John 15:1-11
May 12, 2013
I am the true vine, and my Father is
the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every
branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already
been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in
you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the
vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the
branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart
from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a
branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and
burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you
wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you
bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have
loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my
love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I
have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy
may be complete.
One of the things I find really interesting about the Jesus’
teachings is how he used examples from the world around him so effectively.
Jesus lived in a mostly agrarian culture, and he taught the people using
nature. He talked about how the life of faith is like sowing seeds, how we are
like sheep, how faith is like a mustard seed, how reaching others is like
fishing, and so much more.
Jesus was especially insightful in his use of vineyards
and winemaking to teach people about the spiritual life. He used vineyards as a
metaphor a number of times, and for good reason. Drinking wine was central to
life in the Middle East. What most people don’t realize is that back in Jesus’
day people didn’t really drink water much, unless it came straight from a deep
well. Water that sat for too long was quickly filled with parasites and germs.
Instead, they drank wine—even the children.
Their wine was different from the wine we might drink
today. It was more like a wine syrup, except for special wines, such as
sacramental or ceremonial wines, which were drunk for religious events and
celebrations. The typical wine syrup would be mixed with water and heavily
diluted. The wine they drank daily wasn’t very strong, but strong enough to
kill germs. So wine was drunk throughout the day because it was considered
healthier.
They also had a different attitude about drinking. They
believed that wine was a gift from God to enhance relationships, but they also
believed that drunkenness was a sin. To get drunk accidently was considered a
shame. To get on a more regular basis was bad. To get drunk constantly was
sinful and could be grounds to be ostracized by family and community. Our
culture often revels in how much fun it is to get drunk. Jesus’ culture
believed that drunkenness was an abuse of God’s gift. They were much more
responsible in their attitude toward alcohol. So when Jesus talks about wine,
he’s talking to them about something they considered a gift from God to be
treated responsibly and lovingly.
When Jesus talked wine, people listened. And when he used
vineyards and vines as a metaphor, people understood.
Personally, I find the art of winemaking to be very interesting.
Diane and I first became interested in it when we went to California for our
honeymoon. Neither of us had travelled much before then, so going to the West
Coast was a big thing for us. We went to San Francisco, Carmel/Monterrey, Sonoma/Napa
valleys, and then to Oregon and Seattle. While we were in the wine country, we
learned a lot about the art of winemaking. We’ve continued to return there
about every four to five years since.
Through our continued trips to California wine country,
we’ve learned a lot about vineyards—lessons that have taught me about the
spiritual life, too. From these trips I realized that Jesus was onto something
in terms of using vineyards and wine as a metaphor.
One of the biggest lessons I learned, that relates to our
spiritual lives, has to do with why the best wines are grown in places like
Southern France, California, Australia, Chile, and Argentina. All of those
wine-growing areas are similar in that they are arid areas. They get very
little summer rainfall. Typically they are close enough to lakes, rivers, or
oceans that thick layer of fog engulfs the vineyards each night, allowing the
vines to absorb moisture. The fog doesn’t provide enough moisture, so their
roots have to dig deep in search for groundwater. The roots can go as deep as
75, 100, 125, or even 150 feet down. It’s this digging deeper that gives the
wines their character and complexity. It gives the grapes and the wines what
the French call “terroir.” Terroir is the flavor that comes into the grapes
from the soil, the rocks, the limestone, the chalk, and anything else that
might be deep in the ground. Great wines become great because they face great
stress, which forces them dig their roots deeper.
The table grapes in our kitchens come from soil-rich and
water-plentiful regions like Lake Erie. These grapes burst with juice and are
great for eating, but lousy for wine. Too much water. Too little stress. Great
wines come from regions of great stress that produce great character.
What I learned from this spiritually is that often it is the
crises and stress of life that causes us to dig deeper into faith and God. In
fact, if you talk to people about when they experienced God the most deeply,
they often talk about a crisis they went through when they had to surrender to
God. It was then that they discovered God deeply in their lives.
I think that the lack of stress and crisis in their lives
is often what’s responsible for younger people to not feel the need for God or
church in their lives. I had a professor who often said that no one really
grows till they get past age forty. The reason is that it’s not until we get
that old that we experience enough struggling to actually feel a need for God. We
don’t feel a need to dig deeper until life events cause us to realize how
shallow we are.
Using vineyards as a metaphor, Jesus taught his disciples
and us something profound about him, us, and our relationship with God. He taught
three essential lessons in our passage for this morning:
- How God’s grace works in and through us.
- How God uses life to prune us.
- How we find Joy in life.
1. How God’s grace works in and through us: I have a
quick quiz for you. Don’t look at the answer yet: What does a branch have to do
to produce fruit?
If you guessed that the branch needs to bud, that would
be wrong. Budding just happens. The branch isn’t in control of it. If you
guessed that the branch needs to get sunlight, that too is out of its control.
The branch can’t force sunlight to shine on its leaves. The vine is either
planted in the sun or not. If you guessed that it needs good soil, that’s not
the responsibility of the branch. Only the vinegrower can determine the soil of
the planting.
The answer is that all the branch needs to do to produce
fruit is to make sure it’s connected to the vine. As long as a branch is
connected to the vine, sap flows freely through the branch and produces fruit.
That’s it. Just keep connected to the vine and the branch bears fruit.
This is one of the messages of our passage. Our main
responsibility is to remain grafted to Christ, and if we do, grace will just
flow naturally through our lives. When that happens, the fruit of the Spirit (love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control) grows plentifully in and through us.
The great 19th century mystic, Hannah Whitall
Smith, has a great metaphor for this.
She says, “The trouble with [most
people’s faith] is simply this: they are
trying to grow into grace
instead of in it. They are like a rosebush planted by a
gardener in the hard, stony path with a view to its growing into the flower bed, and which has of
course dwindled and withered in consequence instead of flourishing and
maturing... In order to grow in grace it is necessary to be planted in
grace... [When] once planted in grace,
the growth of the spiritual life becomes vigorous and rapid beyond all
conceiving. For grace is a most fruitful
soil, and the plants that grow therein are plants of a marvelous growth.”
Basically, she’s saying that our problem is that we are
always trying to get grace to work in our lives, hoping that God will bless us
if we just do the right things and act the right way. Instead, if we just make
sure we are open to God’s grace, then we end up naturally doing the right
things and acting the right way. It’s a reversal of the ways we typically
think.
The Christian writer, teacher, and found of Liberty
University, Elmer Towns, tells of a time when he discovered this grace working
in his life. He says that, “My wife and I
went through college by faith. If we had not prayed together daily through all
our difficulties, I don't know how we would have made it. I earned $1 an hour
for driving a school bus, which was just enough to pay for our necessities, but
there wasn't even a dime left over for a Coca-Cola.
“One
evening the only thing in the kitchen cabinet was a can of tuna, so my wife
served a tuna casserole. As we clasped hands to thank God for the food, I
prayed, "God, you know we are broke. You know it's two days until payday.
You know we are willing to fast until we get money, but we ask you to please
take care of our needs."
“As
we finished praying, the laundry man came to the door. Ruth met him to say, ‘No
laundry today; we can't afford to have anything cleaned.’ But he had not come
to pick up our cleaning. The laundry man explained, ‘A few months ago your
landlord asked me to pass along $20 to you to pay for having thawed the pipes
for him. I had forgotten about it until today.’
“Some
might say this was a coincidence, but Ruth and I say that our prayer together
reminded the laundry man that he had $20 for us. He had been sent by God.” This is the kind of thing that happens when we
remain grafted to the vine.
2. How God uses life to prune us: While fruit is naturally born in branches connected
to the vine, any good vinegrower knows that the branches need to be pruned
back. If not, too many leaves are produced, which prevents the flow of air through
and around the branches. Also, branches are pruned back so that you can create
a more limited number of great grapes, rather than a great number of mediocre
grapes. The more a branch is pruned back over the winter, the more energy can
be devoted to a smaller amount of fruit in the summer. The pruning of what’s
unnecessary allows for the growth of what’s necessary.
A similar principle of pruning is part of our lives, too.
I believe that God has created life in a way that offers the conditions for us
to have to decide whether or not we choose God. Life is full of difficulty, and
I think that this may have a purpose. Our struggles force us to prune back our
lives, or let God prune back our lives. Prunings are the difficult experiences
we have in life that push us to make a decision either for or against God. These
are the experiences that push us to make hard life decisions to give up ways of
living that both interfere with a healthy life, and with a healthy relationship
with God. The reality of becoming mature is that we often have to give up
attitudes, behaviors, and habits in order to live a better life. The same is
true spiritually. To form a deep relationship with God requires that we give up
everything that interferes with this.
What’s hard is that the real pruning of branches and
vines, and of life, can be harsh and feel like it takes so long. For instance,
do you know how long it takes for a grape vine to even be allowed to grow
fruit? When a vine is planted, the farmer lets it grow the first season, and
then cuts it back almost to the root. The next year it grows again, and then is
cut back almost to the root. Each year, for anywhere between four and six
years, the vine is cut back. It is only in year seven that it is allowed to
bear fruit. By then the vine itself is large and thick. And all those prunings
force the roots to dig deeper for moisture.
The reality is that most vines don’t produce fruit good
enough to turn to wine until it has been there for at least ten years. The best
vines are often between 30 and 60 years old, and have gone through so much
pruning that it no longer resembles a young vine. We are similar. It takes us a
long time to grow spiritually mature, and often we have to be pruned back many
times by God before we are ready to really produce truly great fruit in our
lives.
3. How we find Joy in life: One of the problems of our culture is that we
consistently confusing happiness and joy, and the result is that we think that
it’s the temporary things of life that give us a sense of contentment. Real joy
doesn’t from collecting stuff, buying stuff, or owning stuff, or from being
entertained. It comes from a sense of connection with God that flows through
everything. It comes from a deeper sense of what matters in life, and living
that sense throughout our lives. Let me give you an example of what I mean?
Would you want to be a professional athlete? Do you think
being one would bring a sense of real joy to life? Most people think that if
they had the opportunity to be an acclaimed professional athlete, musician,
actor, or something similar, their life would be filled with joy.
Grant Desme found real joy by giving all of that up. Do
you recognize his name? He was a second-round draft choice of the Oakland A’s
in the mid-2000s. In 2010, he was on the verge of stardom. In AAA baseball he
had done something few in any league could do, which is to hit 30 home runs and
have 30 stolen bases. He was about to make the major league team and become a
star. But in 2010 he retired from baseball to become Brother Matthew at St.
Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California.
He walked away from millions of dollars and the
opportunity to live everyone’s dream. But in doing so he also found real joy.
As he said, in a 2013 interview with the National Catholic Register, “I still don't miss playing professionally,
but I've come to enjoy the game of baseball itself more. When I let go of it as
my idol, I was enabled to enjoy it for what it's worth. When you're projecting
your own designs on something and taking it more seriously than it should be,
you don't get what God intended you to get out of it. When you simply accept
things for what they are and don't expect more than what they can give, you
experience the satisfaction you're supposed to.”
This is the kind of joy we can have if we are willing to
live life connected to the vine. You are meant to be a branch that is grafted
to Christ. You are meant to flow with grace. You are meant to be filled with
joy. I’d like to you reflect on your life: what are you doing to be grafted to Christ,
flow with grace, and live a joyful life?
Amen.
