[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #660, Easter 5, 5/10/09

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Easter 5 – May 10, 2009

Acts 8:26 40
Psalm 22:25 31
1 John 4:7 21
John 15:1 8

“Not Pressed, Grafted”

To graft a branch onto a vine you must cut open the vine.  To graft a branch you must cut off the branch.  Jesus was cut open, his hands, his feet, his side.  The source of his life, his blood, became available.  If anyone is cut off from their root and grafted into his body, his lifeblood nourishes them.

I had never thought about the wounds of Christ exactly that way before.  My life is grafted into his, tissue for tissue, hand to hand, foot to foot and side to side.  It is his blood that flows in me, not just the closed system of my circulatory system.  The roots I had before I was grafted into Christ were shallow and spindly, entangled in culture and self will.  The vine he offers is rooted in heaven, and now so am I.  Rooted in heaven I am free to bear much fruit:  "…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control." (Galatians 5:22 23)

Moses asks the Hebrew people, "Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?"  (Deut. 4:34) The Gospel writer might20ask, "Has any god ever allowed himself to be pierced so that he might draw the world to himself?" 

After describing our suffering but not knowing it is God's suffering    without knowing God's mightiest act    the Psalmist proclaims, "Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it." (Psalm 22:31) So, a black eunuch cut himself from his roots there on the road to Gaza and was grafted into Christ.  The Coptic Church bears witness to the fruit that he bore thereafter.

Fruit is not the achievement of the branch.  We branches fret so about achievement.  "It is too hard to make an ‘A' in your class," was a criticism I received one time from a college student.  Never mind being rooted in learning. It’s the report card that counts. Life is getting harder as we squeeze it for its last drop of value.  Chrysler once earned a billion dollars in the same quarter that it squeezed its employees out of jobs.  The United Methodist General Conference squeezes the Annual Conferences, and the Annual Conference squeezes the preachers and churches for more achievement (money).  This is what happens to branches that have been cut off and thrown into the press.

We have been grafted into Christ.  Fruitfulness is our nature!  Instead of squeezing harder, let us meditate longer on that pierced body into which our bodies have been grafted.  Feel the flow of that blood enriching 
our blood, washing over every cell     not a vitality rooted in our deteriorating environment but one fed from above.



May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
(an e-mail service) 
 
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