Wild

John 15:1-8

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

We live in a world where bigger is better, where exponential growth is the goal. It’s a world in which we are taught that our value is in our usefulness and how much money we can make, whether we make that money for ourselves, or for someone in a corner office who will never know our names, never even set eyes upon us. It’s a world in which the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else, because that seems to be the goal—grow, build, spread, expand, at the expense of everyone else, at the expense of anyone who might stand in their way.

In other words, we live in a world that is completely antithetical to everything about today’s passage. From a surface-level, cursory reading, it may not seem like this is the case— after all, it’s written that every branch that is pruned will bear more and more fruit, and at the end—whatever you wish will be done for you if you abide in Jesus. That is quite a promise. But we have to think a little more deeply about this. It’s not just about exponential growth and getting whatever material things we may covet.

The pruning metaphor here is key—yes, pruning begets more fruit, but it means that in order to blossom and fruit, we need to cut back. We need to slow down, we need to figure what what’s really important in life, and what allows us to thrive. We need to cut back, we need to simplify in order to understand what matters in this world, and also, more urgently, in order to survive.

I hope you don’t mind that I’m going to reuse a passage from the book When We Cease to Understand the World that I used in a sermon a couple years ago. It’s a favorite passage of mine, from a favorite book of mine about a lemon tree:

[He] once asked me if I knew how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive drought, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death… displays of overripening feel out of character for a plant and more akin to our own species, with its uncontrolled, devastating growth. I asked him how long my own citrus had to live. He told me that there was no way to know, at least not without cutting it down and looking inside its trunk. But, really, who would want to do that?[i]

They succumb from overabundance… from uncontrolled, devastating growth. Isn’t that what’s happening to our planet? We seem to be under the impression that technology will solve everything, that all we have to do is continue to grow and progress and it’ll all work out, we’ll find a way to survive. But the reality is, we have to make some painful decisions. We have to cut back, we have to prune. And I don’t mean we, as in us individually… sorry to be a little cynical here, but I don’t think a few of us saying no to plastic straws is going to save the planet from rising waters… no, we have to do what seems impossible—change the minds of the monied, the lobbyists, the powerful who have everything to lose from a world turned on its head, from the type of world Jesus was working to bring. Pruning is the exact opposite of what they would do. They would have things grow and grow and grow until it can no longer support the weight of itself.

It is naïve to think that our current economic system is sustainable, as is, in a world with finite resources. We haven’t done the work to bring about an earth as it is in heaven, a world without end, and so, here we are—fighting against the clock, fighting a futile battle against the planet we should be working with, not against— we’re trying to one-up the planet, when we should be trying to live in harmony with and on it.

“Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me…Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers.” I’ll be honest with you, that last part almost made me reconsider preaching on this. I really struggle with passages that infer anything other than universal salvation… but the more I thought about it, the more I understood this as less of a threat, and more of a commentary on the interdependence that is crucial to living in a thriving society. In the same way the modern world in which we live encourages never-ending growth at any cost, it also emphasizes individuality, it emphasizes doing it all on your own, it creates the classic bootstrapping myth, that anyone, no matter how poor or oppressed can make it—the American dream, right? But I think we know by now that it doesn’t work that way. We need support to make it in this world—support from one another, support from our government that claims to represent us, support from our faith and our faith community, and support from the very earth that we are a part of, that we are, in the words of Mary Oliver, “…only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”

We are one of many, and we need each other, and we need everything around us to survive. It’s an interdependent ecosystem, biologically, emotionally, socially… we depend on each other, and we need to restrain ourselves and reevaluate what we really need in this life, and on this planet. “Apart from me, you can do nothing,” says Jesus, which sounds quite harsh—but when we think of how this world works, and when we go by his metaphor of a vine and branches, things become clearer—a branch does not sprout on its own; it comes from a seed, it comes from roots, it comes from the fine that grows from that seed and that root. It’s all connected; one cannot exist without the other.

When I was reading this passage, as I noticed the buds on the trees, I was thinking that this passage could be good inspiration for a belated Earth Day sermon. And just as that thought crossed my mind, a notification popped up on my phone from the New York Times—something about, in terms of reversing climate change, reconnecting with the world around us instead of trying to “save the world.” Sometimes it seems like God is working through my smartphone. It was an opinion piece by Craig Foster, the activist and filmmaker who made the academy award winning film for best documentary a few years back, My Octopus Friend. The documentary is about this unlikely friendship Foster starts with a female octopus during his diving sessions off the coast of his home of South Africa. Octopuses have long been thought to be some of the smarter animals on our planet, able to remember people, able to play, able to problem solve and adapt—and in the opinion piece from last week, Foster writes that during a diving session, and octopus actually took his camera from him, and managed to take a few interesting shots during its time with the strange device. When Foster saw the photos, it let him, in a way, see the way the octopus saw him, with its tentacles hanging over the lens, and he was able to connect with the creature and its habitat in a way he hadn’t before.

He writes that we shouldn’t think about how we can “save the planet,” but rather,

The question we should be asking is what caused the precipitous increase in species loss and what can we do to reverse it. To me, it all started when we disconnected from our wild origins. While agricultural and technological revolutions have enabled massive population growth and innovation, they have also instilled the belief that we can control nature, that our planet is an infinite resource to be mined for our advancement, comfort and entertainment.[ii]

He believes that with more than half the world’s population living in densely populated urban areas, we’ve, as a whole, lost the plot— while we’ll need scientific advancements to an extent, we first have to reconnect with realize that we’re not so different from one another, from the animals on this planet, even the 8-tentacled ones, and that we all need the same air, the same water, the same plants to exist and so survive. Because under our current economic system, it’s not about how can we scale back, what can we do without; it’s about what can we discover, what can we create to enable us to keep up with our, in the words of Labatut, “uncontrolled, devastating growth.”

In an article titled The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth from Scientific American, the author asks the question, “…how do we transition to alternative economic paradigms founded on the reconciliation of equitable human well-being with ecological integrity?” Because the fact is, is that, according to scientists and researchers, one of the biggest drivers of environmental collapse is… affluence. It’s economic growth that leads to obscene affluence.[iii] Because rather than scaling back, rather than pruning, the most powerful want to do everything they can to hold that power. And because of how far they’ve gotten from what really matters, from the way the rest of us live, they’re disconnected. They no longer care to be part of an ecosystem where it takes working together, and some sacrifice so that everyone can have a good life. And there’s a sense of invincibility when you’re that much farther up the socioeconomic ladder than everyone else. But the reality is, no matter how high up in that tower one may get, that person is still dependent on the same air, the same water, the same soil, seed, roots, as everyone else, human and non-human alike.

And one could read today’s passage and dispute my point here by pointing out the huge promise “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” But if we are truly abiding in Jesus, and if his words are truly abiding whin us, “whatever we wish” will not be anything material—it won’t be money or mansions. Because if we are truly abiding in Jesus, we will be deeply connected to the roots of our faith to what Jesus calls us to do—which is to left the oppressed, which is to work for a world in which everyone is equal. And at that point, of ultimate, perfect equality, we will be interconnected to one another, to the earth, to the animals—we will be reconnected to our wild origins… our simple origins… those wild origins of sitting around a meal, and really connecting with each other… those wild origins of being out in nature, connecting and appreciating and respecting this incredible planet, communing with trilling sparrows and the singing frogs.

Foster ends his article by asking

How strange it is that one silly primate can see itself as separate from all those it shares this world with. What might happen if we remembered we are a part of this wild world — and let that understanding and humility guide every choice we make?

As people of faith, the goal is that that understanding and humility that we receive by abiding in Jesus, and allowing Jesus to abide in us in return. If we allow Jesus’ call to truly abide in is, we realize we have no choice but to do everything out power to go back to our wild origins—to find ways to step away from our possessions, our screens, our endless doom-scrolling to stop and reconnect with the world around us—the one we were born from, the one we need to survive… the one each and every creature, from humans to octopus, needs to survive.

Today might be cloudy, but church, it’s finally warm—so after coffee hour today, and before the musical performances here at church, of course, I want you to take a few minutes to commune with the world around you, to really listen to the birds, to watch the animals, to feel the grass. Because the fact is, no matter how much money we have, no matter how many advances technology can make, no matter how invincible the human race may seem, especially in the richest’s delusions of grandeur, we are nothing without the vine; we are nothing without our roots on this planet. A branch that tries to exist on its own withers and dies. So let’s reconnect with this planet. Let’s reconnect with one another, human and non-human alike. And then, together, we will find ways to prune, to scale back, to make it so that our goals are no longer to grow bigger and bigger to make more and more; but rather, to simplify; to have this earth. To have each other. To abide in the call of Christ—to bring about time in which we will never forget we are interconnected with this wild earth, or with one another; to bring about an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

[i] Labatut, Benjamín. When We Cease to Understand the World (p. 188). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition.

[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/opinion/earth-day-octopus-teacher.html?smid=url-share

[iii] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y