May 14, 2006 (David Hyers)  

Scripture Readings for Sunday, May 14, 2006

Acts 8:26-40

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

John 15:1-8

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.

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As spring days elongate into summer, and it become so hot I start to sweat simply by breathing too hard, there are times when my thoughts begin to travel back to the lush coolness of the North Carolina mountains where I was raised. I will close my eyes for a moment seeking respite in the quiet shade of my memory, thinking again of weeks spent there at Holston Presbytery’s summer camp.

Recently I took a mental walk around the old dining hall. Thousands of photos form huge collages along the walls -- 51 years of collective memory, visualized prayers of thanksgiving and prayers of joy. All are silently and continually offered up for those who seek to see and remember.

The photos are more than just smiling faces and playful poses behind layers of clear plastic laminate. They become more than just canoe trips and camp outs. They are Kodachrome testimony to God’s mysterious and playful abiding among the people of God. They are branches and lives full of fruit after all my years working and living in this place as lifeguard, counselor and program director.

There are, truth be told, a good number of rather embarrassing photos of me. Visual proof that I cannot dance. Winching faces prove that I cannot sing. There is my long and messy orange hair before it began its great migration.

There is one photo though, small and grainy, high upon the wall near the back dim corner, that I don’t visit very often. It’s not a shot of my small group like many of the other photos. Rather, there are only two of us in this photo, a kind and patient camp director, with one arm hugging a rather dirty, tired and red-eyed little boy with a swollen cheek.

We are standing in the parking lot, both with much more hair than we have now. I seemed so small and so far away. More than 20 quick summers have passed, but I’ve never wanted a copy of that photograph. There are some images more powerfully seen with the mind’s eye.

Of all the photos lining the camp dining hall, it’s the only one of me not on staff. It was taken the week I went to camp as a camper. And it was fated to be a rotten week.

Just before camp, I was playing with a neighbor in a big pile of leaves. We were having a great time, diving in them, throwing them into the air or tackling each other in them. All the while, as it turned out, we were throwing around plenty of freshly chopped poison ivy vines at the bottom. My own human-sized Poison Ivy Salad. 

I’ll spare you the unpleasant details. But the remedy required a shot and vast amounts of calamine lotion. And my parents very nearly used restraints to keep me from scratching my own skin off.

By the time I made it to camp, most of the worst skin irritation was gone. The ivy had gone underground, moving into my blood stream. The result was one bright red ballooned cheek with an itch that could not be scratched. My face looked something like a sun-burnt chipmunk with one cheek stuffed full of food. The bottle of pills prescribed by the doctor didn’t reduce the swelling but wound me up like a mouse on Red Bull. I was bouncing off the walls at home. I am sure my parents were grateful for the break. I ended up sleeping in “Fox Den,” which sounds cozy. But in reality, it was a collection of damp canvas Army tents with muddy wooden floors built next to a stream. The heavy summer rains had turned the hard-packed dirt into a muddy soup that loved to eat tennis shoes. There wasn’t a dry piece of wood to be found for cooking food or heating water for showers.

Midway through the week, I was a rather dirty and smelly chipmunk with one shoe and a bad attitude. I didn’t do much to endear myself to the counselors. I’ve been told I was going through one of those “why” and “how come?” phases. Any adult sympathy for my swollen cheek was gone.

It also didn’t help that somehow I had sneaked a Zippo lighter and a large supply of fluid into my bag. I guess they didn’t like the fact that I started a little band of pyromaniacs who were obsessed with trying to set anything and everything on fire.

It’s amazing what will burn when given enough lighter fluid and toilet paper.  Although I didn’t have much luck or interest in actually starting a fire in the fire pit. I did have some success with Tang and certain brands of toothpaste. The pivotal event involved a can of Cheese Wiz, a small explosion and some singed hair on the arm of a male counselor.

After my pyrotechnic rebellion was squashed, my counselors and I talked and reached a mutual decision that it might be best for me to go home rather than complete the week. And so I was moved into the dining hall to await deportation. Someone grabbed a camera and snapped that small fuzzy photo, the only one of my notorious week at Camp.

On the way out to my parent’s car to be driven home, the camp director came up to me, placed his arm around me and told me he was really sorry to see me go. He said he loved me and wanted to see me again soon.
I can’t say I was sorry to go. I can’t say I was sorry for acting out. And so I thought it was odd to be sent off with such kindness.

Tired from the pain in my check, the emotionally volatile week and the drug-induced rebellion, I climbed into our car, and we headed home.  I was expecting a stern rebuke. For a long time there was silence from shame on my part. It’s never good for the son of a preacher to have to leave early from church camp.

From my parents though, there was no judgment, no anger rebuke. Nothing but calm, quiet reassurance. They knew growth would come in time. (I am not sure how long that knowledge persisted?)

Once we were in the main road, mom turned round and handed me a large bunch of grapes. These were not just any grapes. These were Concord grates from my great uncle’s house. They were the wild kind of grapes, smaller and sweeter than any store-bought variety. She handed me a large bunch.

The fruit from the vine became fruit for the soul. And I ate and ate and ate.
By the time we got home, my stomach was aching from the grapes. My heart also began to ache with the first tendrils of healing. I lay down and slowly went to sleep, and I slept for a long time.

I am reminded of the irony of this story that as a camper I never finished seven days, but as a staffer, I worked at the camp seven summers.  Those seven years determined my path that led me here.

I found out last week that one of my fellow campers who was worse than me and who made me look like a saint just became a candidate for the ministry. Sometimes the worst campers make the best counselors.

When I see that photo in my mind, I am reminded by that hug and those grapes that even in failure, in sickness, God’s love abides. And we, aware or not, also abide in God’s love.    And when the church and Christians are at their best, we know that love abides. We show how love abides in the hug of a gentle man around a tired and sad boy and from patient parents.

That fuzzy photo is important to me because it reminds me sometimes at our worst, we re loved best. Sometimes at our weakest, God’s strength shows forth the strongest. And there are times when we must fail in order to succeed.

For a long time, I wanted to disown that photo and symbolically that little boy. But the process of growing in life, in faith and in love means claiming that little boy, tired and afraid.

         
Awakening to the abiding of God’s love also enables a cathartic growth. Sometimes we must face the dark corners, the faded fuzzy photos we would rather avoid in order to see clearly the growth of God’s goodness around us.

The God we meet in Christ’s words, the God we meet in truth of our hearts, the abiding vine maker is a God whose strength is in God’s compassion and venerable love. God is the one who desires abiding joy and lasting peace for us. God desires relationship and relatedness to one another.

In verse 9 in John 15, Jesus goes on to say, “As God has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love,” and in verse 11, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

The photo reminds me of God’s abiding love. We are always challenged to rethink our relationship to God and to our very selves. We are invited to be present to God’s pruning, cleansing love, which is a love that does not seek our destruction but prays and builds our wholeness. I didn’t want to look at that photo, because I only saw the little boy, his failure and his fear, and I didn’t want to be defined by that image.

But I didn’t see clearly that the photo is less about me and more about the abiding love of God. I didn’t see the gentle arm placed around me, inviting me to grow and to realize again that I am and always will be loved by God.

God invites us to hold up faded images of ourselves that seek to define us as someone other than one of God’s beloved and leave them behind. God invites us to remember that Christ is the vine, and we are the branches. God is the vine tender. God invites us to prune and clean and grow into life more fully aware of God within and around us.

Paul says in God we live and move and find our being. That is our definition; that is our picture; that is our photograph. All of us at times are small children who can be scared and afraid and separated from the vine, from even ourselves and even from God.

The truth of the good news of the gospel for me is the truth of my heart. It is continually needed to be reminded that God’s arm extends around us. We are the vine and branches. We abide in the vine, and God is the vine keeper.

Friends, no matter where we go, what we do or what we seek to be, we are first and foremost beloved children of God. Branches in the vine, beloved, claimed and renamed. That is who we are. That is our first and most important photograph.

And yet God extends to us a challenge to look for those other photographs in our memory and other things in our lives that seek to tell us we are something other than a child of God. We learn to leave those things behind through work, catharsis and community. We turn again to the true vine and remember we are the beloved branches cared for by God.

Alleluia. Amen.