“The Fruit of the Vine”

John 15:1-8; 1 John 4:7-21

Providence United Presbyterian Church

May 10, 2009 (Easter 5B)

Rev. Dr. Mary Jane Hitt

This image of a vineyard, with vines and branches and fruit, would have been very familiar to folks in Jesus’ time, but it’s not unknown to those of us who live in the United States, either. It seems that vineyards are cropping up all over the place. I had a friend at WVU who left her job as the top institutional researcher to join her husband in planting a vineyard on the hillside near their home. Bill and I once lived only a mile from a successful vineyard operated by a man who had left a successful career as a real estate agent. We drove by his vineyards every day on our way home from work. And probably many of you have visited the vineyards and wineries in the Finger Lakes region of New York or the Napa Valley. You can picture a vineyard in your mind’s eye. It’s an image that has stood up well over the two thousand years since Jesus used it in his final teaching moment with his disciples.

On the night before his death, Jesus gathered his closest followers together. He washed their feet, much to Peter’s dismay, and then ate a meal with them. Then Jesus began to prepare his disciples for life without him. Much like we might do when a son or daughter goes off to college or moves away from home to take a job, he sat his spiritual sons and daughters down to tell them some things they would need to remember, because he would not be with them much longer. He told them even when he was no longer physically present, he would remain connected to them, and they to him, like a vine is connected to its branches. Scripture uses an old-fashioned word for this connection – the word “abide.” Abide in me as I abide in you, Jesus said, and God – the vine grower – will take care of you.

That’s a beautiful image, isn’t it? The vine and the branches, standing strong in the vineyard, growing together, abiding together, with the vine grower taking care of them. It must have been a comforting thought for disciples who were just beginning to grasp that the Jesus they knew wouldn’t be around forever. Over the next few days, as Jesus was crucified and buried and they went home, dejected and confused, they may have remembered and taken heart in what Jesus had said – I am the vine, you are the branches – abide in me as I abide in you. He was going away, but they were not abandoned. They were not alone. They were still connected to Jesus like branches are connected to the vine.

But that was just the beginning, because no one ever plants a vineyard just for the beauty of the vines. You plant a vineyard for the fruit. It’s all about the fruit. And that is the second part of Jesus’ message as he was about to be put to death. I am the vine, and you are the branches, and God is the vine grower, and the whole point of this vineyard is to grow good fruit. That’s pretty obvious, I guess. When you plant a garden – probably not a vineyard, but the little garden in your own back yard – you aren’t really looking for a beautiful, strong, healthy-looking tomato plant; you don’t care so much that your blueberry bush is green and lush. What you care about is the fruit – juicy tomatoes that make that BLT sandwich worth the calories – plump blueberries that make your pancakes come alive. It’s all about the fruit.

And Jesus says that God’s desire is that his followers bear much fruit. What fruit is that, you ask? John’s gospel doesn’t answer the question, but John’s epistle does. The fruit produced by the branches that abide in the vine is LOVE. God is love, John writes, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. That is the heart of the gospel – the heart of our faith – the heart of our life as those who follow Jesus. We are branches, attached to the vine, and we produce the fruit of love – not simply our own love, but the love of God that flows through the vine and is made real in our world through the power of God’s spirit in and among us.

You already know that, of course. You heard that message last week, and (sneak preview) you’ll hear it again next week. God loves us, and in response to that love, we are expected to love others – not just in our words, but in our actions. It seems simple enough. But God knows it’s not! The uncomfortable truth is that we branches sometimes are more interested in being the biggest, thickest, most beautiful and impressive branch on the vine than we are in producing the very best fruit. And yet, when the vine grower walks through the vineyard, the thing that catches his eye isn’t a particular branch at all. It’s the fruit. It’s all about the fruit.

And so it is that Jesus encourages his followers – the first disciples, and us as well – to bear much fruit – to love as we have been loved, without measure. But if this teaching is an encouragement, it also contains a sobering word. Whoever does not abide in me, Jesus said, is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. Now that gets our attention, doesn’t it?

Many of us, when we hear Jesus use the image of fire in his teaching, jump to the conclusion that he is talking about hell. Let me be clear: That is NOT what he ever intended. The whole idea of a fiery hell doesn’t come from Jesus at all, but from later theologians who literalized some of the metaphors that he used, and created a non-Biblical understanding of hell as a place of eternal suffering in a lake of fire. Not true.

What Jesus IS saying here is not so much punitive as it is descriptive. As any vine grower will tell you, branches that do not bear fruit are not left on the vine to draw power away from the other, productive branches. Nonbearing branches have to be attended to in one of two ways: First, they are pruned, to help them bear fruit. Then, if that doesn’t work, they are cut off and discarded. That’s the way of the vineyard. It’s all about the fruit.

And what does this suggest for us? Just this. The fruit that God desires from us is love. That’s what Jesus came to teach us and to show us; that’s what God’s Spirit empowers us to do; that’s the whole reason we are connected to the vine. And so God works to shape us into branches of love. That’s what pruning is all about. God uses the circumstances of our lives to make us more fruitful, loving branches. We experience the loss of the person we love the most, and we become better able to empathize with those who lose the one they most treasure; we experience ill health, and we become better able to love those whose bodies fail; we struggle to put food on the table, and we better understand those who go to bed hungry. When all the events of life come our way, God’s uses them to prune us – to shape us into more loving people.

But sometimes we don’t respond as God intends. Sometimes the challenges of life have just the opposite effect: We lose a loved one and become bitter, especially toward those who have a partner when we do not; our health fails, and we become so discouraged and angry that we close in on ourselves in self-pity and pain, forgetting those around us who also suffer; we struggle financially and blame others for taking the job that we think should be ours. Sometimes we don’t produce the fruit of love, but rather the fruit of fear or bitterness or hatred. When that happens, we are like branches that wither and fall off the vine. That’s not punishment, but the natural consequence of disconnecting from the source of love.

And so it is that Jesus encourages us as he encouraged his first disciples to abide in him. Abide in me, as I abide in you. And he goes on: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. That gets our attention too, doesn’t it? Ask for whatever we wish, and it will be done? Sounds right out of the prosperity gospel that we hear so much on TV and radio. Abide in Jesus, well-dressed, well-coifed preachers proclaim, and you can have it all – a nice house, a luxury car, even (in the words of a well-known mega-church preacher I once saw on Larry King Live) a wife as beautiful as mine. Is that what Jesus is saying here? Is that our incentive to abide in the vine?

Not even close. No, Jesus is not proclaiming a prosperity gospel. Far from it! He is talking about a vineyard here, and the vine grower and the vine have only one thing to offer the branch – the capacity to bear an abundant crop of fruit – an abundant crop of love. That’s the context. Abide in the vine, and your desire will be for a bountiful harvest of love. You will ask for whatever you wish – more grapes, bigger grapes, sweeter grapes – and God will grant the desire of your heart, filling you with more love, bigger love, sweeter love. You struggle to love a particularly obnoxious person in your life? a difficult colleague at work? a family member who makes you mad? a new family in your neighborhood that doesn’t speak English? even someone here at church who pushes all your buttons? Well, there’s good news for you today. All you have to do is abide in the love of God – abide in the vine – and ask for more love. You’ll get it, guaranteed.

Thanks be to God. Amen.