"You are!" An Invitation to Have our Imagination Run Wild

Easter is a time to have our minds blown by and for our imaginations to run wild with the possibilities of what the reign of God might look like. I wonder what that means for us as we commemorate ANZAC Day and offer a place for our city to commemorate the Battle of Pukehinahina Gate Pa.  These dark and sad stories would seem to be the exact opposite of Easter. And yet amid the violence are moments of compassion that arose out of the deep wells of faith within people like Henare Wiremu Taratoa, Heni Te Kiri Karamu and Rawiri Puhirake. Mind blowing Easter shaped possibilities.

Strangely in Easter we go back to John’s version of the last supper. In our gospel reading (John 15:1-8) Jesus comforts his shocked disciples with his last “I Am” statement – “I am the vine and you are the branches”. As they and we hear this we are invited to hear all the previous I Am statements like, bread of life, living water, light of the world. Look them up. And then Jesus says “You are”. The only time he says this. Jesus in the vine and we are branches. What a profoundly pastoral image for his followers standing on the edge of horror. To be a branch is to abide in the vine and all that means. Jesus invites those disciples and us to “abide in me as I abide in you.” (John 15:4). To abide is to have a place where you are deeply at home. Henare, Heni and Rawiri offer examples of people who were deeply at home in God’s compassion, generosity, and life. They help us see how Jesus’ use of the vine offers an image of divine life welling up from beneath and within pouring out in their courageous act of offering water. Their fear and hate had been pruned allowing them to act in ways that changed the story.

In our own time of deep uncertainty, I wonder how we experience these words?