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(Read this series from the beginning at Part 1 and Part 2.)
Let’s pause, though, for just a moment and look at the little bit we have listed here.
Concern for economic justice for the poor, wealth redistribution, centering of the marginalized, cancellation of oppressive debt, liberation for incarcerated people, liberation for the oppressed, ensuring people’s health care needs were taken care of, and lastly, nonviolent resistance to systemic injustice.
What would it look like if this were the platform of Christians today?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to the for-profit prison industrial complex?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to the school to prison pipe line for Black people in the U.S.?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to the demand for universal healthcare when so many people, even those with health insurance, have to file bankruptcy?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to police brutality?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to student loan cancellation?
What does a response like the Jesus of the story look like in regards to civil rights for our LGBTQ siblings?
What about the industrial war machine that drives our national deficit and diverts funds away from our social good?
What about proposals to defund Social Security and Medicare for the elderly?
The list could go on and on because it’s in these specifics that we see what could it look like for Christians today to live as Jesus lived, to remain in him, and to bear the fruit we all remember the original Vine for.
Today, my concern is not that Christians aren’t producing fruit with our lives. It’s not that we are withered branches. We produce copious amounts of fruit.
I’m concerned about the type of fruit so many White, straight, cisgender Christians are producing. Is this fruit life-giving or is it poisonous? Does our fruit look like the fruit of the original vine, and if not, what vine have we allowed ourselves to be grafted into instead? If the vine we’re connected to is nationalistic, supremacist, patriarchal, or violent, it’s not the vine Jesus calls us to remain in.
Does your life bear fruit that resembles the fruit at the heart of the Jesus story? Is it life-giving or life-inhibiting for the vulnerable within our society? Is the fruit of your life a blessing or a curse? Does it ensure life and thriving for those society deems least of these or is it death-dealing?
As the Johaninne community taught:
“Whoever claims to remain in him must live as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:6)
It would be better for branches that bear poisonous fruit to wither, die, and be thrown into the fire by Mother God, then to go on harming others.
But even better than that would be for those branches to choose to be grafted once again back into the original vine and begin to bear fruit that can feed and heal the nations. (Revelation 22:2; Ezekiel 47:12).
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