Vine and Branches
“Vine and Branches” by Pastor Rosanna McFaddemn
Good morning! This is the first Sunday of a sermon series on Fruit of the Spirit. We’ll be exploring the fruit of the Spirit in our worship services and in an adult Bible study during the Sunday School hour. I am grateful to all the folks who will be teaching; I will be seeking and using your input to help me in my sermon preparation. If you want to find the text where the fruit of the spirit is listed, it is in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23. If you can’t do it already, I hope that by the end of June you’ll be able to list those fruits by memory: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. You might even be able to do it without humming the camp song that goes with it.
Especially of you were already familiar with that list of the fruit of the Spirit, you may have noticed that the title of today’s sermon, Vine and Branches, is not on the list of fruit of the Spirit. The idea of Jesus as the true vine serves as an introduction and grounding for this theme, and I hope that you have heard the concept of being rooted in God, growing in Jesus and bearing fruit in the Spirit before. If you haven’t, it’s written in big letters over the doors to our Worship Center: that is Creekside’s vision statement, and the inspiration for trees with purple and orange fruit, which you can see in this stained-glass window, and other places around the church. Feel free to do your own tree scavenger hunt here at Creekside, if you wish. If you do so, be sure to look in my office, where there are new trees coming up almost every day.
Trees are not the only place where fruit grows, obviously. If you have ever picked strawberries, you know this. If you have picked berries of any kind — and perhaps gotten your arms covered with scratches, you know that not all fruit grows on trees. Melons, grapes, passion fruit and kiwis (who knew?) also grow on vines. Passion fruit would be a fine fruit of the Spirit, but it isn’t on Paul’s list. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul isn’t talking about edible kinds of fruit; he means the result of having the Spirit within us and shaping how we interact with other people.
John chapter 15 is also picking up the idea of fruit, but it is a different speaker in a very different context. John chapter 15 is the words of Jesus addressed to his disciples at their last meal together. It is part of a long teaching which is known The Farewell Discourse. We often read from this section during Holy Week, particularly at our Love Feast service, because the beginning of this teaching is Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and commanding them to do likewise. Although the disciples may not have been aware that this was the last teaching they would hear from their rabbi, Jesus — and the author of John — were keenly aware of this. Jesus’ words about love, sacrifice, his legacy, and how he will remain connected to his followers are passionate and poignant.
I am focusing on just a portion of that long teaching, and I want to lift one specific word out of all these carefully cultivated words. It may already have caught your attention, but just in case, I’m going to re-read John 15:4: Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. The Greek word men-oh which we translate as the verb ‘abide,’ means to stay, remain, exist and persist. John uses this word way more than any other gospel writer. Here in John 15 it is used repeatedly and it describes a relationship which is close, intimate, and permanent — at least as long as the branch stays connected to the vine. The vine is the part of the plant which is rooted in the nurturing soil and which gives life to the branches. A branch which is not bearing fruit — not doing what branches are supposed to do — may be pruned, that is, cut back or cut off entirely. And the part of the branch which is no longer attached to the vine will die.
It isn’t really a comforting metaphor, the idea of being cut off if we aren’t doing our job. This idea is certainly not unique to Christianity: reality shows like The Apprentice or Shark Tank are about people getting cut off or thrown out in a competitive business environment. Most of us, certainly me, would not want the church to operate that way. There would be fewer of us here, for sure. But Jesus’ metaphor of the vine and branches is not about competitive performance, it’s about connection and relationship, specifically about relationship with Jesus Christ. We are branches from the true vine of Christ because Jesus loves us and has chosen us to be his disciples. As those branches, we choose whether or not to be connected or stay connected to the vine. If we abide — dwell, endure, exist and persist — there will be results which other people can see and which will produce good fruit. This is not the result of our good works, it is an inevitable result of our connection to Jesus and of remaining with him.
As we will see in the coming weeks, there is more than one kind of fruit; we do not all produce grapes or strawberries or passion fruit. John 15:11 says, I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. And then Jesus shares the commandment to love one another. Joy and love are on Paul’s list, too, and like other fruit like patience and kindness, all of this fruit is healthy and nourishing to relationships with other people. We must choose to be connected to the vine, and cultivate the kind of fruit we will produce. If we say we are abiding in the vine of Jesus Christ and the fruit of that connection is say, bitterness, arrogance, or disdain, we are not being honest about that connection. We have been growing and nurturing things which are harmful to ourselves and to other people. We may be fooling ourselves, but we are probably not fooling other people. Joy, kindness and generosity are tough to hide.
In the coming weeks, as we are working our way through the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control — I would invite you to take some time to consider which of these characteristics comes most naturally to you, or which you think is most evident in your life. These are all forward-facing attributes. No one has them all in equal measure, but if we are abiding in the source of goodness, that is something which should show up in the way we treat other people. If I try to tell you, “I’m a really generous person, but no one knows that about me,” you’re allowed to scoff at that. If you are brave, you might even test out your assumptions with people at Creekside, or others who are close to you. How would it feel to go to a friend and say, I think I’m a generous person: do you experience me as a generous person? Tell me more about that. Or maybe, I think I’m a patient person — c’mon, tell me what you think! If you can ask for and accept that kind of feedback from your fellow branches, that may be the kind of pruning that would be helpful. It could also be a load of fertilizer that you weren’t expecting, but taken in moderate doses, that can help us grow, too.
Here’s another idea: when you see someone here at Creekside — or anywhere, but especially here — bearing the fruit of the Spirit, peace. patience, etc. mention that to them. Be the person who encourages others in bearing fruit. Some of you are really good at this already, but it’s something which we can all be intentional about. If you are someone who gets embarrassed about being thanked or recognized or appreciated, remember that what is being noted is not your personal accomplishment, it’s your connection to Christ and how your actions show that you are connected to that source. I believe that we ourselves are more fruitful when we recognize and appreciate the fruit of the Spirit and the ways in which Christ is working in and through other people. This nourishes us as we abide in Christ. This morning we will have the service of anointing . . . the desire and the humility abide in Jesus and to be connected to the true vine.