Always Being Reformed, May 10, 2009

John 15:1-8
Acts 18:26-40
Different from several Mothers' Days past, when we have contended with SNOW,
this has been a week of Pruning, Weeding and Cutting Back Gardens.
Three weeks ago, I took my mower in, to prepare for Spring, changing the plugs and oil, sharpen the blade, and the Shopkeeper looked at me and said “You don't want this back for 6 or 8 weeks do you?” The temperatures have toyed with 80 and the grass and weeds have grown as I tried to wait, until going in this weekend, where the Serviceman said “It cannot be fixed, the gas tank leaks, the carburetor sputters and coughs, it's not worth putting money into.” Then I interpreted, “Is there anything different from last summer. The gas tank has leaked for a long time. The carburetor sputters, but with cleaning, it still works.” And an hour later, I was cutting my lawn.

The text from John describes that PRUNING is different from mowing and other forms of gardening. Throughout the Old Testament there are references to VINES and VINEYARDS and GARDENS, but always naming DECAY, that the Vineyard becomes overgrown, weeds grow up, the WinePress or Mower is broken.

Jesus words explain that the TRUE VINE is different from other plants in the Garden.
DENDRONS, that is the Greek Classification for Trees and Vines, are the only other VERTICALLY ORIENTED Creature in the garden of Creation. There are snakes and birds and fish, but only trees and vines and Humans are living beings standing upright.
Vines do not have a straight stem, and clear clean “dendrects” that is branched nerve endings.
Vines, like human lives are all twisted and jumbled and intertwined, but underneath all the branches, all the past growth and experience, there is ONE TRUE VINE.

Different from MOWING where we cut everything down to the stubble, and WEEDING where we pull everything out by the roots, or as in the parable separate at harvest to burn,
We need to understand that as the Vine Grows, there is OLD DEAD WOOD, there are CREEPY Vines and FRUIT-BEARING Vines, AND there is a GARDENER, who is God. If left untended, the old dead wood will rot and decay and become infested with parasites, so it must be continually cut back. If left untended all the vine's resources would be used by the Creeper Vine, that forever reaches out without direction and can without intent strangle the Fruit-Bearing Vines. So as a form of Cleansing the Garden, the Gardener prunes away the Old Dead Wood and the Creeper Vines, to allow the Fruit-Bearing branches to grow. Without Pruning, there would be no fruit. Painfully, there are times when what we see looks like bleeding stumps and weeping cut off vines, as the Gardener can and must cut deep. Branches, whether Fruit-Bearing, or Creepy, cannot grow cut-off from the TRUE VINE. There needs must be old wood from past years, to provide stability and strength; there must be creeping vines, lest the vine would never branch, reach out or grow. But when the gangly reachers and the dead wood get in the way, God cuts them back to encourage and motivate bearing FRUIT.

Often times, the CHURCH has been compared to a Family, particularly as MOTHER CHURCH. But the truth is that being a Mother is not only about carrying biology in your womb for 9 months. I would be the first to say that as a man, I do not know all that that is about, yet for me a Mother is about comforting and caring, as one who taught her children boys or girls to cook and to sew, to embroider and knit and garden, because these are BASIC SKILLS of life. If the Church is a family, we can be a pretty dysfunctional family! More, I think, Mother Church is walking along beside, waiting and willing to help interpret.

Faith is not simply DOING GOOD WORKS, as important as the Fruits we create are; the Means and the Foundations, the Vine and the Root, and the Gardener, are what determine the ENDS.
But the first point of the story of Philip and the Ethiopian is that READING the SCRIPTURES this Seeker (as educated as he was) was left with more questions than understanding. The Bible is not a text book of theory and philosophy, that reading one can know, grasp and understand as an EXPERT. Faith requires AMATEURS. AMATEURS are not EXPERTS, Amateur comes from the Latin Prefix AMA meaning to LOVE, and the Suffix TEUR meaning to WORK, so those who are motivated by a love of their work. As opposed to an EXPERT, EX being the Prefix for FORMER and SPURT being a term used in PLUMBING for a DRIP, and therefore an Old Drip. Two or Three gather together, sharing understanding and questions and experience. What pointless work it would have been, for Philip to have lectured to the Ethiopian were he not wanting to listen! And how helpless the Seeker was to find answers all on his own, he may as well have gone back to Ethiopia to read the Scriptures and search for understanding, as riding on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza, except that someone saw him on the Road and took interest in him and regardless of their differences began walking along side.

Is that not what we are Called to do, to walk alongside? We can read this, as a story from long long ago, in a place half-way round the world. And we are left believing the Prophecy of Isaiah, or the Birth, Death and Resurrection of Jesus are moving stories, but how different, if like Philip we interpret for one another and help one another to see, that faith is not simply about words, life is not a private matter but is to occur as work that we love doing.

We often read history, recognizing that our Nation was born out of struggle for independence over 230 years ago! That this Church was planted and nurtured by Missionaries visiting in the homes of 15 believers almost 208 yeas ago. But 800 years ago, when the Christian Faith was already 1200 years old, the Protestant Reformers in Europe questioned and risked working at what they loved. For us today, it is hard to imagine a time and place where the understandings of TRADITION of ORTHODOXY were so strong that the Church dared not risk celebrating worship in the language of the common culture, but only prayed, preached and sang in LATIN, though the people could not understand a word that was said. Hard for us to imagine a time when The Church questioned whether it would profane the Holy Scriptures to place the Bible in the Hands of Common People. Yet, how many ideas have been challenged and nurtured by those simple acts... Public Education for the Masses, the Printing Press, the spread of the Gospel to the Whole World. One of the great insights of those Reformers became the Watchwords of the Reformation, ECCLESIA REFORMATA SEMPER REFORMANDA. ORTHODOXY is straight forward to preserve, like the Shredded Wheat Commercial we stand against progress, against any and all change, clinging to the way things were hundreds if not thousands of years ago, never questioning in humility if we were ever wrong. But ECCLESIA REFORMATA, the Church which rather than calling itself ORTHODOX claims to be Reformed, SEMPER REFORMANDA is always being reformed. Too often, we have interpreted this as “The Church is Always Changing, or Always Open to Change” which as the High School latin scholars will tell us is wrong. ECCLESIA REFORMATA SEMPER REFORMANDA has an assumed pronoun, “The Church that calls itself Reformed IS FOREVER BEING REFORMED (by God).”

In all of this, there is a reality of God, whom we often forget. The Gardener, the Reformer, the One who suffers for us and died for us to live. We live in an exceptional time. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, and until Seminary had truly never heard of Adult baptism. Yet, in the last dozen years, we have baptized at least one if not several each year, who were not infants, who chose of their own desire to accept God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

One of my favorite stories, came when serving another church. We had a woman join the church, who three years later came with an odd story. When she had been a young woman she had been great with child, and a few days before term was not feeling well. She went to the doctor and they could get no fetal pulse, so the priest was called, who anointed the Mother's belly with the blessing of the sick. Three days later the baby was born alive and healthy. Her daughter was now 40 and had never been baptized. Her family were catholic, but she could not be baptized by a priest because of this. Determining that there is one true church and that she had not previously been baptized, but was wanting to be, we recognized we had water and celebrated her baptism.