PREACHING THE LECTIONARY: THE McGREGOR PAGE
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Easter 5
May 18, 2003
Deuteronomy 4: 32-40
Acts 8: 26-40
Psalm 22: 25-31
1 John 4: 7-21
John 15: 1-8
To graft a branch onto a vine you must cut open the vine. To graft a branch you must cut off the branch. Jesus was cut open, his hands, his feet, his side. The source of his life, his blood, became available. If anyone is cut off from their root and grafted into his body, his life blood nourishes them.
I had never thought about the wounds of Christ exactly that way before. My life is grafted into his, tissue for tissue, hand to hand and side to side. It is his blood that flows in me, not just the closed system of my circulatory system. The roots I had before I was grafted into Christ were shallow and spindly, entangled in culture and self-will. The vine he offers is rooted in heaven, and now so am I. Rooted in heaven I am free to bear much fruit, viz. "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol." (Galatians 5:22-23)
Moses asks the Hebrew people, "Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?" (Deuteronomy 4:34) The Gospel writer might ask, "Has any god ever allowed himself to be pierced so that he might graft you into himself?"
After describing our suffering but not knowing it to be God's suffering without knowing God's mightiest act the Psalmist proclaims, "Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it." (Psalm 22:31)
So, a black eunuch cut himself from his roots there on the road to Gaza and was grafted into Christ. The Coptic Church bears witness to the fruit that he bore thereafter.
Fruit is not the achievement of the branch. We branches fret so about achievement. "It is too hard to make an 'A' in your class," was one criticism I received teaching Old Testament at the College of the Southwest. "Never mind being rooted in learning, we want to squeeze out straight A's." Life gets harder as we squeeze it for its last drop of value. Corporations earn billions by squeezing employees for more value. The General Conference of The United Methodist Church squeezes the Annual Conference. The Annual Conference squeezes the preachers and churches for more achievement (money). This is what happens to branches that have been cut off and thrown into the press.
But, we have been grafted into Christ. Fruitfulness is our nature! Instead of squeezing harder, let us meditate longer on that pierced body into which our bodies have been grafted. Feel the flow of blood enriching our blood, washing over our every cell -- not a vitality rooted in our deteriorating environment but one fed from above.
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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