Micah 4:1-5

In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.

John 15:1-11

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. 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 branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

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This congregation is really good at something, and I want to compliment you on it. We don’t need each other to be mirror images of one another.
If you listen in on small group gatherings of this congregation, you will hear the power of convictions, but you will not see anyone trying to silence or shame anyone else’s point of view.

Disagree, yes.

With energy, yes.

But, and this is the thing we are doing well: We have learned somehow to be hard on ideas but gentle with people. And this is rather miraculous in a sense.

These days, society seems to be working overtime to establish who is to blame and who is innocent. And society seems to insist we be rude and aggressive toward those who have a different outlook or point of view.
The attitude of our American culture seems to be that we must look at everyone around exclusive moral polarities. On “our side” are the just, the pure, the innocent, the true and the good. On the “other side” are the unjust, the corrupt, the guilty, the liars and the evil.

I really believe who you have become as a congregation is quite uncommon among congregations.

You seem to know a wisdom that warns you that to establish your identity as that of a “red church” or “blue church” would mean spiritual death. So, I think of us as the way I would want other churches to become--- a “purple church,” which is what you get when you combine red and blue.
Too many congregations and preachers have become so politicized around issues that they are pretty much mirror images of one another and really have no desire to even put up with folks who are not exactly like them. They want to go to church and have everyone be in perfect agreement which, of course, means seeing everything, everyone and every issue the same way. It is either red or blue.

But, I have to hand it to you, First Presbyterian, for you do a good job of working hard at remembering you are not the Christ. You know you are not the perfect disclosure of God as we believe Christ is. You know you are not the protectors of the faith or its absolutes. And, this is good Presbyterian self-understanding.

The motto of the Presbyterian Church is “Reformed, Always Needing to be Reformed.” This is a most humble dynamic insisting that only God is perfect and our understanding of God’s truth is always inadequate due to both our smallness as finite creatures with imperfect perspectives and judgments and our sinfulness, which causes us to always want it our way or no way.

Sure, we believe based on the grand narrative told in the Bible and based upon what the sacraments make visible that we are “chosen” children of God. But we don’t believe we are the chosen people in the sense that everyone else is to be just like us.

That’s not how we understand “chosen.” That’s why our understanding of “chosen” will never pose a danger to others. We understand our being “chosen” means caring for others and being good neighbors to those who are different or “other” from us.

Oh yes, we have our convictions. We believe in our “absolutes.” But we don’t believe we can interpret them absolutely.

So, we don’t come to church to do battle. We come to church to learn how to nurture. We come to church to worship God, whose whole energy seems to be about loving, forgiving and transforming if Jesus is the key, and we, here at First Presbyterian, believe him to be.

We come to church to practice together the strange love that honors the opinions of others more than our own. And it is hard to do! Hard to do in a marriage, hard to do in a friendship and hard to do at church.

As a congregation though, you do great work at struggling to get in touch and stay in touch with people who are different from you politically.
You understand your being “chosen” has nothing to do with your politics or preferences but rather with the mission of reaching out to invite one another to the experience of Jesus Christ alive and of reminding one another that the only unity or oneness that matters is our common life in Christ.

He is the Vine, we are branches. The source of our spiritual vitality is neither our political allegiances nor our views on social issues. It is our commitment to grow in the nurturing power of Christ and to mutually rejoice in our connection to the Vine.

Agreement on homosexuality, the rightness or wrongness of Planned Parenthood or the war in Iraq is not the agreement that binds us. We are all over the map on those issues. That’s why some folks don’t connect with us and seek a congregation where the branches are all exactly alike. They want a leadership and an authoritarian system that guarantees sameness by cutting away all different or unusual branches.

But we believe it is not our job to prune the branches. God is the gardener. First Presbyterian branches of the Vine don’t look alike.

Our binding agreement is that the good news of Jesus Christ is transforming lives like ours and uniting us with one another in a more potent and life giving way than political agreements ever could over any controversial or national issue.

Christ is the nurturing source, the Vine. Branches have no life apart from the Vine. We will shrivel and die if removed from the nutrition and life of the Vine. Agreements on a political perspective or agenda will collapse under the weight of our sinfulness and our mortality.

Yet, our common experience of life in Jesus Christ and our common commitment to be one in Christ, regardless of our agreement on anything else, is invigorating us as a congregation.

I think you do a great job of keeping that unity in diversity. As long as I am your pastor that will be the value that I seek in my own life and insist it is the binding value in our common life. God’s life in Christ and our shared life in the fellowship of the Risen Christ is the nurturing power of our common and individual lives.

This “vine of life” connects us to 185 other congregations in our Grace Presbytery, to the thousands of congregations in the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) and to all other branches of the Vine of Christ, whether called Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal or Pentecostal.

Today we especially remember our ties with Christian brothers and sisters in the North Kerala Diocese of the Church of South India who operate a trade school for training young men. Our congregation each December provides financial assistance to the school.

Today, we add our prayers to theirs just as their congregations in the North Kerala Diocese also pray for us and remember their Christian friends in the Presbyterian congregations of central and north Texas.
Today when we say the Apostles’ Creed, there will be the phrase which says, “I believe in the holy catholic church...” What this means is that you believe in the oneness of the church as the intention of the Holy Spirit.
It is not a oneness in doctrine or church government or agreement on right and wrong, but a oneness in love.

We know we are all connected by sin. “All sin and fall short of the glory of God,” Saint Paul writes in Romans. And that connection ought to make us humble toward one another.

But there is a much more glorious oneness and connection. Love. Love for the Vine and Love flowing from the Vine, which empowers us to love fellow branches. At least that’s how this congregation understands itself, not as red, not as blue, but as purple, as a mixture whose oneness is Christ, rather than our politics—and we are better off for it.