A week ago Saturday Norm Soderstrom died. I loved Norm. He was, to use one of his expressions, comfortable as an old shoe. He loved to sit, coffee cup in hand, and talk like the good old Swede he was. It didn’t matter what you talked about just as long as the feeling was easy and the moment preserved. He would do that with anyone. He genuinely liked people. He especially loved children. But he was happy with just about anyone who would drink his coffee, which was mostly horrible but always present. Norm also loved animals, he loved animals. The first time I met Norm he had a little toy poodle in his shirt pocket. The dog’s name was Andy. He would lick your face as long as you would let him. That is an enduring picture for me. Andy licking Norm’s face, early any morning, listening to the morning news, drinking coffee, and talking about nothing and everything. I have spent many a pleasant morning just like that with Norm.

His affection for people rubbed off. Norm was loved by just about everyone he knew. And because of his easy nature you might conclude that he had grown up comfortable but his was not an easy life. He was born out on a farm near Pepin, Wisconsin. He was born before there was electricity in that part of the world. His mother cooked on a big wood burning stove. The farm work was brutal and the life was simple. But families were strong and endured almost every hardship. Norm was strong and enduring and that is good because as a teenager Norm was drafted into the army and fought in the Pacific as an infantryman. He experienced that incredible carnage and violence that most of us have only seen on the movie screen. He lost many a friend. He would say and did say many a time that the atomic bomb saved his life. He was sure that if he had to fight his way to Japan he would have died. He never really got over the war. I am not sure that he ever could. He knew it wasn’t right but he couldn’t stomach anything Japanese and looked askance at me when I showed up in a Japanese car. But he came back in one piece. For that he was thankful almost every day of his life.

He and his wife had three children. He loved his sons but his daughter, the middle child was the brightness of his every day. She was daddy’s girl and she always would hold the special place in his heart.

But his children also brought heartache. His oldest son was murdered. A strange and terrible event that nearly broke him. But it didn’t. He came from a big family and among all the relatives there was a great deal of love and support. The healing kind of love and support. A day sitting around with everyone drinking coffee and reminiscing and remembering all the people who love you can heal many wounds. They did for Norm.

Norm was also very popular with the boys down at the union hall. He was a sheet metal worker by trade but could do just about anything around the house. In me he saw a sadly challenged suburbanite who never learned the things that everyone needed to know. But he was patient. He would laugh at my efforts to do any kind of home project. And he would teach me. I loved that he would take time to help me figure it out.

He had a number of colorful sayings, none that I can mention here. He loved a good joke and could tell about a thousand Sven and Ole jokes.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I loved Norm Soderstrom and I am very sad that he has died. The world has lost someone great in him. And that would be sadness enough. But it is a complicated world that we live in. And the true sadness is that too often we can’t see our way through such complications. You see Norm was my ex father-in-law. So I haven’t talked to Norm in years. That I regret. I regret it because I could have kept up with him. I could have honored the love I have always felt for him. But I let circumstance and my own pride get in the way.

That is especially difficult for a preacher to admit because I bank on God’s grace and forgiveness. I preach reconciliation as the key to our happiness. If I had taken it to heart I would not have lost Norm Soderstrom so many years before he died.

But this is exactly where God is greatest. We read in the gospel today that God is the vine and we are the branches. We are the ones who will bear God’s fruit. That would be those actions, those activities, those saving graces that make life so livable and wonderful. We are the agents by which all the magic that God has in store for this world is made manifest. You see we are utterly dependent on God for life and God is utterly dependent upon us, according to this image, to bring about the kind of life that God wants for us. God gives life and perfect freedom to create and recreate our lives in the way that God asks. So that at no time can there come a time when the will of God cannot be achieved.

The fruits of God’s life are far more possible than we believe, reconciliation, grace, and life are as near as our faith. So Norm is not lost to me. Norm is alive in the memories I have, he is alive in the ways that he inspired me, and he is alive as I write this sermon and I wrote my condolences to his wife Helen and my ex-wife Joni. The fruits of God’s life can live even in this completely fractured relationship because God has created this life without limit of possibility.

I was so taken by the image that Jesus uses to explain the relationship between God and human beings in the reading for today. If you read it, it seems threatening. There are those branches that will be cut off because they do not bear fruit. But the underlying subject of the whole passage is about pruning so that the vine can bear fruit. The difference between pruning and being cut off is non existent when you consider the vine as a whole. And perhaps when obstacles get between us, when we get cutoff from one another it might be helpful to remember that the vine can be pruned but that does not limit its ability to bear fruit. Any situation, any circumstance, any moment is a moment when God’s blessing can blossom and bring the fruits of the spirit.

We forget this truth too often. Just consider one of the fruits of God’s presence. Jesus speaks again and again of forgiveness and reconciliation. In fact if you took a survey of the gospels you would find that these are overwhelmingly important themes in the ministry of Jesus Christ. And yet in our infinite and God given freedom we consider this act almost impossible. The situation is too awkward. How do you talk to an ex-father in law? And it would be awkward, and it would be different but that does not mean it has to end. I don’t know how many times I have talked to people who do not talk to this or that relative. Or who have given up on a friend who used to be important to them. Or will not forgive because the other person is not worthy of forgiveness. That of course is ridiculous because quite simply if a person were worthy of forgiveness they wouldn’t need forgiveness. We think forgiveness is something that someone deserves. If it were true then it would not be forgiveness.