4th Easter
John 15: 1-27
I AM the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every
branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that
does bear fruit he trims clean, so that it will be even more fruitful. You have
already been purified by the power of the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit out of itself unless it
is given life by the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you stay united
with me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains united with me so
that I can work in him, bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Whoever does not remain united with me withers like a branch that is cut off.
Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in
me, and my words live on in you, pray for that which you also will, and it
shall come about for you. By this my Father is revealed, that you bear rich
spiritual fruit and become ever more truly my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Ground your
being in my love, just as I have taken the aims of my Father into my will and
live on in his love.
These words I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in
you, and that your joy may be complete. This is the task I put before you: that
you love one another as I have loved you.
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| Christ the True Vine, Wiki Commons |
No man can have greater love than this, than that he offer
up his life for his friends. You are my friends if you follow the task I have
given you. No longer can I call you servants, for the servant does not know what
his master is doing. But I call you my friends because I have made known to you
all that I have heard from my Father.
You did not choose me, but I have chosen you, and appointed
you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruits should live on after
you, so that what you ask the Father in my name he should give it to you. I say
to you out of the fullness of my power: Love one another.
If the world hates you with hatred, remember that they hated
me first. If you belonged to people in general, they would love you as
belonging to them; but you do not belong to them, because I have chosen you out
of mankind. That is why people hate you.
Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater
than his master’. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If
they have held on to my word, they will hold on to yours also. Everything that
they do to you they will do as though they did it to me, for they do not know
Him who sent me.
If I had not come and had not spoken to them, they would be
without sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who turns in hatred
against me turns in hatred against my Father also. If I had not done deeds
among them, deeds which no one else has ever done, they would be without guilt.
But now they have seen me, and have still hated both me and my Father.
But it was to fulfill what is written in their law: ‘They
hated me without a cause.’
But when the Comforter comes, the Spirit of Truth who
proceeds from the Father, he will bring knowledge of me and will be my witness.
And you also will be my witnesses, because you have been united with me from
the very beginning.
4th Easter
April 26, 2015
John 15: 1-27
The wild grape vine will
spread its many branches far and wide, climbing over fences and up trees. A cultivated vine is trained up on stakes and
cross-wires. The vinedresser prunes it back to restrain much of the growth.
Thus the vine sacrifices some of its wild abundance in order to produce better
fruit.
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| Christ True Vine, wikicommons |
Christ calls himself the
True Vine. He is the Life the living entity of the earth and all on it. Our
lives are branches off of His Life. And He tries to convey to us that both He
and we are not to remain wild and uncultivated. Rather we are to contain
ourselves on the cross-wires so that the Father, the vinedresser, can
concentrate and strengthen our growth to produce excellent and abundant fruit.
The goal of our lives, the
fruit we are trying to produce, is love. We are to produce the sweet and
abundant fruit by remaining connected with the True Vine, the one whose very
being is love. We are to remain connected with Him, living in His life, out of
our own freedom of choice. To do otherwise is to risk bitter even diseased
fruit.
To love means to offer our
own life forces, our thoughts, our time, to others for the furtherance of the
world. Offering ourselves is a habit into which we can train ourselves. We can
prune away our more selfish and lazy habits, our soul’s deadwood. And this
matters not only to us, but to the world. For as the poet says:
Vine and branch we’re connected in this world
of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves
contingent, roots pushing against earth. [ A fruit} An apple
belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air
that claims it, then ground. Connections
balance, each motion changes another. Precarious,
hanging together, we don’t know what our lives
support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing.
Each holy thing is borrowed. Everything depends. [1]
