John 15:1-11. Being fruitful disciples.
Aim: to encourage people to remain obedient to Jesus through all hardships so that they may bear fruit and live joyfully.
Intro: I wonder how many of you got ‘How to’ book or video or DVD for Christmas like ‘How to take perfect digital photos’ or ‘How to cook curries’ or ‘How to improve your golf/football/tennis..’ I don’t know about you, but I find that it always looks simple in the action photos – whether it’s Madhur Jaffrey cooking a curry or Tiger Woods swinging a golf club - but not so simple when I try it out. Developing a good technique requires a certain amount of ability and practice – both lacking in my case!
If I were to find a book with the title, ‘How to improve your Christianity’, I would be even more sceptical because living as a Christian is not a matter of ability or technique, although practice does help. When Jesus says to his followers that he is the true vine and we are the branches, he shows that growing as a Christian is primarily about a relationship. And he uses this picture of the vine to explain how we are to live in relationship with him.
1) We need to remain in Christ (v.4): Jesus points out the obvious fact that “no branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain (abide) in the vine” (v.4). Every branch of a vine or a fruit tree needs the sap and strength of the main trunk if it is to grow and bear fruit. If it is broken or diseased, it dies, the leaves wither and there is no fruit. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, this means that if we cut ourselves off from him, we die spiritually. We may not notice at first, but that is what happens, which is why we must remain in him.
When Jesus said to his followers ‘you have been made clean because of the word I have spoken to you’ (v.3), he meant that they had been put right with God as they had responded to his message of salvation and put their trust in him. In other words, Jesus was saying that only he can put us right with God. That was a message for his own people, the people of Israel, often referred to in the OT as the vine – that he is the ‘true vine’ – the Messiah they were looking for. It was also a warning for his would-be disciples: that their claim to follow him must be matched by the way they live; that their commitment to him must continue even when the going gets tough.
Only Jesus can put us right with God, if we drift away from him we will wither and die spiritually. If we stick close to him, we will grow spiritually and receive life in all its fullness. Whatever church or denomination we belong to, it is our closeness to Christ that matters, and it is as we draw closer to him that we find that we belong to one another.
2) We need to be prepared for suffering (v.2). When Jesus says that the unfruitful branches must be cut away and that the fruitful branches must be pruned back in order to bear more fruit (v.2), he is warning his disciples that being faithful to him is often a painful process. If we think that living as a Christian is a soft option, we are bound to be discouraged. Jesus has called us to follow him for a purpose – he wants us to be fruitful, just as a vine is meant to be fruitful. Jesus accepts us as we are, but he wants to change us so that we can become more fruitful. So we should not be surprised when the Spirit of God rebukes us in our spirits for a wrong attitude or ambition, or puts his finger on something in our lives that needs to be changed or removed. I am grateful for Christian friends who have had the courage to question things I have said or done and ask whether they honour the Lord or not.
Sometimes the Lord prunes us by allowing things to happen to us that we would do anything to avoid. At the beginning of WW2, William Temple wrote a commentary on John’s gospel, and when he came to these verses he said, ‘in war, the suffering of the trenches refines still further the finer natures, and brutalises still further the coarser natures’. Being a friend of Christ does not spare us suffering, but God can use that suffering to refine us.
So when you go through a dark time, or if you are going through one now, ask God to show you how he can use it for good, in order that you may become more fruitful for him. The death of a loved one may make you more compassionate to those who have also been bereaved. A period of illness may allow you to do things you were previously too busy to think of. A difficult experience at work may equip you to help and mentor others.
3) If we remain in Christ, we will live worthwhile lives (v.5): Jesus is direct and to the point: “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (v.5). That’s a hard teaching. You may well be asking, ‘What about all those people who don’t follow Christ and yet seem to live good lives?’ The problem is that every thing we do has a motive, and our motives are always mixed, even if we try to put Jesus at the centre of our lives. At the end of the day, only God can judge the motives of our hearts and decide whether our life is truly fruitful.
Jesus has a very simple test of our fruitfulness (v.8) – that we show that we are his disciples. How do we show we are his disciples? In verse 10, he goes on to explain that it is by obeying his commands. In particular, he goes on to say in verse 12 that this means loving one another as he has loved us. If we really live like this, it will be to the Father’s glory because people begin to take notice and are drawn to him.
When you look at a vine laden with grapes or an apple tree weighed down with apples, do you think ‘What clever grapes!’ or ‘What clever apples!’ No, you think ‘What a good tree!’ and ‘What a clever gardener!’ In the same way, if the Holy Spirit bears fruit in our lives, it brings credit to God, not to us.
So let’s rejoice in what we do for God. And let’s not be jealous of any success that God gives to another Christian or another church - whether it’s a project that’s been successfully completed, or a gift day that raises the funds you have been praying for, or some one being led to Christ. Let’s rejoice together that the Kingdom of God is extended and give glory to him.
4) Jesus says that if we remain in him and bear fruit in our lives, our joy will be complete (v.11). Most people think that happiness is being able to do what we want when we want. And yet Christians believe that true happiness is found in service. Way back in the C16, Theresa of Avila put it this way, ‘Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which is to look out Christ’s compassion to the world; yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless others now’. How can living this way bring us true joy?
It brings us joy because we know where we belong. We have one Lord and Master, and we are not torn this way and that with all the anxiety and stress that brings. It brings us joy because we know that no suffering or pain is pointless, but it can be used to change us for the better and to enable us to be more fruitful in the purposes for which God has called us. It brings us joy because we know that Jesus accepts and loves us as we are. We don’t have to pretend to be better than we are. We don’t have to strive to earn his affection by doing all the right things. We simply have to love him and obey his commands. It brings us joy because we know that, if we are in Christ, the true vine, that means we are part of the communion of saints, bonded to all Christians, dead or alive, in China or Cumbria. Every time we share Communion we are reminded that we are one with them in Christ.
Conc: When astronauts first landed on the moon, Buzz Aldrin asked Mission Control in Houston for a few minutes of silence for each person listening to give thanks in his own individual way. For Buzz this meant taking Communion. Afterwards he wrote this, ‘I took the little plastic packages which contained bread and wine. I poured wine into the chalice my parish had given me. In the on-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there were consecrated elements. I read the words which I had chosen to indicate our trust that as man probes into space, we are in fact acting in Christ. I sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home and with the Church everywhere. I read, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me’.’
So, as we share bread and wine, and renew our covenant with God together, may we be reminded that our unity is not an ideal we must strive to create, but a spiritual reality created by God through our union with Christ; may we be strengthened and fed by the Holy Spirit as the sap gives strength and food to the branches of the vine. Let us pray together in the words of Richard of Chichester, ‘Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.
