Fifth Sunday of
Easter
Living with John 15 this week
transported me back to my time on the Camino, the 500-mile pilgrim route across
the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela, one of the oldest Christian
pilgrimage sites in Europe. On the
Camino, I spent a lot of time walking around and sometimes walking right
through acres upon acres of vineyards.
The Camino winds through some of Spain’s richest winegrowing regions,
such as Rioja. I’ve seen vineyards
before in France and Italy, in Switzerland, in Nova Scotia, in Napa Valley, in Maryland,
and in New Jersey—yes, even New Jersey! Walking
the Camino, though, I was up close to the vines and the branches, I could see
the vines staking their claim in the rich soil.
I walked the Camino in September and October, during the wine harvest, so
the vines were laden with deep, purple grapes crying out to be picked (which,
of course, I was happy to oblige).
 |
| Vineyards along the Camino, outside Logroño, Spain. |
There was one day, Sunday, September
25, that stood out. I left Logroño when it was still dark. The city was
recovering from its annual Rioja Festival, a weekend revel to the grape, worthy
of Dionysius or Bacchus. My destination for the day was Nájera, about fourteen
miles away. On the way, I walked through
and along and around many vineyards, as far as the eye could see. As I walked, this text came to mind, “I am
the vine, you are the branches. Those
who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do
nothing” (Jn. 15:5). And then, as I
walked, I reflected on the nature of the vine. I considered the power of the
vine—the source of life, the source of vitality for the branches. I considered
the energy, all the life flowing through the vineyards, moving from the roots
and stretching out along the branches and eventually bearing fruit. Then I considered all the wine these grapes
would eventually produce, barrels and barrels.
It felt like wine was flowing all around me. I was swimming in it.
When Jesus said, “I am the true vine
and my Father is the vine-grower” (Jn. 15:1), he was tapping into a symbol
deeply rooted in the human psyche. Grapes, vineyards, wine have been symbols of
fertility, immortality, and divinity for thousands of years. The oldest vineyards go back to around 6000
BC, in the Republic of Georgia; the oldest winery dates to around 4000 BC can
be found in Armenia. The Greeks and
Romans loved their wine. So did the
Israelites. In Isaiah 5, Judah is
compared to a vineyard, planted to bear fruit, to yield grapes. At the time of
Isaiah, he judged the house of Judah unfaithful to the covenant, and therefore unable
to fulfill its purpose: to bear good grapes.
Isaiah warned that the vineyard would be left unattended and be
destroyed (Is. 5:1-5). In the ancient
world, wine was safer to drink than water. The fruit of the vine was equated
with life. At the wedding at Cana, Jesus
turned nearly 200 gallons of water into the finest wine (Jn. 2:1-11). And Jesus
turned to the fruit of the vine and said whenever you drink wine, “Remember me”
(1 Cor. 11:25). The vine and grapes became a distinctively Christian symbol;
you can find these images in the catacombs in Rome. In the Vatican Museum, you can see the
beautiful sarcophagus of Empress Constantia (d. 354), the eldest daughter of
Emperor Constantine (c.272-337); the porphyry sarcophagus has a beautiful vine
motif—a symbol of the Christian life.
Jesus took a common, ordinary
element of his world and transfigured it for his disciples. John 15 is part of
Jesus’ Farewell Discourses. He’s
preparing them for his departure. He
wants them to know that after he leaves he will still be part of them and they
will be part of him. For them to continue his work in the wake of his absence,
they need to abide in him. Here, Jesus offers them a final “I AM” statement, “I
am the true vine,” and invites them to abide in him.
The Greek verb meno, translated, “abide,” also means “to remain” or “remain on,” “hold,”
“attach, “keep.” It’s one of John’s
favorite words. It’s found in 16 of 21
chapters in his Gospel, used more than forty times. Abide. Remain. Stay. Connect. Jesus says
earlier in John, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I
in them” (Jn. 6:56). Jesus uses a relational
figure of speech, and gives it to the disciples—gives to us—to encourage them,
encourage us, to stay close to the vine. In the extra-biblical source, Gospel
of Thomas, which dates from between 40 and 140 A.D., we find Jesus saying
something similar, “A grapevine was planted away from its Source, where it
remains unprotected. It will be torn
down by its roots and destroyed.”[1]
Both references stress a similar point: Jesus wants us to stay near the Source
of Life. Stay. Remain connected. Rest. Abide.
When Jesus says, “I am the true
vine,” he is essentially saying, “I carry the roots.” In other words, he provides access to
something deeper, deep in the soil. He
conveys through his roots the stuff of life, which generates growth. Through
him the branches are generated, branches that intertwine and branch out in
every direction. We are the branches,
entangled together, connected to the root.
As we know, a branch can’t survive separated or cut off from the vine; a
branch can’t access the roots except through the vine. A branch can’t go it alone, without withering
and dying. And a branch can’t really choose
to not be a branch, it can’t sever itself from the vine, because the branch is
an outgrowth, an extension of the vine.
A branch cannot even hope to bear fruit apart from the vine—only when
the branch is in service to the vine, in relation to the vine, when life pours
through it and branches out, only then does it yield fruit. And the branch exists to bear fruit, to
produce a yield, but it can’t do so apart from the vine.
And note, Jesus isn’t saying that one
day, when you get your life in order, you’ll become a branch that bears fruit. He said, “I am the vine.” “You ARE the
branches.” Right now. It’s a done
deal. We’re already involved in the work
of the Vine Grower. Whether we like it
or not, our lives are bound up in his life and his life in ours and we
connected to one another.[2]
But Jesus takes the figure of speech
even further. Yes, the branch is dependent
upon the vine for life. However, Jesus also says that the life of the branch is
nurturing the vine. Jesus invites us to abide in him, so that he can abide in
us. There’s dependence here, but also
mutuality, mutual interdependence. Jesus is sharing with us the life of the
vine. We are grafted into him and he is grafted into us. And because God is the
vine grower, caring for the true vine, allowing it grow, Jesus is suggesting an
intimacy with God unlike any other passage in scripture. Jesus invites us to remain in him, because he
wants to remain in us. And when we stay
close to the vine, stay together, like vine to branch and branch to vine, that’s
how we bear fruit. Apart from him we can do nothing, no fruit. This is not meant to be a negative statement,
but a realistic one. It’s a true confession that life flows through the
Vine. This is a profound claim in John’s
Gospel; he bears witness to the corporeal, physical relatedness of Creator and
creation. It’s incarnational through and through. God wants to grow through us, be implanted in
our lives. God seeks incarnation,
embodiment, connection, intimacy with humanity through Jesus through whom we
experience God, the God who becomes further embodied in the world when we bear
fruit.
I’ve been thinking a
lot about connection lately. There is a brilliant new film adaptation of the
novel Howards Ends (1910), by E. M.
Forster (1879-1970). In the novel,
Forster famously describes the philosophy of the protagonist Margaret Schlegel,
this way, “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the
prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at
its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the
monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die” Only connect. Forster
was skeptical and, at times, hostile toward Christianity (for good reasons).[3]
Yet, here he certainly captures what’s at the heart of the religious life: only connect.
What is true for
individuals in our relationship to Jesus is also true for a church, for a
community of faith. We are called to
make deeper connections, stay close to one another, remember that we’re all
connected, that Christ’s life is pouring through us. Just as individuals try to go it alone, churches
can do the same, trying to bear fruit without maintaining the connection with
Christ. When that happens it’s easy for churches to become closed communities, cut
off from the life of Christ, cut off and dead.
Jean Vanier, the Roman Catholic philosopher and
humanitarian, is founder of L’Arche, intentional communities (in 37 countries)
for people with developmental disabilities and those who care for them. Healthy communities, like healthy branches,
know they exist to bear fruit. Vanier says, “A community
gradually discovers, as it grows, that it is not there simply for itself. It belongs to humanity. It has received a gift which must bear fruit
for all people. If it closes in on
itself, it will suffocate.”[4]
Jesus wanted his disciples to know that
they can’t do it alone. We can’t really serve him apart from him. We can’t be a single branch doing our own
thing, without the support of the community around us. The Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber, who
is known for her bold tattoos and colorful language (even in her sermons) and
heart on fire for Jesus, says, “Christianity is a lousy religion for the ‘I’ll
do it myself’ set. We are meant to be
tangled up together. We are meant to
live lives of profound interdependence, growing into, around and out of each
other. We cause pain and loss when we
hold ourselves apart, because the fate of each individual branch affects the
vine as a whole.”[5] The body of Christ, the church, is a vineyard,
we are branches all tangled up together, connected to the vine, and all is in
service to bearing fruit.
So, what is this fruit? There’s only one
answer: love. Jesus said, “My Father is glorified by this,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me,
so I have loved you: abide in my love” (Jn. 15:8). God is glorified when we
abide in and remain in and stay connected to God’s love. When we’re abiding in love we’re able to bear
fruit and the fruit is always love. Jesus
said, “You did not choose me but I chose you.
And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…. I am
giving you these commandments that you love one another” (Jn. 15:16). The world
knows we are followers of the Risen Christ when we love—that’s the fruit that
matters.
What became clear (or clearer) to me in a
new way walking through the vineyards that Sunday in Spain, in a moment of
grace, is that every blessed thing is pulsating with life and that life is
pouring through the vine and bringing life to the branches (to me), and we are
part of it all. There is no life apart from this life. Everything flows from
this love. And I found myself saying, “I want to be in service to this love.” I want to abide, remain, rest, stay in this
love.
Love is the vine.
Love is the branch.
Love is the soil.
Love is the sun.
Love is the life pulsating through it
all.
Love is the fruit.
And the vine and the branch and the soil
and sun,
the life pulsating through it all,
and the fruit—are all in
service to God’s love.
And knowing this is the cause for great
joy, it’s the root of our joy.
As Jesus said, “I have said these things
to you so that my joy may be in you,
and that your
joy
may
be
complete” (Jn. 15:11).
[1] Lynn C.
Bauman, The Gospel of Thomas: Wisdom of
the Twin (White Cloud Press, 2012), Logion (Saying) 40.
[2] Debie Thomas’
insight in “Abide,” Journey with Jesus, 22 April
2018.
[3] See Wendy
Moffat, A Great Unrecorded History: A New
Life of E. M. Forster (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).
[4] Jean Vanier,
Community and Growth (Paulist Press,
1989), 117.
[5] Cited by
Thomas at Journey with Jesus.
