John 15:1-17 (New International Version)
1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
Introduction:
If you ask people about it, there are many different reasons why people seek a connection with God. The bottom line is though that most people seek God in one way or another, either because they desire to or sometimes circumstances sort of force them to.
A minister dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket, and jeans.
Saint Peter addresses this guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"
The guy replies, "I'm Joe Cohen, taxi driver, of Noo Yawk City."
Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the taxidriver, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff, and it's the minister's turn. He stands erect and booms out, "I am Joseph Snow, pastor of
Saint Mary's for the last forty-three years."
Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Just a minute," says the minister. "That man was a taxi driver and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. How can this be?"
"Up here, we judge by results," says Saint Peter. "While you preached, people slept; while he drove, people prayed."
In today’s scripture, Jesus talks about an important connection. A connection so important, that without it, we are as good as spiritually dead. My tv gets about 60 different channels. Most of them are worthless. It amazes me how often with all those channels, there is still nothing on worth watching. But if my tv is not connected to the cable, it’s just a blank screen. It’s still a tv, but it can’t do what it is supposed to do, because its not connected.
On Sunday mornings, Tina and I are in the habit of having waffles for breakfast. With real maple syrup. We have this electric waffle iron and it makes the best waffles you’ve ever had. But if you don’t plug it in, it doesn’t work. It’s still a waffle iron, but it won’t cook a single waffle because it’s not connected to what it needs to work. Today, we’re talking about the connection we have with Jesus. In order to be the people of God that he intends us to be, we have to be connected to Jesus.
Sermon:
This is such a rich passage of scripture that we are going to talk about it for two weeks. This week we will be talking about verses 1-8 and next week, we will discuss the second half of the passage, verses 9 through 17.
I would like to talk about first of all about something that I think this scripture is not. I do not think this scripture is talking about God’s punishment and judgement. The God of the scriptures is often presented as a judgmental God who doesn’t seem to mind condemning the people he supposedly loves to a fiery hell. These verses are often presented as that. I remember hearing a sermon about this and then being scared to death that I was not bearing fruit and that God was going to cut me off. Read the first two verses, Jesus said, 1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. . . That should sort of catch our attention, shouldn’t it? I was in like, 8th grade and I knew that there wasn’t a whole lot of fruit hanging from my spiritual tree, so for about a week, well maybe an hour or so, I was so scared that God was going to take his big pruning shears, like these, and just lop me right off from the vine. That’s a scary image, isn’t it? But that is the image that some people have of God. That if you don’t reach a certain level of performance, [chop, chop] I do not think that is what is meant in these verses because that is not grace and grace is the foundation for the whole Biblical message.
Did you know that Jesus spoke these words in between the last supper and his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane? Did you know that? He was hours away from being arrested? He was less than a day away from being crucified? These are some of his last words. These are some of his last instructions before He is surrendered to the authorities. And one of his concerns was that his followers needed to be told to stay connected. Don’t drift away, he is saying. Don’t get distracted by other things. Make sure you focus on your job as a branch.
Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Simply put, that means you cannot survive without me. Just as a branch cannot survive if it is cut off the vine, so you cannot survive without me. Just like a branch cannot produce fruit unless it remains connected to the vine, so you cannot produce the fruit God intends unless you remain connected to Jesus. The implication here is that we have a choice in this. The implication is that we can choose one way or another. The branch can choose whether or not to be connected to the vine. Jesus was warning his followers that you will find yourself tempted to be connected to a whole host of things other than me. You will be tempted to trust yourself to other vines. You will be tempted to trust other vines as your source of life. Vines like money and materialism. Vines like philosophy and all kinds of “isms” and beliefs. You might even be tempted to trust in yourself. But in those other things, you will not bear the fruit that the gardener is looking for. In fact, if you are not connected to the true vine, you might even shrivel up and die. There is such a thing as spiritual death. I think that is why Jesus brings up the fate of the branches that do not bear fruit. They have chosen not to be connected and so have cut themselves off from the life giving vine that God created us to be connected to.
Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. God is the gardener. What is the gardener’s job? It is to coax the garden or in this case, the vine, into producing the fruit which is appropriate to that vine. Probably grapes. The point is that the vine and the branches together are meant to produce fruit. The vine’s job is to supply the branches with what they need to get the job done. Water and nutrients come up through the vine and the branches do what they are supposed to do: grow and produce grapes.
God wants us to produce fruit. In the scripture, there are two kinds of spiritual fruit. One is the type that Paul writes about in Galatians 5 and it is the type that we are most comfortable with; Paul says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Excellent fruits, wonderful fruits. We like those don’t we? They make for nice people. We love those kinds of fruits and we don’t mind producing them.
But Jesus is here referring to a fruit of a different kind. And this is the point where people start to get uncomfortable. Jesus is referring to spreading God’s kingdom by bringing more people into the kingdom.
A preacher took on a country church and was out trying to grow his congregation. He stopped at a farm and he struck up a conversation with the farmer. After some customary small talk, he asked the farmer, “Are you a member of the Christian family?”
"No." said the farmer, "they live two farms down the road."
"That’s not what I mean”, said the preacher. “What I meant was, are you lost?"
"No”, said the farmer, “I've been here thirty years."
"What I mean is, are you ready for Judgment Day?" asked the preacher.
"When is it?" replied the farmer.
"It could be today or tomorrow or the day after,” Said the preacher.
"Well, when you find out for sure when it is, you let me know.” Said the farmer.” My wife will probably want to go all three days!"
Bearing this kind of fruit is not always simple or easy in our modern society what with all the bad press that the church gets these days. But Jesus is very plain in these verses. He says if a person remains in Him, in other words stays connected to the vine, that person will bear fruit. The gardener will do his job and the vine will do his job and the branch, if it has done its job and stayed connected to the vine, will produce fruit. We hear people sharing news about good movies all the time, don’t we. Oh, yes, I saw this movie the other day. It is so good you need to go see it. We share good recipes. We share good books. We share good jokes. We forward all kinds of stuff in our e-mails. And if you don’t forward it to at least 150 other people, you will have bad luck for the next 27 years. But do we look for opportunities to share God’s kingdom? Do we look for opportunities to bear the fruit that Jesus is talking about? I’m not asking or encouraging you to be what people call evangelical. If I see any of you preaching on tv, you’re going to have to find another church. I just think that if you have something good, you almost automatically share it. And we certainly have something good, more than anyone I know we have something good.
We meet Him here in this place. He speaks to us and feeds us through His Word, the Holy Scriptures. He loves us deeply through this wonderful family that surrounds us. He nurtures us through a gardener who lovingly and carefully guides our lives so that we bear good fruits. He listens to us in our prayers and He speaks to us through His Holy Spirit.
Jesus said I am the true vine, My Father is the gardener, and you are the branches, stay connected to me, and you will bear much fruit, to my Father’s glory.
