The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Christ is the vine, we are the branches.

A homily by Br. Richard Matthias

In October, 1954, Hurricane Hazel, moved from the Caribbean, north along the eastern coast of the US and into Ontario. Winds reaching up to130 mph, brought catastrophic property damage and death to over 1000 people from Haiti to Toronto.

At that time, I was six years old living in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia.

On clear evenings my father and I would sit on the stoop and look at the skyline of Center City Philadelphia. I can remember that storm… the wind and heavy rain – how the house shook in the gusts. I remember my father sitting in the car, parked at the curb in front of our house, listening to the radio for the latest weather and news reports. I remember going outside as the eye of the storm passed over, holding firmly to my father and mother. I remember the force of the wind, as the opposite storm wall approached. I remember neighbors and family sharing meals by candlelight until the electricity was reconnected. I remember family, congregation, and community working together to ease the pain, share the loss and keep up morale.

It was a disaster, however, as big as that storm was, it was limited in its impact.

The dead were mourned, the injured treated, damage was cleared, buildings were repaired, and electricity was reconnected. The end could be envisioned. Even as the winds howled and the rains beat down, a resolution was always near. I knew that after the storm my father and I would sit on the stoop again looking at the Philadelphia skyline.

As a child I could determine when a hurricane was over.

As an adult I cannot see the end of this pandemic.

Our present disaster, the COVID 19 Pandemic, is quite a different beast. Everything looks the same in our neighborhoods. There has been no widespread loss of electrical power, not a single building has been damaged. There has been no great display of violence by nature. Rather, we are held in a prolonged period of isolation and uncertainty.

The effects of the virus ebb and flow. It mutates and renews. Science and medicine race against a relentless enemy that kills without remorse. We know that this pandemic will change so much in so many ways that we cannot even begin to comprehend. The very fact that I am giving this sermon remotely demonstrates that this change is already happening.

These are difficult times and in difficult times Christians turn to God for solace and for direction. This morning’s scripture readings provide exactly that. Our Epistle from the 1st Letter of John tells us that: “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them…”

In our reading from John’s Gospel, we hear Jesus tell his disciples, “Abide in me”. Abide? What does it mean to abide? Perhaps if we were to think of abiding in Christ as being connected and staying connected?

Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches”. Jesus is the vine. He is the connection between God the Father and the branches, the connection between God and the people of God. It is through Jesus that God’s love flows into us as individuals, and into us together as a community of faith and then outward through us into the world. We are meant to be connected in love and service. We are meant to be connected in adversity and grief. We are meant to be here for one another through hard times, exactly like this one.

Secure in the certainty of my parents love for me I was unafraid of the hurricane that was threatening our home because they were holding me tight. They were holding me, just as God holds us -- today, tomorrow and forever.

Christ is the vine, we are the branches.

Let us pray:
Keep us, good Lord,
under the shadow of your mercy
in this time of uncertainty and distress.
Sustain and support the anxious and fearful,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may rejoice in your comfort
knowing that nothing
can separate us from your love,
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen

Eastern Orthodox icon of Jesus Christ as the True Vine, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55553 [retrieved May 2, 2021]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_the_True_Vine_icon_(Athens,_16th_century).jpg.