Like the good shepherd of last week’s text, this week’s image of the vine is another extended metaphor, which also borrows from and adapts Old Testament imagery for Israel.
Whereas the Synoptic parable of the vineyard is a story of violence and greed (Mark 12:1-12), this image of the vine is one of fruitfulness, intimacy, and love.
Jesus is on his way out. On his way to suffering and death and life and ascension. Out. Away. Apart from them. And he knew it and told them. Over and over he told them.
Did they not get it?
Did they just glaze over whenever he talked about that departure?
The overwhelming thrust of the passage is fruitfulness. The words bear fruit appear six times in these eight verses. Fruit-bearing is not something that the branches do by force of will.
The fruit happens organically because the vine is true and the gardener good. But the branches of this passage do choose to abide.
The verb abide like the phrase bear fruit appears over and over — eight times in four verses here — and will be repeated in part two of the passage next week when we learn that abiding in Jesus means abiding in Jesus’ love.
1) First Abiding is important
Abiding is important in John, where love of God means mutual indwelling. The verb abide has a cognate; and this noun appears in one of John’s most famous verses, 14:2. The many mansions in the Father’s house (in the familiar KJV) are actually abiding places.
The branches have to abide because without the vine, they are fruitless; they can do nothing.
And if they do abide and Jesus’ words abide in them, then and only then can they have Ministry or bear fruit.
We also find in the passage two references to the fruitlessness of not abiding.
It isn’t as if there are options. If you want the fruit of this vine, this is where you get it, by abiding here.
But just as there is no fruitfulness in not abiding, so there is no real future in focusing on those fruitless branches. The text is clear fruitless branches need to be pruned.
We don’t even make ourselves fruitful.
We cannot possibly discern what is happening with the rest of the vine.
But whatever is going on with the other branches is in any case the work of the vine grower.
It is perhaps also worth keeping in mind!
We bear fruit not by squeezing it out of ourselves but because we are extensions of the vine, pruned by the gardener-God who wants us to be fruitful and to be drawn into the unity of the Father and Son.
God’s love, presence, and pruning are gifts.
2) To abide in Christ is to know him as the way, the truth and the life.
To know him ‘perfectly’ is to abide in his love just as he abides in the love of his Father.
To follow him (think to last week about the Good Shepherd) requires a trusting obedience and foundation of “knowing” that moves beyond mental assent.
It is a knowledge that is based in love and based on faith. Jesus is the life and therefore to know him is to have life, both now and evermore.
To abide is to love and to remain in Christ love. The basis for all such love is the love of Christ that is first, it is sufficient and it is complete.
Jesus loves us and therefore we should love one another.
God so loved the world that he sent his son Jesus Christ to be the sacrifice for our sins; therefore we should love each other.
How do we abide? Well, it’s a two-way street as Jesus abides in us. Jesus’ words are to live in us and we can then live in him. In fact, we can do nothing apart from Jesus! Have you ever heard someone say, “I love Jesus but not the church. I’m just going to do “church” on my own,”?
Church cannot be done alone or apart from Jesus because it is the body of Christ.
You cannot have the church without Jesus.
Through obedience, and love, and action we are able to abide in the vine and therefore in the Father as well.
To abide in Jesus is to love him and to know him to be the way, the truth, and the life.
To abide is to have the abundant life promised by Jesus and to have it now.
Jesus said that the world would know we are his disciples by our love for one another.
3) Let me tell you Vines are amazing plants.
Vines are amazing plants. They are prolific, productive. They do not stay put, but grow in every direction if given the opportunity, and something to support them (the ground, a tree, a fence or building). Some of our favorite food plants are vines (tomatoes, grapes, squash, cucumbers, kiwi fruit, melons, beans, and peas).
However vines are also pests, with ivy, kudzu, and jungle vines overgrowing anything they can (English country homes, abandoned structures, lost cities).
While Jesus lifts up the vine's connectivity, and may also seek to recall its mustard-like persistence, if there is a central image in this passage it is the vine's fruitfulness.
And critical to a vine's fruitfulness is its trainability.
A vine will grow in any direction it is able.
But Jesus' heavenly Father tends the vine, directs the vine, prunes the vine so that it may grow in ways which produce fruit.
So it is with Jesus' disciples. If we "go wild," we will grow willy-nilly, and are unlikely to put much of our energy into producing the fruits of his kingdom. But following Jesus means being trained, directed, led to grow in righteousness.
Lastly, We pray that the energy which might be wasted in quarreling, in anxiety, might be used instead to grow charity, kindness, forgiveness, justice, peace.
As we look to the kind of ministry Jesus call us to, how much of our lives are spent "going wild"?
And how much are we letting ourselves be trained, guided, by the master gardener, master artist God?
With Artfields on my mind this week and all the wonderful art I want to close with this God is the master artist, the author and engineer of your life - and perhaps this ministry letter is particularly important and meaningful for you right now.
I’d like to end with the following true story.
In the early 1500’s a twenty-five-year-old artist and sculptor labored tirelessly with hammer and chisel over a colossal block of cold granite. Other artists had rejected the stone because it had defects, so it sat untouched for several decades before this young sculptor saw something beautiful in it.
He worked night and day with obsessive dedication. Someone asked him why he was working so hard on that old stone, he replied, “Because there is an angel in that rock that wants to come out.” Nearly three years after starting his work, the young artist, Michelangelo, unveiled his masterpiece: the seventeen-foot-tall sculpture that is now known the world over as “David”.
Anyone who is an artisan will acknowledge that before a masterpiece is ever crafted, it exists in the mind of its creator.
Before a brush strokes the canvas,
before a chisel touches the stone,
before the clay is placed on the potter’s wheel, before the artist creates a painting, sculpture, or piece of pottery,
before the artist has anything tangible to display, he first and foremost has a dream.
In the artist’s mind, he already sees what he will create before it exists in the physical world.
Michelangelo saw something in that block of stone long before anyone else did. Other artists saw impossible defects and imperfections, but he saw a masterpiece trapped in that rejected rock, and he worked diligently to set it free.
God sees something in you Wesley chapel abide in God and one day your Angel your Fruit will be celebrated.
