Easter 5 (Mother’s Day)
May 10, 2009
Gather and Tend
by
John Christianson
John
-15:1-8
15:1”I
am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2He
removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit
he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3You
have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide
in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless
it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I
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. 6Whoever
does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches
are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If
you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it
will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by
this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
Ah
yes, the vine and the branches, the pruning and the fruit. I’ve visited this I AM passage from John
many times. Perhaps you have too. Sometimes I’ve concentrated on Jesus the
vine – other times on you and me, the branches. I’ve also analyzed the relationship between pruning and bearing
fruit. That’s very important.
What
I’ve ignored is the “vinegrower.” Jesus
says that’s the Father – always tending and gathering, tending and gathering.
- TENDING
means hoeing to control the
weeds and fertilizing to get
good growth. It also means pruning. Very uncomfortable for the branches, and
also very touchy! Skip pruning one
year and you get too many grapes, all small and poor quality. Try to catch up the next year with two
years pruning at once, and you end up with no grapes. And then there’s the challenge of
foxes. Apparently those critters
are as much trouble in the vineyard as they are in the chicken coop. Song of Solomon says:
Catch us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the
vineyards for our vineyards are in blossom.” [Song of Solomon 2:15]
Tending is very touchy business. It’s a good thing the Father does it.
- GATHERING
is touchy too. It has to be done
carefully, and it has to be done on time.
Too early and the grapes
don’t have enough sugar to make good wine. Too late and an
early autumn rainfall swells the grapes and splits them, and there’s no
harvest at all.
Tending
and gathering – a job that requires the vinegrower himself! It would be just too stressful for anybody
else.
Stress! Do you remember learning in school about human
reaction to stress. Let there be severe
stress for a human being, we were told, and there’s a sudden shot of adrenaline
in the body. The heart pounds, the breathing quickens, the hair stands on end
to conserve heat, and the person is prepared for “fight or flight”. If you
can’t defeat the enemy, then you’d better escape. It was carved in granite.
The conclusion of 100% scientific psychological studies: The human reaction to stress is the fight or
flight response.
Then,
maybe twenty years ago, one experimental psychologist noticed that all the
experiments had been on males. It was
probably not necessary to repeat the tests with females, but they did. And did they ever discover a
difference! The response of the human
female to stress was NOT “fight or flight;” it was “gather and tend,” like
circling the wagons when the wagon train is under attack, like a school of fish
clustering together when the predator attacks. “Gather and tend like the hen gathering her chicks under her
wings. Or “tending and gathering” like
the vinegrower, if you please, who, according to Jesus, was none other than his
Father .
Oh,
and by the way, Happy Mother’s Day.
Let’s
draw the parallel just a little farther.
There’s a word in the Bible that we hardly notice. Compassion! In the English, it’s a good word, but
hardly a word that causes your head to spin.
In Hebrew, it is the first love that any of us experience. Two Hebrew words: răchăm and rechoom. The first word, răchăm, is where we all started life – the womb. The second word, rechoom, is the love each of us enters life already
enveloped by. It’s what stirs a
mother’s heart when she sees her new-born baby lying in the crib kicking, and
she recognizes that kick from her răchăm.
Solomon
understood what that was all about.
Remember when he proposed to solve the quarrel of two women over a baby
by cutting the baby in two and giving half to each?
But the woman whose son was alive
said to the king——“Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not
kill him!” 1 Kings
3:26]
Why did she say that? The Bible reads that she said it
because compassion for her son burned within
her.
Now guess what Hebrew word here is
translated, “compassion?” Right! It’s a form of the word rechoom – womb love!
God has arranged it so that each of us entered this
world to be cared for one who was filled with rechoom – womb love for us. Eventually a good Dad develops it too, but your mother had it
first. Of course, didn’t she have a
nine month head start?
Rechoom, womb love! Oh, and by the way, Happy Mother’s Day!
But I’ll tell you a strange thing. Almost every time this word occurs in the
Bible it applies not to a mother, as in the story about Solomon, but to
God. Who “gathers and tends?” The vinegrower and the mother do.
Rechoom, womb love! Oh, and by the way, Happy Mother’s Day!
Now I hope that none of you Dads rush
home and produce a home-made Mother’s day card with an original verse like:
I’ll be
a loving father –
We’ll be fed and clothed and shod.
You, to
be a loving mother,
Only
need to be like God.
And
Jesus, what’s Jesus like? In our text,
he’s the vine that we branches grow on.
Last Sunday’s gospel described him as a shepherd – the Good
Shepherd. And what does a shepherd
do? Scripture says he “gathers the lambs in his arms,” and he
“tends his sheep.” Gather
and tend – the woman’s reaction to stress.
I remember hearing about the world evangelist who
traveled to Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka.
A large crowd gathered to hear him.
He didn’t know a word of their language. They didn’t know English.
But he had an excellent translator to interpret his message to them,
sentence by sentence. He spoke on the
shepherd who went searching for the one sheep that was lost out of the
flock. The people were visibly much
moved. He told them they were like that
lost lamb and God was like the shepherd.
Now there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen.
He invited all who wanted such a shepherd to come forward. The people thronged for the altar call.
Afterwards he thanked the translator for doing such an
effective job. He’d never seen anybody
so moved by this picture of a lost sheep.
The translator said, “Well, actually there isn’t a
single sheep on the entire island of Ceylon.
The people have no idea of what either a sheep or a shepherd is. I changed it to a mother water buffalo and
her calf.”
Rechoom, womb love! Oh, and by the way, Happy Mother’s Day.
So
fathers are prepared for “fight or flight.”
That’s good. Sometimes we need that. Mothers are prepared to gather and
tend. That’s good. Always
we need that.
Vinegrowers
tend and gather, like mothers. We have
a heavenly Father who is always doing that for us.
Shepherds
gather and tend, like mothers. We have
a Savior who is always doing that for us.
We
Dads shouldn’t spend all our time fighting or flighting. Our children also need us to gather and tend
sometimes, just like mothers.
And you men and women who are childless, do you also
have a capacity for rechoom , womb love?
Then gather and tend. We all
need you in our family here.
But, especially, you mothers, take a
little time today to be appreciated and loved, and then get back to that
precious activity that seems to come more naturally to you than to
anybody. Gather and tend!
Rechoom, womb love! Oh, and by the
way, Happy Mother’s Day!
Amen.
(Comments to John at john.christianson@stjohnsofmound.org )