In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.”

In the May 3 edition of the Globe and Mail there was an article entitled “Canadians praying in private, Statscan says.” According to the article it seems that millions of Canadians are secretly more religious than they let on. Many are murmuring prayers, meditating and reading sacred texts in the privacy of their own homes but staying away from formal worship. According to the authors of the report the findings indicate that adult Canadians attach a higher degree of importance to religion than religious attendance figures alone would indicate.

Certainly I was surprised by the findings for I had long assumed that Canada was becoming more secular as religion was pushed to the margins of society. But as I read on I saw that the results of the survey could be interpreted in different ways. It seems that the respondents were asked whether they engaged in private religious activities. However, the respondents were left to define what those activities were and whether they qualified as religious. Does saying a little prayer in the privacy of one’s home count as a religious activity?

Now the study primarily sheds some light on the religious habits of individual Canadians. And yet it also indirectly gives us some idea of the attitudes concerning religion itself. Once again affirming the fact that religion, and not just Christianity, has been removed from the public square. Religion is seen then as a purely private individual matter.

A me and God or me and Jesus type of experience which has left us with the attitude that one can be a Christian without being involved in the life and ministry of the church. I have encountered this attitude often as a minister as people express their admiration for Jesus and his teachings but feel that they don’t have to be involved in a community of faith in order to follow him. Many people seem to find him on the golf course.

And yet the essence of Christianity is community. Jesus’ whole ministry was based on the belief that we worship and live, not as a collection of individuals, but as a community that is responsible to and for one another. Following his baptism, the first thing Jesus did was choose disciples, to choose to be in community. The disciples he chose were just like you and me-flawed imperfect people who struggled to understand life and God. They formed a community, an extended family that has been the model of the church ever since.

John Calvin once said, “One cannot have God as Father without the church as mother.” Calvin was talking about salvation outside the church, which is a sermon for another day, but we also see this idea of community in Calvin’s thought as well. 

And it is to this community, this family that Jesus is speaking in our discourse from John’s gospel. “I am the vine; you are the branches…Using a gardening metaphor, Jesus draws us to the root (no pun intended) of community. It is Christ who brings us to faith and leads us into the life and mission of God’s people. I think of the people who are brought into membership in this congregation. Last month Al Anderson joined our community. Next month there will be a baptism and two others will become part of us.
And yet what do we do when we are received into this community of faith?
In the language from the Gospel of John we “remain”.
“Remain in me and I will remain in you.”
“No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
“If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers.”
Now the word “remain” seems to suggest stillness or passive dependence. Like when you tell a child to remain in one spot until I come back. But we don’t seem to be very good at this passive dependence thing. With our Protestant work ethic run amok, we always think we have to be doing something. I will let you in on a well-kept secret. Ministers are the worst offenders. Coming into a new congregation ministers feel that they have to give a new vitality to the life of the community. Preach the gospel courageously as if you are hearing the gospel for the first time, change the order of service, new strategies for mission etc.

But after a couple of years of this rather frantic work we come to discover that Christ has his own pace, his own agenda for the community of faith. So often we forget where our true strength lies in our search for the right individual, the right program, that magic bullet which will solve our problems. We fail to remember that for us, the church, this family, the true source of our strength and unity is a living relationship with the risen Christ.

Apart from Christ, our attempts at peace and justice are empty schemes despite the best of intentions. But prayer and faithful practice by those who abide in Christ are powerful if often hidden forces in the world.
Our reading from the Gospel of John reminds us that only by “remaining” in Christ can we do his work, and that means cultivating (again no pun intended) a relationship with Christ through word and sacrament, prayer and study. It comes down to practice.

If we understand Christianity as a path, a way of life lived in community then practice is about the living of the Christian way in relationship with God and with others. And it is the midst of these relationships where we are formed to be like Christ.

For example, in worship we come together to praise God, to hear the stories of our community, to enter more deeply into the rhythms of tradition that has been handed down to us. But worship is also many ways subversive for as a community, as a family, we are saying through word and sacrament, prayer and study that God is Lord and that the gods of our world are not.

We are a community, a family whose source of strength and unity is found in Christ. Our life in the midst of this family is admittedly not always easy. It’s not that we don’t treat each other as family but that we do treat each other as members of the same family. And yet throughout history, we have worked to achieve not just the difficult, but sometimes the impossible.

For Christ has taught us that if we remain in him we will know more deeply the power of community in a world which focuses so much on the individual. Today churches like ours are still showing its effectiveness in small but powerful ways.
THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.