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.
