What is your true life? Your truest self, your identity? How do you understand your life and death? Can you understand such things? Simply, who are you? Are you what you think? What you do? Are you who you think you are? Believe yourself to be? Jesus asks you to dive deeply into your life for a sense of these questions. Answers while elusive, lead us to the mystery of life itself, to an identity way beyond your imagining. “I am the true vine,” says Jesus.
Icon
The Eastern Orthodox church gives us the spiritual tool of the icon. The icon is a play of figure and ground, foreground and background. Always, the figures of an icon, (whether Christ, Mary, the Holy Spirit, etc…) are set against a golden background of the kingdom of God. To sit with an icon is to dive deep through the foreground of our understanding into the reality of “the kingdom of God is in our midst,” which is, of course, beyond our ability to grasp. This method of spiritual communication reminds me of Bodhidharma’s encounter with Emperor Wu.
Emperor Wu of Liang asked Bodhidharma, “What is the first principle of the holy teaching?”Bodhidharma said, “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.”“Who stands before me?”“I don’t know.”
What does Bodhidharma, “not know?” Could you show me that? Who are you? Can you show me that?
So, Jesus has these "I am" sayings. At first glance these statements seem to define things for us. However, if you look more deeply, you see they do nothing of the sort. Rather, they leave us with something like a question, “Who stands before me?”
As if using the form of icon, Jesus uses these sayings in the gospel of John to lead us into the always present background of grace that is your life in the ineffable, unnamable, kingdom of God. This realm, which is inseparable from your life, is your life and your living.
“In you,” Paul says, “we live move and have our being.” Maybe you could show me that.
As the figures in the foreground of the icon are held in and are inseparable from, the background of golden leaf, so you are in the golden sphere of love that is the grace of God. Jesus’ icon (koan) for us here is, “I am the true vine. And you are the branches.”
Let’s dive deep.
Domesticated Vines
In Sonoma County, California where I am a United Church of Christ minister, we know grapes. Our vines are of the domesticated variety. Politely, they hold fast to their trellis – the farm workers arranging them just so—the grapes hang down, exposed to the air, ready for easy harvest upon ripening. We look at our fields around here and we are stunned by the beauty. Maybe this beauty will lead us. However, being from Kentucky, familiar with the backwoods, I am aware of another type of grape vine – the kind you smoke.
Wild Vines – Entangled Mess
I never smoked tobacco. But, as I was growing up, a lad at 10 or 12 years old, I would join with my friends at summer camp and smoke grapevine. I don’t really even know if what we smoked was grape vine, but it was a vine: The trunk would grow up the side of a tree, and up in the branches of the tree, the vine would poof out. All the branches would entangle, link, to the point where you could not tell one branch from another, just an entangled mass. We would yank on the trunk vine, yank, yank, yank until the whole mass of vines would come down from the tree branches. We took the dried vine, cut it in “cigarette sized pieces” lit the end of it in our camp fire and smoked until we turned green. WE WERE COOL.
Vines are entangled. Have you ever walked in the forest over a trail overgrown by vines?
- – they are indistinguishable from one another
- – they are woven together
- – you trip over vines.
Vines, entangled, a hindrance on our path, yet beautiful and we, the branches, are connected to the true vine, the trunk, the source. As definition this turns over on itself, contradicts itself, holding us hostage to its absurdity. These vines are crazy – offering to ensnare us right now. Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, “who stands before me?” “I don’t know.” Who is this true vine, these branches? Perhaps we are better off not knowing, rather than trusting what we know of botany. Think about it, you look to the foreground, to the vine and the branches Perhaps better not to think so hard and to see the background, the gold leaf – the great I am. So, we have God to Moses, “I am that I am.” And then we have Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I am.” What? It is a little like being asked to define Bodhidharma’s “don’t know.” Could you show me that? How about “I am?” Could you show me that? How about the “you are” of “you are the branches?” Honest now…just as filled with mystery. All we have is the true vine and the branches as they emerge from the vastness, from Life, from “I am,” from “you are.”
Behold! the beauty of the yellowing vines in the autumn sun – I am.Behold! the entangled mess that is my life – I am.Behold! I skin my nose as I trip and fall, ensnared by the vines – I am.
It is all included within the vastness, the great I AM. I will be stunned by the beauty, ensnared by the tangle, woven into community, entangled by the trials. Through it all Jesus calls us through the details, joyous and painful, into the background: “Before Abraham was, I am.”
“Can you show me THAT?” No. Either you see IT (by being IT) or you don’t. Yoda: There is no try…. Rumi: Beyond good and bad, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. (It is up to you to get there, Rumi is not going to carry you.) If I were to jump up and down, waving my arms and pointing wildly in all directions, would it help you? Doubt it. There is no way there by ordinary ways from here. The only means helpful on that no-journey are no-means. How does one find what has never been lost? Would “thundering silence” be helpful? No more so than simply going about one’s business. When everything without exception shows forth the Glory of God, how could anyone miss it? Be still and KNOW….. Does anything I have said add one whit to anyone’s understanding. Of course not.
ReplyDelete