John 15.1–17
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 26 June 2022
Yesterday I prepared some grape vine cuttings. With UTube helping it’s easy. Of all the fruit-bearing plants I reckon the grape vine is out and away the number one, although apart from propagating new vines, the wood from the old vine is useless. Everything else though—you can even eat the leaves. The spies returning from Canaan found such cluster of fruit that they had to attach it to a pole for two men to carry. Vines spread their branches so quickly and so far. And they grow in so many places. There is a grape vine in a greenhouse at Hampton Court in London that is hundreds of years old. And there are so many varieties. You can eat them as fresh fruit. Or dry them as raisins, sultanas, and currants. Or ferment them. God had made the grape with its own fermentation agent on the skin. Let the juice once contact the enzyme on the outside of the skin, and it will start to ferment.
When I was a child we had a wild vine at the bottom of our garden, which we never tended, but it produced a crop every year. One time we kids decided to make wine. We filled an enamel bowl with grapes and trod around on them in our bare feet, and managed to strain off two beer bottles of juice. Then we hammered on crown-seals, put them under the back steps and forgot all about them. Until a month or so later when a thud shook the house and we traced it to the back steps, and found one of our bottles had exploded. We took the other one into the kitchen and cautiously prized off the lid. A fountain shot into the air and hit the ceiling, leaving less than a centimeter of liquid in the bottle, which we weren’t game even to taste. For years there was a patch of mould on the kitchen ceiling. Had we left the caps off we might have discovered how to make wine—or vinegar, another product of the vine. When you think about alcohol, in addition to “gladdening the heart of man,” as the Bible says, along with benzene from coal, you’ve got the raw materials for most organic substances that have revolutionized modern life. God had it worked out.
I am the true vine, Jesus said, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
John 15.1–2
What Jesus says here has a lot to say about our individual lives, but I chose it for us today because it gives us further insights into Jesus and his Church. The first is simply this: he is the vine, we are the branches. What he means, is that he is the main trunk; we are the many arms of the vine. We are where the fruit grows; he provides the sap to make it possible.
But what does he mean when he says he is the true vine? The word means “real” or “authentic” or “genuine,” which suggests there are vines which are not. In the Old Testament we learn that God planted a vine in Canaan, when he brought Israel out of Egypt—but it was not a good vine. The same image appears in various places—also the vineyard.
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes… And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard… I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down… I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for mishpat (justice), but behold, mishpach (bloodshed); for tzedakah (righteousness), but behold, tse’akah (a cry)!
Isaiah 5
Israel was meant to bear fruit, but produced only rubbish. And so God let loose a nation from the north and trashed them. I worry about us. As a nation we saw ourselves once as part of the vine, but did we bear good fruit? I am old enough to remember when it was fashionable to go to church. Men who wanted to get on in their business or job were seen in church. But did that mean they were honest—that they were faithful to their wives? A lot of churchgoing was about loyalty to an organization. There was huge rivalry between Catholics and Protestants; which church represented the true vine? The essence of being a Christian is being attached to the vine, and Jesus is the vine, not any human organization. I worked in one church where there were two distinct groups: the traditionalists who saw their allegiance to the church, and the new converts who had come in as a result of the Billy Graham Crusade of 1959, who saw their allegiance to Christ. The Parish Council had to decide what to do with a house that had been bequeathed to the church. Half wanted to sell and invest; the other half wanted to do ministry.
We see that the vine—or the vineyard, whichever you like— is not an individual, but a nation. It hadn’t been pruned for a long time, and in Jesus’ day, had grown in many directions with Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and Essenes, all laying claim to being the genuine vine. Jesus says it is he, and God, the gardener, was at work pruning away all the fruitless branches so the vine would bear good fruit.
The vine and its branches, we learn, is an image of the Church: the great community from every age and nation, which Jesus said would inherit the earth. We learn that true church membership is about attachment to the Lord Jesus; if we are attached, we will bear fruit. We cannot bear fruit if we are not attached. The branches that do not bear fruit God strips away. He is purifying his Church until at the end it will be the bride that Paul pictures in Ephesians without imperfection or blemish, and John describes in Revelation as “beautifully dressed for her husband.”
The message for us as individuals is clear: we must bear fruit, or we will be cut off from the vine and cast into the fire. God told our original mother and father to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” God appointed Israel to bear fruit. Paul says that all over the world the gospel is bearing fruit. (Colossians 1) And in today’s reading Jesus insists that his disciples bear fruit. This is a scary thing. The vine we are being cut away from is the community of those who will live forever, not just a human institution. It is our destiny which is at stake.
The question then is how do we bear fruit? Jesus’ answer is encouraging. In verse 5 he tells us how we can be sure.
I am the vine, you are the branches. If a person remains in me, and I in them, they will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15.5
I read this as a promise. Don’t worry your head about whether you will bear fruit, or over how much fruit you will bear, or what kind: attach yourself to Jesus, and remain attached, and you will bear much fruit. Life flows from the stem to the vine.
When we dug up our back yard to build a new house I was amazed at the roots we took out. That grape vine on the fence, which had been there for years, had roots as thick as tree trunks running all under our yard. They were drawing huge amounts of water and nutrients into the vine. No wonder it grew like it did. If you cut a stem in summer, the moisture dripped out like a leaky tap.
But as Jesus goes on, he says a lot more about remaining in the vine and bearing fruit. If you have a vine at home, you will know that pruning is the secret of a good crop of grapes. I didn’t learn this until an old man taught me how to do it. Most varieties bear fruit on the new wood, so you cut back last year’s growth to two canes with two buds apiece. You’ll think you’ve killed it, but come Spring the new branches will shoot out in all directions, and you’ll get heaps of fruit. Sultanas bear fruit on last year’s wood, so you leave five or six longer canes.
This means that all of us who are Christians may expect a bit of pruning, and that sounds painful. If you are so busy you are neglecting your prayer life and your church attendance, and your family, and God lays you on a sick bed for a while, you shouldn’t be surprised. But notice carefully, something Jesus says here about this pruning. The Greek word we translate as pruning (15.2) is actually an ordinary word for cleansing. They thought of pruning as cleansing the vine: “Every branch that does bear fruit he cleanses that it may bear more fruit. Then, in the very next verse Jesus says,
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
John 15.3
Here it is the word of God which prunes us—which means we are called on to self-prune. When we read the Scriptures or hear a sermon or read a book, and see something in our life which is wrong, and holding back our flourishing as a disciple, we should take action. This is a much gentler way of being pruned than waiting until God has to bust us. Jesus taught his disciples, and his teaching was the pruning agent. This is the second thing Jesus teaches us about bearing fruit along with remaining attached to him.
The third thing is prayer. Prayer makes us fruitful. Look at verse 7:
If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourself to be my disciples.
Have you thought of that? You may be unaware of the effect your prayers are having; the results of your praying may not become clear until Jesus returns. What you should know is that your prayers are doing far more than you realize. We know this, because Jesus says God will answer them, and that he is glorified through these answers, and that what comes as a result of prayer is fruit. It is a mystery to me what Jesus says here: “Ask whatever you will and it will be given to you.” I’ve prayed a lot of prayers where what I prayed wasn’t given to me. I have had atheists taunt me with this. What Jesus said was wrong, they say. But before we agree, note that Jesus has an “if”— “if my words remain in you.” My atheist friend was amazed when he learned that I pray. “Science has shown that it doesn’t work,” he said. I wondered how Science had discovered that. Choose a thousand people and get them all to ask for something and correlate the results. But how do we know God is listening to all these prayers? Is his word alive in them? God is not like our personal genie in a bottle, but Jesus is certain that those who are led by his word will pray prayers that God will be pleased to answer. It is as God’s word more and more guides our hearts that we will wish the things which God is pleased to answer. But there is something else: we are praying towards eternity. You may pray for someone you love that they will come to know the Lord, and you may see no signs of change for many years, perhaps not for the whole of their life—or yours. I think of a close relation. I didn’t pray for him, I think because I couldn’t imagine him as a Christian. Happily, his sisters prayed, and God answered, but not until he was in his eighties. Never give up praying for your loved-ones! The answer to some of the things we ask we may not see in our lifetime. They may be part of our fruit-bearing, nonetheless.
The fourth thing to learn about personal fruit-bearing is that has a lot to do with love. Look at verses 9 and 12:
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love! My command is this, love each other as I have loved you.
Don’t think that a person without love will be fruitful. He or she fails the first test of knowing what the Lord counts as fruit. I recently got back in touch with a chap I had known when he was an innovative, energetic young businessman, always surrounded by young hopefuls. He would say to them, “What do you want,” and usually they would say they wanted money. He would say, “No! Money is nothing. What do you want to do with it.” Often they didn’t know. “I want to put C. and S. on the mission field,” I heard him say. That was his goal. Of course, he had to make money to do that, and he succeeded. But his point was a good one. Set your heart on money and you are worshipping an idol. Set your heart on how you can best “seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and let the money serve you. That is another thing. In this, let love be your guide. The things that have worth in the kingdom of God are not silver and gold, or numbers in a ledger, but human beings and their relationships.
The fiftth and last thing I will point out about fruit bearing (though there is more in this passage) is what Jesus says in verses 14–15:
You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
Jesus calls us his friends and makes a distinction between being a friend and being a slave. We are his slaves. Paul often calls himself a slave of King Jesus. But we are more than that; we are also his friends. And the difference is this. With a slave you simply tell him what to do; you don’t need to explain to him why it needs to be done. A friend, on the other hand—well, you share with him or her what you are trying to achieve. You explain your plans and purposes and dreams. They will then do what they can to help. You don’t need to spell out details. They know the overall plan and will do what they judge to be best in the situation. This is what our relationship with God is like. He doesn’t give us a rule book and say, “Do this!” This is why the words of Jesus should be part of us. This is how we will bear fruit.
So, look at how Jesus sums it up in verse 16–17:
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Jesus insists his disciples bear fruit, lasting fruit. To do this we must remain attached to him. If we do, fruit-bearing will be natural, though pruning will be necessary, if we are to bear a quantity of fruit. God’s word enables us to self-prune. To remain in him we must let his word dwell in us. If we do, we will find ourselves praying for things that have to do with God’s kingdom, the sort of prayers God wants to answer, because they bring him glory. Our prayers are a big part of our fruit-bearing. And so is love. God the Father loves his Son, and his Son loves us. He wants us to love one another. The kind of fruit that is born by a person who is motivated by love, is the fruit God wants to see; it will last.
Let us finish with a prayer from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. I wonder whether Paul did not have Jesus’ words about fruit-bearing in his mind.
This is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and discernment, so that you may always be able to judge what is best thing to do, and be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 1.9–11
Do you want to come before the Lord on that day with empty hands, or “full of the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ?”