Being Branches on the One True Source of Life – 2 May, 2021
John 15:1-8
Since water was not reliable in the ancient world, wine was an important commodity. The cultivation of vines was a skill greatly prized. It is not surprising that the Old Testament imaged God as the vinedresser who prunes and cares for Israel, which is imaged as a vineyard.
This passage connects God, Jesus, and his followers, imaging God as the vine grower, Jesus as the vine, and Jesus’s followers as branches. It is a call for Jesus’ disciples to stay with him if they are to be pruned, grow, and bear the fruits of faith. It is a warning that those who fail to stay with Jesus are what is removed during a pruning, when they are cut from the vine to be discarded and burned. It is a promise that those who abide in Jesus will be blessed. While bearing fruit would generally imply mission, in this instance it seems to speak more generally to a life of faith. –– Regina A. Boisclair
1 John 4:7-21
It brings together the call to love God and neighbor (Mt 22:34–40). It claims those who love are those who are begotten by God, who is love. It claims that God’s love was disclosed in Jesus, the Son sent into the world as expiation for sins. It claims those who love God are those who profess Jesus the Son of God.
This selection is trying to underscore that the profound love of God models the love we should offer others, which is the only appropriate response to God who “first loved us” (4:19). We cannot see God but we can respond to God’s love by loving those we do see. The author claims God lives with and perfects those who love one another and those who sense God’s presence through the Spirit need have no fear of judgment. –– Regina A. Boisclair
Acts 8:26-40
It is a wonderful story, literally a story of wonder. But particularly wondrous in my estimation is that having introduced us to this exotic person with his seven descriptive phrases, it is the man’s sexual condition as a eunuch by which Luke chooses to label or identify the man subsequently four times—a person formally excluded by the worshiping community of Israel according to Deuteronomy 23:1. This is underlined by the fact that the eunuch is found reading the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, just a short turn of the scroll earlier than chapter 56, which reverses Deuteronomy’s exclusion of eunuchs and explicitly welcomes them into the covenant community of Israel with ‘‘a name better than sons and daughters...an everlasting name that will not be cut off’’ (v 5). –– John Rollefson
Water takes the shape of whatever container it fills, whether that shape is a bowl or a bottle, a lake or a baptismal font. The water, however, holds the same cleansing power for all those who open their hearts to God. Although the water may go on our heads or over our entire bodies, what we are saying is, ‘‘God, create in me a clean heart and make me one with Christ.’’ Then we become the container for God’s Holy Spirit as we live lives that show God’s love to others. ––
Phyllis Vos Wezeman
Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.
John Rollefson, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has served congregations in Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.
Phyllis Vos Wezeman, has served as the director of Christian Nurture at First Presbyterian Church of South Bend, Indiana; as the Calvin Institute Project Director of the “Worship for Life Resource Collection” (Logos Productions 2008); and has lectured in China, Malawi, and Russia.
Homily Service 42, no. 2 (2008): 127-135.