The title of this sermon is the "Story of Two Gardeners." More on that in just a minute. Because first I need to bring you greetings. I feel like Timothy in St. Paul’s New testament letters, the trusty messenger bringing greetings to you on behalf of his mentor. So let me get this right now. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I bring you greetings from your Pastor and the lay delegation you have sent to the Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly meeting currently in Santa Clara. Bishop Mattheis who was just with us at the Easter Vigil also sends his greetings. Whether you know it or not, you have connections in the church beyond your primary connections to the lives of the people here at Calvary Lutheran in Rio Linda. You have connections to the 78,000 people in our Synod who have sent representatives this weekend to Santa Clara to make important decisions as to how we should minister to the people of northern California; many of whom are completely unchurched. In fact, you have connections with the 5 million people who make up the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Indeed you have connections with all Christians throughout the world who have lived in every time and place. You come to church and you are connected. You bow your head in prayer and you are connected. Bishop Mattheis wanted me to emphasize the importance of connections to you today.

In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus talks about the most primary connection in our lives, our connection with God, when Jesus describes himself as the vine and God the Father as the gardener. What does that make us again?! The branches; the branches of a grape vine; the shoots of beautiful green foliage that bear fruit. I’m a little afraid to talk about my backyard again after my sermon on my sewer line last Sunday, but in my backyard, we have grapevines. And each winter, after all of the grapes have been picked and the leaves have fallen off the vine, the vines must be pruned. Why? Well, a properly pruned grapevine bears more fruit then next year. And more fruit is what a grapevine is all about. It sort of defies logic, doesn’t it?! Wouldn’t you think that the bigger a grapevine is, the more fruit it will bear. We live our lives under this very same false assumption as well. In our modern age, we very rarely are willing to allow the pruning shears to touch our lives because we earnestly believe that we must do it all, must have it all, must experience it all. Isn’t that the truth about how we live? Heaven forbid a pastor or a parent or a teacher or a spiritual director ever suggest to you that something in your life must be cut away for your own good. If you hear anything out of this sermon today, please hear this. It is time today, to open yourself up to the idea that something in your life has to go; something must be pruned away.

For some of us, actually probably most if not all of us, one thing that needs pruning is our addictive behaviors. When all of your thought processes become wrapped around the bottle or television or the computer or romance, realize that you have connected the branch that is your life to a vine other than Jesus. Our addictions are our false Gods; vines like the one in my backyard right now that sprouted some branches in early spring, that soon withered because of rot and disease. The roots of a diseased or rotten vine do not reach deep into the good soil of creation. This Gospel text today about Jesus as the vine and God as the loving master gardener should not raise up in you the question as to whether you need some pruning in your life. Pruning happens every year to every vine. It gets rid of the things in your life that once were so alive that now are so dead. The question that should be welling up in you should be both deep and disturbing. It should be wrapped around that desire that is barely flickering in most of us that desires to burn like an out of control fire shooting out of a gas well. What is it O God, what thing, what long held belief, what addictive behavior, what disease, what preoccupation prevents me from turning my life over to you for pruning right now.

Deep down, I think this really is a trust issue. For example, what goes through your mind when I pull out these recently sharpened, razor-like pruning shears, and tell you that a little piece of you, just a little piece needs to be hacked off, for your own benefit. I can read your mind, you’re thinking something like, hey Frank, we know you and we like you, but we don’t trust you enough to get something sharp to close to us. So you just take those pruning shears and get on out of here right now!! Well, we have a problem here, don’t we?! We know we need pruning, right? Don’t you know this deep in your soul. Yes, we need pruning. But who are we going to trust to do it. Guess who gets to prune the grapevines in my backyard and who doesn’t? Let’s just say that in my family, the gardening duties are divided up on the basis of brains and brawn. Any shovel work, lifting, toting: that’s my work. But if the job requires study and research and know-how, that’s Rhonda’s work. In our family, when it comes to pruning grapes, raspberries, apricot or orange trees, only Rhonda is trusted enough to wield these pruning sheers. Who do you trust with the shears?

And that brings me finally to the story of two gardeners. There is a man who lives in my neighborhood and he wanders the streets picking branches and other cuttings out of the piles of clippings we leave in the street for pickup by the City crews. I always wondered what he did with these clippings. I thought he must be some master gardener who could sprout life from dead things. One day I was invited to some friends’ house and they happened to live right next door to this guy. And from where we sat on a raised deck at my friends’ house, I could see into this man’s yard, and do you know what I saw? Nothing but dead branches stuck in the ground. Absolutely nothing was growing and I thought, boy did I have this wrong. This gardener was not to be trusted. He had no idea what he was doing. And I ask you, have you handed your life over to some untrustworthy gardener, maybe yourself even, who doesn’t have a clue about what should and what should not be pruned.

I know another man in my neighborhood. This man is truly a master gardener. His name is Bill Frick, a life-long, involved Lutheran in Sacramento. Some of you may know him. Some degenerative neurological condition now prevents Bill from speaking coherently. But O you should see this man garden. He is a master. He can prune, graft, weed, plant, tend like no other gardener I have ever met. I would go to him with any gardening problem. I would hand him my pruning shears in a second. This is the nature of the gardener Jesus refers to in the Gospel story. God the Father knows what to do with your life - and Jesus lets us know that this is a God who loves us like a parent and can be trusted. I ask you to give your life over to this God today for serious pruning. You and I both know you need it; so that you might not live your life like a dead stick stuck in the ground; but rather as the healthy, vibrant, wonderful creation God intended, bearing fruit in abundance. Amen.