A homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2021
Acts 9:26-31, 1 Jn 3:18-24, Jn 15:1-8
You might think that, considering I have made my living with words for just shy of five decades (yikes!), I’d know every acronym or abbreviation or piece of jargon in circulation.
Nope. Hardly the case.
In fact, the first time I heard “CTA,” I thought someone was taking public transportation in Chicago, or that they had heard “Color My World” at somebody’s wedding and the song got stuck in their head.
Then “call to action” was ’splained to me, and I had a huge Aha moment.
Today’s readings combine for an Aha. Also a huge one.
All three involve CTAs, even the “you are” statement by Jesus in the Gospel. Because it’s far more than a statement of that’s what is, and that’s that.
Being branches means being called.
And all three selections from Scripture involve CTAs to make some changes in our lives so we can answer the other CTAs listed here and throughout Christ’s teachings.
Let’s start with the changes.
Saul, the persecutor of early Christians, became Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles and the prolific writer of letters that help guide our lives along The Way of Christ even today, after his encounter with God literally knocked him off his high horse.
Literally changed his identity.
Have our encounters with our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer been that dramatic?
Now, it’s perfectly OK to answer “No, no fireworks here,” because God does speak in quiet whispers, as she did to Elijah, as well as in the awe-inspiring burning bush that Moses experienced or in the frightening lightning and thunderclaps that our Creator used with Paul and at the baptism of Jesus, among many other times.
Whenever and however God speaks with us, we are being called to renew and strengthen our relationship with God, because all good relationships take constant engagement. They take effort. They take action.
They take self-knowledge.
Which is another factor in making changes.
The grace of God and a well-formed conscience give us the ability to identify those areas of our lives in which we’re not totally in sync, not totally tuned into God’s beacon of goodness and right living. So we catalog our growth areas and work on ourselves so we can work on our relationship with God.
In other words, we get our acts together so we can act as the Apostles did.
They were branches. We are branches. And because of what we are, we must remind ourselves of what we must do.
We must bear fruit.
We must sustain lives.
We must bear the fruit of charity and justice, which will sustain the physical and spiritual lives of everyone we encounter. Every one of them is another branch of the same divine vine. We are called to offer them the best of the fruits we bear.
We also are called to accept the fruits that others offer us, and if those figurative fruits could be riper or sweeter, then we are called to help those other branches grow better.
“Branches of the vine” makes for such a great metaphor. Think about it: Out in the world, which branches of any vine, plant or tree grow the strongest and produce the best fruit? The ones that get the most sunshine. Which wither and die? The ones in the dark.
Our Triune God provides that grace, that sunshine to make us grow and bear good fruit, and plenty of it.
Our Messiah also taught us how to look for the shadowy places in need of more grace-filled light, and he calls us to bring that light to those fellow branches in desperate need of it. The Light of Christ.
We all are connected to the divine vine. We all are called to bear the fruits of goodness and justice ourselves and to tend to each other.
We all are connected.
