St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 15:1-8
The Rev. Deacon Art Bass

The Unity of Vine and Branches

Today’s gospel from the fifteenth chapter of John continues the great Final Discourse, John’s in-depth focus on the instructions and teachings given by Jesus to his disciples on their final evening together, just before Jesus was arrested and then crucified the next day.

It happens that this particular passage from the gospel has a rather personal significance for me, because whenever I hear it, I am reminded of my father. My parents spent many long years as school teachers, and then they retired to a small farm at the foot of Sewanee mountain. There among other farming pursuits, my father took up the growing of grapes, turning a portion of his land into a small vineyard.

Many times I would drive home for a visit and find Mom in the kitchen, and I would ask her, “Where’s Dad?” “Oh, he’s up there on the hill with his grapes.” And sure enough, that’s where I would find him.

On the ground before each vine there would be a small collection of fresh cut greenery, and there would be my father, carefully inspecting and pruning one of his plants.

“Dad, it seems I’m always finding you here doing this.” “Well, Son, this is what you have to do if you want these vines to make grapes.” And make grapes they did for many years. I think my parents kept the whole community supplied with grapes and grape juice . . . and wine and jelly and preserves.

But in September of 1994, one week after I was ordained, my father died. We kept the farm. I still have it today. But my mother moved to a house in town, and no one was left to prune and tend the grape vines. Grape production declined sharply, and after five years, many of the vines had died. Those which remained were only producing a token number of grapes.

What little I know about grapes and grapevines I learned from my visits home during my father’s retirement years. But in the Holy Land in the time of Jesus, grapes were the principal crop. Everyone, the Disciples included, would have had some basic knowledge of vineyards and grape production.

So in his Final Discourse, when Jesus wanted to explain to the Disciples about the relationship which existed, and would continue to exist, between himself and them, he used the metaphor of the grape vine and its branches.

Jesus told the Disciples, “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.”

The image is a simple one and easy to understand. A grapevine is not an ornamental plant. Its sole purpose is to produce grapes. The grapes are found on the branches of the vine, not on the vine stock itself.

The vine stock is rooted in the ground and is tended and cared for by the vinegrower. The vine stock provides the branches with everything they need to produce grapes: nourishment, energy, and life.

Unity, connectedness, between the vine and the branches is essential. If a branch is separated or cut off from the vine, it cannot produce grapes. It has lost its connection to that which gives it purpose. Moreover, if a branch is severed from the vine, that branch becomes separated from everything it requires to sustain life. Without the vine, the branch has no life in it, and it will die.

Jesus is telling the Disciples, and through John’s Gospel he is telling us, do the will of God the Father and produce much fruit. That is, be productive and bring the world to God. Through you, let the world be brought to me and to God’s love and mercy.

“Abide in me,” Jesus says. Let me nourish and energize you with my Spirit, let me give you life and love, that you may accomplish the work that God intends for you to do through me.

Now when Jesus told this to his Disciples, he knew that he was going to die the next day. But he also knew that God would raise him, and he wanted to comfort and reassure the Disciples that their connection with him, their unity with him, would never be broken.

It is in the Final Discourse that Jesus explains how, even after he has returned to the Father, he will send his Spirit so that the Disciples will continue to be sustained and empowered, so that the unity, the communion, between Jesus and his church will never be lost or broken.

Today the unity between Jesus and his followers, the unity between Jesus and us, is still intact. It is a present reality in our lives as Christians, and it is just as important and necessary now as it was two thousand years ago.

“Abide in me as I abide in you.” We maintain this unity with Christ through the sacraments, through prayer, and through love.

Love is essential to our unity. Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross was the ultimate expression of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. . .” Love is the bond which connects us to one another and to Christ. Love is what flows from the vine to the branches that we might have life in us and bear fruit. Love is the fruit that we, the church, have to give and share with the world.

Throughout the Final Discourse, Jesus repeatedly instructs the Disciples to love one another. Love is a dominant theme, perhaps the dominant theme, in John’s Gospel.

In fact, I want to leave you today with a story. It’s an apocryphal story about the Apostle John, who was presumably the author of, and at least the inspiration for, the Fourth Gospel. And let me caution you that this is just a story, a pious legend, that didn’t appear until the fourth century, so it my have no basis in historical fact, but it at least portrays John in a manner that is consistent with scripture.

The story is that because John was the only Apostle who stood witness to the Crucifixion and because he was charged by Jesus to take responsibility for looking after Mary, the Mother of Jesus, John was spared from a violent death. In fact, he was blessed and rewarded with an exceptionally long life, living to be one hundred years old.

In his latter years, as the last survivor of the Chosen Twelve, John became quite a celebrity among Christians. On Sundays, at Eucharist, John always insisted on preaching the sermon personally, and Christians came from all over the world to hear him.

John would preach for hours to spellbound crowds, telling them his first hand account of the life and ministry of Jesus. But in his last years, as the Apostle’s body and voice grew weak, his sermons became more and more concise.

Finally, John could no longer stand without assistance, but still he insisted on addressing the people at sermon time. In his final months, deacons would bring John to the Eucharist on a stretcher. At the appropriate time, they would raise one end of the stretcher, bringing John almost upright. The grand old man would raise one feeble hand in blessing and deliver his homily, which he had now edited down to just three words: “Love one another.”