Acts 9:26–31
1 John 3:18–24
John 15:1–8
Jesus was not afraid of the natural world around him. He used it frequently to describe God-human interaction. He observed its workings and was able to see analogies between plants and animals in the natural world and how life is in the Kingdom of God. Nature is a sacrament and thus holds within it the power to reveal the mystery of God and human beings.
Last Sunday when we gathered, we heard Jesus invoke the experience of sheep and shepherding to help us understand the relationship between himself and his followers, his disciples. It was not just sheep that caught his attention. It was also human involvement with the sheep that is part of the experience of Jesus and ourselves. It was the whole environment: sheep, shepherd, gate, gatekeeper, hireling.
Now Jesus asks us to observe another experience of nature, namely a vine and its branches. He brings in the agricultural world, one that would have been known to his audience and throughout the Mediterranean basin: presumably, he is speaking of grape vines, branches and their fruit, grapes. We know there are other kinds of vines, and some are not so friendly. But again, the center of his image is a relationship between vine and branches. A natural picture of his relationship with those who live by his word. Here too the relationship of Jesus and his disciples is placed in the environment: there is the vine grower, the Father; there is pruning; there is also bearing fruit. As we find in nature there branches that are non-productive, so there is there is burning them after they have been removed. All this Jesus puts in front of us as a help for us to understand how we are in relationship to him and he to us. And he sets that in the bigger picture. Our relationship to Jesus is in the end surrounded and held by the Father. The Father it seems has initiated the vine and branches in the first place. The story begins with him. And it is the Father who, like a normal vine grower, waits for the fruit. The Father has a hope for the relationship between Jesus and his followers. And to make sure that his hope is fulfilled, John tells us that he adds the Spirit into the mixture so that that the grapes will ripen and serve their purpose of making a wine that indeed is the gladness that flows in this relationship between vine and branches.
When Jesus puts the image of vine and branches in front of us, it becomes clear to us branches that our commitment in the relationship is to remain in it as Jesus repeats almost ad nauseam. Remaining in the relationship with Jesus is our task and our mission. Unless we are faithful to the relationship, there will be no fruit. We cannot live on our own. Being human for us means being in a relationship, and for followers of Jesus, it means he is the other half of the relationship. This remains true whether we are thinking of ourselves individually or as Church. Our identity flows from remaining on the vine, or remaining in Jesus. This may not be as easy as it sounds given a culture that prizes individualism and doing it on your own. The basic experience from the vineyard is that if you try it on your own, you fall off. Or more truthfully, you die.
We need to be clear. It is not enough to simply say, “Oh I am in Jesus and Jesus is in me.” As John says today, that’s great speech, but what does it look like. Being in Jesus is not static, it is active. One remains in Jesus so that one grows and produces fruit. The fruit is not there in the beginning. The fruit comes because we stay with it. We allow the process of growth to happen. What feeds that growth process is the word of Jesus. That word of Jesus is the binding force in the relationship. It is the identifying factor. The word Jesus speaks and the word he commands is love. But we know that love is what the Father is all about. He sends his Son out of love and to love. And the Jesus story? It is about laying down one’s life for another. Love reaches its climax in a death for others.
Love is the fruit of Jesus’ life. It becomes the fruit of the vine that he tells us will be poured out for us and for many so that new life may come between us and with the Father. So when we take this image of vine and branches all the way to the end of the process, it means our bearing fruit as well. And love is the fruit we are to bear; it means sacrifice; it means a dying to self and for another. The life the vine gives to the branches is love; it is love that gives Jesus to his branches. It is love that keeps the branches alive and in the process of bearing fruit.
For this process of bearing fruit, we will need to be pruned. Pruning, says Jesus, is an essential element in remaining in him and in bearing fruit. It doesn’t take much imagination for each of us to know what needs to be pruned away in our lives: it is anything that blocks the flow of love from myself to others: prejudices, unwillingness to forgive and let go, selfishness, being judgmental, consuming more than we need, talk that does not build up but cuts down the self-worth of others. We need to remember the command Jesus left us. I am giving you a new commandment, my word, love one another as I have loved you. What needs pruning on our part is anything that blocks that flow of love from Jesus to ourselves to others.
We may sometimes forget that the heart of our belief is love. It really is nothing else. And love as Jesus offers it to us today means nurturing a relationship. It all begins with the Father who does not want to condemn the world, our world. But even for the Father it cannot remain a word, a thought. It must take flesh. And so we profess it does, in Jesus. And for Jesus this love will mean taking up our sin and our death. And filling them instead with the power of love. For us who are a part of his vine, it means that when we are receiving his love we will be bearing fruit in lives through which his love is flowing.
The process is clear; it is a growth process. First, we are just a branch. Then we are a branch on the vine that is Jesus; then we remain in Jesus living by his word to love and then we can be called at the end his disciples. When that happens, the Father’s hope for us is realized: we are his children, yes, all who live by his word and have his love flowing through them.
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB