What a treat it is for all of us to be together today under one roof in one worship service! Those of you who are accustomed to the formality and classical music of our traditional service may be feeling like fish out of water in this contemporary setting today, but in a few months we will all have an opportunity to be together in a traditional setting for a combined worship service. Please remember that the purpose of this joint worship service is for you to renew old friendships with people you may not have seen lately and to meet some new Memorial members and visitors. I am very lucky! I get to experience both worship services each week, and I get to enjoy the fellowship and good music of both services. Unfortunately, I usually have to listen to the same sorry preacher in both services.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. We have celebrated the harsh days of Lent, the wondrous days of Easter, the glory of the ascension into heaven, and today we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Disciples and the beginning of the early church.

You parents of little children have probably experienced this with your children, as I did with mine. You are preparing to leave on an overnight trip without them, and there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and that’s just from your spouse! But your children also cry and cry. Then you come up with an idea! You say to the children, “If I go away, I will bring you a present – a surprise – when I get back!” The crying ceases, and the kids push you out the door! “Go on and leave! Just don’t forget that present.”

The Disciples were like little children on the eve of Good Friday when Jesus said that the time had come for Him to leave them, that is, to die and return to God. He tried to cheer them up by promising to send them a present, saying, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” It was Jesus’ departure – His death – that would open the way for the Spirit to come.

So there it is, the Good Friday-Pentecost Connection! Pentecost was made possible by Good Friday. The Spirit was able to come upon the Disciples on Pentecost Day because that which had been blocking His coming – our sin and guilt – had been removed by Jesus’ atoning death. Pentecost Day and the birth of the church stand as testimonies to Christ’s victory over sin and as testimonies of His resurrection and coronation. Today, whenever a person acknowledges Christ as Savior, at that moment the blockade of sin is removed from his or her life and the Holy Spirit comes into us as a witness to us that we are God’s children.

Wasn’t that what John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience was all about? Wesley, the scholar, the missionary to Savannah, the Anglican priest, knew all about Jesus and the cross, but he found it hard to believe that he was worthy of having his sins included in Christ’s forgiveness. Have you ever felt like Wesley did or known someone who did? God loves and forgives everybody except me. His death was for everybody else’s sin but not mine. Then at the prayer meeting at Aldersgate Street in London, Wesley heard a 200-year-old sermon being read, and as the word was being proclaimed, Wesley realized that he did trust in Christ and that his sins were included in the Good Friday atonement. Pentecost happened to Wesley! He felt his heart strangely warmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit to him. Pentecost Day is repeated every time someone awakens to the Good Friday truth that Jesus is our Savior. By faith, the blockage of sin is removed, our guilt is released, and our hearts are strangely warmed by the Holy Spirit.

This is one of the Good Friday-Pentecost Day connections. The second connection involves the creation of the Church by the Spirit’s activity that Day. Those who were filled with the Holy Spirit came together to proclaim the news about Good Friday and Easter. The story has a bit of humor in it, especially if you have a warped sense of humor like I have! The Disciples, hidden away in an upper room, became so energized and filled with joy by the Spirit that their prayer meeting spilled out into the streets of Jerusalem at nine o’clock in the morning. Some foreigners were mystified at hearing the Gospel story in their native languages as the Spirit enabled the Disciples to speak. But others thought that the Disciples were just drunk. It is at this point that Peter uttered the first blooper of the early church: “We aren’t drunk – it is way too early for that!” One almost expected him to add, “But if you will come back a little later…” I know that sometimes when some of us are eating at a restaurant together – a Sunday School Class or a group of my preacher friends – our laughter creates such a disturbance that some folks may wonder what we are drinking, too! But what happened that Pentecost Day was most amazing. Here was this group of men and women who had lived in fear and hiding for fifty days because their leader had been declared an enemy of Rome and then executed, and they figured that they would be next. For fifty days the resurrected Christ had been in their midst, but they had not spread the word because they were still afraid. Then something happened that removed their fears and sent them into the very streets they had been avoiding and into the crowd they had been hiding from. Boldly they told the Good News about Jesus and they succeeded. Thousands were baptized that day and the Church was born.

Someone has said that the most obvious and yet most overlooked witness to the resurrection of Jesus is the very existence of the Church. It should not have been born. It should not have survived. Most often in history when a leader is killed, followers scatter and the movement fails. The great first century teacher Gamaliel recognized that something extraordinary was keeping the Church together, and he advised the religious leaders to be careful of how they treated the Disciples, saying that they might find themselves opposing the work of God! Why hadn’t the Disciples scattered? That would have been the safest course of action. Just blend back into society and become invisible. Instead, here they are in the streets preaching about a Good Friday death, an Easter resurrection, and a Pentecost Day gift. It was their confidence that Jesus was alive and with them again by means of the Holy Spirit that held them together and sent them into all the world.

And what a motley crew they were. People from rival cities, some saints and some reformed thieves and sinners, some rich, most poor, people that should never have gotten along, all unified and held together by some commonly held beliefs and experiences. They were in one Honda… or one accord, anyway. They believed that the cause of Christ was worth any sacrifice, and so they sold possessions and pooled their resources to finance the spread of the Gospel. They believed that Jesus, Whose Spirit they shared on Pentecost, was calling them all back to Good Friday to carry a cross of sacrifice for each other and the world, to give their time and talent and money, to give up their creature comforts, to give up their lives, if necessary, and it was often necessary. But it must have been very exciting to be part of that first church. When I compare their commitment to Christ with ours today, I am troubled. The Jerusalem Church had no idea what was next or where they were going or how they would get there, but it looks like their theme song was “I’m Going Out in a Blaze of Glory” while ours is “I’ll Rust Away, O Glory.” We take few risks for our faith, choosing rather just to survive, while they risked everything. They went to the far ends of the earth to make new friends for Jesus; we find an excuse not to cross the street to invite a new neighbor to come with us to church. And yet the fact that the church is still here in the world, 2000 plus years after the birth of Christ, is a continuing witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Something has kept us going, growing, adapting and changing, and that something is our common experience of the resurrected Christ in our midst.

Back in grad school, one of my professors was encouraging us to study church history. He said that we would find comfort as we examined various heresies, theologians, the famous and the infamous. If those people who came before us couldn’t mess up the Church, then there is a good chance that we won’t either, he told us. As we say in one of our Baptismal services, “The Church is of God, and will be preserved to the end of time, for the conduct of worship and the due administration of God’s Word and Sacraments, the maintenance of Christian fellowship and discipline, the edification of believers, and the conversion of the world. All, of every age and station, stand in need of the means of grace which it alone supplies.”

Pentecost Day completes the story. The atonement begun on Good Friday and completed on Easter received its strongest endorsement and testimony on Pentecost Day when the Holy Spirit came as evidence that our sins had been washed away. Empowered by the Spirit, the Disciples began their journey into all the world as the Church was formed. As the Spirit’s coming testifies that our sins are forgiven, the Church’s birth testifies that Jesus lives and reigns forever, one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Harry S. Truman was President of our country in the early 50′s when I discovered America. Becoming President after the death of the much-beloved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman found himself to be a very isolated and unpopular President at times. People referred to him as “His Accidency.” Reflecting on the loneliness of being our nation’s chief executive, he once said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Perhaps that is why President Obama got Bo – not for his children but for himself!

At a very vulnerable and lonely moment in His life, Jesus made a very similar and interesting statement: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” This was said on the night of His betrayal and arrest, the eve of His crucifixion. I have a feeling that Jesus, God in very human flesh, felt the need of some friends right then for encouragement and comfort as He stared at the suffering ahead of Him. But His words also signaled a change in His relationship with the Disciples. Up until now, the relationship between Jesus and the Disciples had been similar to a parent child relationship or a master servant, boss employee relationship. But now the Disciples had matured beyond the need for rules and regulations; they were led by love, an internal monitoring system. They were about to be on their own. They had better be all grown up!

Some of us who have grown or almost grown children have noticed that our relationship with our children has gone through a similar change. It better have! Our relationship must become adult to adult now. It is so much fun when your children become peers, friends! Jesus indicated that after several years of apprenticeship, the Disciples were now ready to step up a notch and become His friends, His peers.

Now, if I had been among the 12 Disciples, I would have received this news with fear and trembling! Friendship is an awesome responsibility! It is a lot easier to be a student than to hear that you must now become a teacher. It is easier to be a child than to carry the weight of adult responsibility. It is much easier to be an employee than to be a boss or a partner. If I am an employee, then I can quit working at an agreed upon time. But when does friendship ever take time off? When does a partner let his partner down?

A friend in Greenville started a business in the late 80′s, and he decided that his business would have no employees. Instead, everybody would be a partner. A person had to buy into the business and became a partner, and then it was up to him to make his own income because there was no salary. My friend said that everybody gladly worked 50 to 60 hours each week and that he had to make them take time off. “Go home to your families,” he had to tell them when Fridays came.

Partnership calls for a higher degree of personal commitment. If the boss calls at 3:00 a.m. and says “Please come on in to work,” you will, out of fear of losing your job, but you will grumble and complain. If a friend calls you at 3:00 a.m. and says, “Help me,” you hop up without hesitation or complaining. “That’s my friend who is calling!” Friendship calls for a higher degree of personal commitment. A wise friend in Saluda once asked me, “Think about this. How many friends do you really have? How many friends will stick by your side when your wife says for you to put on your slippers and hit the couch.” My wise friend was aware that most of us have only a handful of real friends.

I heard someone say once that we are trying to bring God down to our level by calling Him “friend.” Whoever would say such a thing has no idea of the responsibility that comes with that title! Jesus is offering us a tremendous opportunity in calling us His friends. He is not coming down to our level; He is raising us to His level of commitment. If I am really Jesus’ friend, then may heaven help me! When can I ever stop working for my Partner, my Friend? When will my debt to Jesus ever be repaid? Are you ready to be Jesus’ friends? Are you able?

The second thing that this passage tells us is that the test of friendship is loyalty in actions. What would you say about someone who claims to be your friend but who stabs you in the back and works against you at all times? I’d say that he wasn’t really my friend! Jesus said, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” I don’t read this as a threat from Jesus, telling us that His love for us will be terminated if we fail to keep His commandments. What I hear Jesus saying is the obvious. Friends stick by each other. Friends put their lives on the line for each other. Friendship with Jesus means that He will put His life on the line for us, and we will put our lives on the line for Him. Friends keep commitments to one another. Friends show friendship by fulfilling expectations, and for us that means following Jesus’ teachings and commandments. Jesus showed that He loved the Father by fulfilling the expectations of that relationship; we show our love for Jesus by fulfilling His expectations of our relationship.

Do I need to tell you that this is rather demanding? But isn’t love always that way? If you love a baby, don’t you sacrifice yourself to get up with him or her in the middle of the night if you have to? Friends show love through loyalty. If you read through the Book of Acts, you will see that these friends showed their love for Jesus by giving sacrificially for His cause. These friends of Jesus did something that defies logic and makes you see just how strongly they considered themselves to be Jesus’ friends. They sold their land, their homes, their valuable possessions and pooled their resources, sharing their resources with one another according to need. We have trouble getting Methodists to turn loose of their loose change! But they really loved each other sacrificially and made sacrifices for Jesus every day.

Several years ago at our Annual Conference, I heard excellent Bible Study leader, Rev. David B. Jones from the N. Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. He told us something I didn’t know, and you may not know it either. He told us that it was faith and prayer that brought down the Berlin Wall and caused Communism to fail! In 1989, Pastor Christian Fuhrer began leading a Monday afternoon prayer meeting at St. Nicholas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, East Germany. St. Nicholas Church dates back to 1165, and it is where the first performance of the Johannes Passion by J. S. Bach was given on Good Friday in 1724. At these weekly prayer meetings, Pastor Fuhrer would preach against the Communist government of East Germany, and then the people would hold a protest march through Leipzig. The crowd of people attending these prayer meetings numbered in the thousands, and the East German government was determined to shut it down at any cost. Rev. Jones told us that as tension mounted, a husband and wife who were members of that church decided that only one of them would go to church that next Monday afternoon so that one of them would be left alive to raise their children. Then Rev. Jones asked us, “When is the last time you had to make a decision like that about going to church?” In the end the faithfulness of those Christians defeated Communism and the Iron Curtain fell! Jesus’ friends show their friendship through loyalty.

The final thing this passage tells us about being friends with Jesus is that friends of that friend should be friends of each other. Friends of Jesus need to be friends of each other. There is a bond between us because of our common connection to Jesus. Within a week of moving to Greer, I had made a very trusted new friend at Waffle House. I discovered that he and my brother-in-law were best friends during high school, and our common friendship with my brother-in-law made us instant friends of each other. Friends of a friend should be friends. Jesus experienced the Father’s love and loved us in the same way. Now He asks us to share that same love with each other, a self sacrificing kind of love for the greater good of the fellowship of believers.

It is in such friendships that we learn more about Jesus. Jesus tells us that friends share insights with each other. Jesus shared His knowledge of God with us, and how rich He has made us! We are invited to turn to Jesus in prayer and share with Him the burdens on our hearts so that He can help shoulder our load. But by being friends with each other, we actually learn more about Jesus, too. I’ve learned a lot more about my brother-in-law since meeting his high school best friend. Through our friendship with each other, we learn more about Jesus.

There are three places where I have learned about Jesus. 1) The Bible, 2) The Holy Spirit, and 3) Jesus’ friends. Together these three ingredients have taught me much about the love of God and helped me better understand my friend Jesus. Friends of that friend ought to be friends!

On His last night on Earth, Jesus said to His Disciples, “I no longer call you servants. Instead, I have called you friends.” And in one of His resurrection appearances, Jesus asked Peter a question that I will close with today by asking you that same question: “Simon, son of John, are you my friend?” Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

You folks know by now that I am a collector of puns. Here are some more that I have recently collected: I like chicken Napoleon – the boney parts. Racial prejudice is a pigment of your imagination. To err is human, to moo bovine. Puns are bad but poetry is verse. A milkman’s creed: “All I have I owe to udders.” The sermon title today is based on a pun I saw on a child’s T-shirt recently: “I’m de Branch; He’s Divine.” In speaking of the relationship between Himself and His disciples, Jesus said He was like the vine and we were like the branches while God is like the gardener Who sees to it that Jesus’ strength passes from Jesus to us so that we can produce the fruits of the faith. It is good for us to remember our place, that we are branches who need the vine in order to survive and live successfully as Christians. We can’t do it by ourselves, nor should we try.

This is not going to be a traditional Mother’s Day sermon, but the image of branch and vine would be an appropriate one for this national day of celebration. Our parents, our home, our heritage is the vine from which we have sprouted our branches. For a very long time, we remain directly connected to the home vine, drawing our values and our strength from our parents. But eventually we put down our own roots and become separate plants, and this separation is natural and necessary since our parents are mortal. But even after our parents are deceased, their lives still live on inside the branches that have taken root, and for that we are so thankful. When the imagery is applied as intended to Christ and His followers, there is one big difference. We always need to remain connected to Him, never severing our connection to Him because He lives eternally. We always are to be connected and rooted in Him.

Dr. James Fleming, a Bible scholar and archeologist, says that you and I have the wrong image of what a vineyard in the Holy Land looked like in Jesus’ day and to a degree today also, and this incorrect image affects our interpretation of this parable. Most of us picture a European vineyard, with posts and wires holding the branches up high overhead. But that is not what a vineyard in Palestine looked like because they didn’t use poles or wires. Instead they used big stones to keep the branches up off of the ground. The more the branches grow, the more stones they use to keep the branches up off of the ground. The problem with the branches touching the ground is that they will try to root themselves and, thus, cut themselves off from the main vine. In most cases, the little separated plant will not survive because it stops raining in April, and the only way to get water is from the early morning fog and from a system of deep roots. Branches that try to root themselves are, in effect, cutting themselves off from the source of water and nutrition and doomed to failure and death. A wise gardener goes through his vineyard lifting up the branches that are touching the ground and placing huge stones under them so that they will remain connected to the vine.

It is this image of a vineyard that Jesus had in mind when He told this parable. Dr. Fleming says that the same Greek word that is translated “cuts off” could be translated “lifts up,” making verse two of chapter 15 read this way: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He lifts up every branch in me that bears no fruit.” Dr. Fleming says that this translation actually makes more sense in light of a vineyard in Palestine, and it makes the passage much more nurturing and much less threatening. It makes God the hero who rescues the wayward branch, not the stern judge who cuts off the wicked.

Another thing you need to know about grapevines in Israel is that they are very vain plants, or so say the local gardeners. They love to load themselves with lovely leaves, much more than they need. They waste precious water and nutrients growing leaves rather than growing grapes, and the extra leaves block the sun, keeping the grapes from ripening. Therefore, the gardener prunes the branches, clipping the leaves off so that more sunlight is available to the grapes. The gardener makes sure that the purpose of the vine is carried out in the branches. They aren’t supposed to look pretty! They are supposed to produce fruit for the gardener. That happens almost automatically if the branches remain connected to the vine and if they don’t waste precious energy on vain things. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He lifts up every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

If you happen upon a vine in Israel during the winter, you would be surprised by what you see! The gardener trims off the withered branches from the previous season, pruning the vine back to a mere nub! It looks like a dead stump sticking out of the ground! But when the spring rains come, that seemingly dead stump comes back to life, giving life to a new generation of branches, sending nurture through them to the fruit.

Are you beginning to see what Jesus found so inspirational about a vineyard? To Him, it made a perfect parable of how He and His Disciples were connected to each other and how God could be counted on to keep Jesus’ work flowing through His disciples in His Church. Jesus is the vine. In Him is life. He is deeply rooted in faith, able to find life-sustaining nutrition for His branches, even in times of great drought. In the winter, the vine looks dead. On Good Friday, Jesus was dead. When spring comes, the vine comes back to life, just as Jesus came back to life on Easter. The Christian movement, which seemed as dead as Jesus was, which seemed to be sealed in a tomb with Christ forever, was reinvigorated by the resurrected Lord on Easter. Those branches began to grow and produce fruit for the Heavenly Father. There were things in the early Church that threatened to choke the fruit – things like unimportant rituals, meaningless debates, and egotistical leaders – but there were enough difficulties to keep the branches pruned of nonessentials and firmly connected to Jesus, the vine. Again and again, the Father Gardener lifted up those branches that were in danger of cutting themselves off – Simon Peter who had denied Jesus and Thomas who had more doubt than faith – keeping them connected to the vine. Jesus knew that He could depend upon God to tend to His branches, and no generation of Christians since has matched their great harvest of fruit!

Can you also see how this parable can be applied to our life of discipleship? Someone has said that the parable of the vine is probably the most complete expression of the mystical union between Christ and Christians. Christians are connected to Christ Who is firmly grounded in and connected to God. He lives in us and through us. As the vine takes nourishment from the earth to its branches, so Jesus takes from God the wisdom and nourishment we need to survive and passes it onto us. If the Father sees us about to root ourselves in something other than in Jesus, He runs to us and lifts us up so that we will remain connected to our source of life, Jesus. It would be a very dangerous thing for us to become disconnected from Jesus.

Have you ever felt disconnected? I have. Like Simon Peter, I have gone my own way and thought I had cut myself off from Christ. Like Thomas, I’ve had my times of doubts. I have spent my time on my pet projects and favorite beliefs, adorning my branch with pretty leaves that crowded out the grapes. My personal ego has gotten in the way, vanity that it is! But haven’t you and I both found that we are tended by the Heavenly Gardener who comes to us and lifts us up when we are in danger of becoming rooted in doubts and self-centeredness, and He faithfully prunes us of unimportant beliefs and vanities. To my amazement, I am still connected to the vine, in spite of myself!

The purpose of the vine is that we, the branches, should bear fruit for the Gardener. God has provided some things that will help us remain connected to Christ and each other. Bibles of various translations are available to us for personal study. Bible Studies and Bible Study books are plentiful. Sunday School is here for us each week. Prayer is available to us anytime anywhere! As someone has wisely said, “As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school!” Worship with beautiful hymns and anthems are plentiful in our country. Fellowship with other Christians can happen any day whenever two or more gather in His name over coffee or lunch. That is a daily occurrence for me! And there are many opportunities to serve in Christ’s name, from simple tasks at church to visiting a lonely person to going on a mission trip. Isn’t it amazing that as we remain connected to Christ, the fruit begins to appear on us branches and people begin to see the life of Christ in us? We may not see it in ourselves because if we did we might become proud, but others see it. It has always been the calling of the Church to be the branches who are so connected to Christ that His power works through us, producing good fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. The fruit of Jesus’ vine changes the world, and we still are called to be world-changers! Jesus said that it would be the fruit on our branches that would bring glory to God and show that we are His disciples.

Jesus is the vine, the source of all our strength and faith. We are branches whose tendency is to cut ourselves off from the vine and root ourselves in petty and vain things. God is the gardener who tends the branches, who lifts us up and puts support under us when we are in danger of disconnecting ourselves from the vine. He is the One who prunes away those things which might harm us so that we can produce His fruit for His glory! May we abide in Christ! Amen.

Arthur H. Holt