God Needs a Cane
Sixth Sunday in Easter - May 25, 2003
By The
Very Rev. James Hubbard
The translators of John chapter 15 have no background in understanding the cultivation of the grape. One understands that from their discussion of the vine and the ‘branch.’ In the grape vineyard one knows from childhood that there are no ‘branches’ on a grape vine, but only ‘canes.’ And so the title of my homily this morning, “God needs a cane.” It is the cane which is selected for cultivation once the vine is established. It is the cane which is pruned. It is the cane which may be tied to the wire or the trellis. It is the cane which bears fruit. It is the cane which is trimmed in the winter. It is the old cane which is burnt as brush. Ignore the canes and the vine produces no fruit. It is this which is the preamble for our Gospel this morning. “I am the vine, you are the canes. 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 cane and withers; such canes are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
And with this background Jesus continues, “As the father has loved me, so I have loved you.” We should not miss the implication that we are loved, that we are lovable. It is not that we are deserving of that love, perhaps; it is simply that we are loved. God’s act of love for Jesus becomes the model which Jesus in his humanity lives out toward you and me. Francis of Assisi was one whose imagination was fired by our Lord’s example. C.K. Chesterton claimed that Francis was a real lover of others. Not merely a philanthropist toward them, interested in their case, so he explains; but one who somehow really loved them, utterly unlovable to one like him though they might seem {IB, 8, p. 720} I’ll never forget that story of Francis on his horse in Italy coming on the man, his face and limbs eaten away with leprosy getting off his horse and taking the man in his arms, embracing and kissing him and then taking him with him to care for him. That is an example of love which knows no reasonable limit. “As the father has loved me, so I have loved you.”
Jesus instruction is to abide in the father’s love. Oh, we want to believe we are loved like that. And we are, but how difficult it is to abide in the wondrous joy of knowing we are completely loved like that. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” That’s how we do it, that’s how Jesus did it. Obey the commandments. Jesus is your example for he claims to have lived in the father’s love by keeping God’s commandments himself. The key here is the choice to obey or not to obey. And Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Joy is a fascinating subject. We have all experienced it at one time or another. Pascal wrote that joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God and Jesus says, ‘ obey God’s commandments and joy will be yours.’ You can’t pursue joy and find it. You can pursue obedience and find joy. It is always a byproduct of something else. How often I read or hear that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness. Not from a Christian perspective. Our purpose is to pursue God and in doing so we are promised, not happiness, but joy.
In chapter 15, verse 12 Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That’s the commandment. We are not asked to begin by loving the stranger, the odd one out, the difficult. We are asked to begin with one another, those in our families, those who are one with us in the household of faith, our companions on the way, if you will. And then Jesus makes a huge leap, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Whew. That I can believe. To actually give one’s life away for one’s friends would be an enormous act of love. We all know what that tastes like, for in our families we have all experienced the beginnings of that. Babies that take up our life every waking moment and at times young mothers feel that all moments are waking moments. Those same children demand our time in different ways as they grow, as we run them here and there to games and lessons and school and church. They require a large share of our resources as we put them through college and perhaps graduate school, but finally they are out of the house, married at great cost, once again, but out on their own. We’re finished with that task. Hah! Only a parent whose children are still young could imagine that. Once a parent always a parent. A couple of my closest friends received a call a few weeks ago that their oldest daughter, Cathy, had become paralyzed from her neck overnight. There whole life is now given to helping Cathy and her family adjust. Money, its hers. Time, its hers. Their plans for the year? Depends on Cathy’s needs. The concerns and the way you give your life for theirs only changes, it doesn’t end. But Jesus had more in mind than that kind of giving, instructive as it is. He literally gave his life for his friends. And you and I are among that blessed company, “you are my friends, that is, if you do what I command.” Note that there is nothing about baptism here, nothing about confirmation, nothing about church attendance, nothing about tithing. It is all about obedience. Is that a way to earn salvation? I don’t think so, but it is about friendship and love. For if we are truly aware of the love of God, and we allow that love to alter our lives bit by bit, then obedience to the loving one’s wishes comes naturally, even compellingly and yes obedience is required for the loving friendship to grow and prosper.
Robert Burns tried to express this love once in his poem A Winter Night:
But deep this truth impress’d my mind—
Thro’ all His works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.
That’s it. We are called to live so that we resemble God, so that our lives reflect God’s love so clearly that we resemble the one who made us, the one who sustains us, the one who loves us.
And at the end of our passage this morning we hear the words, “And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….“ This harks back to the parable of the vine and the canes. Bear fruit. That is your only purpose. Let me say that again, bearing fruit is your only purpose. Oswald Chambers wrote, “God has left us on the earth—what for? To be saved and sanctified? No, to be at it for Him. Am I willing to be broken bread and poured out wine for Him? To be spoiled for this age, for this life, to be spoiled from every standpoint but one—saving as I can disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ.” [My Utmost for His Highest, p. 33] Abide in the vine which is the God of love and produce the fruit of love. “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
Michael Kirwan died on the 12th of November in 1999. He had spent his life in Washington, D.C. feeding and housing the poor. In 1991 he described how he began that mission. He wrote, “In 1978 I was working at the George Washington University Hospital in Georgetown as an account clerk and beginning studies at the university for a graduate degree in Sociology. I lived in a university apartment and was happy and content, looking forward to school and enjoying my job.
“I was out walking one night near the State Department. It was bitterly cold, and, as I passed a heating vent at 21st and Virginia Avenue, NW, a man was sitting there. He called out to me and asked for a dollar to buy a bowl of soup. I ignored him and kept on walking. I still remember being very irritated and annoyed that he had disturbed my peace. He kept calling after me. I stopped about a block away and thought to myself: I’ll fix him. He doesn’t want soup; he just wants a drink; that’s what they all want. I’ll go up to my apartment and fix him some soup and that’ll serve him right. I did that and brought the soup down, set it down and walked away. I don’t remember if he thanked me or not, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know anything about him; I just wanted to be spiteful.
I never saw that man again. I hadn’t cared what it made him feel, but, I had just helped someone, and actually there wasn’t too much to it, and I felt pretty good about it. The next evening, I made more soup and a few sandwiches and some hot tea, and I took the food down and walked away. I still didn’t talk to them; I was still afraid; I was very nervous and very embarrassed. They thanked me, not knowing what I had brought but grateful anyhow, it seemed, for the gesture.
I kept doing that night after night, repeating the same menu but gradually bringing down larger and larger containers as more and more people seemed to congregate for the food that I was bringing. One night, as I brought down a large gallon jug of hot, split pea soup and set it down on the cement block near the heating vent around which they gathered, a rather rough-looking fellow picked up the jar of soup and, in one motion, broke the jar over my head. The soup ran down my clothes; it was boiling hot and burned, but I was too afraid to feel it.
Instead of running away, I asked the man why he had done that. These were probably the first words I had ever spoken to any of them. He told me that I was dong nothing more than bringing food to the dogs. I was treating all of them like pets. I was bringing food, setting it down like I was feeding them out of a pet dish and then just walking away. He said, “Talk to us; visit with us; we don’t bite.” I told him I that I was afraid of him, that I didn’t know what to say. But, I did tell him that from now on, when I came with food, I would stay and visit if they wanted me to. If not, I would just leave.
What had happened that night was that a first barrier had been broken in my perceptions of who homeless people are. I realized that these men and women on the streets had feelings, just like me; they wanted to be loved and respected and listened to. They cared that someone cared about them, but just giving food and a blank stare was not enough.
From there Michael invited a man home with him who asked for a shower and a shave. Showered and shaved the man asked to sleep over and Michael said ‘yes.’ The next morning Michael’s breakfast was made. That evening the man was still there having cleaned the entire apartment and he was listening to Wagner on Michael’s stereo. Michael reported, that he started telling him about Lohengrin. Wrote Michael, “Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that a homeless unkempt person living on a heating vent could appreciate culture of any kind, let alone Richard Wagner, who was a bit much even for me. It broke barriers of other kinds: that homeless people could be educated, could appreciate the arts and beauty, could cook, want to be clean and live in pleasant surroundings and, perhaps, even be trusted; could be honest, decent human beings.
He stayed for thirty days. He wouldn’t leave, because, I think, he felt I wouldn’t let him back in, and I probably wouldn’t have. I loved my privacy and the way I lived. But yet, I began to feel that there was something right about having him stay there. I just couldn’t see forcing another human being out on the streets in the middle of winter, when he took up nothing more than floor space. I also wasn’t bothered at all that he wasn’t going out to work, the reason for his coming up to the apartment in the first place. I discovered then, and it has been confirmed many times since, that, more often than not, there has to be a transitional time from the life of the streets to full-time and meaningful employment; there has to be a time to calm down, dry out, come to terms with life.
“When other people on the streets saw that he was all right, they asked to come up. By the end of that month, I had fifteen people living in my apartment….” [The Catholic Worker, Vol. LLXVII, No. 1, pp. 1 & 5] And that is how Michael Kirwan began ‘bearing fruit’, a career of feeding, housing and loving the poor.
“You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….” So be it