I am the vine, you are the branches.
without me you can do nothing.
John 15
Am I imagining it, or am I just a cranky old man? (Don’t answer that!) Is there a growing attitude of people who think and act as if they live on this planet by themselves, displaying a total disregard of how their behaviors affect other people, displaying an attitude of “I am going to do what I want and I don’t give a hoot how it affects you or anybody else”?
Recently, I am finding my anger level hitting the boiling point when I see people throw garbage out of car windows, roll down their car windows and turn their car speakers up so loud it that it rattles the windows of my house, carrying on loud cell phone conversations in public places, trashing public facilities and vandalizing public art, just to name a few.
This excessive individualism is, no doubt, a reaction to an over-emphasis on the common good, when individuals felt crushed and controlled. It’s the age old story of running off both sides of the road, trying to balance the good of the community with the good of the individual. I am praying that we manage to get the car back on the road and find a balance between common good and individual good.
This is a very old problem. It goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve. According to that story, at the end of creation God, humans and the animals lived in harmony – interconnected and interdependent. As a colorful Baptist preacher said at one of my graduations, “In the beginning, God was happy being God. The animals were happy being animals. Human beings, however, were not happy being human beings. They want to be God one day and animals the next!” Adam and Eve were tempted to believe they could do fine without God. Their children, Cain and Abel, were tempted to believe that they could do fine without each other. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
In this ancient story, we see the sin of denying our interdependence begin, a sin that has been repeated in a myriad of ways ever since. Interdependence is the recognition that we are responsible to, and dependent on, others. To deny that we cannot make it alone and that we need each other is a sin. Interdependence recognizes the truth of our dependence and independence and weaves them together in a delicate balance.
The scriptures are full of stories emphasizing our interdependence. Today’s gospel presents us with one of many. In the gospel today, Jesus gives us the parable of the vine and the branches. The Father is the vine grower, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Just as Jesus and the Father are one, we are one with Jesus. “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” We are interconnected, whether we want to recognize it or not. As Celie, in the movie “The Color Purple” put it, “It ain’t easy trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.”
Saint Paul has many more examples of our interdependence. In one place he says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.” In another place he says, “Everything is lawful, but not everything builds up. No one should seek his own advantage, but that of his neighbor.” In still another place he says, “Avoid giving offense, whether to Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but rather that of the many, that they may be saved.” In still another place he says, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, through many, are one body. Now the body is not a single part, but many. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.”
The Kentucky motto is “United we stand. Divided we fall.” This could be the motto of our country, our church, our parishes, our schools, our marriages, our families and our neighborhoods. It is the message of our scripture passage today, as well as all of Scripture. Some people advocate personal freedom as the ultimate good; others advocate communal responsibility as the ultimate good. Interdependence recognizes the truth in each position and weaves them together. We are both independent and dependent in a delicate balance. We are interdependent! We are interconnected and we need each other. No man is an island, but part of the main. As John Muir, the famous conservationist put it, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
This is a timely message for our country and our church. In both worlds, there is a ever-growing meanness and a “them versus us” kind of attitude that make enemies, winners and losers, rather than partners of each other. We have even found out recently that we cannot even do without the “illegal immigrants” who pick our vegetables, clean our hotel rooms, roof our houses, landscape our lawns, nanny our children and dig our ditches. We have found out that we cannot do without Middle Eastern oil or clothes from China. We have found out that we cannot do without people in places like India when we try to get our credit card bills straightened out or our computers fixed. We are finding out that we cannot even keep our parishes going without priests from Africa, Poland, Philippines, Vietnam and Central America. No, we are not as independent as we like to think we are. In fact, we are becoming more interdependent than ever, thanks to modern communication and travel. The bottom line is this: we are in this together! We always have been, and we will always be, in this together!
“A
branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine.” This is
true spiritually as well as socially.
No comments:
Post a Comment