Abiding In Christ

“I am the vine, and you are the branches.” John 15:5

John 15:1-8     1 John 4:4-21                                                         Rev. Todd B. Freeman

Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                                           May 18, 2003

     In your travels have you ever seen a grape vineyard? More applicable to today’s sermon, have you ever been up close and personal with a grape vine?

        One of the fringe benefits of attending San Francisco Theological Seminary was its proximity to California’s Napa Valley. During the Thanksgiving weekend of 1990 my parents came to visit me and we took a wonderful tour of the Napa Valley Wine Region. One of the most fascinating and educational elements was learning about the complexity of growing fruit-bearing grape vines.

        Well, the author of the Gospel of John has completely intertwined this agricultural imagery and more direct theological language to make a point about the intimate interrelationship between God, Christ, and the Church - us.

        If we were grape experts, or had lived in ancient Palestine, we would have a better understanding about grape vines and thus more insight into today’s scriptural text and its metaphorical language. Since most of us aren’t grape experts, here’s a bit of Botany 101. Grapes are a very labor-intensive crop. Each year, the vines must be pruned considerably as they grow so robustly. A new plant is not even allowed to produce fruit for the first three years so all its nutrients can be stored in the vine. Thereafter, grapes continue to require a great deal of work or the vines will go wild. A vine that is not pruned (cut back) will produce branches that are fruitless and these branches will strip the others of needed water and nutrients. The result is smaller, less succulent grapes that are of poor quality. The role of the vine grower, then, is extremely important and one of constant care.

        Did you notice in John 15 who it is who does all this pruning, cutting back, and tending in order to yield the highest crop? It is God, who the author calls the “gardener,” or the “vine-grower.” We are reminded that there is a difference between the one who plants and the plants itself.

        Quite interestingly, however, Christ is part of the plant, the vine stock itself. We, as the community of faith, are called the branches, all of which grow out of the central vine. We are reminded that we are connected to something greater than ourselves.

        From this vine (Christ) the branches (the Christian community) derive its life-giving energy, the result being the production of good fruit (which, put most simply, are works of love).

        Applying this metaphor, then, what does it mean for the church to live as the branches of Christ the vine? What would “church” look like if it embrace this model for its corporate life? Reflecting on this, Gail O’Day, in her commentary which appears in both the New Interpreter’s Bible and The Women’s Bible Commentary, offers two suggestions:

        First, the image of community that emerges is one of interrelationship, mutuality, and indwelling. This mutuality is conveyed by the use of the verb, “abide,” which occurs ten times in 15:1-11.

        To get the full sense of this interrelationship, it is helpful to visualize what the branches of a vine actually look like. In a vine, branches are almost completely indistinguishable from one another; it is impossible to determine where one branch stops and another branch starts. All run together as they grow out of the central vine.

        What this vine image suggests about community, then, is that there are no free-standing individuals in community, but branches who encircle one another completely. The fruitfulness of each individual branch depends on its relationship to the vine, nothing else. What matters most for the author of the Gospel of John and his community of faith is that each individual is rooted in Jesus and hence give up individual status to become one of many encircling branches.

        The communal life envisioned in the vine metaphor raises a strong challenge to contemporary Western models of individual autonomy and privatism. At the heart of the Johannine model is social interrelationship and corporate accountability. The vine and branches metaphor encourages the community to steadfastness in its relationship to Jesus, a steadfastness that is measured by the community’s fruits.

        To bear fruit – that is, to act in love – is, according to this text, a decidedly corporate act. It is “rooted” in Jesus’ love for the community. O’Day writes, “To live as the branches on the vine is to belong to an organic unity shaped by the love of Jesus. The individual branch is subsumed into the communal work of bearing fruit, of living in love and so revealing itself to be one of Jesus’ disciples. To live according to this model, then, the church would be a community in which members are known for the acts of love that they do in common with all other members.” Among others, our annual People Helping People house repair mission project (which is coming up next month) comes to mind.

        Second, the metaphor of the vine suggests a radically non-hierarchical model for the church. As the description of a vine and its branches suggests, no branch has pride of place; no one branch can claim precedence or privilege over any other. The description of the cutting and pruning of the branches underscore this point.

        Fruitfulness is the only differentiation among branches, and the discernment of what is fruitful falls to the gardener (God) alone, not to any of the branches. One branch of Christianity, then, cannot claim superiority over another denomination. One theological perspective (like orthodoxy, for example) cannot claim superiority over another (such as progressive thought). The same applies to individual Christians.

        It is the gardener’s role to prune and shape the vine to enhance fruitfulness. All branches are thus the same before God, distinguishable only by their fruit. There is neither status nor rank among the branches.

        This dimension of John’s metaphor also poses some serious challenges to the ways in which institutional church life is understood and maintained. In the Gospel of John, there is only one measure of one’s place in the faith community – to love as Jesus has loved – and all, great and small, ordained and laity, young and old, male and female, straight and gay, are equally accountable to that one standard.

        Were the church to shape itself according this metaphor, it would be a community in which decisions about power and governance would be made in the light of the radical egalitarian love on the vine image. The Reformed tradition, to which Presbyterianism is a part, has sought to accomplish this through the election of elders and doing away with bishops and a pope.

        The mark of the faithful community, then, is how it loves, not who are its members and pastors. All three elements – gardener, vine, and branches (God, Christ, and us as the church) – are essential to the production of good fruit. There is only one gift, to bear the fruit of works of love, and any branch – you and I, this congregation, our denomination – can do that if it abides/lives/remains in Christ.

        And again, we are reminded that in order to bear good fruit pruning is always necessary. Although we may not like the idea of being pruned and cut back, we can see sometimes that we do get carried away with certain actions/behaviors/attitudes which do not lead to works of love. We often use a lot of our time and energy in things that may not necessarily be very fruitful. Pruning, then, is indeed necessary. This applies to us as a congregation as well as each of us in our individual lives.

        So, what in your life needs pruning out now? What is our community life needs pruning out now? How are we being pruned and growing in our fruit-bearing at this time and place? These are just some questions to think about this week.

        May we, as this congregation, continue to strive to be a community of faith that understands interrelatedness and mutuality, and therefore allowing us (and others) to bring ourselves, in honesty and openness, to practice our newly pruned selves. For when we are this kind of place, we are indeed a blessing to one another, and are living out what it means to abide in Christ.

Amen.