Over the course of my years at Grace, I have been involved with maybe sixty or so classes for new members. Occasionally I ask, "What appeals to you about this congregation, so much so that you'd want to throw in your lot with us? Especially when there are many other churches from which to choose? By gosh - the saints! Within a dozen miles we are saturated with a dozen saintly churches. St. Andrew, St. Columbanus, St. Elizabeth, St. James, St. Joseph, St. Mary, St. Mary, St. John, St. Luke, St. Luke, St. Patrick, St. Peter. A dozen saints in a dozen miles - just a small sampling of churches nearby - branch offices of God's Church in our local communities. So, why Grace?"

Now when people look to join a church, many look for programs for the youth and a Sunday School that spans the generations. And for many, a fine-tuned music program strikes the right note. And forget about the pastor. Seriously, forget the pastor because pastors come and go (well, some go). Why Grace? Many tell me the biggest draw as they look for a church is the presence of a welcoming community. It seems appropriate on this Mother's Day to observe that many people are looking for a church home, Home implies family.

To put this another way - even when the sermon soars and the choirs sound like a chorus of angels - if, if visitors feel like gatecrashers at a wonderful banquet, chances are they won't be back. A more poignant metaphor for Mother's Day is this: if our Sunday guests feel like orphans at an intimate family reunion, almost certainly they'll be checking out another branch office the next Sunday - perhaps one of our dozen saints within a dozen miles.

All this to say - I applaud the members of this community for being perceived as a congregation of invitation. You are an inviting community on the lookout for the stranger among us ... and helping that stranger feel at home. You do this, not for the sake of numbers. Churches which concentrate on numbers for the sake of numbers will end up a statistic. You greet a stranger and create a friend, and you do it for the sake of community ... and for the sake of the Gospel. And there is this beautiful by-product: sometimes as we search for God ... we find Jesus in the face of one another.

"People are called to live and minister in community with others." So contends Pastor Gregory Boyd. "We cannot hope to embody the (love of God) if we are doing life solo.... We all need people who are close enough to us to notice when we're discouraged and who care enough to take time to encourage us. We all need people who can spot areas of weakness in our lives and care enough to confront us in love. We all need people who can notice when we're going astray and who care enough to hold onto us." Community. Relationships. Connectedness.

In our text for today, Jesus utilizes another one of the "I am" sayings found in the Gospel of John. You've heard them all from time to time: "I am the resurrection and the life." "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I am the bread of life." Last week Jesus proclaimed, "I am the Good Shepherd." And now this morning, "I am the vine." Jesus is the vine .. and we are the branches. And there is a complex interrelationship between the vine and the branches.

My father-in-law used to have grape vines in his backyard, and he took great care in pruning and harvesting. It takes a great deal of skill to do what he did. I watched and tried to learn ... but I couldn't tell where one branch started and the other ended. This though, is precisely the point of the metaphor of Jesus.

We are so entwined in this Christian Community called Church. So intertwined that we meld together in relationship for the common good, and for the sake of Jesus Christ. As Christians, we best live out our faith when we are well-connected to Jesus. The Jesus who proclaims, "I am the vine, you are the branches." We are joined to Jesus and enmeshed with one another. This Vine-branch relationship is a wonderful thing. We are blessed if we can maintain the relationship we have with God's Church throughout the seasons of our life: the high times and the dry times. Sometimes it seems easy just to, as they say, fall away.

Several times during my teens, I was given the task of writing my own obituary. Once in high school English; a few times on church youth retreats. It was not a morbid exercise, but rather sharpened the point as to how we would like to be remembered ... and thus clarified the important things of life. My obituary would always start with the month and year of my birth, February of 1945; and next, my expiration date. I'm not superstitious, but being on the safe side, the date I picked was light years away: June, 2010. If I had to do that little exercise again, I'd push my expiration date a bit further into the future. And my obituary? Reflecting today's text I'd write, "Timothy Kennedy - the grape did not fall far from the Vine." I like to think I've got the time, and I know I have the inclination, to make that more a reality: "the grape did not fall far from the Vine."

"I am the vine," says Jesus . "You are the branches." This is how God intends us to be. The branches, you and I, draw life from the vine. Nourishment. Lop us off from Jesus ... and faith withers and shrivels like a raisin. Prune us away from our brothers and sisters in Christ and our faith and commitment suffer. Our faith means getting intertwined with Jesus - and entangled with one another. That can be the tricky part, can it not? Not the intertwining with Jesus; the enmeshing with one another. Enmeshing can sometimes be messy, and involve risk. Hurt feelings. Being misunderstood. Being overworked in the church, and under appreciated. But the flip side is beautiful - being a part of a community that doubles your joys and divides your sorrows. The risk of the former is well worth the reality of the latter. When we abide in Christ, we find the strength of community.

Many years ago, Martin Luther called the family home, "the small church." In our own homes, ideally, we first learn of the need to be a part of something more than ourselves. We learn about love by the love we are given. We learn about God from our mothers and from our fathers. We learn to pray from mothers by the bedside; we learn to play, and play fair, by Dads in the backyard. We are taught to remember; we are taught to forget. Remember to do love your neighbor; but also, forgive and forget. That's the ideal, of course. The homes in which many were raised sometimes did not quite reach the ideal.

Whether or not that was your experience as you grew up in the family home, "the small church," let's partner together to continue to make it happen here. The loving; the praying; the playing fair; and yes, the forgiving and the forgetting. This is not strictly altruistic. We will discover the closer we get to one another - the closer we get to Jesus.

I'm glad people continually wish to join with us, but by no means are we a perfect church community. We strive for the ideal ... we usually fall short. Nevertheless, we cling to this fact: to err is human ... to forgive is the Vine!