Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2021 – Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

At a certain point in seminary training you have to learn how to give a homily, and how to interpret the scriptures to give that homily. And so, the professor assigned us to preach on a parable of the Lord Jesus, because they’re fairly easy to preach on. One enterprising young man got up and said to all of us gathered to listen, “What Jesus was trying to say, here in this parable…” And the whole classroom burst into laughter. Except the professor, he didn’t think it was so funny. And the young man didn’t realize what was funny about it. “What Jesus was trying to say,” as though Jesus doesn’t say it very well, and needs an interpreter.

And that’s the case with today’s gospel. The extended metaphor of the vine and the branches is so plain, so easy to understand, that it does not bear commentary by any of us mere mortals. I’ll say just three things. Within the parable, there are words of comfort, words of encouragement, and words of warning.

Now remember, before the readings began, I pointed out four things to look for in the first reading. I said there was a contradiction in the first reading. I think it’s deliberate. Talking about Saul, it says that the Hellenists - those who were Jews who spoke Greek - were trying to kill him. Trying to kill him. And in the very next paragraph it says, “The church throughout Judea was at peace.” Well, if they were trying to kill Saul, they very much were not at peace.

The second thing I said was that someone’s name is wrong, and that is Saul. The very first sentence, “When Saul arrived in Jerusalem...” This is the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Saul is the one who used to be an enemy of the Christians. After his experience of the risen Lord, on the road to Damascus, he is converted. And from that point on, his name is Paul. So why, several chapters after his conversion, is he suddenly called Saul again? There are two things so far that are disturbing about this story.

The third one, as I said, there’s a hidden character in the story, who’s very important to the story. When Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples. Who was it that he was coming to see in Jerusalem? It was Peter, the head of the apostles. Yet his name isn’t there, and there’s a reason for that.

And finally, I said there’s a character in the story who’s the most important person in the story, but doesn’t appear to be. That person is Barnabas. Let’s talk a little bit about this story.

At one point in my ministry, I had a lot of friends from one particular precinct in the Bronx, the 44th precinct. And they would tell me cop stories. One of the expressions they loved to use was, “You have to have a rabbi.” What they meant by that is, if you want to get ahead in the police department, or you need a special favor, or if there’s something you need to have done by the higher ups, somebody has to intervene on your behalf. You have to have a rabbi.

Well, in this story, Saul is a rabbi, one of the greatest of all. And yet, he needs a rabbi. No one in Jerusalem, among the small group of Christians, is willing to trust him because of his reputation for persecuting Christians. So someone has to take him in hand. And that someone is Barnabas. So he’s the most important person in the story.
And for a long time, in the book of Acts, he remains a very important person. He’s St. Paul’s closest companion through Paul’s missionary journeys. They work side by side, proclaiming the gospel, trying to get people to see that their salvation lies in Jesus.

And then something happens. Barnabas and Paul have a terrible falling out over the direction of ministry. A fundamental issue in the early church, the direction of ministry. And Barnabas abandons Paul, and they never speak again. That hidden person in the story is also very important, because Paul came up to Jerusalem to get Peter’s blessing, and to create a relationship with him. But that relationship was fractured for good when Peter came down to visit Paul, and Peter, who had championed the breaking of the kosher laws in order to draw gentiles into the church, was embarrassed into keeping the kosher laws when he visited the house of Jewish Christians in Paul’s community. And Paul was so infuriated, that in public, in front of everybody, he called Peter a hypocrite. And that was the last time they spoke.

There is, indeed, a disturbance in the force in this story. And it’s interesting to say that, because, you know, when we celebrate Peter and Paul as saints, the church puts them together. How many times have you heard people say, “Peter and Paul and all the saints?” Right? As though they were bosom buddies. But there’s a problem there. It’s not the only time in church history that saints disagreed violently with one another.

St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen were best buds. They met in, what we would call today, college. They were young men on the cusp of adulthood studying, because they were brilliant, in one of the traditional schools of the ancient Near East. And they formed a bond that lasted for a long time. They both entered religious life together. At some point, Basil became the archbishop of an area almost the size of the United States - all of what we now call the Slavic nations. And he was given this large territory to govern, so he tapped Gregory to be a bishop, a suffragan bishop, someplace. And Gregory didn’t want to do it. He didn’t feel up to the task. And Basil forced him to do it. So he did it, but it ended their friendship.

At one point in the Middle Ages, there were two Dominicans - one a priest, and one a religious sister - who fought violently with each other over the course of their whole lives. Vincent Ferrer was the priest. Catherine of Siena was the nun. They’re both acclaimed saints today. They fought over who was the real pope. At that point there was a great deal of friction in Europe, created mostly by the interference of royal families in the choice of a Roman Pontiff. But Vincent Ferrer championed one of the people claiming to be pope, and Catherine of Siena championed the other, and they wrote hostile letters back and forth over the entire course of their lives, and nothing was settled.

In the letter to the Hebrews, it says, “Try to live at peace with one another.” Try. The implication is that you’re probably going to fail. Maybe you say to someone, “Well, try it, try it,” you don’t really expect much of a positive result.

We live in a binary world. Cancel culture, hashtag this, hashtag that. Binary systems are very important. Without that we could not have modern communications, and computers, and all those things. But we are beginning to learn how to think in a binary fashion. Everything is yes/no, black/white. That’s not the way life is. Life is rarely, if ever, black and white. It’s almost always various shades of gray. Because of that, there’s a conflict within us that’s both in the church and the rest of the world in which we live.

That’s where we come back to the gospel. I said that Jesus does three things in the extended parable of the vine and the branches. He offers comfort, because things are tough. He offers encouragement, because we have to try. He offers a word of warning, because we really have to try, and not brush it aside.

In the second reading, the writer of the first letter of John tells us the same thing in other words. He says there are two things you must do. Keep the commandments and love one another. And he says the way you’re able to do that is through the Holy Spirit that abides in you. Just like Jesus has said, “If you abide in me, and I abide in you.”

So what is that all about? Loving one another requires keeping the other Ten Commandments. That is the way we show love. Love has nothing to do with liking other people. That’s why Vincent Ferrer and Catherine of Siena could go at it with each other. They didn’t like each other very much. But they wouldn’t have continued writing to each other if they didn’t love each other. Which means that they willed the good of the other. Basil willed the good of Gregory, and Gregory of Basil. Peter of Paul, and Paul of Peter. They desired that they have the highest good, which is to go to heaven. And so, loving one another does not necessarily mean having fun with them, enjoying their company, or thinking pleasant thoughts about them. It means willing the good. When we will the good of another person, then we do not do to them the things that our commandments forbid.

Life is not all black and white. It is not binary. We need to try.