Sermon
Story: When Maddy and I lived in Switzerland we had a couple of vines in the back garden.
To be honest, the first year we were there - they looked pretty awful and so Maddy asked her father - as he had been a farmer - to come round and trim them to see if we could get any fruit.
I got a shock when I came home that evening to find all the foliage cut back and all we had was a puny tree which was so weak that it held on the garage wall by clips.
The following year, the vines didn’t bloom - but they did produce fruit.
You see I hadn’t realised that a vine has no other use than to produce fruit – grapes.
You’d never use the vine to make a beautiful piece of furniture – as you might use wood from an oak tree.
The vine merely exists to produce fruit – and it is from the branches that the fruit comes.
In our Gospel, Jesus said:
1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
2 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.
Being in an agrarian society, Jesus original hearers would have known all about vines and how to tend them
But more than that the image of the vine would have a greater significance to Jesus’ original hearers because the Vine represented Israel.
1. A great golden vine trailed over the Temple porch and
2. There are many Old Testament allusions to the Vine symbolising Israel – not least in Psalm 80
(The Message of John- Milne p.219)
We read in Psalm 80, where the psalmist is speaking about the exodus from Egypt:
8 You transplanted a vine from Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground for it,
and it took root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.
11 Its branches reached as far as the Sea,
its shoots as far as the River.
12 Why have you broken down its walls
so that all who pass by pick its grapes?
13 Boars from the forest ravage it,
and insects from the fields feed on it.
14 Return to us, God Almighty!
Look down from heaven and see!
Watch over this vine,
15 the root your right hand has planted,
the son you have raised up for yourself.
If Israel is symbolised by a vine, what is the fruit that it is expected to produce?
Isaiah 49:6 gives us a clue. Speaking of Israel God says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Bruce Milne explains it like this:
<‘The election of Israel coincides with God’s promise of blessing to the nations’ ( H.H. Rowley).
Israel, however was more attracted by the gods of the surrounding nations than by her potential for penetrating them as a missionary.
Her centuries long declension from God’s purpose now reaches its nadir in the rejection and crucifying of the Messiah and the repudiation of the kingdom of God.> (The Message of John- Milne p.219)
Put a bit more simply, not only has Israel rejected its role to take the message of the one true God to the nations surrounding it – and so would have been a blessing to those nations, but on top of that they actually go on to reject the Messiah of the God they profess to worship.
In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus gives us the key for Christians to bear fruit.
And that is 4 Abide in me, as I also abide 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.
You will only bear fruit if you abide in him.
When Jesus spoke about abiding in Him, I thought of three characteristics of the word.
1. The first characteristic of “abiding in Christ” is making time.
We live in a society that runs in the fast lane almost all the time.
The word "Abide" runs counter current to all that. There is a tranquillity about it.
Jesus was busy - much of the time but he did take time off to draw aside and pray in the midst of a heavy schedule.
We read in the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, after healing many people in a particular town:
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed (Mk. 1:35)
How often do we feel that it is a drag to go to pray.
We are too busy for that.
Spending time with Jesus – Abiding with Jesus - can be very rewarding.
If we take time to abide with Christ, we will have time to listen – as the hymn writer John G Whittier put it - to that “still small voice of calm” (in the hymn “Dear Lord and Father of mankind” - v. 5).
You never know what Jesus might say to you!!
2. The second characteristic of "abiding in Christ" is getting to know him
The founders of all the other great world religions, Mohammed, Buddha, and Confucius are all dead, but Jesus is alive.
When I became a Christian, prayer changed.
It didn’t feel like giving God my wish list and hoping it would happen.
I found that when I took time with God – that I would get answers to the questions I asked.
The words of the Bible took on new significance. They seem to jump out of the page like a living Book.
They spoke to me and spoke into my life.
If you hang around someone long enough the character of that person rubs off on you.
And the same is true with Jesus – his character will be formed in us as we abide in him.
One well-known Bible Commentator put it like this:
“The indwelling Christ, or life through the word of Christ, demands and forms a life conforming to his spirit and will and brings about sanctification.”
As we spend time in
prayer,
reading and meditating on God’s word – The Bible and listening to what He says to us,
we will get to know Him.
Going to church is not enough, we must get to know Jesus.
Story: The Christian singer-songwriter Keith Green once said: Going to church no more makes you a Christian than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.
It is abiding in Jesus that makes us Christians.
3. The third characteristic of "abiding in Christ" is following him – or discipleship
When you are around Jesus, he will change you.
It is our changed lives that are going to impress people about the Christian faith – not our words.
Story: My father was very anti-church when he was alive.
He decided not to send me to the famous Roman Catholic school, Stonyhurst, to make sure I didn’t “go into the church” - as his sister and his aunt had done!!
Two years before he died – about 15 years after I had come to faith - we were sitting in my lounge in Switzerland when he said:
“I can see your Christianity has been good for you, Martin. It is not for me, but I can see that it has been good for you”
If we are going to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to those around us, it will be by the way we live.
St. Francis of Assisi once said ”Preach the Gospel to all the world – and if necessary use words.”
Story: Richard Wurmbrand was a particular hero of mine, who died in Feb. 2001.
Wurmbrand was a Christian Lutheran Minister who was put in prison for his faith in Romania by the Communist authorities for his faith.
While Wurmbrand was in prison, he shared a cell with a young Communist lad, who wanted to have nothing to do with Christianity.
Rations were very low in the prison, and yet Wurmbrand used to share his bread with that young atheist.
One day Wurmbrand was telling the young man about a Christian of whom it was said that he was like Jesus.
The young man turned around to Wurmbrand "If Jesus is like you, I would like to know him"
What a witness for Christ. (from the book "In God’s Underground" by Richard Wurmbrand)
I was challenged when I read that. I wondered that if I had said that Jesus was like me – would anyone want to know him?
How much of an impact does Jesus have on the way I lead my life?
Story of Mustapha. When Maddy and I used to live in Basle, Switzerland, we had the privilege of running a refugee church.
One Moslem refugee, Mustapha became a Christian, though friendship primarily of tw oco-workers of mine Dan and Catrin Backlund. He came to faith because as he put it to the church:
That is how we are going to reach people for Christ. By being a living testimony to Christ’s love.
Jesus said he wasn’t going to give us a lot of rules – in fact just one:
“This is my command : Love one another”(John15:17).
And in it he said it all.
Can I leave you with a parting thought?
If being a Christian were made illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
Is there enough evidence of the love of Christ in our lives that people can see it?
Mother Theresa was given a state funeral in India, a predominantly Hindu country – doesn’t that speak volumes for the love of Christ that shone out through her life?
A love that came from ABIDING IN CHRIST
