Texts: Acts 8:26-40; St. John 15:1-8
Once again, a Happy Mother's Day to all of our mothers. I'd like to share a little story for Mother's Day with you.
A man went to the store with his 3-year old daughter in tow. Since he was just there to grab some essentials like milk and bread, he opted to save some time by not pushing a cart around the store.
"That's not the way Mommy does it." His daughter informed him.
"I know, sweet heart, but Daddy's way is OK, too." He replied.
Leaving the store in the rain and without a cart, he carried the bag of groceries, his daughter, and milk quickly to the car. Not wanting to set anything down on the wet ground, he set the jug of milk on top of the car, whisked open the car door with his now free hand, scooted the groceries in and set his daughter into the car in one swift motion. Then he hopped in himself.
"That's not the way Mommy does it," his daughter informed him again.
"Honey, there's more than one way to do things," he replied patiently. "Daddy's way is OK, too.
As they pulled out and headed down the street, he became aware of the scraping sound on the roof as the jug of mil slid down the length of the rooftop, bounced off the trunk of the car and splattered to the ground, sending a froth of white milk in every direction.
In the moment he took to process what had happened, his young daughter looked at him, and in a most serious voice said, "That's NOT the way Mommy does it." (Adapted from a humorous story on www.broadcaster.org.uk)
The Book of Acts provides us with a remarkable early story of the baptism of an Ethiopian Jew along the road that ran from Gaza to Jerusalem. It is the story of a man who was reading aloud (the ancient practice at that time) from the Prophet Isaiah while riding in his chariot, and he came to the words from chapter 3:7-8:
Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth."
Now as it happened this Ethiopian court official was joined on his journey by one of Christ's Apostles, Philip, who began to tell of how this scripture and others applied to the arrest and suffering of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, who had been handed over to death at the hands of sinful men, but whom God raised up on the third day, being exalted at the right hand of God. And he told him that for his part, he must save himself from this corrupt and sinful generation, and repent of his sins, and be baptized in the name of Christ, so that his sins would be forgiven and he would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So taken was the Ethiopian with the good news about Jesus, that as they passed a stream of water, he pointed, and cried out to Philip, "Look, here is water! What is prevent me from being baptized?" Stopping the chariot, they both got out and waded into the water, and the Lord's Apostle baptized the Ethiopian that very day in Jesus' name. (Acts 8:26-40) This early story of the baptism of a pilgrim foreigner has since been passed down in the Church from generation to generation, never to be forgotten, and may in fact be a story preserved of the origin of the ancient Orthodox church in Ethiopia, that is still there to this day.
As we journey down the stream of history, we come now to all of our stories as baptized Christians, for our stories are inseparably joined with that of the Ethiopian eunuch. For most of us, our stories began as tiny infants or children who lived with our parents off the various roads in which we took residence. And our parents after hearing the goods news of the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ throughout their lives, knew they wanted their infant sons or daughters to not be foreigners to God, but wanted God to adopt them as his own children through water and the Spirit. And so in a stream of water, (for some in the stream at John's River), off the beaten path in various churches, we were baptized in Jesus' name, so that our sins would be forgiven and we would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives. They are stories that will be told in our families through the generations, and they are stories that become a part of the church's story that flows through the passages of time.
Our Lord said to his gathered Apostles, the Church, "Abide 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. I 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. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." (St. John 15:4-6) I remember that when I was a much younger man, still in college, I was inspired to write with my friend, then a seminarian at Princeton Theological Seminary, a screenplay (that I must say turned out to be quite good) for a film we hoped to make about the early days of the Christian Church from the Book of Acts, and we called it, "Branches of the Vine" a metaphor for the Church from St. John 15. The image in the opening titles was to be the Church as a silhouette of winding branches proceeding from a vine or a tree trunk as the message of the gospel spread and conquered throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. Christian tradition has long regarded the members of the Church as those who are the branches, joined to the life-flowing force, Jesus Christ, who is the vine; he in us, and we in him. As the Ethiopian long ago, when we were baptized, we were engrafted as a branch to the vine that is Jesus Christ, and whose life giving force flows as a stream of sap into our souls, as we live and grow in Christ, uniting us and the branches that have grown behind us, and will grow before us. Such an image powerfully brings to mind a family tree on this Mother's Day, in which our mother's life - blood flows into us and is joined to those who have come before us and will descend from us. Such is the nature of the Church, as our mother, whose life giving blood to us is that of Christ her Lord. When I was in seminary at Lancaster, Pa. over the arch way that led from the old library to the dorm rooms was a stone relief of a mother pelican piercing her own chest with her beak and feeding her hungry baby chicks with her own blood. This mysterious image is that of the Church, or Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, acting as our mother, feeding us with the blood of Christ for our spiritual nourishment.
Now, St. Paul did not use the organic plant metaphor of vine and branches for Christ and the Church, but in fact, the Body of Christ, the Head and its members. But the principle is the same. Just as the branches cannot thrive and bear fruit when cut off from the vine, so the members of the Body cannot live or even move in the words of the learned divine, Philip Schaff, "without the divine power of life that flows from the Great Head through the whole Body." Through baptism, one becomes a part, a living member of the Body. But just as a branch is joined to the vine, in order to thrive and bear fruit, "it must receive its daily food from the stream of life-giving force that flows from the vine to the branch, in order for it to mature and keep strong its powers. Cut off from the vine for a single day, the branch withers. Prevent respiration, and the life ebbs out." As many of us give those beautiful planters to our mother's...you and I know that if we do not water and care for that plant regularly, it starts to wither and die. (Kathy is going to hate me for saying this, but I think my wife has killed every plant that the kids and I have given her) So it is with the spiritual life of we, the members of the Church, the branches on earth who are joined to the Vine, Jesus Christ in heaven. As branches joined to a vine, we must be regularly nourished, nurtured by Christ in God's House through the preaching and hearing of the Word, by fellowship, prayer, and especially the Holy Sacrament, or else we wither and eventually die. When I was an even younger man, growing up in Lebanon Reformed Church in New Jersey, we would come forward to receive Holy Communion and as I took of the bread and dipped into the chalice, the Minister would say the words of our Lord, "I am the Vine, and you are the branches, cut off from me, you can do nothing."(St. John 15:5-6 adapted) And as I ate and drank, I knew that Christ was abiding in me, and I in him.
My sisters and brothers we are the branches, and Christ is the Vine. Joined together we make up the Church. What does our Lord say happens when the branch is cut off from the vine? It withers and dies. So it is with we who are a part of the Church. When we stop coming to church, when we stop participating in the life and mission of the Church, spiritually we wither and die. When we don't come to church, or miss church, even for a week, we feel empty. We are hungry. We need to be spiritually nourished. On this Mother's Day we remember that just as a newborn babe cannot be taken from suckling on her mother's breast, so we cannot be separated from our Mother, which is the Church. As the First Letter of Peter declares of us, "As newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow into salvation....."(1 Peter 2:2) Our growth begins in baptism, as a tiny chute that stems off from the vine. But by participating in the life of the Church, by being nourished regularly through Word and Sacrament, that chute will grow into a branch, and that branch will bear spiritual fruit in the good works we do for others, that all may share. Gloria Patri. Amen.
