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Crushed Fruit
Constance Hastings April 22, 2024
The Trouble with Jesus: If all God does is leave us dangling in the mess we call life, what’s the point of a God anyway?
The question has to be asked. It springs from recent history of anxiety in a global pandemic, but it’s been around like forever. When we face the horrors which we cannot control, where is God, what is God doing in all of it? Don’t think I’m the only one to ask. People sit in war zones not of their own making and watch their lives, their families, their kids go though terror. Addictions steal souls with so many weapons: drugs that change personalities, legal gambling that gives false highs and rationales, digital devices that can’t be put down while they shout twisted lies and play into fears of isolation. Mental illness raids the mind of rational thought and devastates relationships. Diseases like cancer are known to every single family in this world. There’s more, but worst is how none of this sits in its own silo. Much of it feeds on the other, and we sink into the bottom of what we once thought was bottom.
We’ve got a right to ask, God what’s the plan here? Are you there or are we just left hanging while God watches disinterestedly from the cosmos?
The Desperate Question
That’s valid. If all God does is leave us dangling in the mess we call life, what’s the point of a God anyway? Lord knows, there’s likely not a single person on this globe that hasn’t been affected by any number of these tragedies. And it’s been a long time, a real long time at least for our generation who is used to quick fixes and instant gratification. But in reality, ours is not the only generation who has had to deal with ordeals that reroute life from what it should be.
With all the advances of science, technology, expert knowledge, and now AI, we’ve adopted the perspective that these things should be easily controlled. Learning we’re not in control, how there are no good answers, is a hard lesson. It leaves one last pathetic question, how did people get through this in the past? Or more to your question, where was God then and what came of it?
An Eternal Question
The candid point here is what brings this question has been a part of life, as you said, like forever. Get over it; this is nothing new. Even when we’ve been able to push back and defeat one, something else in a whack-a-mole fashion pops up. The loss it brings is exhausting certainly.
When Jesus lived, it was no different. Illness could easily bring with it early death. Life expectancy was really low. Anything that could save a life was precious. So, news of his healings attracted crowds similar to the first Covid 19 vaccine lines. Furthermore, his power over disease testified that he was no ordinary rabbi. If nothing else, people listened more closely to what he had to say because of them. At best, persons came to believe through his healing miracles that he was from God as the Son of God. But in between is the question, what did Jesus mean to do in people’s lives by healing them? What was he helping people to understand about God in these struggles with that which cheats life of quality and longevity?
The Meaning in the Question
One of those healings was really personal for Simon, more commonly known as Peter. After Jesus and his disciples had been in the synagogue, they went home where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a high fever. Whereas today a high fever could be dispelled in little time with medication, in the first century it demonstrated the body was in battle with something that could take over and bring death, almost like a kind of evil.
In a simple act, Jesus went to her and took her hand. Like today, touching could bring on contagion. Yet, with the confidence of one who has no fear, he helped her sit up. The change of position brought the hoped-for change of restored health as the fever left her. She was so well and strong she even prepared dinner for her family, Jesus and his disciples. (And remember, cooking in those days was no small chore.)
Word spread fast and by sunset, people brought their sick and demon possessed. The crowd was huge and gathered outside the door. Jesus healed them, those whose diseases were recognized and those whose issues and behaviors were beyond the present-day understanding. Sure, this makes for a good story and plenty of movies where people are profuse in their thanks and bow at Jesus’ feet. But it also worth asking what these vignettes are meant to say.
Go back to the present-day struggles. Without discounting crushing sickness, panic, and loss, everyone lives with the constant, low-level stress of not knowing what’s going to happen next and to whom. We desperately want it to go away, and we want to have lives with some kind of normalcy restored.
The Purpose in the Question
Restored. Isn’t that the key? No matter if it happened two thousand years ago or this afternoon, whatever can restore our lives is the healing we want. That’s what Jesus brought in his miracles of healing. Simon’s mother-in-law was not just rid of a high fever, but she was raised back to the life she’d been given where she could serve others. Today, we desire and hope for the same life, a life where we are not separated and distanced but restored to physical and relational presence with each other and working together in community for each other’s common good and connection. It’s the life that God means for us to have.
Our Healer knew that need as well. Before dawn the next morning, he retreated to the “wilderness,” a place of solitude for prayer. Anyone who serves in whatever kind of ministry of healing they are called can tell you at the end of the day, exhaustion will ask why you do this kind of work. Jesus’ life had a similar degree of wrestling with the same question.
He needed his answer soon, for Simon and the others showed up. The crowds were looking for more of the same. Yet Jesus knew his call was not just centered in a small town near the Sea of Galilee. He needed to take his message to others, proclaiming the Kingdom of God is near. This was the Good News. Jesus was bringing healing restoration to life in all that God would have us be and serve each other.
Need a more direct answer to what God is doing in this chaos? In spite of the losses we all know, healing still happens. Just as we watched teams of healers develop vaccines in record time, the human race fights hard in saying, “This shall not be!” against what would end life. With all the hope that brings of not having to live daily with these threats in our faces, there’s something even better. If we choose, life restored will be healed in knowing God wants us, saves us for life with purpose in being who God created us to be.
The Trouble with Jesus: “For this is what I came to do.”
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The Trouble with Jesus: His words grow like a vine,
thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus kept talking. He’d just said it was time to go. But he kept talking. The tension in the room was a weighty blend of grief, some denial, maybe even suppressed anger at what he was saying held in place by the exhaustion of the week. Tonight was not how it had started, an exhilarating parade with the crowd calling him the new king, a king who would save. (Mark 11:1-11)
Deviating Thoughts
But he kept saying things like being lifted on a cross even as he almost desperately called to the people to believe he was sent from God. Those gathered in the city for the Passover festival had heard about his miracle of bringing a friend back to life after four days dead. (John 11:1-44) But most were not buying much more of his message than that. Still, he just kept talking.
Earlier in the evening, he had done something weird, uncharacteristic for one who would be king. He’d dressed like a servant and washed their dirty feet, calling upon them to serve others likewise. (John 13:1-17)
Then he’d said the unthinkable, that one of them, these who had followed and learned of him for three years, would betray him. Maybe that’s why he’d said to Judas, “Hurry. Do it now.” Judas was the treasurer who paid for their meals and gave money to the poor. (John 13:27-30) Do you think he left to pay off any threat to their Rabbi and themselves? Jesus kept talking.
In all the confusion, Peter had declared he’d die for his Lord. Jesus silenced the room when he stated Peter would do go so far as to three times deny he even knew Jesus before that very night was over. (John 13:38) Next came some kind of talk about going away somewhere and how he would send a Counselor to teach and remind them of what he had said. (John 14:26)
Restless, Weaving Thoughts
It was too much, how he kept talking even when he said they should be going. It was as if Jesus knew when they left that room he never would have again the chance to tell them all he wanted. So he weaved in his thoughts, let them creep out and hold on where they would, seemingly just talk but growing into so much more.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” Jesus kept talking but hold on to that thought. A vine. The image is one similar to what he is doing now. It grows, spreads out, weaves up into and among places to which it can grasp, wrap itself, become stable-tight, and then move out again. His words have been like that all night, thin trails of thought getting thicker with meaning.
Jesus fleshes it out. His Father, the one from whom he comes, is the gardener. The work of this Gardener-God is made clear from the beginning: to produce fruit. The gardener trains the branches on the vine, how to grow so light is available to all parts of it. The parts that impede ability to produce fruit are removed, pruned.
Such it has been with these friends of Jesus. The message he has given them has cut away at their ambitions, desires, misconceptions of God’s purpose in them. It’s pruning that can be severe but necessary for the fruit of the vine. Not all will accept being part of the vine. The separation leaves a wound on the vine like something nailed deep into flesh.
Severe, sometimes necessary pruning can also be a cleansing, yielding process, as if having feet or hands washed. The health of the vine and the expected fruit must be protected from disease. Yielding to the Gardener-God’s work maintains the well-being of the branches.
Roving, Winding Thoughts
From the True Vine come branches, and from the yielding of the branches is fruit. There is an interconnectedness in the image that belies the translations. Eight times Jesus states the importance of remaining, abiding, being joined to him. “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
You won’t know growth. You can’t be effective. You won’t have life in the abundance the Gardener-God would have for you. You won’t last because you won’t produce fruit. Abide, remain in, and be joined to the message Jesus brings.
To abide is to be not just a branch, an extra appendage, but an integral part of the vine. By an intimate conjoining of Love the True Vine connects with its branches. In this Christ-likeness, the branch is identified with The True Vine. Yet, this metaphor is not limited to individualism.
“You may ask any request you like, and it will be granted.” Not a blanket give-a-way is this. Throughout Jesus’ words the plural form of “you” is stated. You entails the interconnected, gathered believers who remain in, are joined to, and abide in the True Vine. In the altogether growing, cleansing, pruning of the branches is God’s desire in producing fruit.
Meandering, Heavy Thoughts
Jesus kept talking. His message is understood as the tenuous wisps of leaves sprouted from the tips of the branch connected to the True Vine. His discourse is cloudy in its first vision, requiring multiple re-examinations as the vine sends out more branches.
Jesus kept talking. Fruit is the desire of his Gardener-God. Fruit will be taken from the vine of Love and crushed into a cup from which Jesus soon will pour out his life. The True Vine stared into his fate.
He kept talking.
