Abide in the Vine

Title: Abide in the Vine By Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:    John 15:4-5  4 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.  5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. INTRODUCTION: My dear friends in Christ, everybody knows Tarzan, the ape man.  He was left as a child in the deepest darkest Africa as an orphan.  He was adopted by apes—an unlikely event.  Accordingly he learned from the apes.  One thing he learned was to swing between the trees on vines—a convenient mode of transportation in the jungle.  Notice that as long as he holds onto the vine he’s OK, but when he grabs the snake he falls.  This text makes me think that we have something in common with Tarzan – a bit of a reach but you’ll see… Jesus calls us branches and as long as we are connected to the Vine we are OK.  But a bit like Tarzan when we let go or grab the snake we are in grave danger.
I.   Obviously branches are meant to be connected to the vine.
	A. So we need to look at that Vine.  What makes it so special?
		1. Jesus is the Vine. He is watered in the Jordan River as the Spirit of Life descends from above and the Father says, "This is My Beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). 2. The Vine stretches out His arms from the east to the west to take all the sins of the world upon Himself that all your sins may be removed from you as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12).
				a. Jesus the Vine is fastened to the cross beam, dies in that God-forsaken place and is planted in "a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid" (Luke 23:53).  b. But behold the Vine. Though He died yet He lives and rooted from within that tomb the Vine rises in the midst of a garden from which He will bear much fruit. So the Vine has reached out to save the branches – He reaches out to bring about fruit on those branches..
	B. Then we need to get an idea of the nature of these branches.  In other words we need to look at what we are like.  We branches are naturally cast upon the ground spiritually dead and physically dying. To deny this is to deny the reality of death itself; to say that death is but a myth.
		1. And branches on the ground spiritually dead and physically dying cannot help themselves.  In other words we cannot help ourselves.  Imagine a branch on the ground, totally separated from the vine, completely dead and having no fruit on it. What would you call anyone who comes up to that separated, dead and fruitless branch and says, "I've good news for you. Bear fruit and then you can connect yourself to the vine. Bear fruit and you will then have water, nutrients, and all that you need. Earn the right to the water so you can claim it because of the fruit that you bear. You can do it, right"?  Even a child recognizes that is silly and stupid.  That person needs to be exposed as a nut case. 2. So Branches are always on the receiving end.  They don’t give to the vine, the vine gives to them.  And God has given to you.
					a. In Baptism He joined you to Himself.  He grafted you into Christ, the Vine.  You didn’t pick yourself up off the ground and join yourself to Jesus.  God, in mercy, attached you to your Savior.  And once you were joined to Him through Baptism, you became a living Christian, because you were receiving life from Jesus. b. If you are baptized, Jesus has made you clean.  You are not a dirty, thorny branch.  Jesus has cleansed you.  There is nothing in you that is repulsive to Him, for He has washed you clean.  Everything wrong with you is forgiven.  Your selfishness is forgiven.  Your laziness is forgiven.  Your failure to abide in Christ is forgiven.  And this word of forgiveness which Jesus is giving you is the life-giving sap and nourishment which will keep you abiding in Him.  c. And now branches live by the constant nourishment comes to them from the vine.  Your Christian life and the fruits of faith you produce are the result of the living Word that Jesus gives you, as you hear His Word, and read His Word, and receive His body and blood for you in the Sacrament.  Jesus is no casual acquaintance.
II.  So for the branch that connection is all important.  But you can look at the connection in at least three ways.
	A. Some only look at the branch.  God and the connection to Him is not really considered at all.  Everything centers on the person on the branch.
		1. The Pharisees were like that.  Clean on the outside and dead on the inside, because there is no real connection to God.  2. You can see it like this: A missionary in Africa depended on a small generator to supply current for his small church and home. There was no utility service in the rural area where he served.  One evening some tribesmen came to visit this missionary. They noticed an electric light hanging from the ceiling of his living room. They watched wide-eyed as he turned the little switch and the light went on. One of the visitors asked if he could have a bulb like the one in the light fixture.   The missionary, thinking he wanted it for a sort of trinket, gave the man one of his extra bulbs. Sometime later the missionary stopped at the hut of the man who had asked for the bulb. Imagine his surprise when he saw the bulb hanging in the center of the man’s hut from an ordinary string. Of course there was no light coming from the bulb. The missionary patiently explained to the man who owned the hut that one needed to have electricity and a wire to bring the current to the bulb and to cause it to glow. (2)  No electricity, no light. No vine, no fruit.
	B.. Then we can look at our connection as something we need consider only occasionally.
			1. But Jesus doesn’t say, “Check in with me every now and then.”  Branches don’t “check in with the vine” every now and then.  Jesus says, “Abide in Me.” People have said that you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian, but that’s not what Jesus says.  That’s not far from grabbing the snake. Soon we will fall, it’s only a matter of time  2. But Jesus wants to change all that, like this: One pastor tells about a man who approached him at a conference. The man asked, “Do you understand John 15?” “Not completely,” the pastor answered. “Why?”     The man said, “I own a large vineyard in northern California, and I think I have it figured out.” The pastor says he offered to buy the man a cup of coffee on the spot.       As they sat across the restaurant table from each other, the man began to talk about his life as a grower the long hours spent walking the vineyards, tending the grapes, watching the fruit develop, waiting for the perfect day to begin the harvest.      “New branches have a natural tendency to trail down and grow along the ground,” this vineyard owner explained. “But they don’t bear fruit down there. When branches grow along the ground, the leaves get coated in dust. When it rains, they get muddy and mildewed. The branch becomes sick and useless.”      “What do you do?” the pastor asked. “Cut it off and throw it away?”      “Oh, no!” the man exclaimed. “The branch is much too valuable for that. We go through the vineyard with a bucket of water looking for those branches [growing along the ground]. We lift them up and wash them off . . . Then we wrap them around the trellis or tie them up. Pretty soon they’re thriving.” (1)     This is what Jesus is talking about. He is the vine, we are the branches. But sometimes we are like those low lying branches trailing along the ground. Our leaves are coated with dirt. When it rains we get coated with mud and mildew. At such times we are incapable of bearing fruit. What does the owner of the vineyard do with us? Does he cut us off and throw us in the fire? No, we are too valuable to him for that. Instead, he tenderly washes us off and lifts us up with his gentle, nail-scarred hands and places us up higher where we can thrive again. God does not love you any less if you have been failing to abide in Christ faithfully.  Every branch of His, whether it is faithfully abiding in the Vine, or whether it has become separated from the Vine—every branch is the object of His grace and mercy.
	C. …and the third way to look at the connection is to want it to be vibrant.
			1. And here the Vine and Branches analogy works so beautifully. Love flows from the Father through the Son by the Spirit to the branches who are alive in Christ. It flows from the wounded side of Jesus, the water and the blood, from the font and the Supper, from the words that flow into your ears, that love of God for the sinner in Christ flows to you. And it doesn’t just stop with you. Nice green leaves are a sign of a healthy branch. But fruit is how the branch is known. “By their fruit you will know them.” That love of God in Christ that flows through you produces fruit – thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold for those around you. 2. And the fruit from this connection may look like this: A man on a busy street polished his customers' shoes with great enthusiasm. It was evident that he enjoyed his work turning a pair of scruffy leather shoes into a shining work of art. He also enjoyed talking with the men whose shoes he polished; he even enjoyed polishing the shoes of men who buried their noses in the morning newspaper. There was one regular customer who was a professor from the old Soviet Union. The professor noticed how happy the shoeshine man was. He watched the man shining his shoes so cheerfully and enthusiastically, and he couldn't figure out what made him so happy in such a miserable world. One day the professor could no longer hold his curiosity, and asked the shoeshine man, "Why are you always so happy?" This surprised the shoeshine man. He paused for a moment, scratched his head thoughtfully, and then said, "Jesus. He loves me. He died so God could forgive my badness. He makes me happy." This wasn't an answer that the professor had expected to hear, and he went back to his newspaper without another word. But it was those few simple words spoken by the shoeshine man that eventually brought the professor to Jesus Christ.  When our connection to Christ is vibrant we will naturally bear fruit " like the man shining shoes.  Our strength comes from our connection to Christ. Our purpose is to bear fruit.
CONCLUSION: Yes, maybe you can see our situation to be a little like Tarzan, swinging on the Vine, as long as you see Jesus as the Vine and see that He keeps us connected.  He doesn’t want us to ignore our connections and fall.  And He doesn’t want us to only occasionally consider it.  That connection He gives is all important.  His gifts flow through that connections from Him to us then from us to others.  That flow gives fruit that lasts forever.  Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.   Amen
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