Transcript
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. Please be seated.
When I was in Peace Corps, I was assigned to the oldest village in the country of Georgia. I don’t mean outside of Atlanta. I mean over by Russia. The village, Ruisi, is considered one of the oldest centers of Christianity in the world. The cathedral (I’ve seen it; it’s not what you’re thinking) was built in the eighth century, but a person referred to as the Bishop of Ruisi was mentioned already by the beginning of the sixth century, which means people have lived there for at least the past 15 centuries.
When I was there, I lived with a family in the village, and while they did not date back that far, their house was certainly old. In fact, in their garden (that’s what Georgians call yards), there was a grapevine that the grandfather’s grandfather had planted when he started to build the house. The grapevine was over 100 years old.
It wound up from under the deck, snaking up a porch column and climbing across the second-story awning. During the spring and summer, it produced shade, creating a lovely, cool green canopy behind which the family and I ate our meals and read our books and told our stories. In the fall, this grapevine was harvested, and at such a senior age, it didn’t produce a lot of grapes.
It did produce enough grapes that the grandpa could create a batch of wine and some chacha. That’s what they call the hard liquor produced from what was left over after making wine, and it had a very special place in the family’s life. It was kept in the cellar, buried in the ground, covered by a rock, and only accessed for very special occasions or very special guests.
In fact, when my parents came to visit, my dad was taken down into that cellar, which was kind of like a cellar beneath a cellar, to try the special chacha right from the ground. I could certainly keep going, talking about the family I lived with, their home, their wine and chacha, and about the village of Ruisi, or the country of Georgia and its culture and history.
Like, did you know Georgia is the second-oldest Christian nation in the world? Armenia is the oldest. And Georgia is the birthplace of wine. How very important. But the point of this sermon isn’t Georgia or even wine. Instead, I want to talk about the grapevine, because the grapevine seemed to be very important in today’s readings. In fact, if you look at the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, the Psalm, and the Gospel, you’ll see vineyards and vines in each of these passages.
So now, a horticultural lesson. In one year, one healthy grapevine can produce three bottles of wine. That’s roughly 10 to 20 bunches of grapes. However, a grapevine doesn’t usually start producing fruit until it’s at least three years old. On the other hand, a grapevine can continue producing fruit for more than 100 years, which means, in theory, the grapevine at my host family’s house in Ruisi, Georgia, produced about 1,500 glasses of wine in its lifetime.
One little vine. Maybe knowing that can give us a better understanding of why the landowner in Jesus’s parable was so mad about not getting his produce, and why in the Psalm the vine took root and filled the land. In one season, a grapevine can grow several canes (that’s what they call the branches on a grapevine), each more than 12 feet long, with root systems going an average of 3 to 10 feet deep, depending on the plant, and sometimes even deeper, up to 20 feet, depending on where the good soil is.
Saint John’s Church, as you may well be aware, is the oldest continuously worshiping English-language church on the continent, at 416 years old. It has planted roots that extend from the first and second sites in the middle of Hampton University, up Church Creek, and then to the corner of Pembroke and Patterson, and now here at 100 West Queens Way, Hampton.
And thanks to COVID and the introduction of streaming technology, we now reach across the country and around the world, and our branches reach to where our current worshiping members live. Our branches stretch from Suffolk to Williamsburg, from Poquoson to Virginia Beach. Saint John’s Church, or Elizabeth City Parish, as we really are named. We are the site of the first English baptism on American soil.
We are also the site of the first African baptism in the English colonies, on what is now American soil. Our people, our ancestors and predecessors, played key parts in so many things. They played key parts in the establishment of a permanent white settlement here. They played key parts in the establishment of our democracy. They played key parts in wars across the country and around the world.
Just wander our graveyard. You can see all the plaques. They also played key parts in missions to help the poor, the hungry, and the homeless; in missions to help the world seek peace; and in missions to spread God’s love. And beyond the big dramatic history of a nation being built and rebuilt and a world being helped, there are the people who sat in these pews, who prayed at this altar, who understood themselves to be part of Elizabeth City Parish.
They celebrated joys like baptisms and weddings and new beginnings. They welcomed visitors and opened their hearts to new members as this community grew. They also mourned the loss of jobs and opportunities, the loss of lives and of loved ones. I wonder, since these walls were built 298 years ago, how many times did these bricks hear prayers of penitence, begging for forgiveness for whatever someone might have done wrong?
How many times did these bricks hear prayers of anger, when a person had nowhere else to turn for answers and could only be mad at what had unfolded? How many times did these bricks hear prayers of gratitude for the generous, abundant gifts that God grants to each and every one of us in the pews today? And in the pews 50 years ago, in the pews 200 years ago, in the pews 400 years ago.
Because it was those gifts, those abundant gifts from God, that allowed the grapevines to be planted and the roots to spread out and the branches to expand, until, as we sit here today, we can call ourselves Saint John’s Church, Elizabeth City Parish. We are here. We are who we are now because of the roots that were planted over the centuries by those same ancestors, those same predecessors, who knew God’s gifts, who knew God’s abundance, and chose to give it back to God by giving it all to us.
Just imagine. In another 416 years, people sitting here within these brick walls, praying to the same God who was in the beginning and is now, who heard the prayers of those before us, who hears our prayers. Imagine the people sitting here in another 416 years. What roots do we want them to grow out of? The abundance of God’s gifts to each of us, to allow them, the future, to understand and know God more. To be just as sure and certain of God, to be Elizabeth City Parish. And if we did the math, then in 416 years from now, they would be getting ready to celebrate their 832nd anniversary.
The work done 400 years ago produces the roots that allow us to be the branches that will produce fruit for generations to come. Let us join the abundant roots of the past to give space for the branches of the future.
Now, I will admit I misspoke, because yes, while the roots planted centuries ago and the branches we grow now are because of us, the people who call themselves members of Elizabeth City Parish, the planter, the gardener, the tender of the vines, that’s not actually us. It’s God. It is God who plants, God who grants abundance, and God who harvests the gifts given to us by God for God.
We are rooted in abundance, not just because the people who came before us worked hard and gave willingly and strove to be a church, a congregation, a parish that thrived. We are rooted in abundance because God planted the seeds in each of us, in our ancestors and our predecessors, and in us, our parents, ourselves, our children. And it will be God who plants the seeds that produce the fruit in the generations to come.
Let us praise God for God’s vineyard. Let us praise God for God’s vines. Let us praise God for the roots provided to us, that we may continue to grow in abundance. Amen.