TITLE: “Jesus the True Vine”

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  Our text for today is from the Gospel lesson just read, Jesus the true vine.

We have before us another one of Jesus’ great I AM statements.  I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  Jesus in our text wants to tell us about our relationship to him.  Notice first of all that He is talking to the disciples.  This is a part of the discourse on Maundy Thursday, after He instituted the Lord’s Supper and before He was betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus is very concerned about His disciples, because He knows how easy it is for them and for us to cut ourselves off from Him.  One of the great tricks of Satan is to try and get God’s children to believe that they are on their own.  For many Christians today, the Christian life is like this: Jesus saved me.  I know I’ll go to heaven in the end.  But until then I’m on my own.  It’s my own life to live here on earth; God plays no part in it today.  Now what’s wrong with that view?  Did Jesus give you one super dose of His love that has to tide you over until you die?  No.  Jesus brought you into His family in Holy Baptism, and He keeps you and holds you in that family throughout your whole life.

To demonstrate Jesus’ place in your life, he uses an analogy.  Jesus says, I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in my, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  What is the relationship between a vine and the branches of the vine?  The branches need the vine to live.  The vine provides the nutrients and food to the branches, so that they can bear fruit.  How long would a branch last without the vine?  It wouldn’t last very long.  The vine is always feeding the branches.

There are a number of lessons we can learn from this.  First of all, your life as a Christian is continually nourished and fed by Jesus Christ the true vine.  How?  Does Jesus feed you through some invisible feeding tube you can’t see?  No.  The way you are fed is by coming to Church, hearing the Gospel and tasting the Gospel in the Lord’s Supper.  It’s that simple.  Faith clings to Jesus Christ as you receive Him in the Word and Sacraments.  That is concrete and practical.  If you don’t hear the message of the Gospel again and again and again, you cut yourself off from Jesus and from faith itself.

So why do we go to Church?  We go to Church to get fed.  I guess that’s why I’m always amazed at people that make going to Church an optional or occasional thing.  As Jesus Himself says, If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  It just isn’t enough to say I read the Bible at home, or I worship at the park or on the boat or whatever.  Remember our lesson from Acts.  The Ethiopian eunuch couldn’t understand the message of the Scriptures until someone preached to Him.  Or remember our lesson from Luke 24 a couple weeks ago.  Jesus’ disciples couldn’t even understand the message until He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  As Saint Paul says in Romans 10, So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing from the Word of Christ.

Faith is not a one-time event that we got at Baptism.  Faith must be nourished and strengthened continually by the Word and Sacraments; that’s why Jesus in our text uses the word remain so often.  It could also be translated dwell.  When Jesus dwells in us and we in Him, then and only then can we bear fruits in our lives.  If someone’s life is not bearing the fruit of the Gospel, the problem is that they are not hearing the Gospel in faith.  No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. 

Now there’s another part of this text that is difficult to understand.  Jesus says, every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  This pruning is the trials and struggles in our lives.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do tragedies and heartaches happen to Christians?  Doesn’t God love us?  If God really loves me, why do these things keep happening to me?  Everyone has things happen in their life that are hard to understand.  They may be big problems, they may be little, but they all make us ask questions about God and why He lets these things happen to us.

It’s a good question.  Jesus gives us a simple answer, but a deep one that is hard to understand.  Jesus says that the trials and struggles in our lives are God pruning us so that we may bear good fruit in our lives.  Martin Luther on this text calls these trials and struggles the manure and pruning clippers of our lives.  If you were a branch of a vine, you must admit that there are things that would happen to you that would be hard to understand.  Why does the gardener keep cutting off limbs and branches?  Why does the gardener keep piling manure up all around me?  It stinks and I don’t like it!  So why does the gardener do these things?  The gardener does these things because He knows what is best for the vine and its branches.  The gardener knows that too many limbs will choke the fruits, and that the vine must be fertilized in order to grow and be fruitful.

Now we’re not talking about plant life here.  We’re talking about you.  God uses the lousy things that happen in your life to prune you so that you may bear more fruit.  He uses the trials and struggles of this life so that you may see Jesus all the clearer.  He fertilizes your life with the junk of this world, even the things that we know are gross and wrong, but God uses them for good.  Perhaps you remember the story of Joseph in Genesis 50.  Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery so that they could be rid of him.  But Joseph ended up ruling over them.  As Joseph said, As for you, you meant evil; but God meant it for good.

Perhaps another example is in order.  One of the earliest Christian martyrs was a man named Ignatius, a disciple of the apostle John.  Ignatius was arrested and taken to Rome to be torn apart by wild beasts in the arena.  When this was about to happen, Ignatius said, “Let them come!  I am God’s kernel of grain.  He must crush and grind me in the mill before He can use me.”[1]  Now this is a very different way of looking at Christian suffering.  Certainly it is horrible that wild beasts killed Ignatius.  But Ignatius, in faith, could see that God would use these terrible events to serve as a witness to the Gospel.  As Luther put it, “Ignatius looks upon the terrible teeth of the wild lions and bears as nothing else than God’s millstone with which he must be ground to powder in order that he may be prepared as a good cake for God.”[2]

That is how God works in your life.  God loves you and wants what is best for you.  He takes all of the evil and horrible things that Satan and the world will throw against you, He takes all of that, and God uses it to your eternal welfare.  He prunes you so that you may be fragrant and a fruitful branch of the vine, Jesus Christ.  Amazing, isn’t it?  Only God can turn the worst things in our life and use them for our good.

This same God that prunes you and uses the bad things in your life feeds you with His life in the Lord’s Supper.  I don’t think it is an accident that Jesus calls Himself the true vine.  It is from the fruit of the vine in Holy Communion that we receive His nourishing and life-giving Spirit.  Remain in Him, and He will remain in you.  He has cleansed you by His Word, and He loves you with the very core of His being.  He gives you His body and His blood, so that you may be nourished and refreshed in the journey.  And God the Father, the Great Gardener, looks down upon you and sees the good fruit of your life.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Easter V-B (May 21, 2000)

John 15:1-8

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Last Revised: May 22, 2000