5th Sun in Easter - May 10 - 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

When I was a kid, my dad often told me, "Aimee, I don't expect perfection from you, just sainthood!" Not being a churchgoer, I had a fairly secular image of sainthood. To me it was beyond perfection. I took my father's words to heart and sought to be better than perfect. If I got an A, I wondered why it hadn't been an A+. Better than perfect was what I tried to be, what I was meant to be. I still think about this sometimes. I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I am not trying to meet my dad’s expectations of me. Mostly. But that early image of what I should strive for has a way of being present. I still find myself
reaching for something beyond perfect. And when I do not reach it, I find myself asking, why didn’t I do better? What did I do wrong? Do others see this as failure? And, worst of all, does God?

So today’s reading from First John really caught my attention. The word perfect appears 4 times in that short passage. It’s what I heard and focused on as I read it aloud this past week. Yet this passage, which refers to perfection 4 times,
refers to love 28 times. How then is it that what I remembered after reading it was Perfection – a call to perfection, a reminder of my own desire to be perfect, and of the ways that I do not meet that definition. Of course, we’re reminded daily
of how we are not perfect. Turn on the TV for 5 minutes, every commercial that you see will drive that home in some way or another. Either you drive the wrong car, or you use the wrong deodorant, or you eat too much of one thing or not enough of another. Not that I need the television to remind me of the ways that I fall short. I do that for myself. Like most people, I am my own harshest critic. So it’s no surprise that in the midst of a passage about God’s abiding love,
what I hear is a call to perfection, not God’s promise to dwell with me, God’s promise to be love for me, in me and through me.

Well, my obsession with this word ‘perfect’ drove me to investigate further. The root word in the original Greek, what we translate as ‘perfect’ or ‘perfected’ or ‘perfection,’ is ‘telos.’ And telos is different from the way we use ‘perfect.’ Telos is about accomplishing, not what others expect of us, but what is already a part of us. Telos is about completing, achieving what we are intended for. It is about becoming what we are made to be. Telos is the acorn growing up into an oak tree. Telos is the baby chick in our preschool growing into a rooster. Telos is the grape vine in the gospel reading bearing grapes. And what John tells us in this letter that we read today is that God intends, has made us, to be love; to be God’s abiding love: “if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.” God’s love comes to be what it is meant to be, in us.
And in God, we become what we are meant to be, bearers of God’s love for our neighbor. Jesus speaks of God’s abiding love,
and of God’s intended future that we are being drawn into, in the gospel passage today. “I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus is describing our telos; our intended future.

Branches are part of the vine, they will naturally live with the vine, and they will naturally bear fruit. It’s what the branches of a grapevine do. They can’t suddenly produce olives. Or cats.

Even before I knew about God’s promises for me, I was feeling my way gingerly into them, being drawn forward toward God’s future, toward the possibilities that God had placed in me from the beginning. We all make decisions every day, decisions that cut off some future possibility for us. Whether we are intentionally trying to discern God’s calling, or whether we are seeking some more worldly sense of perfection, we are always choosing paths without knowing where they lead. Like the vinegrower,
we prune branches that seem not to be bearing fruit. In college, I chose to study anthropology instead of chemistry. After college, I chose to move to Seattle and then to Alaska. I had other opportunities, and each choice I made cut off possibilities.
It is hard to know for certain if I made the exact right decision each time. But I can see now the unexpected ways that branches regrew, and I can see the hand of a vinegrower greater than myself, drawing me into a future that I had never dreamt of. Once I said no to a friend who asked me on a date. Now we’re married with two children. Once I turned reluctantly away from a PhD in anthropology. Now I use my understanding of cultures to think about how congregations transform.
Once I decided I was not called to be a teacher. Now I use my passion and gifts for education to teach confirmation and Sunday school and adult forums.
The pruning of branches is sometimes a relief, sometimes painful. But the resulting growth is always a surprise,
and God is at work in it, drawing us toward that promised perfection, the telos perfection of God’s love, the fruit that we are made to bear.

Jesus also describes how that intended future is not something I have to accomplish alone. It is done in community, both with Jesus and with one another. A vine with one branch won’t bear much fruit. But together we make up a system of branches,
intertwining and stretching and supporting one another. And as we grow towards what we are meant to be, God is at work as well. God, the vinegrower, is tending us, coaxing us, even helping us to prune and regrow. During our adult forums this month, we are talking about our spiritual gifts. We’re working together to learn about the gifts that each of us has been given,
the gifts that equip us for ministry. As we do this, we are also hoping to learn more about how this congregation has been gifted. What are the leading gifts that we offer to our neighbors in Longfellow Parish? Next week, some of the leaders of the congregation, the council, the staff, and others, will meet on Sunday afternoon. We have a facilitator, Richard Andersen of Lutheran Social Service, who is going to help guide us through a conversation about how God is drawing this congregation
to serve here in this corner of Minneapolis. The question we are asking is a question about telos. What is the future that we are being drawn into? What has God already given us, what seeds have been planted in us, how is God’s love abiding in the world through us? What fruit is waiting to burst forth from this vine?

The answer is in us already, we are simply looking for the words to describe what God has already begun in us.It is an exciting time for Christ Church Lutheran, and for the Longfellow neighborhood. As we discern our purpose, our identity as a part of the Body of Christ, we will certainly be drawn into new relationships, new ways of knowing one another and our neighbors. As we discover how we are gifted, we will begin to bear fruit in ways we have probably never imagined before. It is also a difficult time. While some branches begin to bear fruit, others may not. Some ministries will grow while others fade. And some that we thought were fading may burst forth with a new kind of life that will surprise us all. As Jesus reminds us, a pruned branch bears more fruit.

Together we form a set of branches, and together we abide in God’s love. Together God’s love is the fruit we bear,
the fruit we cannot help but bear, as God’s love grows in us and through us into our neighborhood.

All those years ago, when my dad told me that he wanted sainthood, not perfection, I took it as a challenge. I strived, I worked, I beat myself up for my failings. Only to realize years later that both sainthood and perfection have been given to me. Sainthood was given to me in my baptism, a promise from God that I am washed clean, forgiven and justified. And perfection was given to me as well, or rather it is being given to me. I was drawn to the waters of baptism, and I am always being drawn into the future that God has prepared me for. Like the branches of the vine, I am already equipped to bear fruit. Indeed, I cannot do anything but bear fruit. There is work for me to do, but I do not do it alone. And I do not do it out of fear, out of my striving for perfection, out of fear of falling short of my dad’s or my God’s expectations. Instead, I love because God first loved me. God’s love is being perfected in me, in us. And that perfecting love casts out fear. We are free to set aside fear of failure, fear of letting go, fear of pruning, and live into the future that God promises. A future borne out of God’s perfect and perfecting love.