John 15:1-8
“Learning to Live in Jesus”
Jesus and His disciples have just finished the Last Supper.
Following the Supper Jesus washed His disciples’ feet and told them that He was setting an example for them—that they should do for one another what He has done for them.
From there Jesus has a conversation with His close friend Peter.
The conversation ends with Jesus telling His dear disciple that he will disown Him three times before the rooster crows the next morning.
In Chapter 14 Jesus says to His disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.
In my Father’s house are many rooms; I am going there to prepare a place for you.”
How could the disciples NOT be troubled?
Jesus is telling them over and over again that He is going away.
And He is preparing them for the time when He won’t be with them in the same physical sense that they have always known.
He will, though, still be with them.
He will be with them through the Living Presence of the Holy Spirit.
And He says that Holy Spirit will live with them, and will be in them.
“I will not leave you as orphans,” Jesus tells His disciples in John 14:18, “I will come to you.
Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.
Because I live, you also will live.
On that day, you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
In our Lesson for this morning, Jesus continues to prepare the disciples for the time when He is no longer with them physically.
He knows the trials they will face in the days and years ahead.
At the same time Jesus invites them and us to enter into a more profound relationship with Him by urging us to live in Him, make our home in Him.
And so, rather than wringing His hands in despair, Jesus is speaking a word of hope and trust.
Stay close to Jesus, weathering whatever storms may come.
He says, “I am the Vine, you are the branches…
…Live in me.
Make your home in me just as I do in you.”
For most of us, we don’t have to look too far to find every day examples that help deepen our understanding of what Jesus is getting at when He compares Himself to a Vine and you and me to the branches.
It almost goes without saying that once a branch is cut off from its life source, it is simply not going to live long, not to mention being at the end of its fruit bearing potential.
A farmer in a rural congregation in South Carolina once planted several acres of watermelons that he had presold to a grocery store chain in New York City.
When the truck got there for the watermelons, though, there was a misunderstanding over who was supposed to harvest the crop.
The deal fell through, the truck left empty, and the farmer gave all the watermelons to a local church Youth Group to sell at a roadside market for missions.
The young people and their parents put on boots and gloves and went out into the fields in search of the melons.
They soon saw that some of the branches had separated from the vine, had turned brown, and had no fruit worth finding.
But the green, living branches were still connected to the vine and had tasty watermelons under their leaves.
So, Jesus uses the metaphor of a vine connected to a branch and a human being connected to Christ to emphasize what it means to live a faithful and fruitful life.
And the connection He is talking about isn’t temporary or shallow.
It is abiding, enduring and deep.
It is learning to live lives more and more and more rooted in Jesus.
It is living in Christ in the same way that Christ lives in us, becoming stronger and stronger day after day, year after year…
…producing more and more high quality fruit along the way.
So, let’s ask ourselves this morning: “Are we connected to Christ?”
“Are we rooted in Jesus?”
“Where do we get our nutrients for living?”
“Are we bearing fruit for the Kingdom?”
“Are we making our home in Jesus?”
If we really think about it, this is a difficult question.
I struggle just thinking about it.
The answer should be easy, but if I am honest, I have to admit that a lot of times I don’t live in Christ.
I don’t make my home in Him.
How about you?
Instead, I often abide in things that I think I can control, but then those things end up controlling me.
I abide in things that require little of me, but they end up taking my soul.
What do you spend your time doing?
What things do you give your life to?
Many of us are sports fans.
We dress up.
We go to the games and we make the time to do this.
Some of us love our television programs, so we sit there and even binge-watch because we can’t wait for the next season to begin.
We are constantly living in, taking residence in, fixing ourselves permanently to many things in our world.
And we kid ourselves if we think that those things are not affecting us, shaping us, transforming us.
The proof of what is shaping us is all around us.
That which we value, what we spend our time doing, the activities that we engage in, our attitudes, whether or not we are putting what we claim to believe into action, whether we are becoming more loving, more altruistic, more like Jesus or more like something else all point to the things that captivate our hearts.
These things are the fruit of our lives.
I’m not trying to get all legalistic.
This is a hard lesson.
It takes a life-time and then some to try and get ahold of what Jesus is talking about.
In verse 9 of Chapter 15 Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Now remain in my love.
And a couple of verses later Jesus says: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
That’s really what it’s all about, is it not?
Love.
The kind of love that comes from a living, abiding, connected relationship with Jesus Christ.
The kind of love which is the fruit or result of being joined to the Real Vine.
A great preacher was once asked to share about the person who influenced him the most in his life and his call to ministry.
He surprised the audience when he told them the name of someone that no one knew: Miss Emma Sloan.
He explained that Emma Sloan was his Sunday school teacher throughout his childhood and Youth.
She gave him a Bible and taught him to memorize Scripture verses, though she never explained them or interpreted them.
She always told the children: “Just put it in your heart, just put it in your heart.”
The preacher shared with his audience how Miss Emma taught them a Bible verse for each letter of the alphabet, and then ended with these words: ‘I can’t think of anything, anything in all my life, that has made such a radical difference as those verses.
The Spirit of God brings them to mind time and time again.”
Miss Emma Sloan was teaching this young man what it means to live in God’s Word, to live in Christ as the branch lives by being connected to the vine.
Jesus says, “I am the Vine, you are the branches.
When you are joined with me you will bear much fruit.”
And the fruit we will bear begins inside of us and moves into our families, our towns, wherever our lives touch the lives of others.
And it’s not so much about the words we use; it’s about the love we give.
Fred Craddock, a preacher and teacher, who passed away a few years ago used to tell an amazing story about Albert Schweitzer.
Schweitzer wrote a book that, according to Craddock, was woefully lacking in its understanding of Jesus Christ and what it means to live out the Christian life.
It turns out that Schweitzer was playing an organ concert in Cleveland, Ohio and so Craddock bought a bus ticket to go up there and hear him play.
He thought up a series of stunning, piercing questions to throw at Schweitzer, to call into question his understanding of Jesus.
He wrote them down on a legal pad.
His plan was to catch him in a corner after the concert and engage him in a serious discussion.
After the concert was over, Schweitzer came into the Fellowship Hall to visit with people.
He was white haired, with a bushy mustache and stooped over.
He was a master organist, a medical doctor, a philosopher, a writer, a missionary and a biblical scholar.
He stayed for a short time and then spoke to the crowd.
“You’ve been very warm and hospitable to me,” he said.
“Thank you for it, and I wish I could stay longer among you, but I must go to Africa.
I must go because the people are poor and diseased and hungry and dying and I have to go.
We have a medical station in Africa.
If there is anyone here in this room who has the love of Jesus, would you be prompted by that love to go with me and help me?”
Craddock said that at this point he looked down to his legal pad full of questions, and they were absolutely stupid.
“And I learned again,” Craddock said, “what it means to be a Christian and had hopes that I could be that someday.”
We know it when we see it, don’t we?—a life connected with God.
Someone teaches us by their lives.
We know it when we live it ourselves, don’t we?
But it is impossible for us, on our own, to fend off the host of things that threaten to interfere with our staying alive in Jesus.
Think with me about all those things: temptations and trials, unrealistic hopes and ungrounded fears, undeserved wealth and unjust poverty, talent as well as untapped potential.
Any and all of these things and a thousand more left on their own can easily cut me off from the only source of life that really matters.
And they could do this in a way that I don’t even notice at first…until I start to realize that around the edges I am simply dying—like a branch that is separated from the vine.
Perhaps that is a description that fits your life this morning.
Jesus says to us: “Separated, you can’t produce a thing.
Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown in the bonfire.
But if you make yourselves a home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon.
This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”
Jesus is offering us an amazing gift.
We have been handed the source of life itself.
Why in the world would I allow anything to get in the way of my receiving it?
All we have to do is stay attached.
All we have to do is make our home in Jesus.
So why not do that now?
Why not today?
And not just for ourselves, but for God’s love to be made known in the lives of our families, our community and our world.
