“Christ fights with the devil in a curious way—the devil with great numbers, cleverness, and steadfastness,

and Christ with few people, with weakness, simplicity, and contempt—and yet Christ wins.”

– Martin Luther, Table Talk

Beloved of God,

Our journey this Easter season is about conforming ourselves and our lives to Christ; living our lives following his lead.  The language we’ve heard these weeks from the Jesus of John’s gospel—LISTEN TO VOICE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD; ABIDE IN THE VINE—is Christ’s answer to the question, how do we live in this world with all its cruelty, malice, competition, and greed without being defeated and deflated?   We follow him past troubled waters; we cling to the SOURCE; we rest in, we draw our lives from, we ABIDE in, the VINE.

Simple, right?  Of course, many things that on the surface are simple to understand are hard to do.  So it is with the life to which Christ calls us.   There’s a reason we talk about “practicing” our faith—because we never achieve perfection, we never finally arrive; we’re always in the process of becoming, we’re always on the way.

On the final page of his RULE, St. Benedict calls upon monastics to, “with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners.” Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, in her commentary on The Rule of Benedict, writes:

“Benedict does not believe that the simple reading or study of spiritual literature is sufficient. He tells us to keep this Rule, its values, its concepts, its insights.  It is not what we read, he implies; it what we become that counts.”

Every major religious tradition, says Chittister, calls for a change of heart, a change of life, “rather than for simply an analysis of its literature.” The Jewish Hasidim, for instance, tell the story of the disciple who said to the teacher,

“Teacher, I have gone completely through the Torah. What must I do now?” 

               The teacher replied, “Oh, my friend, the question is not, Have you gone through the Torah?

               The question is, Has the Torah gone through you?”[1]

Habits shape us from the inside out—for good or for ill. We need a community to help us dwell in habits that shape us toward the good, that help us discover and remain connected to the voice of the Good Shepherd and to the image of God within us, especially during those times when we sheep are surrounded and vastly outnumbered by wolves.  We follow Christ, we abide in the Vine, because in spite of our weakness in the face of all that the world throws at us, Christ wins.  This is the meaning of the cross and resurrection.  Christ finds us even in our failure—in our godforsakeness—and grafts us back on himself; leads us home.  We are never beyond the reach of the Risen One!  Death has no power over us when we abide with him.  Yes, we lose our way; life prunes us.  Yet even then, the experience of being “cut back” is an invitation to dwell ever more deeply in the Vine.

We often speak about habits during the season of Lent.  But the Easter season is also a time for cultivating habits that will keep us tuned to the Shepherd’s voice; connected to the Vine.  The most foundational of these habits is coming to the Eucharistic Table, for there the fruit of the Vine is poured out, tasted, consumed—becomes part of our very being.  What more powerful witness is there to abiding in the Vine than sharing in the fruit of his life for us and with us—and finding the life we share tilted once more toward him, that is to say, toward our neighbor?

Pastor Erik

[1] Joan Chittister. The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century.  (New York: Crossroad, 2010) pages 302, 303.