Connected, Growing, and Fruitful
Text: John 15:1-8
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My own prowess as a gardener leaves a lot to be desired. I marvel at the ability of others to keep plants alive and to get them to bear fruit. What I do know is that it takes plenty of work to keep a plant alive. And the most important thing is to keep the branches connected to the vine. This is what we hear in our Gospel reading for today. “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” Those who remain connected will continue growing and therefore be fruitful. You, baptized Christians, are the branches that when connected to the Vine who is Christ, will bear much fruit, because branches nourished by the True Vine can’t help but be fruitful.
This is the main point of our Gospel. What God, the gardener, wants to cultivate is fruit. He wants to see you bear fruit. And fruit-bearing is not something that the branches do because they worked hard. The fruit develops because the Vine is true and the gardener good. Fruit comes because the branch is connected to the Vine. What flows from the Vine to the branch makes it fruitful.
We can only bear fruit if we’re connected to Jesus. “I am the vine… apart from me, you can do nothing,” says Jesus. Whenever the Good News of Jesus is preached, God’s Spirit works, and people are renewed, and they are given new spiritual life. The sign of this connection and that new life is trust in Jesus. There is a recognition that as branches we cannot produce fruit on our own. We bear fruit not by squeezing it out of ourselves somehow, but because we’re extensions of the Vine that are designed to bear good fruit.
The question then becomes what that fruit Jesus is speaking about looks like. In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul tells us. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” That’s the fruit that God is looking for in you. Branches don’t live off their own fruit. Their fruit is meant for someone else. Branches live off the Vine. There must be something of the life of the Vine in us if we belong to God! There must be Christlikeness. There are certain attitudes, behaviors, habits, and virtues that God is looking for in you. The fruit God looks for is Christ’s own life at work in us. Like the Vine that conveys the vital nutrients to its branches so they may remain productive, so Christ functions as the source of life for His people. If the connection remains, there will be spiritual fruit as a result.
But there are many things that can stop the flow of nutrients from the Vine to a branch, and cause the branch to wither and become a fruitless and ultimately dead. Dead branches are what God’s pruning shears are looking to trim away. Jesus says, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Dead branches are our sinful selves that get in Jesus’ way. If it’s causing God’s fruit to be hindered from growing, then it needs to go. If you take a deep look inside yourself, you’re going to discover all kinds of obstacles to the growth of God’s fruit. If selfishness, greed, idolatry, and all other manner of sins are allowed to reign in your life, you will become disconnected from the Vine and ultimately wither up and die. These are the things that Jesus died to take away from us. These are the things we died to in our baptism. This is what Jesus absorbed into His death and buried in His tomb. These are the things He has taken from you in the absolution you heard this morning so that your connection to Him might allow you to continue growing and producing the fruit He desires from you.
But that fruit God is seeking doesn’t suddenly appear just because you believe in Jesus, It doesn’t come by sitting back and waiting for fruit to arrive. It’s not automatic. For fruit to grow, there has to be a gardener. The gardener has to tend and prune the branches. He has to cut away weeds and anything else that doesn’t bear fruit because those simply suck the life out of the Vine. The gardener cuts away dead branches. Good branches need to be pruned back so they might be even more fruitful.
We need to be pruned if we’re to bear the fruit of the Spirit. So, God uses His Law by which He confronts our sinful desires and actions. Pruning can be painful. We all have dead branches that need cutting away. And when God prunes in us what is unfruitful, growth will come. There are things you need to stop doing. When you look at your life it will be easy to see the things that are unfruitful. The mirrow of God’s Law will show you these things. There are also things you haven’t been doing that you need to start doing. We all have evil desires that we need to overcome. When God confronts you with his Law, He’s not being mean and vengeful. He’s actually caring deeply about your long-term spiritual health. He wants you to repent so that the unfruitful effects of sin don’t keep your whole branch from withering up and dying. Paul says right after he lays out the fruits of the Spirit, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the Vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” What happens when a branch is broken from a tree? It dies. Not right away, perhaps. It slowly dries up. And it certainly doesn’t bear fruit. What happens to the believer when they cut themselves off from Jesus? What happens without the Word or without the Body and the Blood? When we cut ourselves off from the Vine, when we refuse the gifts Christ sets before us, why are we then surprised when we feel dried up, withered, and fruitless?
Sometimes we barely notice the withering in our day-to-day habits. We just kind of slip away and lose touch. We’re not at the Lord’s Table as often, we don’t read the Bible as much, we go through the motions of of our faith but we’re not hearing. And what happens? We dry up. Faith withers, like that branch cut off from its source of life. Faith doesn’t necessarily die right away. It just dries up and shrivels. And it’s all so unnecessary. “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
The word abide is extremely important in this passage and in our lives in Christ. Because to abide is not a sporadic thing, something that happens once a week for an hour or so. Abiding isn’t putting in time, waiting for the benediction so we can get out of here. That’s not abiding. To abide is to dwell, to reside, to have your home and place somewhere. To abide in Christ is to live in Him through faith. Abiding is a beautiful union, a fruitful communion where Christ feeds us and makes us fruitful. Through baptism you’ve been grafted into the true and living Vine. We abide in Him. God’s Law prunes us, and We cling to His Word of forgiveness. We eat the Bread of Life and drink the Fruit of the Vine so that we might receive nourishment. What happens here in this congregation every Sunday morning, and Wednesday evening, is the joy of God’s branches being connected to the Vine, growing in faith, so that we might be fruitful in the world for the sake of the Gospel. Jesus the Vine, feeding and nourishing and refreshing His branches. Christ is your life. There is no life apart from Him.
Abide in Him. Remain in Him. But what does that look like in practice? We must remain in the community that knows and loves Jesus and celebrates him as the Life of the World. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian. We can’t go it alone. Christ’s bride, the church, is where the branches connect to the Vine. That’s not to say that we don’t remain in prayer and worship in our own private lives, but branches that decide to go it alone soon discover their mistake.
If you try to live without the life of the Vine, you will wither and die. And if you become all dried out and fruitless, that’s not God’s fault, it’s our own. The Vine is always there, giving us life. He will never cut off His own branches. Those who are cut off have chosen to disconnect themselves. Jesus is always faithful, always forgiving, always urging and welcoming. And apart from Him there is only death and destruction. Remain in Jesus, as He remains in you. Branches that remain in the Vine live and bear fruit.
Jesus wants each of us, all of you, to be fruitful, to live a life of Christian virtue, to live freely in His forgiveness. He desires that for each of you. It’s to His Father’s glory that you bear fruit, much fruit, that your lives be filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and that you be His disciples, trusting Him in every aspect of your life. You are the branches; He is the Vine. Connected to Him, you will grow, and you will be fruitful. Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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