John 15:1-17 “Life
on the Vine”
This week I have been immersed in getting to know you!
(Remember the old song “Getting to know you”)
I’ve been having lots and lots of conversations with people -
by phone and in person.
All of the staff met together for our first staff meeting.
I went to a pastor’s breakfast at the Norcross Cooperative Ministry
and learned about that.
There’s a lot to learn, as you know if you’ve ever been the new kid on the block in any situation - new job, new marriage, new school.
Earlier this week, it occurred to me that I had not yet walked around the church property.
Even my sons and husband did that last week!
So I went outdoors late one afternoon to look around.
Because I was working on this scripture that we heard today,
I actually went outside to do some “sermon research.”
I was looking for vines of any type.
Now grape vines would have been nice, but I found all kinds of vines,
which Will Perdue helped identify.
Kudzu of course, this is
Now it’s winter, so these vines don’t look like much.
But I noticed how the vines were all tangled together, all connected.
Life on the vine is all about connections.
The leaves and branches of a vine, cannot survive on their own.
They need connections to the vine.
Today’s scripture is probably familiar to many of you.
I am the vine, you are the branches, Jesus tells us.
It is such a wonderful image -- which is why I have invited you to attach your picture to the vine that is set up outside the sanctuary here.
The vine image
reminds us that we are all connected to the true Vine.
That connection is
the source that gives us life and growth.
In the scripture we read today, we hear this word “abide” several times.
Jesus tells us to abide
in me as I abide in you.
Abide in my word. Abide in my love.
Those who abide in me
and I in them bear much fruit,
because apart from me
you can do nothing.
The tricky thing about understanding this scripture
is that Jesus connects bearing fruit with abiding in his love.
So with our typical Protestant mindset of productivity,
we measure how good we are as Christians by how much we are doing.
We hear this scripture and all we hear is the bearing fruit part.
We forget abiding in Jesus.
When we have a relationship with Jesus Christ
fruit bearing is a result of that relationship.
Not the reason to
have that relationship.
Big difference.
It can’t be “I think I need to have a relationship with Christ so I can get more done.”
Too often even in the church,
it looks like we are the vines and Jesus is just one of the branches.
So today we are going
to talk about the abiding in Jesus part of this scripture.
What does it mean when Jesus says “abide in me as I abide in you?”
Some translations say remain in me, or dwell in me.
The Message, which is a very modern translation by Eugene Peterson says this:
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you.”
These are powerfully connecting words.
What does it mean to live in Christ? And what does it mean when we don’t?
There was a man who lived a long time ago whose life illustrates both.
The man was
but if you listen to his story, it sounds like he could be living in the 21st century.
Now Augustine didn’t start out being a saint.
In fact, he was about as far from being a saint as you could imagine.
Although his mother was a Christian and raised him in the faith, his father was not.
The family was both educated and well-to do,
a prominent family in Algeria of North Africa. But this wasn’t enough.
Augustine left his faith at the age of 17, moved in with a girl, had a baby,
and then later abandoned both of them when they got in the way of his career.
He became a professor of rhetoric at schools in
But that wasn’t enough either.
He had to retire at the age of 32 because of asthma and other health issues.
Spiritually, he got involved with a religion that today we would call a cult.
But it didn’t have the answers he was looking for.
He kept looking for something deep and important and purposeful in his life.
But he kept looking in all the wrong places.
Then in 386, he had a conversion experience in a garden,
where he heard a child’s voice saying “Take and read.”
He picked up a New Testament that he had with him,
and starting reading a passage from Paul’s letters that convinced him
that his lifestyle was leading him nowhere.
Later, he was baptized, wrote a famous book called Confessions,
and became a priest and a bishop of the early church.
In his book he writes something
that captures the essence of what it means to live in Christ.
It’s a prayer, really, and he says:
“Lord you made us for
yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
In today’s scripture Jesus also urges us to abide in my word.
To be connected to Christ means we must stay connected to the word.
The scriptures prune us, trim us, give us a clarifying focus for life.
Everyone has some system of values. Some way they make ethical and moral decisions.
When the word of God abides in us, this becomes our value system.
This is the lens thru which we look at the world. There are no shortcuts to this.
If we are to be formed by the scriptures, we must read, and study the Bible.
This is not some simplistic reading of the bible,
where we take a verse out and use it as a hammer to pound down any opposition.
This is a reading of the Bible which we do both individually and together as a church. Where we help each other understand the word.
When we teach the Bible to our children.
This is a reading of the Bible where we read not just to be informed,
but to be formed, shaped, pruned into followers of Christ.
Yesterday’s faith & value section of the AJC had an article titled
“Spiritual Direction: Parents Urged to Give Kids a Moral Grounding.”
In it an author and father named Scott Cooper is interviewed.
He says this: “In our modern western world,
we have become accustomed to a compartmentalized, institutionalized way of life.
We get so used to identifying work with companies,
education with schools, and religion with churches that sometimes
these basic human activities don’t become a part of our being.”
He goes on to say that if religion doesn’t spill over into daily decisions
and daily actions, it loses its power for good.
In other words, an
hour of church on Sunday morning isn’t enough to keep anyone connected to Jesus
Christ in a way that will change your life.
Jesus also teaches us Abide in my love.
Love is first the root and then the fruit of this relationship with Jesus Christ.
Augustine, whose story I told earlier, said that scripture has one goal -
to promote the love of God and neighbor.
What this means is there is no such thing as a lone ranger Christian.
We are always connected to God and each other.
Anybody can have Christian beliefs, Christian values, Christian teaching.
But to live as a Christian means you have to be in community -
that’s where “love one another” will really be tested.
The love of Christ is a different kind of love.
The word in the Greek is agape love.
We don’t even have an English equivalent for this word.
This is not a feeling, romantic, kind of love.
This is sometimes a hard kind of love.
It is a forgiving, swallowing pride, move forward with courage, sacrificial kind of love.
At my former church, I was fortunate enough
to go on a number of mission trips with youth and adults.
One of the challenges of traveling together in groups - especially teens -
is that everybody wants to do their own thing.
If you are traveling with 17 people and make the mistake of asking
“Where should we stop for lunch?” you will get 17 different answers.
So I learned quickly don’t ask where should we stop for lunch.
But I also learned that we needed to learn about agape love
and what it looked like in a church.
And so before every trip we took, we would gather as a group in a circle and pray,
and I would give this little speech.
“We are a church, and we are traveling as a church.
Because we are a church, each of us may have to sacrifice a personal desire
for the good of the group.”
Each time, this had to be stated, and sometimes restated throughout the trip,
because as a culture, we are so used to thinking “me first.”
We are so used to being self-centered rather than other-centered.
But when we abide in Christ’s own love,
we live out the fruits of that love with others.
Love is first the
root
and then the fruit of our relationship with Jesus Christ.
I know that our church here has been thru a lot of changes in the last year.
That means that some of us are worn out or burn out, as one of our elders said.
And I can see that.
I can see that it might be time for some of us to rest.
And for some of us to pick up something new.
It might be time for some of us to recognize
what we do well here and to prioritize that.
Maybe you’re thinking,
But we’re a church! We’re supposed to serve.
To give. To sacrifice even. To bear fruit.
All of this is true.
But it is also true that we are human beings. Not human doings.
The purpose of life is not just to bear fruit.
The purpose of life is to abide in Christ. Bearing fruit comes out of that!
According to Henri Nouwen a 20th century professor, priest, and writer,
the question is not: “How much are you going to accomplish?”
Or “Can you show some results?”
But rather: “Are you in love with Jesus?”
My question for you is “Are you connected to the true Vine?”
I have learned that I simply cannot do ministry if I do not spend time with Jesus.
Neither can you.
If you are feeling worn out or burnt out,
it might be time for you to reconnect to the vine. To abide in Christ.
In the coming weeks, as we move into Lent and Easter,
there are going to be a number of ways that you will have an opportunity to just that. Special worship, a Lenten study, times for prayer.
Nearly everything I am leading in the coming weeks
has to do with what we
as a church and as individuals do to stay close to Jesus.
Because, you see, to be Christian is not simply to join some organization.
Who needs that? We all have enough organizations in our lives.
To be a Christian is to follow Christ and to be joined with Christ.
Connected to the True Vine.
To be rooted and grounded in Christ’s own love.
A love that heals and empowers,
a love that grows hearts and grows churches. Amen.