May 2, 2021 John
15: 1-8 Rev. Peter Hofstra
Does
our passage today speak to today’s world about Jesus? Jesus speaks to us of being the true vine, of
his Father being the vinegrower. Then we
get into pruning, those who bear fruit will bear more and those who do not,
well, they will be removed completely.
But
for those of us who bear more fruit, we have been cleansed by the word of
Jesus, we are called to abide in Jesus, because as the branch cannot bear fruit
unless it abides in the vine, so we cannot unless we abide in Jesus. Where is Jesus going with this? 15:5 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. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away
like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire,
and burned. AND, if we abide in Jesus
and His words abide in us, it is like we have a genie. Whatever we ask for will be granted.
Jesus’
Father is glorified by this and we can bear much fruit.
I can
conceptualize the metaphor. It helps
that there are vineyards in New Jersey and wineries that we can visit. Because we can actually get a look at what
Jesus is talking about here. Jesus wants
us to understand the connection that needs to exist between himself and
ourselves. That we are not out there as
Christians on our own, but that we are intimately linked to our Savior. That this intimacy is laid down in us by God
the Father.
But
the question that remains is how do we get there?
I
think I found this rather frustrating because of an incident with my cel
phone. I have my news sources on the
phone, trying to catch up with the events of the day as I can. I don’t do newspapers, used to do the morning
shows, but with COVID, the morning routine is much more quickly to the school
connections my family has to make. So
there are several…online news services I try to keep up with.
Of
course, there is always advertising.
There are also hooks for further reading. Scroll to the bottom of the article and there
will be a list of other links to things that their algorithms think I might be
interested in. Now this is something
that has to be considered carefully, because the news reports and advertising
hooks are intermingled. And I saw one on
back pain.
One
simple exercise to relieve back pain.
Now, I know better, but sometimes I just do not know better. The picture was someone on their back with
their feet raised and balanced on a chair.
Maybe it meant something. So, I
started the video while I was doing some morning chores. In the first twenty minutes, I learned all
about the car accident the promoter had been in, how there was one simple
solution to deep problems I most likely have that I never even knew about, and
that most Americans suffer from this.
The video also showed no signs of ending. Okay, it was a YouTube video, so I went to
find it there. I have consumed enough,
tell me how to get there. Embedded in a
commercial, I have no control, on YouTube, I can slide up and down the whole
length of the video.
Wow,
we post our services to YouTube. Go
watch there, and you can fast forward through the sermon. That makes one think.
Sorry,
so I go find this video on YouTube, and I fast forward to the end. First of all, the whole thing was fifty, five
zero, minutes long. I was already
invested for 20 minutes. I just wanted
to see the promised exercise. So I take
the cursor to the last few minutes where she is explaining how my credit card
information will be secure when I order her DVD set, a DVD set mind you, that
will show me this ‘one simple exercise’.
Yes,
so I wrote an imaginary “Sucker” across my forehead and closed the video in
disgust. Because I knew, deep down, it
wasn’t going to get me there. There are
a ton of short videos on YouTube about stretching and exercising and doing
things better, and each of them gets to the point and is actually there to help
you. Almost an hour on back pain is
trying to sell me something, it is not getting me there.
So
what does a backpain video (which turned out to be the provider of pain just a
little lower than my back) have to do with our text this morning? Well, we have a special today, for just five
payments of $29.95, I can send you my DVD set explaining just what the heaven I
mean….
But
there is a connection here. Jesus is
promising us some pretty amazing things in our passage. Doing what we ask? That’s the allure of the lottery. “Give your dreams a chance.” Or “Anything can happen in Jersey.” Jesus says, if we abide in one another that,
“ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”
And
yet there are a huge number of people out there who want that, but have no idea
how to get there. Or they tried, and
they got burned over by the church community that they joined to get
there. These were churches that were in
for the money. These were churches that
were in it to promote their personal savior in their faith leader. These were churches that were so motivated by
political agendas, to the left and to the right, that people were left
overwhelmed, burnt out, cast off.
It
has been my experience that while there are a lot of people who have problems
with the institutional church, there are very few that have issues with Jesus
directly.
I am
the vine and you are the branches. I
think we can imagine what that means, Jesus’ words, Jesus’ love, Jesus’
actions, all these things coming out meaningfully in our lives as believers. But for whatever reasons, it does not come
about. I believe that is why there is a
whole vocabulary built up around spirituality and spiritual growth, this
internal connection to what is good and loving and wonderful.
It
came home to me last week when we had the joy of celebrating a baptism here in
the service of worship. There were
promises made and there are expectations that the gathered family and this
gathered congregation are going to fill that young man’s life with Christian
love and attitudes, that he will know Jesus abiding in him and know himself
abiding in Jesus. But we seem to live in
a time where we cannot seem to embed that knowledge, those life lessons, in the
next generation.
The
answer to this bridging question, this question of getting from where we are
right now to a place where we, individually and collectively, is something that
Jesus lays out in the chapter before this one.
John 14 is one that is pretty well known, where Jesus says things like
“in my father’s house there are many dwelling places” and “I am the way, the
truth, and the life.” He also talks
about sending another, a Counselor, an Advocate, one who will be with us when
he returns to heaven. We know this counselor
as the Holy Spirit who, with God the Father and Jesus the Son, make up the
Trinity that we understand as our God.
And in three weeks, we are going to celebrate the coming of the Holy
Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost.
But
what exactly do we do to grab onto that Holy Spirit? When I was watching that back pain video,
what I wanted to know was what the exercise was that would make the back feel
better. What is the mechanism, what is
the exercise, what is the process by which the Holy Spirit enters into us? My assumption is the Holy Spirit is the
process by which Jesus abides in us and we abide in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the bridge.
Something
Jesus repeats twice in these verses, above the references to the vines, is his
word. We are cleansed by the word, vs.
3, and the words abide in us, vs. 7. The
truth, the bridge, the knowledge is in what Jesus shares with us.
So
where do we even start? What words of
Jesus do we seek to absorb into our memories?
Into our hearts? How do we seek
to live differently? Maybe we begin by
going to the outside. The truth that
Jesus tells is that apart from him, we can do nothing. Figuring out what it means to abide in Jesus
in this day and age, understanding not just in the symbolism, but in the
reality of head and heart what it means that Jesus is the vine, and we are the
branches. Juxtapose that against what
else is out there, which is not much of anything.
And
unlike the world today, Jesus is not so much out to sell us something as to
give us something. We are given the free
gift of salvation in Him. Well, there is
actually a cost, it is our whole being, but what truly does it cost us? It costs us the joy of knowing what true love
is. It costs us the sure and certain
knowledge of life everlasting. It costs
us the strength of the Lord to bring love to the world-a world that is deeply
in need of God’s love.
If we
have hit the wall and we are truly wondering about our faith, it can be very
helpful to pause and consider the other option.
Because there isn’t one. And the
call is to abide in Jesus. We can renew
that process simply by embracing again the promise of Jesus’ love, of the glory
of God carried out through our discipleship.
The branches that don’t bear fruit, they are the ones that are removed,
gotten rid of. But the promise of the
metaphor is that if we are feeling pruned back, if we are feeling like every
avenue of faith and its expression just seems to be shutting down and slipping
away, sometimes things get pruned back so that a greater expression of faith
may blossom.
So
how do we get there? How do we abide in
Jesus? Take seriously the other option
and push away from it. How often do we
discover just how much we love something when it is taken away from us? Simply acknowledging afresh “Lord Jesus, I am
here for you” is a step into the arms of the Holy Spirit. Know that no matter what happens, in the
church, in life, in our own journeys of faith, Jesus is there. That is the foundation upon which life in
Christ can always be built powerfully, for we are the branches, but Jesus is
the vine. And Jesus is the vine, but God
the Father is the vine grower. And
nothing can stand against God’s love.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment