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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
“I am the Good Shepherd,” we heard Jesus say last week in the Gospel Reading. In the Third Reading this week we hear Jesus say, “I am the true vine.” Both of these figurative but nonetheless accurate statements of Who He is, are recorded in St. John’s divinely‑inspired Gospel account, but they are given in different settings and at least a few months apart. Instead of at Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication in winter, it is now in spring, before Passover, specifically the night on which Jesus was betrayed. Jesus has washed His disciples’ feet and talked about cleansing, and He has promised to send the Holy Spirit. Perhaps having taken up one of the cups of the Passover meal and prayed the prayer of thanksgiving that refers to “the fruit of the vine”, Jesus identifies Himself as “the vine”, first in relationship to His Father and second in relationship to us. This morning we reflect on both of those aspects of Jesus’s words with the whole of our Third Reading using the theme of “The Vine and its Abiding Branches”.
So, first, Jesus says that He is “the true vine” and that His Father “is the vinedresser”. Branches in Jesus that do not bear fruit, the Father as the vinedresser takes away (or cuts away, cuts off). Branches in Jesus that do bear fruit, the Father prunes (or trims, cleans). Jesus further says the Father is glorified by a fruitful vineyard.
Some of you may know that I have taken some training in wine, during which I learned a great deal not only about wine but also about grapes, their vines, and other factors that make or break the wine—things such as the vineyard’s weather and terrain. Such knowledge of the cultivation of grapes, what is called “viticulture”, is even helpful for better understanding the Bible’s references to the vine and grapes, its fruit, such as the references Jesus makes in our Third Reading. More helpful than knowledge of viticulture, however, is an understanding of how the Bible itself, especially in the Old Testament, refers to the vine and grapes, for Jesus is continuing such references.
In places such as the Psalms, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, God in the Old Testament describes the people of Israel as a vine and Himself as its vinedresser. He says that He brought this vine out of Egypt, drove the nations out of the land in order to clear it of stones and to dig it up and so to plant a vineyard with the choicest of vines. He says He built a watchtower in the vineyard and a wine press. He says the vine took deep root, expanded by branches and shoots, and filled the land. Yet, in time when He came to look for a crop of good grapes, He says He found the vineyard yielded only bad fruit, for it had turned degenerate and the vine had become wild.
Israel turned out to be a false vine, but Jesus says He is the true vine.
What kind of vine are we? What kind of fruit do we produce? In St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he lists the “fruit” or works of the flesh: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” Too often those or things like them are our works, our fruit. Producing such bad fruit means we are false vines like Israel turned out to be. St. Paul warns the Galatians and us “that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” And, the warning in the Third Reading, about being thrown away like a branch, withering, being gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned, similarly calls us to repent of all of our sin.
Jesus is the true vine. He yields good fruit and stays the perfect vine the Father intended Israel and all of us to be. What is more, Jesus loved us so much that He died the death we deserve because of our bad fruit, and the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf and raised Him from the dead. Today’s Second Reading put it this way:
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
One of the Old Testament references to Israel as a vineyard already called for God to restore the vineyard by having regard for the stock He had planted, that is by letting His hand be upon the Son Whom He made strong for Himself. When we turn in sorrow from our sin and call in faith for God to restore us, He does just that: He restores us, forgives us for Jesus’s sake of all of our sins, whatever our sin might be. We can only please the Father insofar as we are in Jesus, which leads us to the second aspect of Jesus as “the vine”: namely, ourselves as branches in Him.
Today’s Third Reading describes the organic, living relationship we have in Him through faith: the closest‑possible union, an inward enduring personal communion. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can we bear good fruit unless we abide in Jesus. St. John’s Gospel account frequently emphasizes abiding in Jesus, but nowhere does it do so as often or with greater emphasis than in today’s Third Reading. There we hear how apart from Jesus we can do nothing. When we abide in Him and He abides in us, we bear much fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he lists the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control”. He says, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” We are branches who abide in Jesus the true vine—we believe in Him and receive life from Him.
As the true vine, Jesus “gathers a community, a fellowship of life”, which He continually cleanses, and He does all that by His Word, in all of its forms, and near the beginning of today’s Third Reading, Jesus tells His disciples that they are already clean, or pruned, because of the word He had spoken to them. Near the end of the same Reading, Jesus speaks of His words abiding in them—clear references to His proclaimed or preached Word. Earlier in St. John’s Gospel account Jesus speaks of cleansing through washing—a clear reference to Holy Baptism, His Word connected with water. (Today’s First Reading tells of the Ethiopian Eunuch both abiding in the Word and being baptized.) Later in St. John’s Gospel account Jesus speaks of His apostles forgiving sins and withholding forgiveness—a clear reference to Holy Absolution, His Word spoken to an individual by a pastor, effecting forgiveness on earth and in heaven. And, today’s Third Reading, spoken in a Passover context, is full of imagery that relates to the Sacrament of the Altar. There, the Word connected with bread and wine gives us Jesus’s body and Jesus’s blood, which cleanse us from all sin. Jesus Himself says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me, and I in him.” Preaching, Baptism, Absolution, the Supper—all ways of remaining in Jesus and Jesus remaining in us, because they are His Word and so He Himself. That Word is clearly taught and confessed by Lutheran confessional writings such as the Small Catechism, whose teaching or doctrine we will pray in our closing hymn that the Lord help us ever to retain, for by it He makes us His disciples.
Disciples have the privilege of praying. In the Third Reading, we hear Jesus promise that if we abide in Him and His words abide in us, we can ask whatever we wish, and it will be done for us. Our sinful human natures might wish for things such as health, wealth, an immediate restoration of all our broken relationships, or an immediate end to whatever else we might be suffering as individuals. God may or may not will we have such things—we do not know. However, if we abide in Him and His words abide in us, we are going to ask only for the kinds of things we know He wills—we are going to ask for our bearing much fruit, for our proving to be His disciples, and so for our glorifying the Father.
Remember Jesus says that every branch that does bear fruit the Father prunes that it may bear more fruit. Such pruning comes in the form of suffering and affliction. As cruel as it may sometimes sound, such suffering and affliction are part of God’s counsel and will. They are signs of grace and Fatherly love. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther preached that, as a vinedresser controls the clipper and hoe, the Father controls our suffering and affliction. We do not need to fear them or think that they will never stop, for they will stop when and where the Father wants them to stop. They will go no further than our welfare requires. Such suffering and affliction increase our faith and lead us to produce more good works that flow from our faith.
So, Jesus is “The Vine”, and we are its “Abiding Branches”. As we abide or remain in Him we are forgiven for our sins, and we bring forth the fruits of faith, including praying daily for those very things. Such good news we hear in today’s Third Reading! When in the 19-70s work was being done that later produced our hymnal, Lutheran Worship, pastor and hymnwriter Jaroslav Vajda was asked to supply a hymn based on today’s Third Reading that would be used as the Office Hymn or Hymn of the Day on the Fifth Sunday of Easter. Vajda wrote such a hymn, and it was included in our 19-82 hymnal (#273), though it was not included in its successor, the 2006 Lutheran Service Book. And, Vajda’s hymn describes well ourselves as the branches of the vine, how we draw the juice of life from Him and feel the vinedresser’s knife. Vajda’s hymn ends with a short prayer with which we conclude this day: “Vine keep what I was meant to be: / Your branch, with your rich life in me.” ( Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +