Prune. Thin. Cultivate.

By Rev. Chris Jorgensen

March 13, 2022

Scripture: John 15:1-5

image of woman reaching up to leaf on tree branch

Wow, it continues to be wonderful to see so many smiles in the congregation this morning. We really are beginning to transition from our locked down and limited pandemic reality to our more open waning-days-of-the-pandemic reality. At the very least, we do know our cases are lower now, we are not in the high or substantial threat categories in the county any more. Things are truly opening back up.

I’ve been reflecting this week on the two years we lived in an active pandemic reality. It was almost exactly two years ago when it all started. Specifically, I have been thinking about the things we pruned during the pandemic. In other words, what things in your life just didn’t seem important anymore, so you stopped doing them during the pandemic? Especially, what are some things you stopped doing during the pandemic that you just aren’t ever going to do again? You learned that was something that could be pruned.

Folks online – why don’t you start sharing in the comments things you have pruned from your life since the beginning of the pandemic? I’m going to ask the folks in person in just one minute.

I’m going to start with just one small example. Before the pandemic, I would put makeup on every day that I went into the office. Fast forward a couple months into the pandemic. It’s just me and Cindy in the office together, and we are seeing like, nobody in person. And I’m like, “Okay, there is really no reason for me to wear make-up every day, especially since only half my face is showing behind this mask.” So I stopped wearing makeup Monday-Saturday except on rare occasions. I do still wear it on Sundays because worship is important, and I see LOTS of people on Sundays…but the rest of the week: no makeup. You know what? Nobody died, and now I get back 20 minutes of my life every day.

So what things did you prune during the pandemic?

Now, in today’s scripture, we have this image of God as the gardener and Jesus as the true vine that gives life and love to all the branches. The branches! That’s us! We are the branches, and branches need pruning.

We prune things from our lives for a very good reason. We prune in order to make sure we are receiving everything we need from the vine. We receive life-giving power and the love of God from the vine. We receive power from Jesus for our very lives and to sustain us in our work, and if we’ve got random tendrils of busyness and distraction going every which way, that power and presence of God is being wasted on activities that might not bear much fruit. Those activities might even drain us so that the fruit on the other branches begins to wither.

As we enter into these waning days of the pandemic, it’s a season to be aware of the good that can come from pruning. Just this week, I pruned something from my life. On Tuesday morning, because I had pruned my makeup routine and got up a few minutes early, I had about a half-hour to spare before I had to leave for work. Now, recently, I have been watching some morning news during that time before Matt and I ride to work together. It’s an okay activity. It’s not sinful at all, I would say. Maybe there’s a little value in it because it’s good to keep up with national and world news. But there’s also a lot of fluff. Again, it’s not bad. It’s not some rotting, diseased branch. It’s just not particularly fruitful.

So on Tuesday, instead of watching The Today Show, I went up to my room, closed the door and spent a half hour mindfully in the presence of God. I listened to one of the hymns for worship this week, and I took some deep breaths. Spiritual formation hack: I am bad at sitting quietly and focusing on my breath in prayer because my mind starts like planning church things and writing sermons. But if I listen to music I can focus on the music while I breathe, and it keeps my brain in check.

After that, I read the daily reflection from the Lenten book that we are using, I read through Psalm 42 a couple of times (which is where that language of “as the deer pants for the water” comes from), and I prayed for the many people on my prayer list.

By the time I was done, I was fully grounded in the presence and power of God, and I felt a difference as I went about my day.

Now this taking 25 minutes to practice a spiritual discipline might sound like what is commonly called “self-care.” I do believe that making time to ground oneself in the love of God is self-care, but I want to be clear there is nothing “selfish” about it.

I was recently listening to a podcast with Dr. Shawn Ginwright. Dr. Ginwright is a professor of education. He researches and works to transform the world into a better place specifically for African American youth. Dr. Ginwright was talking about this idea of self-care. He said that he does not believe it is simply self-care. He believes that self-care IS community-care.

He reminded me that if “I” am not healthy than “we” are not healthy. I am, each one of us are, connected to the whole community. We are each a branch on the vine. And if I am not the healthy, it can negatively affect everybody else. This is especially true for people in leadership from global leaders to pastors to committee leaders. If I am not healthy, “we” are not healthy.

So, what we call “self-care,” the actions we take to keep ourselves healthy, whether that is physically healthy, mentally healthy, or as I did this week, spiritually healthy, it is ALL community-care.

It is all so that we can bear good fruit.

I’ve also been thinking about thinning this week. Has anyone here ever thinned seedlings from a garden? I think especially of carrots here. When you plant carrots, you put a whole bunch of seeds in a row. Then, hopefully, all these seedlings come up…but they come up right next to each other. They are good little carrots with so much potential, but if you leave them all there, you will never have any actual edible carrots. They need space and room to grow. So you have to thin even the good things with potential to give space for the most important things to grow.

As we enter these waning days of the pandemic, we also need to look at our ministries and determine what needs thinning and pruning. There may be some things that were wonderful in the past, but they might not be the things we need to put energy into for the future. Or, perhaps they continue to be wonderful…but they need some pruning. Maybe we do them less often so that a healthier, stronger branch can bear more fruit.

Let’s take Worship in the Garden, for example. So, in 2020, we started a weekly Thursday evening Worship in the Garden. It was awesome. It was awesome partially because we were still in the terrifying grips of a pandemic with no vaccines. We could not meet in a large group inside the sanctuary safely. But because of wearing masks and being outdoors in the totally moving air, we could gather to worship safely outside. Also, it had this wonderful benefit of being a witness to our faith for the neighborhood and a chance to meet and invite our neighbors to celebrate God’s love with us.

You know I personally LOVE Worship in the Garden. So we did it again, every week, in 2021. It was still lovely, it was still a great witness to our community, it was still a place of welcome for our neighbors. However, our attendance numbers dropped toward the end of the summer. Because we could worship indoors on Sundays due to the vaccine, the group gathered on Thursdays grew smaller.

So as we plan for this year (and I will mention I had planned to propose this even before I knew I was going to be moved on July 1) I think we should prune Worship in the Garden. I’ve talked with Chuck and our music leaders about this already. I think if we prune away our weekly gathering and put our planning and volunteering and marketing energy into four Worship in the Garden events, we can have larger worship services which will actually bear more fruit!

I am thinking those four events will be things like, of course, the Pet Blessing and the Backpack Blessing. Hopefully, the week of VBS if that works for everyone involved in those ministries. And because I do love it so much, I would LOVE if we could have a big Worship in the Garden event before I leave to celebrate our five wonderful years of ministry together.

Now, we will work all the details of that out, but what I want to emphasize is that I am proposing to prune Worship in the Garden because I love it, and it is a great way to share our love of God with our community. Pruning will make it better and more fruitful. So as we reopen, I encourage all of us to approach all the ministries of the church in the same way. More ministry or activity is not necessarily better. What we are aiming for is more fruitful ministry that is deeply grounded in our love of God and neighbor.

We are called to participate in the work of loving the world into wholeness. We are called to make space to ground ourselves in the love and power of God so that we can bear the fruit of loving God and loving our neighbor.

So I want to end this sermon with three questions for you to ponder this week:

            What in your life needs to be pruned?

            What in your life needs to be thinned?

            What in your life needs to be cultivated?

In our Christian faith, there is a promise that if we prune & thin the unnecessary things our lives, if we live from a place of faithfulness to the voice of God, we will not see less abundance, we will see more abundance. So don’t be afraid to thin those carrots.

What will be left will be filled with the power and love and the hope of God. It will bear fruit beyond our imagining.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1) Think back over your life. What is something that was good in your life for a time, but you “pruned” it away in order to pursue something more life-giving or fruitful?

2) What in your life needs to be pruned or thinned today? What thing do you spend your time on that could be better spent in growing in your care for self, your love of God, and your love of neighbor?

3) What in your life needs to be cultivated? What is something you really enjoy or feel called to do that you would spend more time on if you could?

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