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Crushed Fruit
Constance Hastings April 22, 2024
The Trouble with Jesus: One can’t know Love without knowing its Lover.
Now, You Christians really like this part. You’ve got it inscribed on your bracelets, shirts and mugs, and you gush when you say it. Seems to some of us though, you haven’t really read it, more like you take these words and make them be what you want to hear. Let me rephrase what it sounds like to an outsider. God is out to get us. Either we take and swallow God’s deal, or we’re fried. It says God loves and is not condemning or judging, but it certainly doesn’t play like that in my world. One contradiction after another is all it is.
So at this point we say, Sorry, we didn’t mean it and God didn’t mean it either? You want what you say you don’t want, to make it all into what you want to hear? Not going to happen. Granted though, this is the crux of this whole thing. What is required is clarity of thought and expression. It’s a valid need and not to be ignored by any of us.
Context First
Notice the limitations we have with it. We live right now. No kidding. Written 2000 years ago, some things are not going to mean what we think it means. Start with this, “As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole…” That’s what medical professions use as their logo, right? Yes, it came from a story of healing, referencing when the Israelites in the wilderness suffered from snake bites. God provided healing in this pole for those who gaze upon it. (Numbers 21:8-9) Lifting one’s focus above one’s self to God is what heals and restores. Sure, the image seems strangely voodoo-ish, but if it’s good enough for your favorite doc, don’t bash it.
Jesus saw himself on it except his pole was a cross on which he’d be lifted. Like the Israelites, anyone who looks up to it in belief that God heals and restores all that’s wrong with us, gets “eternal life.” That’s huge, a lot more than you may think or have been led to think. It means that life with God begins now, not when you gasp your last. Now. In God’s own presence and being, you have it made. God out to get you? Thank God for it. God wants to get you close and live a full life with you. Yes, right now and again even after your body gives out.
The How and How Much of Love
Then, in just 24 words or so, Jesus clarifies. “God loved the world so much…” Only a copious Love can make it happen, the kind of Love that will do anything to be with another.
“… so much God gave…” It took the fullest sacrifice that can be measured, so much Love that gave and spilled all it could, a surrender that shatters all concept of a love that serves itself. “I came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
“…God gave his only Son…” Love came to show how Love is done, a Love that is total, unreserved, and unrestricted.
“…his only Son that whoever believes in him…” Jesus offered it in his call to “Come and see.” (John 1:39) Watch me, observe me, draw closer, get nearer to what I do and who I am. Know it for yourself and not just what you’ve been told or what someone else wants you to know. And if you get close enough, I will change you and reverse all that you thought you were or could ever be. For in me you will know God and believe, in me you will have faith in what I can do, and in me you will trust as you walk in my path.
“…whoever believes in him will not perish…” Yes, that for which you’ve striven is what I want for you as well. By reversal and restoration, you won’t be separated from Love, but find your life, your soul, that innermost, intimate part of you that only God really sees and of which you have only part understanding.
“…not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) I have come that you may have life and have it fully, abundantly, rich and satisfying with the essentials of all that life is and needs. Even more so, it will carry you from this life, this trouble, into an even better existence with me forever.
So God loves and God gives. God gives God’s self in human form who lived and died for real, reversing trouble by reversing where trouble ends into what God and every created person wants, not death but life that fulfills Love.
Love. For the Love of God, Jesus came. Not to condemn, not to bring judgement, but to bring Love.
Woo Hoo! You set that up well. If only your Jesus had ended with that. But he says too much. Way too much. Next is this thing about if how you don’t buy into God’s plan, if you don’t trust it, you’re judged, punished, and that can’t be good. Then he goes into this light and darkness thing. (Hate to say this, but does it sound like it has racial overtones here?) Not liking this at all. Feeling like it’s how you either sugar-coat all things God or you want to scare the living crap out of someone. Son of God, not ready to buy yet.
Choice or Consequence
If this was easy, you’d question its worth. Again, look at the layers. Talk of judging today isn’t politically correct (like nobody ever does it, just saying). Have you heard it said that tolerance is the love-language of today’s culture? Judging doesn’t fly well when you are supposedly a proponent of Love. Understood. But what seems to be the real misunderstanding is what judgement means here and who does the judging.
Look at it like this. A parent loves a child like nothing else in this world. Now, if that’s so, then the parent wants the best for that child. Think of God’s Love like that for “the world”, that’s all of us. Now, a loving parent wants to help a child grow up to be the best possible kid ever. So that parent will lovingly direct and teach that kid how to be smart and good and stay away from anything that can hurt that kid. When really little, you hold their hands constantly when outside the house. Then you let go more and more. But you teach them to stay on the sidewalk before crossing the street, how to look both ways, read traffic signals, and to cross only when it’s absolutely safe. All out of love and wanting the very best for your kid. God’s like that, too.
But the day will come when the kid crosses the street with no parent standing around. The kid chooses to trust what the parent has taught or to do it however they like. Worst case scenario though, if the kid runs out into traffic and gets killed, it’s not the parent’s fault. (Stop there; this is an analogy. No analogy is perfect, but please go along for the point made.) Don’t blame the parent for what was taught but not obeyed. In the end, the kid made a choice, and the consequence was tragic.
Now, see God like this. God has given God’s best for the world, actually coming here as one of us to teach how to live and how to know God, but most importantly, how much God Loves the world and to what extreme in Jesus that Love is given. The choice to believe is open, not forced. If one chooses otherwise, it’s a choice that can have eternal consequences. That’s not on God; that’s on us. That’s not judgement. God did God’s best to let the world know all it takes is a belief in what Jesus did, how he made a promise written in blood so we don’t have to.
In today’s world, light and dark themes for good and evil choices don’t work well. Agreed. But go with this. You can’t see clearly or well without light. Darkness makes for poor navigation, and it can hide a lot, especially what some would prefer not to be seen. The fact is some choices have clarity of vision and truth, and some choices are cloudy, murky, ones with limited spiritual sight. If someone stays in the dark too long, sight can be impaired to the point of blindness. One is able to spotlight choices, and the other seeks to hide and cover itself from those choices. Judgement isn’t the point, but the choices one makes is.
This makes sense as long as you accept one premise. God set this system up. If God was really that loving, then why make this requirement of “believing”? If God really “so loved the world” then why not take us all in, beliefs or not, warts and all? What if we don’t want to give God all this control and say so?
The Lover in Love
Therein lies the crisis. Sometimes the people who seem most disturbed by and who cry against this system-set up are the ones most fearful of it. Why be afraid of something if you don’t believe it’s true? If it’s not true, no one is going to lose by it. Except that it stabs into and opens up the most vulnerable part of everyone, the need to be Loved, not as the world loves imperfectly, but completely and wholly as you are and are meant to be.
One can’t know Love without knowing its Lover. That’s the choice.
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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.
