Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fifth Sunday of Easter (Easter V, 18 May 2025), known in the Orthodox Church as the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman.
The Church Calendar today celebrates Saint Helena (330), Protector of the Holy Places. A local tradition in Essex claims she was from Colchester. Her son Constantine, who is associated with York, became Emperor in the year 306 and raised her to the position of Empress. Helena visited the Holy Land as a pilgrim in the year 326. There, it is said, she found Christ’s cross. She is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on this day with her son Constantine, so today is the name day for everyone named Eleni, Dina, Kostas or Konstantinos.
There is no choir rehearsal in Stony Stratford this evening, but before today begins I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 15: 1-8 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 1 ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 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. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.’
Today’s Reflection:
Today’s Gospel reading provided in the Lectionary at the Eucharist (John 15: 1-8) continues our readings from the ‘Farewell Discourse’ in Saint John’s Gospel.
One Sunday morning, when I was preaching on this reading, I held up two bunches of grapes, and invited the children to offer or distribute to each person in church one individual, single grape.
One grape in your hand looks fine, but the stem of the vine that is left looks dishevelled and grotty – a sign of things once promised, but no good on its own. Grapes on their own as individuals are small fruit. A vine on its own without fruit looks forlorn and wilting, if not dead.
Many years ago, a friend in Greece was very excited when he realised I was returning to his village in the mountains in Crete that summer on holidays. He rang me with gushing enthusiasm and delight. I must come and see what he had done with the ‘graveyard’ in his village, Piskopianó.
‘The graveyard?’
Naturally I am interested in visiting churches and churchyards, and graveyards and gravestones provide rich material for social, local and family history. But a graveyard is not the first place you think your friends want you to visit on a holiday in the Mediterranean.
So, I asked again: ‘The graveyard?’
‘Yes, you’re going to be delighted to see how the vines are growing with new life. You remember how I trimmed back the vines and the branches and how I built new trellises. Now there is a rich crop in the grapeyard this year.’
The grapeyard! Of course. Now it makes sense.
I had shown an interest in his grapes, his vineyard … and a healthy interest in the local wine. Now a new lesson awaited me on how to grow grapes, how to trim the vines, and how vines, like people, only make sense in clusters.
The grapes on the bunch, and the clusters on the vine, produce better fruit and better wine when they are together, working together, abiding in and with each other.
In today’s Gospel story this morning, Christ talks about himself as the true vine, and he invites us to abide in him as he abides in us. The Prayer of Humble Access prays ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’
In our Gospel reading this morning (John 15: 1-8), he tells us: ‘I am the true vine.’ This is the seventh and last of the seven ‘I AM’ (ἐγώ εἰμι, ego eimi) sayings in Saint John’s Gospel. They begin with ‘I am the bread of life’ (John 6: 35) and end with ‘I am the true vine’ (John 15: 1). It is as though our experience of meeting Christ together in the Eucharist, in sharing the bread and wine together, collectively, encloses our experiences of Christ as the light of the world (John 8:12), the gate for the sheep (John 10: 7), the good shepherd (John 10: 11), the resurrection and the life (John 11: 25), and the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14: 6).
Poetically, the bread and the vine open and close these seven ‘I AM’ sayings.
At the celebrations of the Eucharist, and I notice how traditional Jewish table-blessings, drawn in turn from the Bible, are adapted at the Taking of the Bread and Wine:
Priest: Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation:
through your goodness we have this bread to offer,
which earth has given and human hands have made (Ecclesiastes 3: 13-14).
It will become for us the bread of life (John 6: 35).
All: Blessed be God forever (Psalm 68: 36).
Priest: Blessed are you Lord, God of all creation:
through your goodness we have this wine to offer,
fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become our spiritual drink (Luke 22: 17-18).
All: Blessed be God forever (Psalm 68: 36).
[See also Common Worship, p 291.]
Our openness to Christ present in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist is at the beginning and the end of our acceptance of who Christ is for us.
The image in today’s reading is of God the vine grower and the gardener. Christ is the vine and we are branches bearing fruit.
The vine is trimmed so that it can grow new fruit. But this is not the heart of the teaching here. Instead, the image offered here is one of abiding and remaining. The image of the vine grower, the vineyard, the vine and the branches is one about the living Word existing as the life blood of those who belong to Christ.
The Johannine scholar Raymond Brown says this passage is about the disciples remaining in Christ. Many people in the Church talk about following Jesus and leading a virtuous life. But here, the image of abiding is about being, not about becoming. If we are abiding in Christ, then God is central, not the desires of our egos.
And so, when we are invited to the Holy Table, to the Altar, the Holy Communion, the Eucharist, it is not because we lead a virtuous life, and we should not be afraid to come to the Eucharist, fretting that others think we live lives that are not virtuous.
Instead, the words of the Prayer of Humble Access remind us:
We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord,
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen.
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 21 May 2025):
‘That We May Live Together: A Reflection from the Emerging Leaders Academy’ is the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Annsli Kabekabe of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 21 May 2025) invites us to pray:
Loving Father, we ask for your blessing upon the youth of Papua New Guinea. Grant them access to education, opportunities, and guidance to unlock their potential.’
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ
have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
grant that, as by your grace going before us
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help
we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life:
grant us to walk in his way,
to rejoice in his truth,
and to share his risen life;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.
Additional Collect:
Risen Christ,
your wounds declare your love for the world
and the wonder of your risen life:
give us compassion and courage
to risk ourselves for those we serve,
to the glory of God the Father.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
