Sermon

John 15:1-8

The Vine and the Branches

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John 15:1-8

The Vine and the Branches

By Dr. Philip W. McLarty
Last week we looked at the “I AM” sayings in John’s Gospel and how John used them to proclaim the divinity of Jesus Christ. John makes it clear: Jesus is the Word made flesh, God Almighty in human form. That’s important, because coming to grips with the Incarnation is the first step in knowing Jesus as the Son of God and the Lord and Savior of your life.

This morning we’ll take a closer look at one of these “I AM” sayings: “I am the vine. You are the branches.” The point I want to emphasize in the sermon this morning is what follows:

“He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit,
for apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15:5)

As we’ll see, the strength is in the connection – our relationship to Jesus Christ in community with each other through the Church. Working together in the unity of God’s Spirit, we’re able to accomplish all that God would have to do and be.

Let’s start with the people of Israel. They knew all about vines and vineyards. They knew the secrets of proper planting and grafting and pruning. They also knew the responsibilities of keeping a vineyard, that when plants fail to produce, it’s up to the keeper of the vineyard to dig them up. After all, they’re not there for show. Unless the vines and the branches bear fruit, they’re taking up valuable space. So, the keeper of the vineyard would do everything possible to plant choice vines and cultivate them and nurture them along so that, in time, he could enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Well, it didn’t take much for the Hebrews to draw this analogy: The vineyard is the people of Israel, and God is the vine dresser, who plants the vines according to his will, prunes them to make them healthy and strong and fertilizes them and waters them to see that they grow. The people enjoy the protection and providence of the vine dresser knowing that he expects them to bear fruits of righteousness to the glory of his name.

Even little children could tell you the fundamental parts of the story. First, it’s God who does the planting. Just as a vineyard doesn’t magically appear, we’re here on this earth by God’s design.

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Think about that: You’re not here by accident. You’re a child of God created in God’s image and put here for a special meaning and purpose.

A child once asked his mother, “Mommy, where was I before I was born?” She smiled and said, “Honey, you were a thought in the mind of God.” No truer words were ever spoken: “You were a thought in the mind of God.” That’s essentially what God said to Jeremiah:

“Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you. Before you came forth out of the womb, I sanctified you.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

And just consider the implications: Who you are and, to a large extent, what you are, is largely a product of when and where you were born, the circumstances of your surroundings and the genealogy of your ancestors.

I thought about this on my recent trip to Italy. Children there experience life differently than children in the United States. They speak a different language, they eat different foods, they learn the folkways of a different culture. I wouldn’t say their ways are any better or worse than ours, but they’re different, and that difference is profound. It’ll lie at the heart of everything they think, say and do for the rest of their lives.

Now, apply that to where you are in your life today and consider the possibility that where you are is no accident, that God placed you here intentionally to serve a specific purpose in the building of his kingdom on earth.

Richard Halverson, a Presbyterian minister who served for many years as Chaplain of the United States Senate in Washington is noted for his parting benediction. It goes like this:

“You go nowhere by accident.
Wherever you go, God is sending you.
Wherever you are, God has put you there.
He has a purpose in your being there.
Christ, who dwells in you,
has something he wants to do through you where you are.
Believe this and go in his grace and love and power.”

In this spirit, ask yourself: What would God have me to do with the freedom I’ve inherited just by being born in the United States, the privileges I’ve been given of a good education and opportunities for self-fulfillment, the abundance of material resources at my disposal?

Years ago, one of my church members gave me a cross-stitched wall hanging that reads:

“What we are is God’s gift to us;
what we become is our gift to God.”

The point is this: God plants, and, as those whom God has planted in this time and place, it’s not for us to take God’s blessings for granted or to lavish them on ourselves, but to use them faithfully to the glory of God’s name.

God plants. Children living in Jesus’ day could’ve told you that. They could also tell you that, just as God plants, God prunes, and pruning is necessary for the health and vitality of the plant. Saturday morning my friend, Jim Robbins, and I trimmed trees around the house. You should see the mountains of branches piled up by the curb – sucker shoots branching off this way and that from the trunk of the tree and the larger limbs, so that if you don’t trim them, they’ll drain the tree of its vitality and ability to grow.

Left to their own devices, plants and trees will grow randomly in every direction. So will little children. I had a fresh dose of parenting this week with my grandson, Nathan. I picked him up on Thursday morning in Temple. John, his father, came and got him Friday afternoon. As the saying goes, “The little angel came on Thursday, and the little demon left on Friday!”

No, seriously, Nathan is as sweet and adorable as any child you’ve ever seen, even if he is my grandson. But he’s a handful. He’s fifteen months old, and he’s big into walking. He wants to walk everywhere … at his pace, in whatever direction he happens to be pointed. He’s indiscriminate. He’d just as soon walk off a cliff as stay on the sidewalk.

So, it’s up to someone to steer him in the proper direction, and, for a good part of the day Thursday and Friday, that would be me. Oh, he’d protest when I’d turn him around or curb his path to keep him from going down Carter Creek Parkway. But, he’s a good kid and still pretty pliable, and so we got along.

This is what parenting is all about: Helping children focus their attention and channel their energies in a meaningful and healthy direction; gently saying no to bad behavior while reinforcing and rewarding and saying yes to good behavior.

It’s a lot of work, and it’s not always pleasant. When you say no, the child often rebels and complains, and, to be honest, Nathan did his share of sulking and crying and throwing little temper tantrums.

But, what’s the alternative? Let him walk out into the street and get run over? Let him make his own choices and grow up to be a juvenile delinquent?

No, pruning is necessary to ensure proper growth. And it only gets more painful as we grow older: When something or someone we love is taken from us, it hurts.

The question is, does God intentionally cause the pain? The Old Testament writers would’ve said yes. The Book of Lamentations says,

“It is good that a man should hope
and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh…
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
For though he cause grief,
yet he will have compassion
according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses…”
(Lamentations 3:26-32)

The ancient Hebrews believed God was responsible for everything, both good and evil. God is all-powerful, and, as far as they were concerned, nothing could happen, one way or the other, unless God ordained it. In the New Testament, Jesus gave us a different way of understanding God. He asked,

“Or who is there among you, who,
if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish,
who will give him a serpent?
If you then, being evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father who is in heaven
give good things to those who ask him!”
(Matthew 7:7-11)

As Christians today, we don’t believe God would ever harm us in any way. At the same time, we don’t look to God to give us immunity either. A tornado is just as likely to strike your house as your neighbor’s. What we believe is that God will use both the pleasures and the pain of life to strengthen us and draw us closer to himself. Paul said it best:

“…we also rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering works perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character;
and proven character, hope:
and hope doesn’t disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5)

And one of my favorite verses of scripture:

“We know that all things work together for good
for those who love God,
to those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

So, yes, let’s admit it – God prunes, and often, the pruning is painful. We don’t always get what we want. Things don’t always work out the way we’d planned. Yet, through it all, we become stronger and more resilient. And, ironically, we find that our strength is as much a product of our failures as our successes; that it’s not the pleasures of life, but the pain, that proves to be the mettle of strong character and lasting faith.

So, let’s see … God plants, God prunes, God also provides. One of my favorite hymns goes like this:

“Be not dismayed, whate’er betide, God will take care of you. Beneath his wings of love abide, God will take care of you.”

In the Old Testament, God’s promise was a simple word of assurance: “I will be with you.” For example, God said to Joshua, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake you.” (Joshua 1:5) In the New Testament, these were Jesus’ parting words to his disciples:

“Behold, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:20)

God will be with us, now and always, to provide every grace we need for a full and abundant life. That’s the promise. All God asks in return is that we abide in him, and that we live and work together in the unity of his Spirit.

And this is the point I want to make in closing: From time to time we’re tempted to go off on a tangent and do our own thing. We don’t get much accomplished when we do. Only as we work together in accordance with God’s will can we reach our potential and live faithfully as disciples of Jesus Christ. The strength is in the connection – our relationship to each other through the community of faith – the church – which is the body of Christ in the world today.

Once upon a time a man who dropped out of church. He figured he could worship God just as well on his own. A few weeks went by and the minister came to visit. They sat in the living room by the fireplace and made small talk. Then the minister took the tongs and picked up a glowing ember and placed it to one side of the hearth. The two men watched without saying a word. In no time, it began to cool. A few minutes later, the minister picked up the dead ember with his fingers and pitched it back into the fire. Immediately, it came back to life. Without a word, the minister put on his coat and started to leave. The man walked him to the door and said, “That was one of your best sermons. I’ll see you in church this Sunday.”

Jesus said,

“I am the vine. You are the branches.
He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit,
for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Brothers and sisters, this is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Copyright 2006, Philip W. McLarty.  Used by permission.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public domain (no copyright) modern English translation of the Holy Bible.