THE ‘I AM’ SAYINGS OF JESUS - ‘I am the True Vine’ John Ch 15 vv 1 – 8

THE ‘I AM’ SAYINGS OF JESUS  - ‘I am the True Vine’ John Ch 15 vv 1 – 8

Did you know that farmers and Jesus have something very important in common; they share a common goal, a common hope. Now, you’ve all heard, I’m sure, those jokes that start, ’What’s the difference?’ For example, ‘What’s the difference between an elephant and a post box?’ To which the answer, for those of you who havn’t heard it, is, ‘Well if you don’t know, you’re certainly not posting any of my letters!’ But this isn’t a ‘what’s the difference’ question; it’s a ‘what do they have in common?’ question. And the answer is that they are both extremely interested in fruitfulness.

Just as the farmer wants to see his orchards produce apples, his fields corn, barley, wheat or whatever, his cows milk, so Jesus wants to see spiritual fruit from his followers, his disciples. The goal of our discipleship is, first and foremost, fruitfulness.        As I have said on so many occasions, the Gospels teach us quite plainly that the goal of discipleship is not goodness but effectiveness: any goodness in you or me of any value in Jesus’ eyes, any goodness worth having at all, will always be as a consequence of our being effective disciples for his name’s sake.   And in our Gospel passage this morning, which contains the next in our series of Sunday morning talks on the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel, 

Jesus here explains not only the key truth that fruitfulness is the goal of discipleship but also here he explains how such fruitfulness may be achieved.

So it really is a very appropriate topic on the occasion of our Harvest Festival, when we come together to thank God for all his gifts and blessings of creation, for the fruit of our labours, and to sing that great pride-busting, humbling Harvest hymn which reminds us that ‘all good things around us are sent from Heaven above’, that we are reminded too that we are each one of us called by Jesus, in whatever work or season of life, to be fruitful for him to God’s glory.

The picture or metaphor Jesus uses here is that of the vine which was used in the Old Testament to describe the people of Israel. But always and consistently the prophets were calling them to repentance because they were not producing the fruit God wanted. And Jesus takes up this picture and claims to be himself the ‘true vine’.

So let’s see what this passage has to tell us about Jesus, about you and me in relationship to him and to each other, and about what it involves and requires of you and me to fulfil our calling to be fruitful, to be effective disciples. 

Our passage is in two intricately connected parts (verses 1-8 and verses 9-16) which inform and comment on each other. Both sections speak of ‘remaining’ or ‘abiding’: the first, of remaining in the vine (vv 4-7), that is, Jesus; the second, of ‘remaining’ in Jesus’ love (vv9-10); both parts hold up ‘fruitfulness’ as the disciple’s goal (vv 5,16); both tie such fruitfulness to prayer (vv 7-8, 16). Both sections are designed to move the listener or reader away from the old covenant to the new covenant in Jesus, from Israel as the vine to Jesus as the true vine. Remember, as we learned at the outset of this series, John is writing primarily to help Jewish converts grasp the fundamental and liberating truth that Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s dealings with his people, and therefore to move away from relying on the old practices. Also, Jesus moves our understanding of our relationship with him from that of ‘servants’ to ‘friends’.

Taken together then, as they are supposed to be, these two sections help us to appreciate more deeply the relationship between Jesus and his disciples, and between Jesus and you and me. Our relationship with Him is defined but not exhausted by such terms as obedience, perseverance, revelation, and love: it is this picture or metaphor of the vine which helps us to understand that this relationship with him includes fruitfulness, dependence on him and on each other, vital union with him and with each other, and the uncomfortable one – pruning; pruning away what is diseased or non-fruit-bearing in order to make us more like Jesus.

Again, as with the bread of life metaphor we looked at a couple of weeks ago, there is nothing in this passage about the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion – though many have claimed it in order to support some of their interpretation of Holy Communion. The simple truth is that John is speaking here of the union of believers with Christ, apart from whom they can do nothing effective as his disciples. This union, originated by him and sealed by his sacrificial death for us, is completed by our responsive love and obedience. It is the very essence of Christianity. There are, unfortunately, so many things that the Church and culture have tried to make of Christianity and for various reasons. Sometimes they have tried, with good intentions, to change, develop, or improve it; or, misguidedly, tried to make it easier for people to accept by watering it down or accommodating it to the prevailing culture; or to discredit it: but any understandings of 

Christianity which place greater weight on any such additions or subtractions tend by and large to undermine fruitfulness. Such and such may be our time-honoured custom or comforting habit, but do these things make us more effective disciples? Do our preferred ways of ‘doing Church’ help or hinder others to learn of God’s truth and love for them?

Let’s take a closer look at some of the verses. Sadly, we do not have time to delve very deeply in a short Sunday morning talk but, as with the other talks, this talk will be on our website, together with study questions; and after half-term there will be an evening Study Group if you have been unable to attend the afternoon one on Tuesdays here in the snug New Room in church.

Notice v1 . Although the Son’s role is central, the Father’s is not mere background: it is He who trims and prunes the branches, which is of course a necessary operation in order to produce new, more, and more abundant growth. I know we don’t like being told that we need pruning: there is always the tempting and comforting thought that, in terms of our discipleship, ‘Well, you’re really not doing too badly’ – if only in comparison to some others! And there will always be some kind and comforting soul around to confirm my view of myself, my character, my good works, or my achievements. But be careful; flattery is not the same thing as encouragement: and we all of us need to spend quality time with him, listening to his loving and gentle voice explaining where and why some pruning is necessary if we want to be fruitful for him.                          

V2 Jesus is the vine; you and I are the branches. The branches derive their life from the vine; the vine produces its fruit through the branches. But then comes the pruning and the cutting off of the dead wood. In short what Jesus is saying here is that fruitfulness is an infallible mark of true Christianity; there are no true Christians without some measure of fruit. This is hard-nosed, challenging teaching: Jesus did not suffer from the Anglican sin of ‘niceness’. Coming to church, being baptised, reading your bible, believing that there is a God, are all worthless unless we are producing fruit. Ninety year olds can produce fruit; children can produce fruit: paraplegics can produce fruit; terminal cancer patients can produce fruit. What matters is the state of the soil in our hearts. 

V5 We see here that the branch’s purpose is to ‘produce much fruit’. What is the fruit we are to produce? Well, I think we must envisage a tree or bush that has the potential to produce a whole range and variety of fruits. Let’s not try to restrict or confine possibilities but expand them! So we are talking about: the Fruit of the Spirit, Christian character, love for others, but above all – if we remember the calling God gave to the Israelites – to be ‘a light to the Gentiles’. And if we take into account Jesus’ teaching elsewhere about the purpose of discipleship, this ‘fruitfulness’ concerns at heart the making known of Jesus to others who know neither his truth nor his love.

In verses 7, 8, and 16 we see that any such fruitfulness is the consequence of obedience to Jesus’ words, prayer in Jesus’ name, and offered to the glory of the Father. So when we are examining or testing whether or not any claim to fruitfulness is genuine, we need to apply this three-stemmed litmus test: is it a consequence of faithfulness to Jesus’ revelation (his words), of prayer in Jesus’ name, and to the Father’s glory?  Why is this necessary? Well because, sadly, there are often too many things that the Church and Christians do that do not pass this test: rather, they are the product of purely human invention and pride or cultural and worldly pressure. Jesus makes the point here too that such fruitfulness in believers is one of the ways that Jesus Himself glorifies his Father.

I said that the second section (vv 9-16) is really a commentary on and expansion of the first 8 verses. A very important thing we need to grasp here, something that is frequently mentioned in chapters 13 – 17, is that the relationship Jesus has with his Father is the example or paradigm for the relationship He wants between us and him. This is why prayer is so important in the Christian’s life: we need to get to know God better and to discover what it is He wants us to be doing as Jesus’ disciples. And Jesus in this second section moves into a deeper presentation of God’s love for you and for me: the agricultural metaphor is very useful, but on its own it cannot express adequately the wonderful truth that ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you’. 

Then, in v12, we see explained the imagery of the vine as it touches upon our relatedness with one another. 

So in effect what these 16 verses are is a picture, an unpacking, and an application of the two great commandments, a kind of loving that necessarily contains a profound element of self-sacrifice. And in v 11 is surely, what I would want to call, the ‘break through truth’ for anyone’s understanding of why the two great commandments are so important and why  the very best and most rational and sensible goal in life, the true and only happiness worth having, is to become a disciple of Jesus.

Finally, together with this self-sacrifice, we see, from the idea of the disciples’ ‘going out’ and producing ‘fruit that will last’, that the fruit Jesus has in mind is primarily the winning of new converts to him. Above all else this is fruitfulness, this is the goal of discipleship, this is what genuine, effective, and joy-giving Christianity is all about.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1. When you hear or read this metaphor of the vine, what thoughts and feelings does it create in your mind and heart? Do you find it helpful or encouraging?

2. When you think of the vine metaphor and its branches, how far do the branches stretch?

3. The vine expresses our relatedness and interdependence? In what ways is, can, and ought this to be shown and practised?

4. Can you think why Jesus places such emphasis on ‘fruitfulness’ and on evangelism (telling others about Jesus) in particular?

5. How does having the objective of ‘fruitfulness’ help my own spiritual growth and maturity?

6. In what ways are we tempted not to bother about ‘fruitfulness and fall back instead on our own private spirituality?

7. Why is prayer central to discipleship?

8. What is the point of our ‘fruitfulness’ being ‘to the glory of the Father’?

9. Why is self-sacrifice at the heart of the Christian understanding of love?

10. In what way has this passage of Jesus’ teaching encouraged you?