The Gardener's Knife

A View from the Pew

by Gerry Hunter.

I am the vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

-- John 15:1-2.

These words, spoken by Jesus in his final discourse to his disciples, echo an image often used in Holy Scripture and well-known here in the pews. Moses invoked the image of the vine, and grain, fig trees, fruit, and honey in Deuteronomy, chapter 8. The Hebrew people, through their history, held the image of the vine as both a symbol of God's bounty and blessing, and as a tangible manifestation of them. And in St. John's gospel, God's ultimate gift to his people, His Son Jesus Christ, once again uses this image to describe His relationship with those who will follow Him. In verse 5, He presents the image which we in the pews most often find presented to us. "I am the vine, you are about branches." We seldom hear about the Gardener.

In the world, the one Jesus called his followers out of, there is a definite dislike for pain and suffering. So there should be. Pain and suffering were not a part of God's original plan for creation. But with the fall, we were faced with them as a part of our reality, and a very unpleasant part at that. There is no denying it, yet in the most affluent parts of the world today, the denial approaches a manic pathology. Perhaps that's why we seldom hear of the gardener, and his knife.

We have ample evidence that pain and suffering are not part of God's plan. Many former sources of physical pain, for instance, have had that component removed. The blessings bestowed on the injured or ill by the medical professions were most frequently are accompanied by pain. This has decreased markedly, even in my own lifetime. At the same time, among the world's affluent, the idea that absolutely no pain at all is acceptable has grown apace. "If it feels good, do it!" has become a guiding principle for behavior. Once, only torturers and other purposeful inflictors were held in contempt. Once, it was considered virtuous to do the difficult and painful thing when confronted with the need to do it. Now, anything that even under the most far-fetched or fanciful scenario could even perhaps lead to pain must be shunned in the affluent world. Failure to do so will garner contempt, or worse. Fear of pain and suffering, once the healthy survival instinct, has become the swaying cobra that can hold people mesmerized and inactive. And the choice that avoids pain has become the right choice, too often, for that very reason alone. We leave undone the things we ought to have done, and there is no health in us, but there is no sin, for we have avoided even the remote prospect of pain.

The effects are plain to see. People in the pews know only too well of friends and acquaintances who have made choices to avoid pain, even pain from the Gardener's knife. If the choice of marital faithfulness becomes painful, it becomes acceptable in the world to alleviate the pain, as long as, supposedly, pain for others is avoided. Where respect for life demands a painful choice, the avoidance of the pain becomes sufficient reason to set the respect the side. If the truth is hard to hear, and silence is not an option, a lie becomes a proper choice because it avoids immediate pain. We in the pews, as Christians, have been called out of that world.

Our call has not been into a painless existence. How could it have been? We are called by the One who told us, "I have not come to bring peace, but the sword." (Matthew 10:34) The virgin mother who bore him, by submitting to God's will in circumstances of enormous confusion and potential peril (they stoned adulterers and fornicators then) was told by Simeon, "and a sword will pierce through your own soul also." (Luke 2: 35) "He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me," (Matthew 10: 38) He told us. And in his final discourse, the disciples are told they have to choices; either bear no fruit, and face the knife, or bear fruit, and face the knife. There will be the knife, which is not the promise of no pain.

We come to the pews from the world, and here in New Westminster, one of the more affluent parts of the world. We know well how many times right and wrong are set aside in favor of expediency, compromise, and other paths which, in no small part, are pursued to avoid pain. No one, it seems, is ever wronged anymore; it is always "a misunderstanding." The psychology industry, ever eager to exploit and opening, offers many elaborate though flimsy mechanisms to bolster this approach. This phenomenon, very much the product of a society which tracks between non-Christian and anti-Christian, is well-known to us in the pews. It is hard for us to miss it, and probably a waste of time to try and disguise it. If the church were to use the ways of the world, it would most certainly not go unnoticed in the pews.

There is no call in the Christian life to purposefully seek out, much less to multiply or increase, pain and suffering. Even our Lord, while he was with us on Earth, was subject to them even before his passion. In the shortest verse in the Bible, we are told that, at the death of Lazarus, and amidst the mourning, Jesus wept. He wept even as he went to resuscitate Lazarus. Jesus also loved us far too much to deceive us. Pain and suffering had entered creation, and would remain until He came again. And He told us plainly that to follow him was to know the knife in our life. The only question was how it would be used -- to cut us loose, or help us in bear fruit. The message is plainly given.

When the methods of the world are applied to issues of the Christian life, one sure sign is the avoidance of the Gardener's knife. Gamaliel was a classic example. This non-prophet, non-apostle, non-disciple Pharisee came up with the perfect phrase to try to avoid pain and suffering. His famous observation about things of men passing, and things of God being unstoppable, has become a license for revisionist, in their view, to try and insinuate anything into the church. It may have been good politics (pardon the oxymoron), but it fails the test of pain and suffering. Like so much else from the world, it claims to avoid pain, but fails. The very endurance of pain and suffering in the world would require them to be consistent with God's first plan for creation for Gamaliel’s strategy to be valid. Now, in the fallen creation, we are faced with the reality of pain and suffering, and a God so sovereign that He can use them to His purpose, and so loving as to not try and deceive us about them. He sets a very high standard for his church.

Here in the pews in New Westminster, we have our own particular proof that there are Anglican Christians in Canada who do not fear the Gardener's knife. On 10 May 2003, the Synod of the Diocese of the Yukon, standing with their faithful Bishop, voted unanimously to back his offer of the Episcopal oversight with jurisdiction for parishes in New Westminster that were bereft of oversight by a faithful Bishop through a 63 percent vote last June. Avoiding the knife would have been so simple for them, given the recent decision to do that by the Canadian House of Bishops. Are we wrong in anticipating a stream of the invective against these Christians for their action? Probably not. Are we right in stating that they knew precisely the torment they could well face in taking this step? We are. Have they acted in a manner that meets the standards Jesus Christ has set for His followers and His church? Yes indeed. Will it be comprehensible to those who look tot the world for their cues on what to do in similar situations? Definitely not.

Here in the pews, we know that the action of this faithful Christian Diocese will have effects well beyond that Diocese, out to our own Diocese, the Province, the Canadian Church, and the world Communion. To speculate on what the effects could be is, right now, so difficult to do with accuracy that it is a fool's game. We can say with certainty, though, that there is still, in Canada, a faithful Anglican Christian presence, in the form of a Bishop with unanimous backing of his Diocese, who will act, and have acted, on their profession of faithfulness to Jesus Christ. May He petition His Father, on their behalf, that when they are pruned, the pain will be minimal, and the fruit most abundant.