Scuppernongs

My grandparents lived on a farm.  I visited often, which was always a treat.  Farm or not, I really don’t get agricultural metaphors very well.  While the farming roots run deep in my family, I’m afraid they skipped right over me, being from the city as I was.  I’m afraid I’m glad they did.  I do worry that I may not be understanding gospel passages like this week’s, in which Jesus spoke, as he so often did, of farming.  This week’s gospel (Jn. 15:1-8) involves the vine, the branches, and the fruit.  I’m not sure I understand.    

I do remember my grandparents and their farm, though.  Now they didn’t grow grapes or make wine (to my knowledge!), but they did have two large scuppernong trees, more like giant bushes really.  They were huge.  The driveway went in a circle around one, so it was really the first sign that you were at Grandmother and Granddaddy’s.  The other was beyond the driveway, sort of an entrance to the back yard.  Grandmother kept a step-like shelf next to it.  She put potted plants in need of particular care on it.  Not surprisingly I don’t remember what plants they were.  Just not interested.

But I was interested in the scuppernongs.  For one thing, they were delicious.  They have a more important focus for me, though.  We grandchildren spent hours playing among the limbs and nibbling on scuppernongs.  The important things about scuppernongs have little to do with agricultural details as far as I’m concerned.  They have to do with two things.  One is the welcome they gave to arriving at Grandmother and Grandaddy’s house.  The other is the bond they created between my cousins and me.  They were fundamentally about relationship and family in my experience.

It might help to understand Jesus better if I knew more about their growth and taking care of them and what to do with the fruit.  Maybe there’s something I should get about the vines, the branches, and the fruit, how they’re connected and how they come to be unconnected.  Maybe I would understand better if I knew more pruning and raking up.  But maybe not.  After all, Jesus had grandparents, too.  Somehow I think that may reveal all that one needs to understand.

                                                                                    Agape,

                                                                                                Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                                                Founder and President

                                                                                                Love Must Act