There is a character in George Orwell’s great analogy of the
Soviet Union “Animal Farm” that I really love and whom I find displays some worrying
character traits that I see in myself…Boxer… Boxer is a cart horse, he has
great strength and faith, he believes strongly in what is happening at the farm,
in animalism, and his response to everything that goes on and definitely if it
goes wrong, even the ridiculous fanciful plans of the pigs is I must work
harder, he puts all his strength and energy and heart into helping the farm
achieve its purpose, working longer and longer and harder and harder,
heroically even, and then finally his heart gives out. He lies there exhausted
and broken still in harness. Wow does it feel like that sometimes. I have to
watch myself in that the Christian life and Christian leadership can feel a lot
like that. I must work harder; it’s all up to me. We even live in a society where
there is an expectation at our work places that we will all be like boxer,
there is the demand for greater and greater productivity, less people doing
more and producing more and more and more.
In that environment you can find yourself just surviving holding
on by a thread, but Jesus invites us to be thriving, bearing lasting fruit,
through a life giving relationship holding on to him. Leon Morris sums it up like this ‘The analogy
of the vine brings before us the importance of fruitfulness in the Christian
life and the truth that this is not the result of human achievement, but of
abiding in Christ.’
We are working our way through Jesus “I Am” Sayings in
John’s gospel, Sayings that show us something of the mystery and the meaning of
Jesus divine origin and nature, as John says of Jesus in the prologue to his
gospel “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the
Father, full of grace and truth.” Our working definition of Glory is the weighty
reality of all that someone is and just like light is refracted when it passes
through a prism in the “I Am” saying we get to see some of the wondrous hues
and deep rich dimensions of the weighty reality of all God is revealed in
Jesus.
Jesus used an analogy from everyday use to bring a spiritual
truth. All around them would have been vineyards, and they would be aware of
all the work and effort that went into getting the best crop and the best
vintage. I worked for a year in the Kiwifruit industry and there are a lot of
similarities. The canes had been grafted onto a strong sturdy root stock, each
winter old wood had to be cut away and the canes with the best possibility of
being fruit chosen and the others cut away, they had to be tied down to a frame
and wires so it would get the space it needed and the sunlight it required to
bear fruit in summer more had to be cut away so that all the energy surging
through the vine could go to producing the right fruit. Vines were sprayed to
protect them from insects and fungi, they were protected against the worst
adverse weather at the wrong time. All to produce good fruit, when you pruned
you had to be careful not to nick a fruit bearing cane if a cane was somehow
detached from the vine there was no way it would bear fruit. I even remember
the hard and unrewarding week we spent picking fruit on an orchard that had not
been pruned for a few years. Struggling to find good fruit under frames that
were sagging and breaking under the weight of too much wood. Jesus uses all
this to say I am the true vine and my father is the gardener’ and tell his
disciples that it is only in their relationship with him that the life that he
has will bring forth fruit to the glory of God. Just as Jesus is the means by
which we find life he is the means by which that life continues to flow into
and through us. He is the vine we are the branches, to abide in him means to
stay connected, to dwell and live in him.
But it is also an analogy full of meaning and significance
from the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Old Testament Israel is portrayed as the
vine, or God’s vineyard. Coins from the Maccabean era, which was the last time
Israel was a nation before 1947, bear the image of the vine on them. Like in
our reading from Isaiah today Israel is seen as a vineyard that God expects to
get fruit from, but because of mismanagement or disobedience does not bear the
fruit it is supposed to. Jesus here presents himself as the ultimate fulfilment
of this image, it is in him not ones national or religious identity that life
and fruitfulness will be found. In both images it is the Father that tends the
vineyard. That prepares the soil, prunes and plants and engrafts and makes the
fruit to grow.
It’s not often that you get asked whether you’re a heretic
but at a funeral last year someone asked me if I believed in replacement theology.
Well I’d never heard of it so I asked what they meant. She told me it’s a
heresy of believing that the church has replaced Israel in God’s purposes, and
is the heir to the promises of God. But in this analogy Jesus points to a
greater fulfilment and a greater reality that it is in Christ and our abiding
in him, that both Jew and Gentile have life and are formed as God’s people. It’s
not one replacing the other. The focus is Jesus as the vine, as the source, as
the one in whom we all find our purpose and meaning and identity as God’s
people.
The context of this passage of course is the last supper,
Jesus had told his disciples he was going to leave them for a while, he was
predicting his imminent death, he comforts them with the words we looked at
last week I am the way the truth and the life, no one come to the father but
through me, it was an invitation into a relationship with God that would result
in our eternal destination being with Jesus at his father’s house. Then Jesus
had gone on to prepare his disciples to follow him even after he had gone away.
He tells them that he will send them a comforter and here he tells them that
the way to continue to bear fruit is through relationship with him. That
dwelling with Christ is not just a future hope but a present reality. While
John does not have Jesus initiating what we call the Lord’s supper these word
of Jesus at this time are beautifully illustrated by communion hwere we
remember what Christ has done for us and his strengthen presence with us,
We are called to bear fruit, and that comes from knowing and
being known by Jesus, and while Jesus doesn’t unpack that metaphor here, we
know that if he is the vine then we are called to produce Jesus flavoured
fruit. In fact Jesus goes on to tell his disciples if they continue to abide in
him that it will result in a fruitful
prayer life and in us loving one another as Christ has loved us, love that is
sacrificial costly, self-giving service.later Paul will define the fruit the
Holy Spirit produces in our lives and as many scholars point out the list of
this fruit starts with love and the other eight expand what we mean by love.
I don’t know about you but Jesus saying ‘Ask whatever you
wish and it will be done for you’ sort of sounds like a cosmic credit card,
Jesus what about that red Ferrari, and
people often treat it like that, the whole prosperity ‘name it and claim it’
false theology. We forget that the basis of this is abiding in Christ, is
finding our life in relationship with Jesus. A relationship that Jesus
quantifies by calling friendship not servant and slave, so part of what makes our
prayer life fruitful is that as we are friends and Jesus has revealed all that
God is to us that we have common aims and a common vision, which means our
prayer life flows out of that relationship with Jesus. Our heart desires
reflect those of Christ, we desire like Christ does to bring glory to the
Father by what we ask for. Jesus repeats so that whatever you ask in my name
the father will give you at the at the end of the reading we had today and the
context is Jesus giving his disciples a commandment to love each other as I
have loved you, and again it turns Jesus saying on prayer from being
self-centred and want centred to an expression of both our relationship with
Jesus and an outworking of receiving that and showing it others.
That’s the context of lasting fruit as well, the fruit that
will last is to be found in our love for other people. The Christian faith at
its core is a very simple faith. In Christ God has shown us what God is like,
he has shown us the love God has for us, by giving his life for us, greater
love has no one than they lay down their lives for their friends; as we respond
and live in Christ we are called to share that love with other people.
The obvious question of course is how we abide in Christ.
How do we keep abiding in him? And It would be easy to try and fit this in to
us doing things, more things to abide in Christ. But that does not really fit
in with what Jesus is saying here. If we use the analogy that Jesus does of the
vine it is in clinging to the one who is the source of life. Paul Metzger talks
of a type of burn out that he experienced in his life where he tries to do
everything in his own strength, and he is a very gifted and capable person, but
he finds that he simply ends up empty and dry if at the core of what he does is
not a focus on knowing and being known by Christ, Investing in spending time in
prayer and scripture reading and silence and stillness to be with Christ. As
well as a willingness to do what Jesus commands us and invest ourselves in
loving other people.
I’m very blessed to be married to my best friend and to keep
that relationship growing and strong I need to spend time with Kris, we need to
talk, I need to know what is on Kris’s heart and she needs to know what is own
mine. We use certain techniques to do that, we try and have a regular date
night for one. It’s the same with our relationship with Jesus there are
techniques and disciplines that help us to abide in Christ, daily quite times,
spiritual disciplines etc they are not the answer it’s not about doing rather
they help us to be, to be with Christ.
The passage also talks of the gardener pruning and cutting
off what is not fruitful, and this is part of the process of abiding in Christ.
Allowing God to focus on what will bear fruit, opening ourselves up to the
discipline of God. I’m an ideas guy, I’m at home in a brainstorming
environment, give me a situation or a problem and I’ll thrive coming up with
creative solutions, but I’ll also find myself just doing stuff rather than
doing stuff that is fruitful and we need to be willing to have the fathers
prune us and call us back to what Jesus is wanting to do through and with us.
Towards the end of
last year the church leadership went through a visioning process and we came up
with a vision for our church here that we are called to be an authentic, vibrant,
sustainable community growing as followers of Jesus, and inspiring other to
join us on that journey’ it’s a good way to look at all we do and ask the
question in light of that what will bear fruit and what needs to be pruned. But
also at the heart of that is us as a congregation abiding in Christ.
Authenticity, being real comes from knowing the reality of Christ with us.
Vibrancy life itself comes from us vibrating in unison with Jesus who feeds us
through his presence and by his word. Sustainability at its core comes from dwelling
in Christ and finding ourselves centred in him, our energy and our resources
overflowing from that core relationship… Community, coming from communing with
Christ, growth coming from being disciplined and pruned by the Father. Inspiring other to join us on the journey,
coming from being inspired by the one who is our friend on the journey.
Let’s be still this morning and hear Jesus invitation to
abide in him. Jesus said I am the true vine.
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