Thursday 7 May 2015

The True Vine (2 May 2015)

John 15.1-8
 ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener’ says Jesus to his disciples on the eve of his arrest and crucifixion.  To this point in the bible the vine has always been associated with Israel, the covenant people of God.  And all the OT texts chastise the nation for not bearing fruit as God expects.

Jesus is the true vine.  Just as sap runs through the vine and into the branches to produce grapes, so all life flows through him and then through us, the little branches, in order to bear fruit.  Well, that should be what happens.

 ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’  I’m no gardener but I get the need for pruning.

You lop off branches that are unproductive and just waste energy.  You try to produce a plant that is open to the light and not tangled in on itself.  The gardener lovingly cleans the vine in order to produce the best possible grapes.

Jesus said to the disciples: ‘You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.’  No doubt there was more pruning to do but at that stage certain things had already been cut away –some goals, some wrong ambitions perhaps.

‘Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.’  Here I prefer the AV or the new English Standard Version: ‘Abide in me, and I in you.’

‘Remain’ is too thin, too static.  It feels like ‘stay put’ or ‘hang around’.  Whilst to ‘abide’ means to ‘make our home’ in Jesus and to let Jesus make his home in us. It’s more dynamic

I think ‘abiding’ has more the sense of a full, personal commitment.  Like Ben Quash's thought that the best description comes in the Book of Ruth where she expresses her loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi:   ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.’

Remain in me, abide in me, is to make our home in Jesus and to let Jesus make his home in us; it’s a place of presence and rest, of mutual friendship, a source of life and creativity.

‘I am the vine; you are the branches.’ This is a call to radical discipleship.  ‘If you remain in me (abide in me) and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’

Jesus asks us to surrender our own will and to recognise our dependence upon him.  He asks us to relinquish control of our lives and let him live in us.  The US theologian Stanley Hauerwas says that the Christian life ought always to be a ‘life lived out of control’.  Quite what that would mean for you I leave you to ponder; my point here is that abiding is not just about our own efforts.

Also let’s be aware that the ‘you’ here is a plural ‘you’ in the Greek.  ‘You lot are the branches.’  So, it’s not just about us as individual Christians but us as a church.  We have fruit to bear together, as a body – what does it look like?
Branches that decide to go it alone, that try living without the life-giving sap of the vine, soon wither and die, they are good for nothing.  ‘If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.’

The message should be clear.  We are all to remain in the body, in the community that loves, worships and serves Jesus as Lord.  You can’t go it alone.   And we must be people of prayer and worship, in touch, in tune with Jesus, knowing him and being known by him.

That sharp warning of the futility of life without him is now accompanied with the most extraordinary promise:  If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.’  If you’re like me you’ll look at a promise like that and conclude ‘I don’t yet know the first thing about abiding!’  That is not my experience of prayer. My only deduction is – there is an awful lot of pruning that needs to be done before I’ve let go and let God take control.

Finally Jesus says: ‘This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.’ Jesus offers these words to his disciples on the eve of his arrest and execution.  In the terrible hours ahead and in the confusions of the days to come they will be words of great hope. In spite of everything the disciples will flourish.  John will record these words in his gospel for a church that may feel abandoned – thrown out of the synagogues and scattered.  They are experiencing savage cuts but they will produce much fruit.  These are words of great hope.

What about us today?  We may be feeling cut down or severely pruned – as we experience life’s tragedies, great and small.  The personal disappointments and losses, the terrible reports of death and destruction and abuse that fill our news reports…

We may not be able to sense or believe that such afflictions have happened for a purpose or that they herald a bright future but we can hold on to Jesus’ promise that we can still flourish, we can still be fruitful branches united to the vine.



His life can still flow from him and into us and through us, for the good of others.  No matter what happens Jesus’ promise remains:  ‘YOU LOT - If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.’

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