all lose touch with the renewing, sanctifying power of love.

Every spring, my father would make me toil in his garden.  I had the task of turning over the entire plot, which covered most of our backyard.  Since pop was too cheap to buy a roto-tiller, I had to use the old fashioned human-propelled shovel.  And I would sweat and gripe my way through the season, not much wanting to be grafted into the agricultural life of the serf.

We also know that we can be reconnected, grafted back into the vine by an infusion of love, from wherever, in God’s great providence, God chooses to send it into our lives.

For me, my mother helped keep me connected to the vine.  After spending hours in the mud taking orders from pop, I would head into the house and clean up.  There, mom would take the time to explain how much pop loved his garden and how he wanted it to produce the greatest quantity and quality of veggies.  She told me how pop could no longer physically do some of the work and how important it was that I help out.  And, on particularly grueling days, she would always make one of my favorite dishes.

It is quite easy to become disconnected from the vine.  We live in a society where there are lots of toxic elements constantly invading the vine, clogging the connection.  We see the effects of Covid-19, how it has displaced us and disconnected us from one another.  Life is not as it should be right now.

The history of humanity is about the Fall – the fall into unconnectedness.  There was a time – called paradise – when the whole natural world, including humans, was without boundaries.  Love flowed through all things and there was an awareness that all of life was sacred and connected.  When humanity fell into sin, the age of the ego began.  And folks separated themselves from other folks.  We see the results of this disconnectedness all around us today.

To use an analogy from plant life, disconnected people are like annuals.  They can be kept under control.  They die out each year, so they will never spread like a vine.  A vine is a perennial and will eventually cover the earth if it is not uprooted, poisoned or cut off.  How does one reconnect all the broken and wounded branches?  It is a rather mysterious process, but we know God is at work doing this all the time.  One of the ways He does it is through the love of mothers and the love that children bring out in their mothers.

During my younger years, my family would often visit my grandmother, who lived a few hours drive from us.  I always felt a great remoteness in her presence.  I had no inkling how I might connect with her.  My mother’s relationship with her mother also seemed a bit formal and aloof.  I could always sense that mom also struggled with being connected to grandmother.

Nevertheless, years later, when grandmother died, mom gave a most profound and touching eulogy at her funeral.  Somehow, over the years, mom had been able to put the pieces together, to understand the soul-work her mother was doing, and reach herself for the vine that connected her to a love that fed and drew her mother in as well.  Out of that love, mom reinvented her childhood so that it, and the rest of her life then, were filled with a love that had been dormant.

Now we can’t do this connection thing for ourselves.  It is mysterious.  Christ says that, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (v. 16).  But we can earnestly and constantly seek it.  We can build soil.

One time, in an effort to expand his garden, my father decided to remove a concrete base that had obviously belonged to a long-gone garage or barn.  I muttered something about child labor laws, then began the work with sledgehammer in hand.  I hated every minute of it.  Finally, though, I removed all the cement, leaving the dirt of the ground exposed.

Then, the next spring, from beneath where unsightly concrete had been for so long, there miraculously came up all sorts of colorful wild flowers.  A veritable garden of paradise had once been planted there and had waited years, beneath the cement, to grow again.

There is so much power and endurance in the life of the vine.  And it can wait.  But we should look to it, and not make it wait too long.

God lives and new life is constantly springing up, reconnecting us to God, renewing us in love and reconnecting us with each other.  Thank God for the enormous power and endurance of God’s love.  And, especially today, we can cherish and celebrate about how much of that love God has vested in mothers.  Wearied and injured as they may be by the journey, we yet give them great honor for the life they bore or are bearing along the way.

I don’t believe there ever was a mother who gave her children any less love than she could.  But that’s why it’s so important that mothers be connected to the true vine, and why that connection should be nurtured and protected.  For the life in the vine runs both ways.  The connection or reconnection can happen through a mother’s child, too, and often does.

God knows, mothers should be very much loved.  And so should we all.  For therein is our joy, the fruits of our lives, and thereby is the Father glorified (v. 8).

Oh, you may be wondering what became of my father’s garden.  Well, after each spring of hard work and grumbling came a summer and autumn of grand harvests.  And there was always so much that we went door-to-door, giving the bounty away to grateful neighbors.  And they knew my parents by their produce.