I was having a work related conversation with a friend today when she mentioned that she had been reading some notes she had taken about a sermon I preached a while ago about abiding. We chatted about it for a bit and then I came home and looked for it on my blog but had not posted it. I found it in my notes and read it. I am deeply appreciative of being reminded of this sermon by my friend, especially in these days. I present it to you below for what it is worth:
Abide: The Parable of the Vine
Late last week after days of struggling to work through this sermon and many false starts I awoke one morning with a clear vision of what needed to be said and how to begin. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really do anything to make this happen, it’s not like I practiced any sort of secret pastoral ritual to draw down the inspiration of God (I only get three of those and I’m saving them)…frankly I had spent most of the week doing dry Greek word studies. I think what likely happened was God finally got tired of watching my pathetic struggle to put this together and said “o k a y, I can’t stand watching you suffer like this – fiiiine I’ll write it…you sit back, rest and let me do the work…which to be honest pretty much happens every time I attempt to put a sermon together. Anyhow – this is what I was given.
In our continuing series focusing on the parables of Jesus we look today at the parable of the vine from John 15:1-8 which reads as follows:
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes [a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Picture this:
Single mom gets up early in the morning, starts breakfast, wakes up the kids, makes lunches for school, goes and wakes up the kids again, showers and gets ready for work, goes and wakes up kids AGAIN, gets everyone in the car, starts to drive away, drives back into the driveway and lets son out to go and get his forgotten backpack…and the whole time Christ is whispering in her ear – remain in me, remain, abide, just abide.
Dad get’s up at 5 am and gets ready for another 12 hour day dealing with jerks, angry co-workers and clients never really sure where the line is between the three; He hits the road and ends up behind the world’s slowest driver (who also by coincidence happens to be the world’s oldest driver); finally makes it to Tim’s for a coffee only to find two dozen cars ahead of him in the drive through all of whom seem to be ordering seven course meals…man finally makes it to the window only to realize he’s forgotten his wallet…and the whole time Christ is whispering in his ear – remain in me, abide in me, remain, abide, just abide.
Grandmother greets the day with prayer and tea in the sunroom. This is the way it’s been every day since her love passed away years ago and if she could just stay here and pray all day she would but she can’t. Today is another day with the prospect of wandering lonely through the house cleaning and adjusting, maybe a nap, maybe some work in the garden…another day with no visitors, no phone calls, thoughts of maybe calling her son but she doesn’t want to bother him…and the whole time Jesus speaks softly in her ear – remain in me, abide in me as I do in you, just remain, just abide…abide.
Young teen boy drags himself out of bed reluctantly. A pointless day of school ahead, too tired to pick fresh clothes, stumbles to the bathroom for a shower that never really wakes him up because he made it too hot…at least its Friday but that means the weekend is there and he’s got to spend it listening to parents fighting and avoiding younger siblings – boy makes mental note to make weekend plans that involve a lot of sleeping over at friend’s houses…and the whole time Jesus is leaning in close to him and whispering – remain in me, abide in me, just remain, just abide in me as I do in you, abide…
These images are true ones. We have all in some way been connected to the ever increasing chaos that is life. There is something restful and appealing about the idea of remaining or abiding in the midst of the storm…something the strikes a chord deep within us…a yearning for this kind of rest, this kind of escape. Even the words typically used in various translations are like breath words – remain, abide, remain, abide – they are peaceful pastoral words that sound like the Spirit when we whisper them. Beautiful and poetic is the image of how we typically interpret this admonition of Christ’s – to abide in him.
Still – if we are honest with ourselves and we dig even deeper beneath our dreams there is something frustrating about these words of Christ…something rather annoying at being told to abide while the storm approaches ready to ravish everything you hold dear. You know what I mean. You know what it feels like when you’ve just stumbled into church on a Sunday morning maybe dragging screaming kids, maybe an angry spouse or maybe just plain ol’ lonely and you just realized you locked your keys in the car or ladies you just noticed that you tucked your skirt into you pantyhose (which really frustrates you because you knew you should’ve stuck to your first choice and just worn jeans) and in the midst of all your explosive frustration some well-intentioned disciple of Christ wanders up to you smiling and gently says – just abide in Christ. That’s usually when you want to turn around and say “Let me give you something to abide in…” but of course you don’t, you smile and say thank you and you move on because you know they meant well.
Many times when we chafe at gentle words in the midst of struggle it is wise to recollect the many instances in scripture where God promises to be our shelter and our comforter. This parable however is not one of those instances. We would like to read these verses in a way that suggests that we remain in Christ like frightened people remain in a bomb shelter during an air raid or like Dorothy’s family remaining in the storm cellar during a tornado lest it whisk us away to the dangerous and unpredictable land of Oz. Frankly many of our Bible translations encourage us to read this way.
The question we need to ask ourselves then is what does it mean to remain or abide in Christ then? How would it have been understood by those to whom it was first written? These are important questions to ask and sometimes we are not fond of asking them. Too often I have heard people complain about the suggestion that a certain effort must go into reading and understanding our Bibles. It is said that God’s Spirit helps us to understand His word which is true in the sense that the Spirit convicts of us the truth but not in the sense of doing all our thinking for us.
Imagine the following scenario – you’ve just returned from a shopping marathon in Grand Forks and you’ve got your new clothes on and you’re walking down the street. Someone you know stops you and says – yo, (because that’s the way your friends talk) you look phat, you look bad man. Now depending upon who says that to you and how you hear it you either just heard that these clothes make you look fat and bad or they make you look PHAT and Baaaad. There is a critical difference between these two interpretations – one is likely going to make you angry and possibly drive you to doing something you are going to regret; the other is going to make you smile and feel good about your phat bad self. Reading our Bibles can be a similar exercise in Spirit-led discernment. There is a natural way we will understand things and then there’s a way they are intended to be understood and that is what we’re seeking when we seek after God’s truth. Thankfully we don’t all have to be Greek scholars and Hebrew historians – God in his wisdom created a church with a variety of gifted folks among whom happily we have Greek scholars and Hebrew historians…for my part I spent a good part of last week digging into some Greek texts prepared by just such folks and trying to better understand a critical word in this passage – the word translated as remain or abide in most translations. The word is repeated eight times across the eight verses of the parable and one of the rules we should all remember when reading our Bibles is that when God is repetitive with a word, phrase or idea it is because this is a VERY important point and we are supposed to pay close attention to it. The only other word repeated nearly as often in the text is fruit/fruitful and we’ll get to that a little later but for the time being let’s talk about the word remain.
The actual Greek word we find in the text is meno and its variations like menein (and not Menno, I’m sorry this does not have anything to do with your name – your name is from the German meaning strength). While it is correct to translate meno as remain or abide this does not capture the depth of the meaning present in the text. Just like translating the Hebrew word shalom as peace is technically correct but misses a great deal of depth. The author of the gospel has many other options open to him to express the idea of remaining that Jesus was presenting in the parable…he chose this word for a reason. What we know about the word is that in all the classical literature at the time John was being written and before, as well as throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament the word is never used in the sense of to remain hidden, to remain safe, to remain sheltered or the like.
In the Greek version of the Old Testament that was widely read in Jesus’ time (called the Septuagint) the most common use of this word was in describing the enduring, unchanging, never leaving presence and character of God. This God is the God who abides. This God is the God who will never be driven away. This God is the God who stands fast and endures forever and ever and ever; the eternally present never abandoning God of all gods. This is the primary sense that John wants us to hear in Jesus parable. John uses this particular word more than any other in the New Testament and so we ask ourselves why? One of the things John is concerned with throughout his gospel and letters in the New Testament is that the reader understand that Jesus is God’s son, that Jesus is God come in human flesh. This is probably why only John recollects and reports the parable of the vine…because the vine was a symbol of Israel (Israel brought a vine with them from Egypt and planted it in the Promised Land on their arrival). In Jesus all the promises of Israel are fulfilled. N.T. Wright says in his excellent commentary John for Everyone “Jesus is saying that he is the true vine. This can only mean that he is, in himself, the true Israel. He is the one on whom God’s purposes are now resting.” ASIDE: BTW if you are looking for an excellent, inexpensive, readable commentary without a lot of technical jargon then I highly recommend Wright’s for everyone series on the New Testament.
But back to John…in John’s gospel Christ abides. He abides in God and God and God’s promises abide in him. In our Bibles God is the one who abides forever…in John, Jesus is the one who abides with God forever and Jesus would have us abide as well – forever. That is the sense underneath the text. When the readers hear Jesus telling us that we must abide in him as a branch abides in the vine they instantly say to themselves – wait a minute, only God abides eternally, only Christ abides eternally – now it seems through Christ I too can abide eternally. Wrapped up in this one word as it is used in the parable is Jesus promise of salvation for all who know him. Not to hide in him. Jesus does not hide in God. Not seek shelter in him. Jesus does not seek shelter in God. Abide in him. Stand fast, stand firm and endure in him as Christ stands firm forever in God. This is the way the word is meant to be read and understood. Frankly the way the word meno is used in the parable anticipates struggle and adversity just as it always has throughout scripture. In the Old Testament our God is the God who abides, against the challenge of false foreign Gods and beliefs. God stands fast eternally – long after other gods have been proven as nothing more than wood & stone, myth and memory. In the New Testament, Jesus, God in human flesh stands firm in God even in the face of death to such a degree that death cannot conquer him and now we are being told to stand fast and firm in Jesus as the branches abide in the vine. Why? What adversity can we expect? To what end must we abide in Christ? Salvation? Eternal life? Our personal salvation is of critical importance to us and to God and understandably so, but our salvation is not of primary importance in this parable. The parable says that the reason the branch abides in the vine is to bear fruit for the one who tends the vine (this is God). So what is this fruit? What is so important about this fruit that we must stand fast in Christ against all adversity to ensure this fruit comes about? Is the fruit good works? By keeping the law are we producing fruit? No. It is not what we do by our own strength that brings forth fruit but our standing fast in Christ, with Christ, and for Christ that leads to the fruit God wants to see. The fruit God desires from us is quite simply the grafting of others into the vine. It is each person lost in darkness gaining the hope of God because they see you standing firm in Christ against all that the world can throw at you. The fruit that we bear if we abide in Christ, if we stand fast with Him, is nothing less than the salvation of the world.
And do you know what the purpose of fruit is? Do you know why fruit exists? It does not exist to sit and contemplate its own delicious and fortunate fruitiness…Oooohhh thank God that I’m a banana and not some miserable radish…doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Fruit does not exist to bask in the glow of its own fortune at being fruit and not something else. It exists for one reason and one reason alone – to make more fruit. Fruit falls to the ground, dies and bears an even greater number of fruit which fall to the ground and bear an even greater number of fruit – you get the point.
Our salvation is a good thing, it is delicious and wondrous to behold but our main task is not to sit back, bask in the glow of, and contemplate our own salvation but to make more like us…that is the sole reason we exist as children of God and in doing so we bring God glory. That is why Christ tells us to remain in him as the branch remains in the vine – because He is about God’s business of saving the entirety of creation and has graciously given us a role. But along with this life-giving role comes a warning to those who would not abide, not stand fast…the branch that tries to go it alone soon withers and becomes useless. Useless because a withered branch bears no fruit and is either cut away by the vinedresser or torn away by ravaging storms.
I love the image of the vine and branches that Christ has chosen in this parable because in so many ways it illustrates the nature of the church, the body of Christ. When I say church I do not mean the bricks and mortar of this building and the countless others around the world – this is a simplistic way of defining church which needs to be discarded…when I say church I mean the universal collection of Christ followers that Jesus himself defines as his body, some of whom happen to meet in this place each week on the Sabbath to celebrate God, and expose themselves to fellowship, teaching and preaching so that they might go out into the world again and abide in him in order to bear fruit – that is what I mean when I say church.
Anyhow this parable illustrates the church incredibly well and I think it is appropriate that it is only John, the most poetic of the Gospel writers, who includes this parable. The vine is an amazing plant. There is a vine growing on a trellis in front of my home and there are a few things I have learned about vines since moving here. First, the branches of a vine are unruly and difficult to tame. If the branches had their way they would be haphazardly growing all over the house and every tree and bush in the yard as well taking wasteful advantage of the endless nourishment the vine offers them. Essentially it would smother everything and in the process kill other plants. If the church is like the branches of a vine drawing its life from Christ our vine then God is the vinedresser as the parable says, who must come along and prune, cutting away unnecessary growth and provide direction and purpose in the process. Pruning is painful. There is no other way to describe it. It is the taking of shears and cutting unnecessary branches off of the vine.
When I first began caring for our vine I sort of let it do its own thing and in the fall I would simply hack the whole thing down to a nub and it would start up again in the spring. After a few years of this I began to notice something – the vine was not producing much fruit. Finally it was decided not to simply cut everything away to nothing – rather be a little more selective and strategic about it. Leave the primary parts of the vine and cut away select branches that don’t have any fruit because all they do is take away from the other branches. I did this and this year’s vine is filled with more grapes then we’ve had since we moved here. The point? The pain of pruning works and is necessary. Jesus says to the disciples at the beginning of the parable that they are already clean (which is the same word used for prune in the Greek) because they have been with him and heard His word. Much has been pruned from their lives – they have left jobs, birthplaces, families and friends for the sake of Christ…for the sake of His message and to bear fruit for the kingdom of God and Jesus commends them for it here. The reality though is the pruning is not done. The pruning is never done. In the fall I will have to prune my vine again if I want an abundant harvest next year. The disciples endure pruning again and again and the parable tells us that we will be pruned as well as long as we abide and stand fast in Christ our vine. What has God desired to prune from your life so that you might be more fruitful and focused on him? It is a good question to ask ourselves on occasion.
Another neat thing about the vine which brings us back to the image of the vine and branches as an image of the church is the way it grows and supports itself. A vine takes advantage of its environment…it grows on a wall but it is not a wall; up a tree but it is not a tree; on a trellis but it is not the trellis; a vine infiltrates its environment for growth. In a wind storm I would trust my vine to remain standing long after other, stronger looking things like trees, had fallen down. This is because of the tendrils that the vine has the wrap around things for support. Near hurricane force winds can blow and the vine will not budge from its spot because it sends out tendrils that grab onto whatever they can and hold on for all they are worth. Do you know what a vine grabs onto more than anything else in its environment? It grabs onto itself. I would guess that 90 percent of the tendrils on my vine are holding onto other parts of the vine…this kind of interweaving of itself gives the vine incredible strength. I think this is one of the reasons Jesus chose the image of the vine and branches for the church. Any branch of a vine off doing its own thing is going to get removed or torn away by the storms that come along because it lacks the full strength of the vine. It grows in isolation, certainly gaining nourishment from the vine but not much more. The branches that rely on each other stand fast against the storms. They continue to remain in the vine and bear fruit.
As beautiful and pastoral an image as the parable of the vine and branches offers us it is clear at this point that its main purpose was not to comfort and sedate us but to prime and prepare us for an emerging war which we were signed up for when we became believers.
“12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
The apostle Paul wrote that in Ephesians 6:12 and when Jesus speaks to us in his parable of the vine and branches he is speaking with this idea solidly before him. This war is not fought with human weapons but with truth which is God’s word. It is fought by standing firm with Christ; abiding in him; How do we do this? How do we abide? Jesus tells us further along in John that we abide in him when we obey his commands but what does he command of us? Almost immediately following the parable in John 15:12-17 Jesus says:
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
Each day we awaken with a critical question before us – will we lay down our lives for the sake of Christ? Will we sacrifice our lives that others may live? Will we stand fast with Jesus as the darkness of the world threatens to sweep us away and with it any hope for creation’s salvation?
Britain at the beginning of World War II in 1940 and her Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill are struggling with similar questions albeit with more earthly consequences. Shall they remain battling against all the adversity that is the growing dark might of Hitler’s third Reich and the conquest of Europe or should they hide on their island. Should they ignore the plight of Europe and take comfort in the false security of the English Channel between them and tyranny? Should they abandon the world to darkness when they could do something about it despite how hopeless things seemed? Essentially the question was whether they should cave before the onslaught of the storm of war and hope that it would pass them by or should they stand fast and firm as the first of many waves of terror struck them threatening to tear them down? Listen to what Churchill had to say:
“we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.“
This is the sense that the parable of the vine is attempting to get across to us…to stand fast with Christ and one-another against the onslaught, to not back down in its face but to move forward for one purpose and one purpose only – to save creation. More than 2000 years ago God established a beachhead on a world overwhelmed by evil – that beachhead was Christ. His task was this – spread the kingdom of God and save this world whatever the cost. This was the new world coming to the rescue of the old only the new world was God’s kingdom remaking the old into what God had always intended. That is our task given to us by Christ, to stand fast with him, abide in him by obeying his commands, by being united, by loving one-another and in the midst of a world overwhelmed by evil to be visible as we do it. Let the world see us face it; Let the world see us fall and rise again so that it asks – “where does their strength come from?” and when they ask that question we tell them simply – Christ in us and us in Christ…we can do nothing without him…
– Let’s pray.
Harnessing Chaos 