Like a Vine Through a Branch

John 15: 1-8

The pastor asked a small boy in the church, “Can you tell me who made you?” The youngster thought a moment. Then he said to the pastor, “God made part of me.” The pastor asked, “What do you mean, ‘part of you?'” The boy answered, “Well, God made me little. I grew the rest myself.”

You and I cannot produce or build or grow anything significant unless we live in Christ and Christ lives in us. A career or a business or an education could produce things and longevity in themselves, but these may not be the fruit that will last to which Jesus refers.

I have known faithful Christians in many churches who did their best to operate honest, faith-based businesses or careers but wrestled with what it meant to live in a deep relationship with Jesus. They had enough religion to be saved but not enough to make a difference in this world, and I’m not sure they cared.

The word ‘abide’ in this passage has two definitions applicable to this lesson: first, to remain or continue in a particular condition; second, to dwell or reside. While either can aid our understanding, to abide in Jesus in this context means to live in Jesus and living in Jesus means to bear fruit. The branches cannot live by themselves. They must remain connected to the vine, and Jesus made it clear, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me (live in me) and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (15:5)”

One time there was a farmer who had planted a crop of pumpkins. Walking through his field when the pumpkins were just beginning to develop, he came across a glass jug which apparently a passing motorist had thrown into his field. As an experiment, he poked a very small pumpkin through the neck of the jug, but he was careful not to damage the vine. Months later, when the field was fully developed and about ready for harvesting, the farmer, making one of his periodic inspections, again came across the glass jug. This time it was completely filled with the pumpkin he had put inside. The other pumpkins on the same vine were large and fully developed, but the pumpkin in the jug had not been able to grow beyond the confines of the glass prison and was shaped to its dimensions.

In relationship to the risen Christ Jesus we are meant to bear fruit. Confessing Jesus as our savior is well and good, but we’re considering these passages these Sundays before Ascension and Pentecost Sundays as disciples who will recollect again Jesus’s bodily ascension into heaven, disappearing from sight, and leaving us as he left them to do what he taught them to do. He is our shepherd, and we will always recognize his voice when he speaks. He will always provide us as he provided them a gateway, a passageway from one realm of existence to another, from one level of revelation to another, from one opportunity of service and ministry to another. Today, in relationship to Jesus, growing and living in connection to the vine, we’re in him and he in us, we produce fruit, but, like the pumpkin in the jug, we can impose limitations. We can limit the size, scope and parameters of the fruit. We have free will, but our fear is that we can’t possibly do what God might ask us to do or demand of us. Our staunch independence, we think, limits our availability to be used of God. Also, our shortsighted belief that we can’t possibly do things beyond our abilities or knowledge also confine what God can accomplish through us.

Again, verse six reads: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” When I’ve preached this text in the past, no one has ever conveyed to me a desire to become fruitful to avoid being thrown away. If anything, people in the church have to be made aware of the fruit they have produced because they’re connected to the vine, connected to Jesus. We so often downplay the impact we’ve made in this world because we want to avoid appearing prideful.

I’m inclined to believe WE’RE SIMPLY NOT AWARE how connected we really are to Jesus. Our destiny, purpose and destination in God is to do the things Jesus did when he was here in the flesh, and that’s what scares us. If Jesus we’re really alive in us, it would change everything, and we don’t want everything to change.

In the simplest terms, being in relationship to Jesus, like a branch to a vine, we are destined to bear much fruit. What fruit is it? Ask what you will and it will be done for you, and that denotes relationship. Jesus wants us so connected to him that when we see a need or when we’re moved with compassion for someone and we ask for his help, he moves instinctively through us to make all the difference (REMEMBER THE PUMPKIN IN THE JAR). He so loves us he wants to live through us to the world he still loves like a vine through a branch.

April and I attended Annual Conference in Birmingham several years ago. We stayed overnight at a hotel in Fairfield. I drove to a nearby grocery store. It was in a very familiar part of town. We lived in that area years before. We both pastored churches in that neighborhood. The store was just down the road from a church I pastored when we lived there. I went inside the store to get us some snacks to share. I stood in line to pay for it. In front of me was a woman accompanied by two small children. Presuming they were a family, I watched them proceed through the checkout line. Smiling at the children, I recalled the ministries we attempted to bless the neighborhood, and particularly children like these, years before. Deep inside, I mourned over WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN in those ministries and forms of outreach. After I checked out and walked back into the parking lot, I walked past my car to edge of the lot and looked down the road to see the church which I’d pastored years and had subsequently closed. Tears came to my years, and I said out loud, “Lord, I am so sorry.” I felt sorry what hadn’t happened, for the feeble efforts we made to share the gospel, and to bless children and families. Amidst my laments and tears on the edge of that parking lot in the dark that night in June many years ago, I HEARD THE LORD SAY TO ME, “JEFF, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.”

(Preached at St Mark United Methodist Church in Anniston, AL, 4-28-24)