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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!)
An electrical outlet, cord, and lamp in some ways might make a more accessible “connection” for us today, especially in East Texas, where, other than Harleton’s Enoch’s Stomp, I am not aware of any vineyards. But, nevertheless, in today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord Jesus Christ uses a vine, branches, and fruit to illustrate the intimate and necessary relationship that He has with His disciples, who ultimately glorify His Father. With a rich Old Testament context, Jesus in the Gospel Reading identifies Himself as the True Vine, His Father as the Vinedresser, His disciples as the branches, and their petitions, formed by His words’ abiding in them and done by God, as the fruit that they bear. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme: “Vine, Branches, and Fruit”.
We can easily picture the scene of today’s Gospel Reading, on the night when our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed: perhaps after drinking the fruit of the vine in the Passover Meal turned Lord’s Supper (Mark 14:25), which may have included an ancient prayer referring to the holy vine of David, the Lord’s servant; or perhaps, having risen and gone out from the upper room (John 14:31), walking through a vineyard outside of Jerusalem, before crossing the brook Kidron and entering the Garden of Gethsemane (John 18:1). Either way, of course, when and where Jesus said the words do not matter as much as what Jesus said about “Vine, Branches, and Fruit”.
Part of what Jesus said about Himself as the Vine is that there are basically two kinds of disciples as branches: those that do not bear fruit and those that do bear fruit. What kind of branch are you? Are you one that does not bear fruit or one that does bear fruit? Jesus says that a branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine; likewise, neither can you, unless you abide in Him, for apart from Him, Jesus says, you can do nothing. Jesus essentially says that, before the Holy Spirit converts us to the Christian faith, our free will has no spiritual power (Formula of Concord, Epitome, II:6). Apart from Jesus the Vine, if we are branches at all, we are fruitless branches, which deserve to be taken away, thrown away, wither, be gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned (confer Ezekiel 15:1-8).
As the Vine’s branches, our lack of fruit or our fruit shows our inner nature. So, for example, John the Baptizer called those who were coming out to him to bear fruit in keeping with repentance or else to face the judgment of being cut and burned (Matthew 3:8, 10; Luke 3:8, 9). When we repent, then the judgment we deserve has instead been placed upon the Son of Man, Whom the Lord made strong for Himself. With the Divinely‑inspired Psalm 80, we say, “Give us life, and we will call upon Your Name. Restore us, O Lord, God of hosts! Let Your face shine, that we may be saved!” (Psalm 80:17-19.)
That Psalm recounts the Lord’s bringing the nation of Israel out of Egypt as a vine and planting it in cleared ground, its taking deep root and filling the land, at least for time, until it turned against the Lord and became a corrupt, wild vine, a false vine in relationship to the Father. So, the Lord broke down the vineyard’s walls, passersby plucked its fruit, the boar from the forest ravaged it, and all that moved in the field fed on it. It was cut and burned, but, when the people repented, and called on the Lord, He had regard for the vine, the stock that His right hand had planted, the Son Whom He had made strong for Himself. (Psalm 80:8-16; confer Jeremiah 2:21). When we repent and call on the Lord, He has regard for us and forgives all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
Against such a rich Old Testament context, Jesus identifies Himself as the True Vine in relationship to His Father. The Son of God and man, Jesus is the nation of Israel reduced to one, but instead of being rebellious He was obedient. Where we fail to keep the law, Jesus kept it perfectly. And, Jesus made up for our failure to keep the law, with His death on the cross for us. In today’s First Reading (Acts 8:26-40), we heard Philip interpret for the Ethiopian eunuch part of Isaiah 53 (vv.7-8) as all Holy Scripture should be interpreted, with Jesus and His death for us on the cross at its center (confer John 5:39). As St. John described in today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 4:1-11), God revealed His love to us by sending His only Son into the world, to be the sacrifice that satisfies God’s righteous wrath over our sin, so that we might live through Him. And, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus says He is the True Vine, essentially the source of our salvation (Beckwith, CLD III:187). Some Church Fathers depicted that True Vine as the tree of the cross, but, we can say for sure that the Word about the cross leads to faith (John 4:41, 50, 53).
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus says His disciples—all except for Judas, who in the end did not remain in the faith (John 13:10-11)—were clean—or, perhaps we might say, “pruned”, for the Greek words are related. The disciples were clean because of the word that Jesus had spoken to them. The disciples are to abide in Jesus, and He and His words are to abide in them (confer John 8:31). Those words are spirit and life (John 6:63). In the First Reading, we heard how the reading and preaching of Holy Scripture led to Holy Baptism, the Word connected with water, that brings us into Jesus. In a sense, Christ’s words through the pastor, in individual Holy Absolution, prune or cleanse us anew. And, in the Word with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, we abide in Jesus and He most‑concretely abides in us with His true Body and Blood. As Jesus had said earlier in St. John’s account, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). Early on, Church Fathers connected Jesus’s Gospel‑Reading words with the Sacrament of the Altar, not only because of the occasion that they were spoken but also because of their meaning (BAGD, 46; cf. Scaer, CLD VIII:138 n.61; Stephenson, CLD XII:216).
Intimately connected in a living relationship with our Lord and with one another, and sustained with His forgiveness, life, and salvation through our Lord’s Word and Sacraments (Marquart, CLD IX:176-177), we branches of the Vine bear fruit, and, continuously pruned or cleansed—for in this life we remain sinful by nature (Luther, ad loc John 15:3, AE 24:212‑213)—we bear even more fruit, so that in the end we bear much fruit. Even in our great weakness we Christians are comforted as we realize even a little internal longing for grace, which longing God not only has begun in us but which He also continues to support and will preserve unto the end (Formula of Concord, Epitome, II:14). In the Gospel Reading, Jesus seems to say that our petitions, formed by His words’ abiding in us and done by God, are the fruit that we bear, fruit that “proves” us to be His disciples and glorifies the Father. Such God‑produced good deeds (Romans 15:18; Philippians 2:13; 4:13) lead others to glorify God (Matthew 5:16). The Church’s one divinely-assigned task is to be built up in faith and love, embracing more and more of fallen humankind, to the praise and glory of God, by distributing forgiveness, life, and salvation through the Lord’s Word and Sacraments (Marquart, CLD IX:185). Even as our congregation’s numbers might be decreased—as they were yesterday with Danny’s “transfer” to the Church Triumphant—every new convert increases the count of the whole Christian Church. Whoever hears Jesus’s word and believes does not come into judgment but passes from death to eternal life (John 5:24; confer John 8:51).
An electrical outlet, cord, and lamp in some ways might have made a more accessible “connection” for us, but by the power of the Holy Spirit we have understood what Jesus in the Gospel Reading said about the “Vine, Branches, and Fruit”. And, by the Holy Spirit’s leading we pray, as we will in the first Distribution Hymn: “Vine keep what I was meant to be: / Your branch, with Your rich life in me” (Lutheran Worship 273:5).
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 + + +