“Kudzu Christians”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2009 (Mother’s Day)
Text: John 15:1-8
One of the most startling claims of our Reformed/Presbyterian tradition is this: We believe that you cannot be a Christian--you can’t be a practicing Christian--by yourself, all alone, religion as a private matter. For many of us, this is just downright un-American! We are children of the great American frontier. The lone explorer, blazing trails ever westward. The lone pioneer family, homesteading out on the great plains. The lone cowboy riding the Western range--these constitute the American experience. Individualism is in our genes. Independence is our lifeblood. Uniqueness is our pride and joy. Privacy, our sacred privilege. By contrast, among the nine “marks of membership” in the Presbyterian Church is this:
We are to take part in the common life and worship of a particular congregation. A life of Christian discipleship makes it a priority to listen, discuss, laugh, weep, play, study, serve, lead, pray and worship with brothers and sisters in Christ whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.1
This may be the most radical notion we Presbyterians have. Not the sovereignty of God, not priesthood of all believers, certainly not predestination, but the fellowship of the Church. As independent minded, red-blooded Americans we might dare anyone to tell us, “You can’t be a Christian by yourself.” Here today, in the Gospel according to St. John, Jesus accepts our challenge with a powerful metaphor:
1 I am the true vine, my father is the vine grower.
5 I am the vine, you are the branches.
With me, I trust you can picture a charming grape arbor, with
fruit-laden vines hanging from decorative trellises, or perhaps
those vast, well-manicured vineyards in the Southern California wine
country. Perhaps being a branch of so lovely a vine would not be so
bad. But, of course, here in the South, the vine we see most
frequently is kudzu. It is a lasting, perhaps everlasting gift to us
from the Japanese, who introduced it to America at a exposition
celebrating our nation’s first 100 years. During the Great
Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted
kudzu for erosion control. Hundreds of young men were given work
through the C.C.C.--the Civilian Conservation Corps--
planting kudzu.
Of course, as we Southerners know . . .
The problem is that kudzu just grows too well! The climate (here) is perfect for kudzu. The vines grow as much as a foot per day during summer months, climbing trees, power poles, and anything else they contact. Under ideal conditions kudzu vines can grow sixty feet each year. 2
A kudzu vine planted up here on the cancel, could grow the length of this sanctuary in a single year! Now, I don’t recommend it, and I doubt the worship committee would approve but I do like the idea that we might be considered “kudzu Christians.” Not frilly, fragile, temperamental grape vines, but strong, sturdy, fast growing kudzu.
Were we to venture out into a conveniently located patch of kudzu, lift up some of those floppy leaves and study this prodigious vine more closely, this is what we would see. The branches are “almost completely indistinguishable from one another; it is impossible to determine where one branch stops and another branch starts. All run together as they grow out of the central vine.3
Now, Jesus and his contemporaries would have been blissfully ignorant of kudzu, but they surely knew about vines as ancient Hebrew scripture use this metaphor to describe God’s relationship to God’s chosen people. Psalm 80 begins our family history , “You”--referring to God--
You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.
Isaiah 5 offers a love song to God’s vineyard:
Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines . . .
And this from Jeremiah, chapter 2: “Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock”(v.21).
With this as background, with the people of God well aware that God is the vine-grower, now comes Jesus speaking of himself as the vine, and describing his disciples, now the church, as the branches. New Testament scholar Gail O’Day reminds us that “all three elements--gardener, vine, and branches--are essential to the production of fruit.”4 “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit (Jesus says), because apart from me you can do nothing”(v.5).
Again, Professor O’Day: “What matters for John is that each individual is rooted in Jesus and hence gives up individual status to become one of many encircling branches.” 5
So far, so good. We may have surrendered some of our independence; we may have sacrificed a bit of our treasured privacy; but in return we have been “grafted” onto the one true vine, Jesus Christ our Lord, whose origins stem from Holy God. This is not a bad place to be, this is, in fact, a very good place to be: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit . . .”(v. 5b).
I am not exactly sure what fruit the kudzu vine produces even though I did find recipes for kudzu quiche, kudzu candy, and kudzu jelly. 6
But what we need, what the church needs today is a recipe for “Kudzu Christians.” Jesus has listed the ingredients in the previous chapter of John. To be productive disciples, “Kudzu Christians” if you will, Jesus says we are to take up his mission, his work (14.12) which is summarized in our “Brief Statement of Faith” (10.2) as
preaching good news to the poor
and release to the captives,
teaching by word and deed
and blessing the children,
healing the sick
and binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.7
To all of the above, Jesus says we are to add adherence to his commandments (14.15); namely to love God, to love neighbor, and to love ourselves as God first loved us--all in the context of Christian community.
Minnesota pastor Gregory Boyd writes in CHRISTIAN CENTURY:
We (human beings) are made in the image of the triune God, whose essence is a loving community. This is how Jesus lived, and it is how his followers are called to live. 8
Boyd points to a little book by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. In THE GREAT DIVORCE, Lewis envisions hell as a realm in which people are forever moving farther away from one another. Hell, says Boyd, is the ultimate cosmic suburban sprawl.9
Anyone who drives US 280 during rush hour would surely agree that we humans are capable of creating our own ‘hell.’
6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
Sobering words, but necessary work if God’s vineyard is to thrive. Even so, we do well to remember that God reserves for God’s self the work of pruning. God takes care of the pruning, in God’s own way, and in God’s own good time, leaving us to do the work of growing and producing good fruit. To bear fruit--that is, to act in love--is a decidedly corporate act. It is ‘rooted’ in Jesus love for us--“As the Father has loved me, so I love you”(v. 9)--and it grows as this community--this congregation-- embraces that love as the guiding principle of our life together. To live as the branches of the vine is to belong to the community of faith--not a perfect community, but a committed fellowship united by the perfect love of God.
Again, an excerpt from “Brief Statement of Faith”(10.3):
In sovereign love God created the world good
and makes every one equally in God’s image,
male and female, of every race and people,
to live as one community. 10
It is a radical notion, this idea of surrendering my independence to the communal work of bearing fruit--that is, taking up the mission of Jesus, and embracing the world with love. But I take some comfort in knowing that I am a part, that I am connected to a bunch of “Kudzu Christians”--incredibly strong, not to be trifled with, growing fast, reaching up and reaching out to live and to proclaim the Good News the Gospel.
To Jesus Christ, who loves us
and freed us from our sins by his blood
and made us to be a kingdom,
priests of his God and Father,
to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Rev. 1: 5,6
1 “Exploring the Meaning of Membership,” Tammy Wiens,
project manager, PCUSA.
2 “The Amazing Story of Kudzu: Love It, Hate It, It Grows
on You,” University of Alabama Center for Public Television,
http://www.maxshores.com/kudzu/
3 O’Day, Gail, “The Gospel according to John,” THE NEW
INTERPRETER’S BIBLE, vol. 9. 760.
4 Ibid, p. 757.
5 Ibid., p. 760.
6 from “101 Uses of Kudzu,” quoted by Nancy Basket on her
webpage: Kudzu Cabin Designs,
http://www.nancybasket.com/index.html
7 “Brief Statement of Faith,” PCUSA, 1991.
8 Boyd, Gregory A., “Created for Community,” THE
CHRISTIAN CENTURY, May 19, 2009, p. 21.
9 Ibid.
10 “Brief Statement”