The Good Branch - John 15:1-8
Would all those born of a mother, please raise your hand… hum… seems to be a majority.
I know it’s a rather simple point. Yes we all have a mother. You didn’t come to church to learn that. But you might have come this morning to learn something related.
No one enters the world without a mother, and no branch produces fruit apart from the vine. The picture Jesus paints in John 15 is like that of the relationship between a mother and a child. Without a mother, there is no child. Without that early symbiotic connection, there is no life. No human child can live without those early days of nurturing help. No child grows to maturity without a mother – whether biological or adoptive - no branch produces fruit apart from the vine.
We know its true today, but in Christ’s day when their lives depended on good vines, good crops, good grass for the sheep, the listeners of Jesus would have experiential understanding that a plant disconnected from its nutritional source was barren and would be dead.
God as the farmer (or vintner), Jesus as the vine, Christ’s followers as the branch, and our fruit as the outgrowth of our connection to Christ. Jesus is providing a beautifully organic portrait of our spiritual lives. God is at work, seeking through Christ to make us productive. To understand this portrait I’m going to ask and answer 3 questions:
What is this pruning business?
What is it to abide?
What is this fruit?
As a kid I was struck by the cruelty of the farming life. When raising cows, you don’t wait for 3 or four years to see if a cow will have a calf. In one year if there’s no calf, the cow goes to market and will soon be working at McDonalds (if you know what I mean). To make fruit trees fruitful one prunes them so far back, to the novice it looks like you could kill it. And much of farming today depends on herbicides – literally grass-killer – so that the “good” plants can grow and be healthy. Good farming is about killing for life.
What in your life needs to die, so that your life can live? That’s a question for God, who is the nurturing farmer, pruning, cutting, cleaning. The word in the text is katharizo – from which we get cathartic. God is the great farmer, helping branches produce by pruning and ensuring a good connection.
And therein is the point and purpose of pruning. To keep the juices flowing, to make sure the good branches are well fed.
I said a moment ago that there are these images: God as farmer, Jesus as vine, us as branches, and fruit as the outgrowth of our connection to Christ. There is only one reason that pruning is done – to keep up productivity. In this case make sure that the branch is abiding in the vine.
The in the original text the word “meno” (translated alternatively as abide, dwell, live, remain) is used 10 times in this chapter. Do you think he’s trying to get a point across? Note particularly verse 5 “if a person abide in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit…”
To bear fruit all you need to do is remain. Grow in me, I’ll grow in you, Jesus says.
Interestingly enough, it is this word that John uses when he quotes John the Baptist: I’ve seen a dove coming down from heaven and remaining on him. AND in verse 39 where Peter and Andrew decide to remain with Jesus after hearing him teach.
The word is deceptively quiet. Abide, remain, rest dwell. It sounds effortless. You just rest. Any fool can rest. Just plop and presto you’re restin!
But if you own a home, you know that to dwell in that home is anything but 24 hour resting. If you are in a marriage, and I said to you – to remain in a marriage all you need to do is to not file for a divorce… you’d rightly tell me to let my head remain under the sand.
Just in this last week, I found a dormer that leaked, a toilet that was seeping water, a basement with too much water. For a while I was worried about some weird contagion between my house and the church, because the same day we had a third floor toilet leakage and a basement flood here – I discovered similar things at home; fortunately to an infinitely smaller degree at home.
The point is that to remain, stay, dwell, not to mention flourish, in a house you’ve got to clean the gutters, replace the roof, fix the bathroom, mop the floors, mow the grass, … anybody else depressed yet?
I think this is the point of Jesus’ analogy. Nurturing, whether it is God or a mother, is not a passive activity. It requires some painful cutting. It requires some selective killing. And it requires a good branch who participates in the process. It requires a connection.
Mothers, one of your problems is taking on too much guilt. There’s only so much help you can provide. There has to be some cooperation.
God is at work, removing the destructive from your lives. He wants you to actively dwell in the person of Christ so that the productive can grow.
Meno – to dwell, remain. It is not an act, like the moment of your conversion. It is not a passive reception of life, like a person attached to a feeding tube. It is an ongoing relationship. It is a symbiotic give and take – as you grow in me, I’ll grow in you, Jesus says. The branch gets life from the vine, and energy from the sun. Without its active connection to both it will crumble and die. The gutters will clog, the roof will leak, the house will crumble and eventually be condemned.
I’ve been in church my entire life. I’ve heard lots of sermons on this text and others like it. I’ve heard preachers and teachers give lists of what it means to abide. Bible study, memorizing scripture, daily prayer, etc. All of those are important – but what it comes down to is a heart for the interior life that leads to the kind of reflective living Jesus modeled and preached. Bible Study is a great tool, so is Christian reflection, so is talking with God in prayer. So is sitting and listening. So is turning off the television.
I can’t improve on the words of Frederic Buechner: “…If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
If you think that the Christian life is mechanical – that with a bolt here, and a twist there, you can get your motor running right. Then those words aren’t getting you anywhere fast. But if you’ve heard the organic words of the gospel, and understand that all of life is a growing work of the Creative-Nurturing Presence of God, then you get it.
No one Bible study will fix you. No one prayer time will make your heart purr like a new V8. Only a constant abiding, only a consistent Gardener, will bring peace to your tattered heart and meaning to your faltering steps. Commit to ongoing study, endless prayer, a life long church family. There’s where you’ll connect.
But please don’t hear me say that the Christian life is so mystical that it is completely opaque and mysterious. I think the fruit is the visible result, which every believer ought to see.
What does it mean to be fruitful?
Paul:
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
James:
17But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
And finally Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who give mercy, the peacemakers, those searching for righteousness, the gentle, those who care enough to mourn.
Atheists have used historical/factual inconsistencies in the Bible to discredit its message. Fundamentalists have run to the moon and back trying to show how things that seem inconsistent aren’t really, or at least they weren’t so in the original manuscripts (non of which we really have). Meanwhile the average Christian is proving the consistency of Christ’s work, in their fruitful lives. Not just the great saints of the ages, but every person who acts in fruitful love. May we let God’s nurturing work, Christ’s sustaining words, and the Spirit’s fruitful presence demonstrate the miraculous power of God.
I know it’s a rather simple point. Yes we all have a mother. You didn’t come to church to learn that. But you might have come this morning to learn something related.
No one enters the world without a mother, and no branch produces fruit apart from the vine. The picture Jesus paints in John 15 is like that of the relationship between a mother and a child. Without a mother, there is no child. Without that early symbiotic connection, there is no life. No human child can live without those early days of nurturing help. No child grows to maturity without a mother – whether biological or adoptive - no branch produces fruit apart from the vine.
We know its true today, but in Christ’s day when their lives depended on good vines, good crops, good grass for the sheep, the listeners of Jesus would have experiential understanding that a plant disconnected from its nutritional source was barren and would be dead.
God as the farmer (or vintner), Jesus as the vine, Christ’s followers as the branch, and our fruit as the outgrowth of our connection to Christ. Jesus is providing a beautifully organic portrait of our spiritual lives. God is at work, seeking through Christ to make us productive. To understand this portrait I’m going to ask and answer 3 questions:
What is this pruning business?
What is it to abide?
What is this fruit?
As a kid I was struck by the cruelty of the farming life. When raising cows, you don’t wait for 3 or four years to see if a cow will have a calf. In one year if there’s no calf, the cow goes to market and will soon be working at McDonalds (if you know what I mean). To make fruit trees fruitful one prunes them so far back, to the novice it looks like you could kill it. And much of farming today depends on herbicides – literally grass-killer – so that the “good” plants can grow and be healthy. Good farming is about killing for life.
What in your life needs to die, so that your life can live? That’s a question for God, who is the nurturing farmer, pruning, cutting, cleaning. The word in the text is katharizo – from which we get cathartic. God is the great farmer, helping branches produce by pruning and ensuring a good connection.
And therein is the point and purpose of pruning. To keep the juices flowing, to make sure the good branches are well fed.
I said a moment ago that there are these images: God as farmer, Jesus as vine, us as branches, and fruit as the outgrowth of our connection to Christ. There is only one reason that pruning is done – to keep up productivity. In this case make sure that the branch is abiding in the vine.
The in the original text the word “meno” (translated alternatively as abide, dwell, live, remain) is used 10 times in this chapter. Do you think he’s trying to get a point across? Note particularly verse 5 “if a person abide in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit…”
To bear fruit all you need to do is remain. Grow in me, I’ll grow in you, Jesus says.
Interestingly enough, it is this word that John uses when he quotes John the Baptist: I’ve seen a dove coming down from heaven and remaining on him. AND in verse 39 where Peter and Andrew decide to remain with Jesus after hearing him teach.
The word is deceptively quiet. Abide, remain, rest dwell. It sounds effortless. You just rest. Any fool can rest. Just plop and presto you’re restin!
But if you own a home, you know that to dwell in that home is anything but 24 hour resting. If you are in a marriage, and I said to you – to remain in a marriage all you need to do is to not file for a divorce… you’d rightly tell me to let my head remain under the sand.
Just in this last week, I found a dormer that leaked, a toilet that was seeping water, a basement with too much water. For a while I was worried about some weird contagion between my house and the church, because the same day we had a third floor toilet leakage and a basement flood here – I discovered similar things at home; fortunately to an infinitely smaller degree at home.
The point is that to remain, stay, dwell, not to mention flourish, in a house you’ve got to clean the gutters, replace the roof, fix the bathroom, mop the floors, mow the grass, … anybody else depressed yet?
I think this is the point of Jesus’ analogy. Nurturing, whether it is God or a mother, is not a passive activity. It requires some painful cutting. It requires some selective killing. And it requires a good branch who participates in the process. It requires a connection.
Mothers, one of your problems is taking on too much guilt. There’s only so much help you can provide. There has to be some cooperation.
God is at work, removing the destructive from your lives. He wants you to actively dwell in the person of Christ so that the productive can grow.
Meno – to dwell, remain. It is not an act, like the moment of your conversion. It is not a passive reception of life, like a person attached to a feeding tube. It is an ongoing relationship. It is a symbiotic give and take – as you grow in me, I’ll grow in you, Jesus says. The branch gets life from the vine, and energy from the sun. Without its active connection to both it will crumble and die. The gutters will clog, the roof will leak, the house will crumble and eventually be condemned.
I’ve been in church my entire life. I’ve heard lots of sermons on this text and others like it. I’ve heard preachers and teachers give lists of what it means to abide. Bible study, memorizing scripture, daily prayer, etc. All of those are important – but what it comes down to is a heart for the interior life that leads to the kind of reflective living Jesus modeled and preached. Bible Study is a great tool, so is Christian reflection, so is talking with God in prayer. So is sitting and listening. So is turning off the television.
I can’t improve on the words of Frederic Buechner: “…If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
If you think that the Christian life is mechanical – that with a bolt here, and a twist there, you can get your motor running right. Then those words aren’t getting you anywhere fast. But if you’ve heard the organic words of the gospel, and understand that all of life is a growing work of the Creative-Nurturing Presence of God, then you get it.
No one Bible study will fix you. No one prayer time will make your heart purr like a new V8. Only a constant abiding, only a consistent Gardener, will bring peace to your tattered heart and meaning to your faltering steps. Commit to ongoing study, endless prayer, a life long church family. There’s where you’ll connect.
But please don’t hear me say that the Christian life is so mystical that it is completely opaque and mysterious. I think the fruit is the visible result, which every believer ought to see.
What does it mean to be fruitful?
Paul:
22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
James:
17But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
And finally Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who give mercy, the peacemakers, those searching for righteousness, the gentle, those who care enough to mourn.
Atheists have used historical/factual inconsistencies in the Bible to discredit its message. Fundamentalists have run to the moon and back trying to show how things that seem inconsistent aren’t really, or at least they weren’t so in the original manuscripts (non of which we really have). Meanwhile the average Christian is proving the consistency of Christ’s work, in their fruitful lives. Not just the great saints of the ages, but every person who acts in fruitful love. May we let God’s nurturing work, Christ’s sustaining words, and the Spirit’s fruitful presence demonstrate the miraculous power of God.
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