I Am the Vine
Pastor Doug will continue our series, “Who Is Jesus and What Does He Offer?” sharing the last “I Am” statement in the Book of John, “I Am the Vine.”
John 15 is an invitation to be an intimate friend of Jesus and it’s a reminder that God has expectations for all of us that we’ll be fruitful if we’re receiving the benefits of being “in” the vine and that there are consequences if we’re not.
When Jesus says, “I Am the vine,” he invites people to abide in him because he will sustain us with divine love.
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I Am the Vine
Among the first things you see when you walk into the sanctuary of BBC are the four large wooden carvings over the organ speaker screens on the front wall. These beautiful pieces were drawn, cut, stained, and finished by members of our church. We wanted to have Christian images that also reflected our Cape Cod setting. We settled on a ship moving through the water with its sail full of the wind of the Spirit, an anchor to remind us of Hebrews 6:19, and our hope in God which is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure,” a scallop shell – which is a symbol of baptism and pilgrimage, and a fish. I didn’t want a plain generic Christian fish symbol, but a striped bass big enough to be a keeper. It’s whimsical, like the carved angel playing the bagpipes in St. Giles cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland and it always makes me smile.
Around all these symbols there’s a core image that comes from John 15. There’s a vine with branches and fruit. This image comes from the final I am saying in John’s Gospel. Listen to John 15:1-11 where Jesus says,
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunesa to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansedb by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Many of you enjoying gardening. Clearly so does God who created the whole earth. God knows every tree, flower, and vine. I don’t understand why God allows things like poison ivy and ticks, but part of life is going forward and doing our best even though we don’t understand everything.
The first verse of John 15 tells us something of the relationship of Jesus and the Father. Jesus is the vine; his father is the vinegrower. The imagery conveys there’s a difference between them – they’re not the same, but also acknowledges their relationship.
This passage is important because it tells you how to avoid the judgment of God and invites you to a transforming friendship with Jesus that leads to a life of love and joy.
I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to avoid the judgment of God, and a life of friendship with Jesus known for love and joy sounds good to me.
Jesus’ words come with a sharp edge – he says his Father, the gardener, “Removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”
The image of God coming to the vine with a sharp crooked blade and starting to hack at the branches may sound a little disturbing to some of us. Especially since Jesus says that every unfruitful branch will be cut off; this is a warning of divine judgment.
The assumption is that fruitless branches are already separated from the love that the vine provides, since they don’t bear the fruit of love.
The fruit bearing of disciples of Jesus springs from abiding or living in union with Jesus through prayer and loving obedience to his teaching which leads to joy.
Jesus says every branch that bears no fruit withers, is cut off, and burned. Every branch that that bears fruit is pruned to make it bear more fruit.
Even though Jesus says that each type of branch is going to experience the knife of God, we often aren’t happy at the prospect of it being applied to us.
Urban T. Holmes III wrote in Spirituality for Ministry,
“Any good gardener knows that beautiful roses require careful pruning. Pieces of a living plant have to die. It cannot just grow wild. We cannot simply “celebrate growth.”
It is more than to be regretted, it is tragic that we seem to have lost the insight that growth in Christ requires careful pruning. Pieces of us by our intentional action need to die if we are to become the person that is in God’s vision. We are not cutting away a cancerous growth, but making room for intended growth.”
The reality behind the symbolism of the vine and the branches in John 15 is intimate friendship.
Leslie Weatherhead wrote in, The Transforming Friendship, (page 18): “Christianity is the acceptance of the gift of the friendship of Jesus.”
The gift of friendship can be life changing.
At the Brewster Ladies Library, you can learn about Helen Keller spending time in Brewster.
For those who don’t know the story of Helen Keller, she was born on June 27, 1880, and at the age of 19 months, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness. When she was a 6-year-old girl, her parents, on the advice of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, sent for a teacher from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Anne Sullivan, a 19-year-old orphan, was chosen for the task of instructing Helen. It was the beginning of a close and lifelong friendship between them.
By means of a manual alphabet, Anne “spelled” into Helen’s hand words like doll or puppy. Two years later Helen was reading and writing Braille fluently. At 10 Helen learned different sounds by placing her fingers on her teacher’s larynx and “hearing” the vibrations.
Later Helen went to Radcliffe College, where Anne spelled lectures into Helen’s hand! Helen was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, and after graduating with honors, she decided to devote her life to helping the blind and deaf.
As part of that endeavor, she wrote many books and articles and traveled around the world making speeches. Since Helen’s speeches were not intelligible to some, Anne often translated them for her. Their nearly 50 years of companionship ended when Anne died in 1936. Helen wrote these endearing words about her lifelong friend:
My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her.
I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her – there is not a talent or an inspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.[1]
In many ways what teacher and friend Anne Sullivan was to Helen Keller, Jesus is to those who follow him.
Listen to Helen’s words again thinking of your relationship with Jesus. Could you we what she said?
Jesus noted in Matthew 10:24-25, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to become like the teacher, and the slave like the master.”
If the gift of human friendship can be life changing, how much more so friendship with Jesus as we become like our teacher.
In all friendships, we take seriously what our friend takes seriously, which in John 15 means the commands of Jesus, especially the command to love.
In order to know the commands of Jesus we need to be taking time daily or certainly weekly to read or listen to the Gospels so we know what Jesus says.
As we abide in Jesus, (did you notice how many times that word appears in eleven verses), as we live in him and draw our life from him, we’ll bear the fruit of love that God is seeking in us.
Brother Lawrence wrote in The Practice of the Presence of God, about what it looks like to live in the presence of Christ at all times,
“The most holy practice, the nearest to daily life, and the most essential for the spiritual life, is the practice of the presence of God, that is to find joy in his divine company and to make it a habit of life, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, every moment, without rule or restriction, above all at times of temptation, distress, dryness, and revulsion, and even of faithlessness and sin.”
Practicing the presence of God is living as close to the Lord as a branch does to its vine and we can do that wherever we are and whatever we’re doing throughout the day.
Henri Nouwen said,
“I know that I have to move from speaking about Jesus to letting him speak within me, from thinking about Jesus to letting him think within me, from acting for and with Jesus to letting him act through me.
I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes.”[2]
In order for Jesus to speak and think within us, and to act through us, there will be things in our life that will need to change or be pruned.
Ajith Fernando observed in The Christian’s Attitude Toward World Religions,
“One who trusts in Christ alone will completely give up his idols, horoscopes, and other such practices of his old life that go against Christ’s Lordship. When a true believer is made aware of any area of his life that is not yielded to Christ, he will yield it. When he is made aware of a Christian principle to be followed, he will follow it whatever the cost. So when a new believer finds out that a follower of Christ should love his enemies, he will do so, even though that seems sheer folly in today’s society. When he finds out that a follower of Christ cannot pay a bribe, he will stop paying bribes and pay dearly for it as far as his success in society is concerned. When he finds out that a follower of Christ treats both high and low caste people, both rich and poor people as equals, he will do so, however hard that may be for him.”
John 15 is an invitation to be an intimate friend of Jesus and it’s a reminder that God has expectations for all of us that we’ll be fruitful if we’re receiving the benefits of being “in” the vine and that there are consequences if we’re not.
I’m leading a new member information session today and I hope that some of those who attend will feel called and ready to want to take the step of becoming members of the church. New members who are also new disciples should be able to approach those of us who have been following Jesus for years and ask us about how God has transformed us. We should be able to tell others how we’ve been changed by Jesus. If we’re the same angry, cranky, gossiping, self-righteous, condescending, unforgiving, bitter, selfish, or greedy person we were when we first became a Christian – something is terribly wrong. If we’re friends with Jesus, that friendship impacts us and changes us.
Leslie Weatherhead wrote in The Transforming Friendship, about the transformation that takes place in the lives of those who become friends of Jesus.
“In all who come near Jesus manners soften, hearts become gentle.
There is new tenderness, a new sympathy, a new joy, a kind of infectious goodness. The disciples begin to say things, do things, be things, which they never could have said or done or been before. But those friends who have watched the change know the secret. They have been with Jesus. The friendship has done it. Friendship will always to that for us. It will make us like the friend we admire and see much of.”
Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” “Jesus was and is a joyous, creative person. One of the most outstanding features of Jesus’ personality was precisely an abundance of joy. This he left as an inheritance to his students, ‘that their joy might be full’ (John 15:11).”[3]
You can experience the joy of Jesus. Happiness is fleeting and dependent upon your circumstances. The joy of Jesus is deeper and dependent on your relationship with him. You have the joy of Jesus by doing what he says – abiding in him, obeying him, loving him, serving him, enjoying the gift of friendship with him.
In John’s Gospel, all the “I am” sayings of Jesus are about a gift that God offers to the world. When Jesus says, “I Am the bread of life” (6:35), he’s saying he is “the bread of God…which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” and satisfies our deepest hunger (6:33, 51).
When he says, “I Am the light of the world” he tells us he came to give “the light of life” to all who experience the darkness of sin and death (8:12; 9:5-7).
When Jesus says, “I Am the gate,” he explains that he came to open a way so that people might be saved through him and have abundant life.
When Jesus says, “I Am the Good Shepherd,” he promises to give eternal life to his sheep by laying down his life for them (10:11, 28).
When Jesus says, “I Am the resurrection and the life” he emphasizes that he provides victory over death to all who believe which gives us hope.
When he says, “I Am the way, the truth, and the life” he describes a gift that is extended to all people separated from God by sin.
When Jesus says, “I Am the vine,” he invites people to abide in him as his friends because he will sustain us and transform us with divine love (15:1, 4, 9).
John tells us the story of Jesus who is all these things and does all these things and offers his transforming friendship as a free gift. Who wouldn’t want to be a friend of Jesus who gives so much, even his life, for us, and offers us eternal, abundant, joyful life that begins now. “Christianity is the acceptance of the gift of the friendship of Jesus.” I hope you will accept that gift or live deeper into it today.
If you’re going to grow and deepen any relationship, you need to invest in it and give it time. I want to encourage you to do two things this week.
Every day, read John 15:1-11 and ponder it for five minutes, or until there is a word, phrase or image that seems to speak to you and carry that with you throughout the day.
Second, every day as you go through your day in the choices you make and all your encounters and interaction with people, think of how you’re bearing fruit as a disciple of Christ.
Then when you come to the sanctuary or participate with us online next Sunday, look at the organ grills and offer to God the fruit of what you’ve done in love for Jesus in the week that has passed.
Teresa of Ávila was a Spanish Carmelite nun who lived in the 1500s. She was a mystic and an author of spiritual writings and poems. She said this, “Remember: if you want to make progress on the path and ascend to the places you have longed for, the important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
The first verses of John 15 come with a sharp edge – Jesus says his Father is the vinegrower or the gardener, “He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”
- What do you think of Jesus’ statement that every unfruitful branch in him will be cut off (John 15:2)?
- How do you respond to the idea that God has expectations for you being fruitful if you’re receiving the benefits of being “in” the vine and that there are consequences if you’re not?
- Jesus also says that those who are fruitful will be pruned for greater fruitfulness. If you’re experiencing the knife of God, how do you know if you’re being punished for unfruitfulness or pruned for greater service?
- What does Jesus mean when he says apart from him “you can do nothing?”
- “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” How does this work? Have you ever experienced something that seemed to either confirm or deny what Jesus says here?
- Why is abiding or remaining in Jesus so important?
- Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Is it possible to experience more of the joy of Jesus in our lives, especially given the world in which we live? How can we do it?
a The same Greek root refers to pruning and cleansing.
b The same Greek root refers to pruning and cleansing.
[1] Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (Doubleday, 1954).
[2] Henry J. Nouwen in Jesus and Mary: Finding Our Sacred Center.
[3] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, (Harper, San Francisco, 1998), page 64.