How much fruit?
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (April 28, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
The peaches in the community garden did not look like this.
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Jesus said, “Every branch that bears fruit [my Father] prunes to make it bear more fruit.” from John 15:1-8
Edited Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.
It's springtime, it's gardening season, right? I can tell because I have poison ivy on my hands again, but it's not as bad as that other time. You guys remember! For those who weren't here, it was my very first Sunday at St. James' and I spent the week before weeding this garden bed that turned out to be exclusively poison ivy. It was unfortunate that the Gospel reading that Sunday didn't have any lepers in it because I would've been a really apt illustration.
But anyway, so it's spring. Those who like to garden—even if you don't garden—you're probably out enjoying things, growing and looking ahead to the summer fruit.
In our community garden there's this beautiful peach tree, and last summer, all the gardeners were really excited because it was finally fruiting. It was full of fruit. Every branch had dozens and dozens of peaches on it. It was so beautiful and so exciting.
And as the time for harvest came, the peaches were still small and they were not the color you would think. They were still green, but they were definitely starting to fall off the branches. And the ones that were still on the tree, they were definitely ripe. So the gardener said, okay, we better pick them.
And we collected all these peaches. Literally a barrel full! And the gardeners dragged it out front of the garden, put it by a picnic table and sent out a note: come and get peaches, free peaches! So Christopher and I went over there with a couple of bags and we filled our bags with peaches and we brought them back to the kitchen and we said, well, these seem to be ripe. We're into heirloom fruit. We eat green peaches, whatever. So we took a bite.
They were not good.
So that was disappointing.
I said, I guess we should throw these in the compost. They're no good. And Christopher said, no, no, we can fix this. So he took all the peaches, he put them in a giant pot, he added a five pound bag of sugar, and he turned on the fire and he cooked it for two days straight, and the house smelled amazing! And we were getting more and more excited. And finally he strained everything. And he said, we have peach butter. And we said, okay, great, peach butter. So we both took a big spoonful.
It was not good.
So there was nothing we could do with all these beautiful peaches. They all had to go in the compost. And what a shame, right? The promise of the summer—that we would have dozens and dozens and dozens of these fruits—we had no fruit whatsoever that we could enjoy!
And in talking to people who know a thing or two about tending to an orchard, it turns out one person said to me, well, when the fruits started appearing on the branch, did you pluck away most of them? And I said, no. Why would they do that? Why would you pluck away fruit that's about to grow? They said, because if you pluck away most of the fruit, the fruit that's left will take all the energy from the tree.
So everything that's being dispersed across like dozens and dozens of peaches will be poured into that one peach and make it juicy and full. It'll grow to its full size and it'll be full of sugar. It'll be all the things that you hope for in a peach!
But it requires taking something away. And not taking away dead leaves or a branch that's not doing anything, but taking away what looks like this really good stuff, right? It looks like the hope and the promise of all this fruit, but most of it has to be pruned away in order for that tree to bear, the fruit that it's designed to bear. And this is a lot like our lives.
Most of the time when we have a lot going on in our lives, when we get to those points where we feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or burnt out, it's not because of a bunch of stupid junk that we know we shouldn't be doing anyway. So much of the time, it's because we're trying to do all these good, important, meaningful things that have to be done. Who's going to do them if I don't do them?
The temptation is not of the obviously bad or useless, but the temptation of the good and the desirable, the fruitful! We find ourselves spread too thin:the energy of our lives, the sweetness of our lives, the joy of our lives. When we try to put it into too many different fruits, not only do we not get those dozens and dozens of fruits that we expected, but sometimes it feels we're completely drained and have nothing to show for it. Dozens of green peaches instead of a few full and ripe ones.
And yet, it is really not easy to pluck the fruits that seems so good, desirable and important. Not to overextend this metaphor, but the world is hungry. Things need to be done. And it's especially difficult, I think, to talk about this in a church! Church will always ask you to do one more thing. There's always another invitation at church, and we know God calls us here to serve. That makes it really difficult to know what fruit is ours to bear. But this is the place where we come to learn to practice our faith, and that includes sometimes knowing what God is already pruning away from the branch of our lives.
And sometimes God's invitation doesn't look like doing one more thing, but letting one thing go. Even something that really needs to be done.
It's our invitation to realize that the more we can bring ourselves fully to the things that God truly asks us to do, then that fruit will be all that it is meant to be.
It is so hard to let things go, and it's hard to know which things to let go. The good news here is found in Jesus' metaphor. He says, "My father will prune every branch that bears fruit so that it may bear more." He uses this image of a vine and branches, reminding us that we are meant to abide with Jesus, to abide in God.
Think of yourself as this vine. What would it feel like? There are Psalms about this. "I am a green olive tree planted in the house of God." To be so deeply rooted in the energy and the power and the love of God, to feel that flowing through our lives, to truly abide in the love of God. I don't think we would be able to be afraid of letting some things fall away.
It's feeling isolated, it's feeling apart from God—that's what leaves us hanging on to those things that feel so essential, which God might be inviting us to let go.
If we can plug into God's love, we might find that we are not afraid to let some things be pruned away, right? John's letter says, "There is no fear in love because perfect love drives out fear." If that doesn't make you know that we've never really experienced perfect love... Because we all feel fear, and above all, we can feel fear of letting go what seems important and necessary in our lives. But we are called to allow God to prune away. So that we can allow that fullness of God to flow through us into what we are truly meant to do.
[At this point in the sermon, one of our littlest members came up to play near the altar.] Some of us are meant to serve at God's altar in one way or another, I'm sure! It takes trust. And when you see a little kid come up, he feels good and safe here. He feels connected to the love of God here. I don't mean to make you into a illustration, buddy [addressing the kiddo], but this is the calling! It's that sense of ourselves connected to the vine. We don't have anything to fear. We can let go of what's exhausting us.
If we're connected to the vine, someone else will bear that fruit. Someone who is meant to grow that fruit. God has brought that person. God has already put that person on the vine, right?
We're all connected to the love of God. Together we bear fruit that will last.
I want to invite you this week to think about, to notice: what are all the fruits that I'm trying to bear? Where has that effort become too great for me? What is God inviting me to allow to fall away?
Because we do trust God. We trust God to provide everything we need for the fruit that God calls us to bear. The world is hungry. We will bear fruit when we're connected to that growing love of God. Amen.