They condescended to sip the wine so as not to hurt his feelings.  It ended up being the best wine she had ever tasted.  Because he had closed his jar before the fermentation process had been finished, it crackled like champagne.  There was not much of it.  Only enough to fill, say, one of those little communion cups we have, per person.  They licked the inside of the cups to get the last of the heavenly taste.  Then Frank quoted from what he thought was the Bible.  “I saved the best wine for the last.”  And “The whole world is my vineyard.”  The first quote actually comes from the Bible.   But, the second quote doesn’t.  Although it is in the spirit of it – yeh, no one is picky here!

My gardening is so atrocious that once I accomplished something that I didn’t think was possible – plants that don’t grow.  I planted some eggplants which I had bought from Skillens Greenhouses.  The eggplants didn’t die but neither did they grow.  All summer from June through September, these plants remained the exact same size.  It must have been a combination of my forgetting to water them and of poor soil which I had no idea how to assess, let alone fix.    In contrast to this, the bible is full of lush gardening metaphors.  Especially that of vineyards.  In the Old Testament the house of Israel was the Lord’s vineyard, the soil from which the divine gardener longed to harvest good fruit.   Jesus picks up on this metaphor when he says in the scripture lesson for today, “I am the true vine, and my Father the vinedresser…Make your home in me as I make mine in you…  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever remains in me, with me in them, bear much fruit….”  (John 15:5) 

Because I am such a bad gardener it was hard for me to honestly relate to this metaphor about vines and vineyards from my own experience.  What was more scary was when I read that the mystic Catherine of Sienna used this metaphor to describe ministers.  She writes:   You received your baptism within the mystic body of the holy Church by the hands of my ministers… They are my workers in the vineyard of your souls…  Let’s put it this way, if I as your minister am suppose to tend this church and your souls the way I tend my garden, you are in big trouble! 

That is why I took heart learning about Frank’s wild blackberry wine.  I might not know much about gardening, but I do know about picking wild berries.  I have years of experience picking, not black berries, but wild blueberries which grow on the shores of our lake in the summer.    I like to think that if the Bible had been written in New England instead of the Middle East they would have talked about blueberry bushes as much as vineyards. 

Our lake has many wooded islands on it.  At the edge of these islands are 12 foot tall wild blue berry bushes.   In order to pick the berries you have to be in a row boat.  This is because these islands don’t have beaches.  There is water and many broken rocks and boulders which are debris deposited from glaciers.  Immediately there is the island with a thin layer of black soil, and pine needles, dead leaves in which these enormous bushes take root.  I don’t know how these bushes survive let alone thrive.  Their roots often dangle off under the soil dipping into the water like bangs on a wet hag. 

The only way to get to these bushes is by a row boat.  You have to pick the berries from the boat too.  This means you have to stand up in the boat, hang onto the bushes’ branches and lean in to get the berries.  The fun really starts with you are hit by a series of waves from a passing motor boat.  The waves shove the row boat into the rocks and push your body up and into the twiggy stiff branches of the bush, with you face catching a few spider webs at the same time. 

However, it is worth while getting scratches up and down your arms and spider webs in your hair to grab the great bundles of berries that these bushes produce.  They are large, plump, and purple often hanging in clusters, much like grapes on a vine.

Jesus says that if we abide in him like branches on a vine we will bear much fruit.  In Protestant circles “bearing much fruit” ends up being equated with producing good works.  We get stuck in the idea of productivity and effectiveness.   On the one hand, we have a perilous tendency for activism through missions, and social action.  On the other hand, we sign people up for church work like cooking and cleaning and committees as if that is the only thing we are for.   Furthermore, to be a church we like to think of ourselves as relevant, popular and powerful.  This, we believe, is what will make our ministry effective.  However, as Henry Nowen point out, these are not effective ingredients in ministry.  If you really think about it in light of the message of Jesus, relevant, popular and powerful are not vocations at all.  Rather they are temptations. 

How then do we become agents of change?  How are we to live as a church that is true to its Christian calling?  The heart of who we are must not come from goals of productivity or popularity which we think up on our own.  Our vocation must be rooted  and indissolubly attached to Jesus the true vine.    Certainly, it seems far easier to go to the grocery store and buy a couple quarts of blueberries that are pre-picked and pre-packaged and ready to go.  When we do that, however, we easily forget that blueberries don’t really come in a box.  They don’t grow in those green cardboard containers that they are sold in.  Blueberries grow on bushes.  Likewise, for us as Christians to be true agents of change, we must stay connected and be rooted into the life giving plant of contemplation and prayer.  Without the bushes somewhere the boxes will eventually run out.  In contrast, there are always blueberries along the edge of the lake.  This is so no matter that the lake population as grown tremendously in the past 40 years.  I don’t know if other people don’t bother to go blueberry picking, or perhaps they more they get picked the healthier the plant becomes.  Blackberries, I learned, only form on the new branches of the plant.  Anyhow, often  you will see twenty or more blueberries clustered together and all bouncing up and down on the branch as the wind blows by. 

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he writes that our vocation, our call to the ministry, is a mystical union with Christ so deep that we, “Being rooted and grounded in love may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that we may be filled with all fullness of God.”  (Eph. 3:17, 19)

Our church has an annual meeting every year.  Every year each of our committees and myself write an “Annual report” to submit.  On our report we list things that we did.  The invisible question we think we are suppose to answer is “How much did we accomplish?”  How productive and effective were we?  I wonder, what would the annual meeting be like if no one wrote anything about what we accomplished.  Instead, what if each committee wrote reports on not what they did, but how they love Jesus?   Deacons: didn’t do anything this year, but we sat around praying once a month and went to a silent retreats.  Christian Education:  Billy, and Joey and Edward we caught singing church songs in the back of the car by the neighbor.    The teacher cried at the allowance children saved for Heifer Project. 

For my mother picking blueberries was the closest she ever got to a sport.   She hates swimming because she hates getting her head wet and doesn’t like the cold lake water.  She says it is because of her rheumatic heart.  No one ever even asked my mother if she wanted to go water skiing.  That would be like asking a cat if she wants to eat an orange.    However she loved to go blueberry picking along the shore.  She would get into our row boat and go out for an hour or two at a time.  Perhaps that is an unconscious reason why I am writing a sermon about blueberry picking in honor of Mother’s Day. 

Actually, the topic fits in here.  Mothers are good at reminding us that life isn’t all about efficiency, production, popularity, and relevancy.  Mothers don’t really care what the rest of the world thinks of us.   They don’t care what the rest of the world wants us to do.  They care that we eat right, sleep enough, stay healthy and happy.    My mother thinks about me.  She adores me.  She talks on the phone with me all time.  In short, my mother would feed us children her blueberries.  At the lake we would put her blueberries on our cereal every morning.   That meant that floating in our cereal that was so perfectly dried, preserved, packaged and boxed would be the berries a few sticks and a leaf or two.   Couldn’t my mother have been more careful?  Sometimes there were even very tiny little bugs.  Sometimes, I insist to myself that my life is in ascendancy verses her life which is winding down as she limps along on her bad leg.  Who am I kidding?  My mother is just a few steps ahead of me on the path.  She is my reminder of the very long view, what is really real and what matters. 

My mother has slowed down.  She will be 85 years old in a few months.  She won’t always be here.  I have taken on blueberry picking for her.  Especially, each summer we try to pick blueberries from the lake which we freeze until Christmas morning and then we put them in our pancakes.  When I die, I expect I will see my mother at the pearly gates before I see St. Peter.  My mother will first ask me if I ate, and slept well during my life.  Then if I past that test,  St. Peter will ask me, Were you in love with Jesus?  It is that simple.

Jesus says, “If you abide in me you will bear much fruit..”  How do we do that?  How do we make sure our prayer life is happening?  How can we keep our love for Jesus alive and growing?  There are many prayer practices.  In fact I think they are unique for each one of us.   We have to pay attention to what works for us.   Back to the story about the boy with the blackberry wine.  As much as his mother tried, no one could ever replicated the boy’s miraculous vintage again.  The author notes that like all miracles it was particular.    Likewise, all contemplative practices are particular and idiosyncratic.  There is no abstract berry, or theoretical berry.  Each berry is in it’s own time and it’s own place.   I call out and point to a particular plump berry hiding behind a leaf.  I pull the boat over to a large clump of berries hanging out to the left.  When I go berry picking with family and friends we often shout out, “That one is mine!  I’ve got it!”    In fact, we all have our favorite berry picking spots.   Who here knows a great place to go pick wild berries?  (Raise hands.)  it might be down a dirt road by your house.  It might be on your lake two camps down.  It might be a patch over at Two Lights State park. 

When I pick berries there are always some marvelous clusters that are just beyond my reach.  If I try to stretch any further I would fall off the boat or impale myself upon a branch.  I have to let them go and let them be.  I will row off staring at them longingly and wonder about God.  As the poet Rilke wrote, Confident, dissolved by the juices, your depths keep climbing past me silently.   It is a reminder that there is a blueberry making life force out there that goes way beyond me.  Even now at the very beginning of the season there is a green fuse igniting every berry flower. 

Sometimes after picking blueberries when the boat is filled with sticks and leaves.  When some amount of berries are spilled and floating in a puddle on the boats floor.  When my arms are scratched and hair akimbo.  I row behind the islands where the bushes are, lie back on a seat, put the Tupperware container on by stomach and just drift.  The sun will be hot on my cheeks.  Images of berries dance behind my closed eyelids.  In this moment I am abiding.  Abiding that is all.  It is a prayer.  I wonder that after Christ picked grapes in some beautiful vineyard that he laid down somewhere between the vines, in a quiet warm spot, with the basket of round sweet purple fruit resting nearby.   I bet Jesus did the same thing.