April 28, 2024

My friends, I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Here’s a question: is anyone here a grape grower?

We’ve heard Deacon Vicki tell us lately that she doesn’t know much about fishing or raising sheep. To be honest, I don’t know the first thing about growing grapes. So I had to do a little work to understand the context for Jesus’ message to the disciples this morning.

Grapes are a woody perennial plant. The grape vine and the branches are all part of an interconnected system. The “vine” is the trunk of the cultivated grapevine – the upright part you see if you visit a vineyard – that takes nourishment from the soil and sun to feed and grow the fruit. The branches are the arms of the plants that bear the fruit and their weight as they develop on the new shoots that spring out.

The vineyard keeper tends this whole system. In the fall the keeper cuts back the branches, and in the spring they start off looking totally dead. But then new green shoots burst forth from the branches and grow and the flowers that will turn into fruit blossom all over. At the end of the season, the gardener prunes the branches back again, and the whole process starts all over again. Because without this tending, the vine becomes a sprawling mess with plenty of vine and no ripe, juicy grapes.

For some people the imagery of branches being cut off and thrown into the fire is frightening. Especially for those of us who have experienced judgment. We might worry that we’re not good enough. That if we’re not bearing fruit – or enough fruit – we might be the branch that gets cut off.

If this hits home for you, I want to speak a reassuring word. You are loved deeply by the God who created you. The individual branches in Jesus’ metaphor don’t represent individual people. We’re tempted to think that way, though, because our minds have been warped by society’s constant drumbeat of individualism – that we are defined by our own independence and self-reliance.

In fact, when we pop the hood on this translation and take a look at the original Greek, Jesus’ command to “remain” in him uses a Greek verb that’s in the second person plural. In other words, Jesus is saying “all of you – remain in me”. We’re called to remain in Jesus together.

And that begs the question: what does it mean to remain? It was a question that came up during our Wednesday worship this week, where our translation used the word “abide”. We came up with some good meanings ourselves during our discussion. To follow. To cooperate. To rest in. The sense of mutuality that comes with being in relationship.

And I think all those things get at where Jesus is going with this. When we “remain” – when we follow or rest or abide or be in relationship – we realize our role in a system. And Jesus is clear here about the system. John’s Gospel has seven “I AM” statements – claims about who God is. But this is the only one that’s paired with a statement about who “you are”. It’s the only time in John’s Gospel that a description of God’s identity is linked with a description of our own identity.

So being a follower of Jesus means that we are the branches. Together. It’s an image that defines who we are as a Christian community. Our identity is to be the ones who bear the fruit the vineyard keeper plants and works for; that the vine produces. We are called to remain, and let God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – work through us. And the only way we can do that is to turn our back on individualism and let God do the leading. To put God and God’s call to us at the center of everything we do.

For some of us, that might not be good news. In fact, it might be bad news. It might be bad news if we’re used to being in charge. If our expectation is that we can exercise power to get our way. It’s bad news because it cuts through the lie society encourages us to live – that we ought to be in control of the world around us. Because the reality is that, whether we like it or not, God is in control. We aren’t the vineyard keeper or the vine. We cannot make the fruits appear through our own stubborn insistence. And the only thing good about bad news is that it shows us the truth about ourselves – that we’re in need of a change in our lives.

For others of us, this is good news. It’s good news if we’re tired of trying to be charge. If we’re exhausted from trying to bend the world to our will. The good news is that God is in charge of deciding what to prune for the sake of the plant’s health and life. The good news is that Jesus can produce more fruit than we can ever imagine. The good news is that all we have to do is “remain” and be faithful to the work the Spirit is already doing in the world.

Remaining. Being faithful to the Spirit’s work. Living in community. Another name for all that is “discipleship”. And so today, Jesus points us to the centrality of discipleship in an authentic Christian life. There is pruning going on, and the branches might seem dead. But when we faithfully follow God, then – just like a grapevine in the spring – life will suddenly pour out from our collective discipleship as the branches explode in all directions and the fruit springs forth. Tended not by us, but by the life-giving, life-sustaining presence of God. Amen.