Jesus said to his disciples:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."
This passage contains within it an extraordinary promise. “Ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”
Jesus is saying ask God for anything and you’ll get it. And the reason why you’ll get it, is because God is glorified by giving you what you want. Therefore, ask, and you shall receive. That’s the promise.
But this is a promise that will make unbelievers scoff and will make many believers sad. Unbelievers scoff because they don’t believe; therefore, this is a decidedly unbelievable claim. But why would it make many believers sad? Because many believers asked from God, but they didn’t receive. Many believers have become unbelievers because they listened to these words and asked God for what they wanted and it never came. And they decided that God may be good at laying down the rules by which we have to live, but He doesn’t seem to be so good at living by the rules He laid down for Himself.
But the statement of “Ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you” has a qualification that usually goes unnoticed. Some may think that qualification is that you have to ask it in Jesus’ name, but Jesus doesn’t say that here. Jesus just says “ask” and God will give it. So what’s the qualification to get from God when you ask?
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
We, the branches, must remain in Jesus, the vine. If we do then we can ask anything from God and receive it because:
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
But if we do not remain in Jesus we will wither and die and ultimately be destroyed:
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
The bearing of the fruit is linked to receiving what we ask. God is glorified when we bear fruit, and we bear fruit when God gives us anything we ask. Therefore, to get what you want from God, you must remain in Jesus and He in you, and if you do, you will ask anything and receive, because the fruit you bear will be tied to the abundance you receive. You can’t give what you don’t have, so God will give you in abundance so you can give in abundance.
Someone else who is a believer, or may have been one and became discouraged will say, “I was in Christ and I asked from God, but I never received anything.” That may be a valid assessment. But if I plant an apple tree in the ground today, I can’t expect to eat apples tomorrow. It takes time for a tree to mature. It is only when the tree matures that it bears fruit–and since the fruit is tied to the receiving, one must develop in faith and become mature in faith before one can expect to receive in faith and bear fruit.
The hard part for me is to remember that God is the one who grows the vine, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. We are the ones who bear fruit, not the vine, and not the grower, but the branches bear the fruit–and even then, only when they are mature enough to do so.
Very often I want God to produce fruit in my life, but I forget that I am the one through whom the fruit is produced. The grower doesn’t grow the grapes; the branches do. And the branches are only able to bear fruit if they are alive and connected to the vine, and have remained alive and connected long enough to mature and then produce.
I know a man who is an expert in growing fruit trees. He has a Ph.D. in it. He was telling me one day that in order to get the most fruit out of the tree in the long run, you have to prune it when it is young. In the first year of the fruit tree, you want to remove all but four branches, one on the north, one on the south, one on the east, and one on the west. Somehow pruning away all the other branches for a period of time make the tree more productive when it matures.
Very often when we embrace a life of faith, we are suddenly confronted with challenges and problems. Many people don’t make it through those challenges. But these challenges may be us being pruned, removing extra branches early on, so that we can be most productive when we mature. There may be behaviors, attitudes, concepts, beliefs, relationships, that need to be pruned away so that we can grow and produce an abundance of fruit. There may be sin that needs to be pruned away, because even though our sins are forgive, we waste a lot of time and energy sinning and receiving forgiveness that could be used to bear fruit.
So it may be that the times in our lives, especially when we are not yet mature in faith, that seem the most challenging or taxing or unpleasant just may be the necessary pruning we need that will enable us to be productive when we are mature in faith. So perhaps we should not look at these as challenges or difficulties or some crisis of faith, but instead view them as growth–because even the cutting away is growth. It is just making it so future growth is more efficient and dynamic and productive.
So since remaining in Jesus is crucial to our bearing fruit and receiving what we want from God, then it becomes crucial to know how to remain in Jesus. St. John teaches us how to do just that in his first epistle: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them” (1 John 3:24). And even this reading teaches us that we receive everything we ask for from God, but it also offers a qualification:
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. (v. 21-22)
Therefore, if we want to receive from God, we must keep His commandments, not because God is holding out on us, or withholding from us, if we don’t do what He wants, but because if we don’t keep His commandments, then we are not in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is not in us, and we are a withering branch that is dying a little every day, until we are finally pruned away from the vine and left to die on our own and thrown into a fire.
If we keep the commandments, if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we believe that He is God’s Son come to us in the flesh, if we love one another as God tells us to love in His commandments, as Christ tells us to love in His teachings, then we are in Jesus Christ because we are keeping His commandments, and Jesus Christ is in us, and we are a living branch, connected to the vine, sometimes pruned, by the Father, until we mature and bear fruit–and when we mature, remaining connected, we can ask God for anything and we receive it, because God is glorified by giving to us and allowing us to bear a lot of fruit. The more fruit we bear, the more glory God receives, so God wants to give us abundantly so we can produce abundant fruit. But it takes spiritual maturity; it takes remaining connected to Jesus Christ; it takes keeping the commandments; it takes love; it takes time; it takes pruning; it takes weeding away the crap that robs us of our nutrients and vitality. It isn’t a wish and God isn’t a genie. It is the hope of faith that conquers the world (1 John 5:4).
We know we are in Jesus Christ because we keep His commandments, and we do this because we have His Spirit. This Spirit that we receive allows us the church to be in peace, to build itself up, and to grow–spiritually as well as numerically. The reading from The Acts of the Apostles today says:
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace.
It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers (Acts 9:31).
That’s where believers and unbelievers alike will attack. The church is clearly not at peace–it is divided and fighting amongst itself. And I don’t mean Protestant versus Catholic, or even denomination versus denomination. Each denomination is at war with itself. Whenever there is a governing assembly, I see the battle in Facebook updates. There is no peace in the church, and the church is not building itself up, it is tearing itself down, and it is not growing in any sense of the word, but declining in every sense of the word.
If the church isn’t at peace with itself; if the church can only tear itself apart; if the church can only decline; why should anyone listen to any version of the so-called church when it preaches peace, and building up, and growth? These are things it clearly doesn’t know anything about, so it clearly shouldn’t be preaching about it.
Why is the church like this? Because the church doesn’t follow the commandments of Jesus Christ, so it is cutting itself off from the vine and it is withering. If the church wants peace within itself, it must focus on keeping the commandments, and it will have the Spirit–and it is only through the Spirit that it is at peace. Only when it is at peace will it build itself up, mature, bear fruit, and grow.
The Bible reading today gives us the prescription that will cure all of our ills–social, institutional, theological, ecclesiastical–whatever is withing and dying among us is doing so because it is no longer being nourished by the vine. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. If we want our prayers to be answered, if we want to stop fighting within and without of the church, if we want to grow and bear fruit, then we have to keep God’s commandments, and remain connected to Jesus Christ, and live the way he lived–because “whoever claims to abide in him ought to live [just] as he lived” (1 John 2:6).
May the Lord bless the receiving of this word, and may it help us all to receive abundant life in this world, and in the world to come, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
