Have you ever tried to grow a tree from a seed before? It is a painstaking and slow process that will try your patience. My family once helped grow an apple tree from just one small seed. It was fun to see the finished product, but to my 5-year-old self at the time, it took WAY too long to happen! It was years until it was a full tree! Can’t it just grow and get it over with already?
Any tree takes years to grow strong and full. The trees on the outside of the parking lot of this building have been growing there for much longer than any of us would care to wait. Yet, they have grown. They have been nourished by the sun in its radiance, watered by the white clouds above, and tilled by the many squirrels, earth worms, and moles that live around them. And they have grown. Imagine the things that those trees have seen, the storms that they have weathered, and, perhaps, the children that their branches have held. Yet, one thing is amazing about these trees: it was not by human hands or human efforts that they have grown.
I.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” The words of the Gospel according to Saint John today come in a long string of important lessons that Jesus is teaching His disciples. He teaches them about who His Father is, who the Holy Spirit is, and how exactly He as the incarnate Son of God fits into that picture. This agricultural metaphor that Jesus uses provides a striking image, because He is basically saying that regardless of where we come from and regardless of our particular circumstances, the people of God all must abide in Jesus in order to grow as branches of God. Also, this passage is Christ-centered. Because in Jesus’ teaching, He places Himself as the sustainer and feeder of the entire world. As Saint John said earlier in his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word…all things came into being through Him.” And apart from the Source of Creation, nothing can grow.
Without the radiance of the sun, the trees die and bear no fruit.
II.
We all have experienced hunger, in some form or another. We get hungry every day! From the tiniest baby to the strongest professional athlete, we all become hungry when we have been removed from food for a while. Yet, the people in the world who know hunger better than most of us are the people who have no ability to access food. People who suffer from hunger are far more prone to death from preventable sicknesses, such as measles, malaria, the common cold, and many more. In fact, by current estimates, nearly 4.5 million children world-wide will die from hunger-related causes just in this year alone.
You may be surprised to hear that one of the poorest and most depressed parts of the United States is very close to us: Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The poverty rate of Pine Bluff, according to a recent study of unemployment and poverty rates, is a staggering 24.4%, meaning that 24 out of every 100 people who live there subsist below the poverty line.
But poverty is not simply a physical thing that we experience. Sometimes, the hunger we feel is not for food. It is for love. How many of us have felt lonely? How many of us have experienced what it is like to not have someone who will listen to us, someone who will take us in their arms and love us as beloved sons and daughters? How many of us have struggled with acceptance of ourselves? All of these things are hungers that cannot simply be satisfied by physical food: it can only be cured by the spiritual food of unconditional love.
When we think of poverty and hunger, we sometimes think of those places far from home, when in fact we come to realize that hunger is everywhere, and not simply the places overseas. It is indeed on our doorsteps.
III.
But history is filled with the reality that God provides. God always provides. And boy does God’s provision come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Jesus feeds crowds of thousands of people simply with the breaking of the loaves and the giving of the fish. Jesus turns water into wine for the enjoyment of the patrons at a local wedding. Jesus heals the blind, gives strength to the limbs of the crippled, and reverses death upon itself in His glorious resurrection!
Jesus truly is like the sun, shining His light into the world and sustaining all that lives within it. And by the Holy Spirit of God, the followers of Jesus Christ were given the sustaining power of God’s provision and love. Think of the miracles that happened in the Acts of the Apostles. The Holy Spirit allowed Saint Peter to heal a lame beggar who had been crippled from his youth. Saint Phillip was directed by the Holy Spirit to the Ethiopian eunuch who needed guidance in his reading of the prophet Isaiah. And many more examples can be found in the lives of the saints of our Holy Tradition.
Jesus has shined His light down upon us, so that we, as tender trees, may grow and lift up our leaves to bear the fruit of righteousness and love.
IV.
And Jesus is right here in the midst of Northwest Arkansas as well. Think about the amazing things that Jesus has empowered the Church to do through Magdalene House in Fayetteville, a home for women recovering from violence, prostitution, addiction, and incarceration. These women are being fed both physically and spiritually by the love of God that lives in the people who support that ministry.
We don’t even have to look beyond our own doors to see Jesus’ sustaining power. The Wednesday food pantry and the Wednesday free meal feed the poor and less fortunate people in our community. This is a shining example of simple food being provided for people who have need by the saints who live just down the street in our neighborhoods.
When we, the followers of Jesus Christ, see how much Jesus sustains us and that He is our true vine, we discover that we (the branches) have been given so much grace that we can hardly count the instances where we see Jesus today. We see Him in the lives of the people we work with, the people we feed, the people who feed us, and most of all, in the love that we have for one another.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, let the light of the Son of God shine down upon us to grow our love. Let us feed the people God puts in our way with bread that sustains their bodies and love that sustains their spirit. Let us seek those who are homeless with compassion and not just feed them with physical food, but with the fruit of conversation, engagement, and loving acceptance. Let us see the stressed out woman at the grocery store as a tender tree, planted by God who needs the fruit of encouragement in her hectic life. Let us bear the fruit of patience with our children who take up so much of our time and see them as the tender saplings who are still in need of nourishment as they grow in the knowledge and love of God.
We are all trees planed and nourished by God. So bear good fruit. And may God the Father be glorified in this: that we bear much fruit and become Jesus’ disciples. For He is our vine; and we are His branches.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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