Reconciliation: Unbinding Hearts

Reconciliation:  Unbinding Hearts

NW MN Synod Assembly—Saturday, June 9, 2018

Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Moorhead, MN

Mark 3:20-35

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

When I was a lad growing up on a farm in southern Minnesota, there was one unforgivable sin.

The worst thing I could do on our farm, especially in the spring as we tilled the soil to prepare for planting--the unforgivable sin was getting a tractor stuck in the mud.

Why was that so bad?  Because if you get a tractor “good and stuck” in the mud, you can’t get it unstuck.  Someone—namely my dad--would have to stop what he was doing and come with another tractor and the heaviest-duty log chain he had, to get me unstuck…

…and if my Dad happened to get too close to the same mud I was stuck in, he might get stuck, too.   And then we’d have to call a neighboring farmer or the local tow-truck guy to come out to our farm and get us BOTH unstuck.

When you’re really stuck, you’re stuck, and you can’t get yourself unstuck. 

Here in this story from Mark 3, all sorts of folks seem stuck.

First there’s a restless crowd that seems stuck in their sheer fascination with Jesus—so bound up in their determination not to miss a second of “breaking news” about Jesus—so bound up that they can’t even eat!

Then there’s Jesus’ nervous family who seem stuck in their fear that he’s off his rocker, and if they don’t spirit him away and get him some help, the shame of his delirium might somehow cling to them, making them look just as crazy.

As if the restless crowd and the nervous family members aren’t enough, there’s a gaggle of religious experts,  know-it-all scribes from the head office in Jerusalem, who’re watching Jesus like hawks, all the while voicing their foregone conclusion—that Jesus isn’t on God’s side, but that he’s in league with the devil.   “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” (v.22)

So stuck are these spiritual pooh-bahs that they can’t even absorb a simple, logical question that Jesus asks:  Why would someone allied with the Prince of Demons get rid of demons instead of “multiplying” demons wherever he could?

Everyone’s stuck here: the fickle crowd, the anxious relatives,  the suspicious scribes…they’re all really stuck and can’t get themselves unstuck.

…which is exactly what Jesus encountered throughout his earthly ministry…

….and it’s what we, who are the Body of Christ, also experience in our own day.  

Think about it—all the ways we and those around us are stuck nowadays….

So many Americans seem stuck in resentment, fear, incivility and prejudice against neighbors who look, speak or act in ways different from us.

Our society is stuck in an opioid epidemic that could kill half-a million Americans over the next decade…[1]

Our children are stuck wondering every day if their school will be the site of the next mass shooting…

Our culture seems gripped by gridlock…shackled by uncertainty over what we believe or whom we trust…unable to tell whether facts are real or “alternative” or simply fake.

Our churches feel rudderless, stuck in decline, unable to pass on the faith, bereft of the youthful energy we crave so much.

“Stuckness” describes to a tee the condition that prevails in our world, even now in this present moment…

….which is why we constantly find ourselves uttering some of the most honest words that ever fall from our lips:   “We are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

Think of it:  there’s hardly any other encounter in which we speak with such brutal honesty about how it is with us, than when we confess our utter “stuckness” in sin…when we throw ourselves on the mercy of almighty God who alone can get us unstuck, with God’s liberating word of forgiveness, God’s resurrecting power of reconciliation.

Smack dab in the middle of this story in Mark 3, Jesus speaks this striking one-sentence parable:  “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”  (v.27)

Jesus told that parable to the know-it-all scribes, in order to get them unstuck…to propose another possibility:   that Jesus came not to side with Satan, but to subdue Satan….to plunder Satan’s crumbling kingdom?  

That, my dear friends, is exactly what Jesus did and is still doing. 

With every exorcism he performed, Jesus was setting loose another one of the devil’s subjects.  With every sickness he cured, every withered limb he healed, every blind eye he opened Jesus was unbinding those in the clutches of the Evil One.

With every good-news-promise he uttered, Jesus was staking out God’s claim to a world Satan mistakenly thought belonged to him.

What we witness here in Mark 3 is God reasserting God’s rightful claim to all that God has made.

It’s what Jesus was always about—in his amazing life, through his bitter death, in the surprising power of his resurrection—in all of that Jesus was unbinding sin-stuck hearts.

And this same risen and living Lord Jesus Christ continues to do so even today, through the ministries he has entrusted to us, Christ’s church.

By rights, we who are the church really ought to think of ourselves as a 24-hours-a-day/365 days-a-year tow truck service.   We—the church--exist to get folks unstuck from sin, death and the power of the devil.

We bypass this truth at our peril, according to Jesus when he speaks here about blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is (according to Jesus) an unforgivable “eternal sin.”

The trick here—when we hear such scary talk about an “unforgivable sin”—the trick here is to realize that Jesus wants to wake us up and shake us loose.  

For there is sin that can’t be forgiven—not because God is stingy to forgive it—but because we can become so stuck in this sin that we don’t even desire or seek God’s forgiveness.   It doesn’t get any worse than that:  getting stuck so deep in sin that you no longer know or care how deeply you’re stuck in sin.

What hope is there for poor souls who’re that far gone, that  deep into sin?

There is only one hope:  the hope that Someone will come along who isn’t stuck—

Someone who is utterly free enough, strong enough, brave enough, and merciful enough to pull us out.

There is such a Person.  His name is Jesus. 

Jesus’ own family got part of this right—he is “out of his mind” in the sense that Jesus is not operating completely under his own control.  

And the suspicious scribes also got some of this right—Jesus is “possessed” all right--possessed by the Holy Spirit so completely that he’s always “ready, willing and able” to pull us out of whatever mess we get ourselves stuck in.

This One, this Stronger One, our Lord Jesus, has gone down to death and the grave for us…to drag us out of the muck and mire of our waywardness….and to set our feet on a dry, level, wide and free place once again.

As wonderful as it is to receive such mercy and grace, we can’t help but want to pass this on to those who are still stuck all around us.

God in Christ saves us in order to send us to our neighbors.   God invites us to use—not a tow truck or a winch or a heavy-duty cable with a big steel hook on it--to get others unstuck.

No, the tools for rescuing others that God entrusts to us are entirely different.   God invites us and authorizes us to help others get unstuck with

• A Word of liberation,
• Water for washing away the mud, and the
• Bread and Wine of the New Kingdom that God is establishing even now, in the midst of Satan’s crumbling stronghold.

As God calls, authorizes and equips us to partner with God in helping others get unstuck, we behold first-hand how wide and far-reaching the scope of Jesus’ astonishing mercy truly is.

At the very tail end of our gospel lesson, there’s a sentence that’s often misunderstood. 

It can sound as though Jesus is setting aside his own earthly family….when in reality, Jesus is radically expanding his family…opening the door so widely that anyone and everyone can gain a foothold in God’s Kingdom: 

“Here are my mother and my brothers!,” declares Jesus.  “Whoever does the will of God”—whoever is no longer stuck!--“is my brother and sister and mother.”

That whoever here in Mark 3:35…that whoever includes anyone and everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear.

No exceptions!  

No exclusions! 

No one ineligible for God’s reconciling power that never ceases to unbind human hearts.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic

Pentecost: Another Easter!

Peace & Grue Lutheran Churches, Ashby, MN

The Day of Pentecost/May 20, 2018

Acts 2:1-21

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Christ is risen.   He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Happy Easter to you all!   What a joy it is to gather on this festive day to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

What? (you’re you’re maybe wondering)--what’s with this guy?  Hasn’t he looked at the calendar lately?    Easter is long gone.   We celebrated it on April 1st.   Easter is old hat—we’ve moved past it.

Today is May 20^th, after all.  It’s the Sunday between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day weekend….the day after Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding.     

And on the church’s calendar today is Pentecost—not Easter, for goodness’ sake…

But still I say to you:   Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

And I am bold to repeat to you:   Happy Easter.   Happy resurrection day!

I’m saying that, not just because EVERY Sunday is a little Easter (which is true….we celebrate the resurrection on the first day of every week, 52 times a year…)

No—I’m wishing you a happy Easter, because this festival day of Pentecost itself is really “another Easter.”    It’s not so much the start of the long Pentecost season as it is the climax, the culmination of the Easter season.  

Pentecost is itself “another Easter.”

Here’s what I mean:   the Pentecost story in the first chapters of the Book of Acts “echoes” the Easter story in some amazing ways.

First, both stories begin in a tomb.   Both stories start with death.

In the Easter story, of course, it’s Jesus who’s dead--dead as a doornail dead—that’s what “three days in the grave” meant back in the first century.   You’re dead and you’re not coming back.   Jesus was crucified, dead and buried.  His story appeared to be over.   Jesus’ body was lying, stone-cold in a borrowed grave.  Jesus wasn’t going anywhere!

And in the Pentecost story, we also start out in a tomb of sorts—“the room upstairs where [the disciples] were staying” (Acts 1:13)—the hideout where the disciples shut themselves away, in fear and bewilderment, for the ten days following Jesus’ ascension into heaven.

It was as if Jesus had died all over again.    He had died on the cross—but three days later was raised, walked among them, visited with them for another forty days.   Amazing.

But then, as we’re told in the first chapter of Acts, Jesus left his disciples AGAIN—left them in the lurch.  One minute Jesus was there, speaking with his followers, and the next minute Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

It was as if Jesus had been taken from his disciples twice—once on Good Friday, and a second time on Ascension Day.    It left the disciples dumbfounded.   Acts chapter one tells us that it took not one, but two angels to get the disciples to stop staring off into space, after Jesus ascended into heaven.

These baffled disciples returned to Jerusalem and they waited—waited for what, they weren’t exactly sure.   The disciples sealed themselves in to their upper room.  It became a kind of “tomb” for them.   They turned in on themselves.  They weren’t going anywhere.  Their story appeared to be over.

Both Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday begin in death, both stories start out in “borrowed tombs.”  And then, in both stories, God does something breath-taking (or should I say, breath-giving?) 

On Easter Sunday, God raises up the dead Jesus—puts death behind him.  And on Pentecost Sunday, God raises up the “dead” disciples—gives them all a new lease on life, in the power of the Holy Spirit.    The Holy Spirit (whom we also call The Lord and Giver of Life in the Nicene Creed!)….the Holy Spirit moves through the dead bodies and the dry bones of the disciples, and the Spirit animates them, as surely as God animated the crucified Jesus on Easter morning.

Easter and Pentecost are BOTH, you see, resurrection stories!   They begin in the dead-end of the grave, and they end--well that’s just the thing:  neither story really “ends.”   The conclusion to both the Easter story and the Pentecost story--the conclusion has yet to be written.

All we can really speak about is how these stories begin, and how they KEEP ON “beginning” all over again, even today and on every tomorrow still ahead of us!

What we do know is this:   when God raises the dead, God reverses chaos, God undoes confusion, God clarifies his gracious purposes, God re-establishes all connections, God replaces cowardice with courage—with the result that the Body of Christ is turned inside out and set loose in the world.

On Easter Sunday that happened—quite literally—with the body of the crucified Lord Jesus Christ.    Jesus’ corpse didn’t follow the normal route toward decomposition.    No!  Death was reversed—death was “undone” decisively.  

On Pentecost Sunday, the same sort of thing happened with the whole company of disciples.   They were, in those ten days between the Ascension, on their way toward “decomposition.”    They were all bound up in themselves, turned in upon themselves.

But then the Spirit rushed in with a mighty wind and tongues of fire.  These ingrown disciples got turned inside out.   The Holy Spirit goosed them out of their “tomb” by letting them speak in languages they’d never spoken before….languages that others, just outside, were waiting to hear.

What emerged from Jerusalem’s upper-room-tomb was the resurrected Body of Christ, the communion of Jesus’ loved ones, now transformed from disciples (which means “followers”) into apostles (which means “sent ones”).    On Pentecost, the Body of Christ is set loose in the world, once again.    And the members of this Body just can’t stop talking about Jesus!

You could say that Pentecost “completes” Easter.    The body of the crucified Jesus had to be raised first, of course—like the explosion that detonates a whole subsequent chain reaction.  

But not until Pentecost do we see the whole thing.   Indeed, Christ is not fully raised until the entire Body of Christ is raised with wind and fire and prophetic proclamation on the day of Pentecost.   We see, here in Acts chapter two, the beginning of that story…

….and in our own lives of faith, hope and love….as a people sent in God’s mission, you and I are inspired by God to live out the rest of the story, the end of the Pentecost story.

You know what I’m talking about—because our own personal stories echo the Pentecost story, don’t they?

Our stories begin with death—the death of our sin, our waywardness, our brokenness.   Something kills us, and we’re all turned in on ourselves, all locked up in a tomb (usually a tomb of our own making).   We aren’t going anywhere!

And then God in Jesus Christ the Risen One….God in the power of the Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life…God raises us up, holds our heads above the water, unbinds us, puts a Word on our tongues and gooses us, to get us out into our world.   

The Body of Christ is still being re-animated by the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus.

It happens here in this congregation, in much the same way it happened on Easter and Pentecost.   It starts in dismal death, but moves toward boundless life.    Bracing baptismal water wakes us up.  Nourishing bread and wine revive us.   The Word snaps us to attention.

And we are moved from death to life, from confusion to clarity, from cowardice to courage, from self-absorption to self-emptying love, from dis-connection to re-connection in the Body of Christ.   It’s all here in Acts chapter two

·       The deathtrap where the disciples at first lie hidden;

·       The surprising, reviving intervention of the Spirit;

·       The “these guys must be drunk” confused first reaction of the crowd who hear the disciples’ preaching;

·       And then the clarity of God’s Word to us.   “Let me tell you what’s happening…let me spell it out for you (Peter preaches):   this was all foretold, this was all in the cards, this was, is, and ever shall be God’s work among us….freeing us to speak plainly about God alive and at large in our world.”

You and I, dear friends of the Peace-Grue Parish….you and I are still living out this Pentecost story.  

God is still seeing to it that the story of Jesus, the miracle of Pentecost, the truth of the gospel keeps getting proclaimed, keeps being played out here so that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 1:21).

And what will be the outcome of all of that clarifying, courageous gospel truth-telling?   

The outcome will be another Resurrection--the Body of Christ, all of  us!—animated for prayer and praise and service and mission, turned inside out, and set loose in the world!

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Think About These Things

DEVOTIONS AT CONCORDIA COLLEGE BOARD OF REGENTS

May 12, 2018

Philippians 4:8

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

These words are from the Apostle Paul, and that fact might surprise some of us—that such lovely, lofty, compelling words could come from someone who left behind other passages that puzzle, befuddle and even offend some of Paul’s latter day readers.

St Paul just might be the most psycho-analyzed of all the characters in the New Testament. 

There’s always someone who thinks it would be a good idea if Paul would lie down on a therapist’s couch, to sort out his manifold biases, probe his often self-obsessed ponderings, or untangle his complex personality.   

Though he’s regarded as the author of fully one third of the New Testament writings, Paul always challenges careful readers to wonder just what exactly made him tick?  Where did Paul’s disturbing attitudes toward women, his harsh views on same-sex relationships, his deeply fraught understanding of the relationships between Jews and Gentles—where did that all come from?  And what about that mysterious “thorn in the flesh” he spoke of as both blessing and curse?  What was with that?

Why, despite such wonderment, do we keep coming back to Paul, drinking deeply from the fathomless well of his vision for the life that is opened up in Jesus Christ—crucified and risen for the life of the world?

Perhaps it is simply because right in the midst of passages that some find off-putting we also stumble across passages like this one from the letter to the church in Philippi: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Sometimes the Apostle Paul baffles us or troubles us….and other times his soaring rhetoric, so effusive with the glad tidings of the gospel, stops us dead in our tracks and widens, deepens our vision of all that God is about in Jesus Christ.

I believe there is a particular word here, my friends, for those of us who are called for a season to help this college of the church tend its life and mission.    Paul invites us to ponder another sentence, so dear to our hearts:  The purpose of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.

This sentence reflects anything but a narrow, constricted definition of Concordia’s mission.   It bespeaks rather an expansive, freeing, beckoning vision….due in no small part to the very nature of the Christian life our college seeks to foster.

That last phrase, “dedicated to the Christian life” opens up more options and opportunities than we might imagine, because (following St Paul’s logic here in Philippians 4) there is no truth that is not God’s truth, no honor whose source is not in God, there is nothing pleasing—no beauty worth noticing--that is not God’s beauty, no justice that does not flow from the same God we know best in Jesus Christ.

We need to be this kind of college of the church….not just because the church wants it that way…but because the world needs us to follow this particular path.   Lord knows there are more than enough narrow, pinched, stifling, tribalistic ways of being faithful nowadays.   God calls us to something richer, wider, more liberating, more embracing.

So, my dear friends, as I take my leave from you, grateful for eleven years of accompaniment on this board of regents, I commend to you both today and in all the days to come…I commend to you these words of the Apostle Paul:  “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Let us pray:   Eternal God, bless all schools, colleges and universities—especially our own dear Concordia College—that they may be lively places for sound learning, new discovery, and the pursuit of wisdom; and grant that those who teach and those who learn may find you to be the source of all truth; through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.  Amen.”  (ELW, p. 78, prayer for “Schools”)

Under the Knife

Easter 5/April 29, 2018

Calvary Lutheran Church, Park Rapids, MN

Installation of Justin Fenger

John 15:1-8

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

A pastor once began a Confirmation Sunday sermon like this.

He brought a beautiful potted plant into the pulpit and held it up for all to see its lush, green loveliness.   “This is what your life in Christ looks like,” the pastor told the confirmands.   “As you live like this plant, rooted in Jesus, you are full of life and health and promise.  And you produce good fruit!”

Then the pastor grabbed the green plant in one hand, and a machete in his other hand.   “And here is what your life looks like when you become separated from Jesus Christ,” he said, as he quickly swung the machete, severing the plant from its stalk, and causing the pot and the soil in it to crash to the floor.

Besides making a mess in the chancel…the pastor gave those young confirmands a striking, jarring image of Christian life they would not soon forget….a little like those old TV commercials showing an egg still in the shell alongside another egg being cracked and fried…as the announcer grimly intoned:  “This is your brain…and this is your brain on drugs!”

Now I tell this story even though what the pastor did was a little  heavy-handed--not the kind of thing impressionable adolescents, visiting relatives, and doting godparents need to be hearing on Confirmation Sunday!

How much better it would have been had the pastor just left his machete in the toolshed—if he had just held up that lush, green plant, still rooted in the soil of the flowerpot.  

That’s how we prefer to picture today’s gospel lesson here in John, chapter 15, isn’t it?  Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, and isn’t that wonderful?    Everything is green and growing, a vine laden with bountiful bunches of juicy, purple grapes.  The fruit of the vine is abundant—and that’s how we want to picture our life in Christ, too, isn’t it?

But to do that—to focus just on the vibrant vine, the green branches and the luscious fruit—we have to ignore much of what Jesus says here in John, chapter 15.

Because, no matter how you slice it (no pun intended!), if you and I are branches on Jesus the vine, we’re going to come under the knife!   And we know that because Jesus says so.

I am the true vine and my Father is the Vinegrower, declares Jesus…and the Vinegrower always is sharpening his knife!

The Vinegrower’s knife is his primary tool, and it’s good for two things.

The knife is good, first, for trimming away dead wood—branches that have shriveled up—become fruit-less.  The Vinegrower is no sentimental softy when it comes to dead branches.  He simply doesn’t allow dried-up wood to occupy space that could be filled by living, fruitful branches.  

But it’s not just the dead branches that feel the blade.   The fertile, fruitful branches feel the knife, too….not a destroying knife, though, but a pruning knife.   The Vinegrower “wounds” the healthy branches, trims them back—not to lop them off into the fire—but to spur them to greater growth and fertility.

When in our baptism we are grafted into Jesus Christ the true vine, we come under the “care” of this Vinegrower…so we better get used to feeling the blade.

And although that may be the last thing we want to hear on this lovely spring morning, it is surely what we need to hear.  It’s good for us to hear this—because the Vinegrower is not some sadist who gets his jollies out of hurting the branches on his Vine.

No, the Vinegrower is purposeful in what he does with his razor-sharp knife.  He always has the bigger picture in mind, the over-arching mission, the purpose that he’s pursuing with single-minded focus.

The Vinegrower hankers for the fruit, after all!   It’s all about the fruit!  The fruit is why the Vinegrower planted the vineyard in the first place--to harvest the fruit, to reap the rewards of his creativity, to see the whole Vineyard flourish.

OK, so this may be a great metaphor, a wonderful word-picture….but what about you and me?   We’re human beings, after all--not grapevines.    What does all this look like in our very real lives?

Well, right over there is the baptismal font, with water in it, and we make good use of that water, whenever we can.  The font—conveniently located where we have to walk right by it every time we enter this sacred space—the font reminds us of the greatest day of our lives when in our baptism we were grafted into Jesus Christ the true Vine—forgiven, freed, made alive, and joined to the Triune God forever.

Such baptism into Christ is “for life”….and not just for eternal life, but for life here and now--a fertile, fruitful life in Jesus Christ.

How does our common baptismal life unfold, though?   How fruitful are we?   How determined are we to “abide,” to stay close to, to live in intimate connection with the Body of Christ?

The life of faith is a life lived “under the knife”—for every single one of us.    Our American evangelical friends are correct:  God has no grand-children!

But what exactly does that look like?   What precisely makes for fruit-bearing in the Body of Christ?

It boils down to God fussing over us, constantly pruning us, drawing us deeper into fertile faith practices that bring out the fruit we were created to bear in Jesus Christ.   There’s an “edge” in each of these faith practices—an edge that cuts in on us, trims back the sinner in us, even as it ushers forth the faithful disciple in us.

So we become more faithful and fruitful whenever we pray.  Praying reminds us that we can’t make it on our own; prayer tunes our hearts to the beating heart of God.

And we grow in faith and fruitfulness whenever we immerse ourselves in God’s Word.   Reading, learning, inwardly digesting the Bible re-orients our lives, away from ourselves and towards God and our neighbors.  The Book of Faith lets God into our frantically-busy lives, so God can get a Word in edgewise.

We become more faithful and fruitful when we gather at least once a week for worship.   Public worship reminds us that God has dibs on the first minute of every hour, the first hour of every day, and the first day of every week.   And we worship best when we worship with others, because we’re in this thing together….there are no Robinson Crusoe branches on the True Vine!

We become more faithful and fruitful when we give away lots of money.   Although left to ourselves we’d prefer to keep every last red cent for ourselves, God prunes us of such selfishness—God’s knife cuts away our greed and lays us open to generosity that flows into us and through us to others.

We become more faithful and fruitful when we serve our neighbors in Jesus’ name.  God the Vinegrower slices away our “me-first-ness”….opening us up to our neighbors, giving us excuses all the time to act like Christ in their lives.

Get the picture?   All of this true-Vine-and-branches stuff isn’t just a metaphor or some light and airy way of imagining ourselves.   It’s very, very, very concrete, extremely down to earth:  we feel the knife of the divine Vinegrower in the ordinary, everyday ways we practice the faith that became ours in our baptism.

This morning, the concreteness of God the Vinegrower’s work comes to focus in our welcoming of Pastor Justin, as he joins the ministry team here at Calvary.   Pastor Justin, in company with Pastor Steve and the others on your ministry team—think of them as God’s “assistant vinedressers” in this vineyard called Calvary.  

God will use Pastor Justin and your other servant-leaders to make sure we’re planted, fertilized, watered and pruned in order to be the rich, lush branches that adorn Christ the one true Vine.

That’s quite an assignment for us all, isn’t it?  

Thank goodness, though, that God is the one doing the heavy lifting.  First, last and always this is God’s work in us.  

This is no DIY business (do-it-yourself!).

No, this is what God is doing in our lives:  busily, continually, patiently trimming away all that holds us back….and also pruning us constantly to increase in us the fruits of God’s  creativity and grace.

It’s why God creaed us in the first place.  “For we are what [God] has made us,” we read in Ephesians (2:10,) “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

God’s looking for our fruit. 

God trims away all that leaves us dead and dried up. 

And God prunes us, ceaselessly, bringing forth the bountiful harvest he’s been waiting for.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.