Cake

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 28, 2024

5 Easter B 

          Spring may be orange barrel season in Northeast Ohio, but spring is birthday cake season in the various Reed households.  Between March 2 and May 22, six of the 10 of us have birthdays.  That is a lot of deep, dark, dense, delicious chocolate and peanut butter cake, for which you have the recipe in your service bulletin.  But don’t look now.  Grandson Banks was 2 on April 9 and the movers were coming to pack our house on April 10, so I felt a bit like I was on the Great British Baking Show except that when the time was up, the tent was going to deconstruct!  I have made this cake between 3 and 8 times a year for the past 30 years, and while each cake turns out differently, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the process.  I mixed up Banks’ cake, poured it into the well-greased and floured pans, dumped in the chocolate chips, which, no, I do not measure, and baked the cakes.  When I took them out of the oven, I let them cool for 10 minutes, not 9 or the cake is too hot, and not 11 because the chocolate chips will have stuck to the bottom of the pan in a way that would make gorilla glue jealous.  Then I turned them out onto the cooling racks.  The only problem was that when I flipped the second cake out of the pan, the pan hit the microwave above the stove and the very warm cake dumped onto the cooling rack in more than one squished piece.  What to do?  I had neither the time, nor the ingredients, nor the patience at this point to bake another one.  So, I let it cool and glued it back together with peanut butter and icing, froze it and took it to UPS.  Birthday cake for Banks, check!

          Today we hear Jesus say to his disciples “I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”  To my ears, this sounds like John’s version of Paul’s Body of Christ imagery.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  Paul goes on to say “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” We talk a lot at Christ Church about being the body of Christ and how all of the members are necessary for the body of Christ to function well and do the work God has given us to do.  We know that we are called to both be the body of Christ in the world and seek and serve Christ in all people.

          The vine imagery Jesus uses this morning is similar yet different.  On the one hand, a vine bears fruit because that’s just what healthy vines do.  They produce fruit.  The vine imagery calls us into an organic relationship with Jesus that naturally bears fruit.  But on the other hand, we all know that when one body part hurts, the whole body suffers.  But if one branch of the vine doesn’t function, there will still be fruit.  No big deal.  Right?

          Wrong.  Jesus is clear this morning that life for his followers comes from being attached to the vine.  All of the branches are needed for the vine to do what vines do and bear abundant fruit for the life of the world.  If a branch is not bearing fruit, the branch is pruned so that it will have life and bear fruit because all of the branches are both wanted and needed. 

But what is the fruit of Jesus?  Jesus does not tell us what the fruit is this morning, but in the reading from 1 John we hear “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God….no one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is perfected in us.”  Then we hear “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.”  Jesus said “Whose who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”  The fruit of the vine of Jesus is love.

          If we are talking about being the Body of Christ, all of the members are necessary for the Body to function properly and show the love of God to the world. And if one member of the body needs help, the others pitch in. If we’re talking about a plant, all of the branches are necessary for the plant to produce the best and most fruit possible and those branches must be attached to the vine, which is Jesus.  If one branch of the vine needs help, it is pruned to bear more fruit. That fruit is love.   And if we’re talking about cake, every single ingredient is necessary for the cake to be amazing, and at Christ Church we know that cake is love.  When the cake meets with disaster, other parts of the cake, like peanut butter and frosting, can be used to put it back together.  The point is this.  To be the church you want to be, to be thriving and growing and bearing the most amazing fruit possible, the gifts of each of you are needed.  Every single one of you is a necessary ingredient, to mix the metaphor.  There is not one single person without something to contribute to being the church you want to be.  Be rooted in God’s love.  Use your gifts.  When things go sideways, step up.  Life is not perfect and you might just be the peanut butter or the icing that is needed.  As I have said many times before, the top secret super simple way to become the church you want to be is to Be That Church.  Be That Church and you will become that church as naturally as healthy branches bear fruit.  The legacy of our time together is not what we have done over these wonderful 8 years, not the Parish Hall or the restrooms or the music program or the youth group, or the hospitality or the energy, but what you will grow from what we have planted together.

                                                                                                Amen.