The real thing

“I am the real thing, and I’m guided by God my father!” If ever there’s a way to get peoples attention making a statement like this is it and that’s what Jesus does in today’s reading when he says “I am the True Vine, and my father is the gardener!”

In my mind I imagine it a bit like this… Jesus has started becoming a popular teacher with people following him, some beginning to see him as the Messiah who is going to save them, some seeing him as the next Prophet whose teachings will help them know when the Messiah is coming, some seeing him as good entertainment value, and some thinking of him as mad. Jesus had told his close friends, the disciples what was going to happen and knew what feelings must have been going through their minds at the time. There must have been some doubt in the minds of his followers, even if it was only a slight doubt, surely any rationale human being would wonder if the man they have dedicated life to following was going a little bit crazy having recently told u what he was going to go through. Part of them probably thought, well if he’s who I think he is then surely he can stop this from happening.

Bring all this into today’s world and the same issues are always the ones that come up when discussing Jesus, all of the things that probably ran through the disciples minds back then are things which society throws at Christians when we confess our faith.

Jesus’ reaction to all these natural thoughts was this one line – Yes I am the true Vine but God is the Gardener! You are right to follow me but I’m following Gods plan.

Jesus then explores the complex relationship between a vine and the gardener, before I move on I should say I hate gardening and don’t know much about pruning vines or any other type of plants and so when I read “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful.” My initial thought is to skip this bit but I wont, instead I will use an image I understand a little bit better. One of a football team.Now I support Liverpool Football Club, and yesterday was FA Cup final day and you may have heard by now that it was one of the best cup finals ever. One of the reasons for this, from a neutrals view, is because Liverpool played so badly and made so many mistakes during the game that both teams scored goals etc. Liverpool is managed by Mr Rafael Benitez and during the game itself he saw what we all saw, that there were some players on the pitch who were not playing very well and so he took them off in order to get better flowing football. He then looked at the players who were playing well and changed the formation of the whole team in order to enable them to play even better. It worked and from being 2-0 down after 20 minutes Liverpool drew 3-3 and won on penalties.

If Liverpool’s manager had not cut out the players who weren’t performing and if he didn’t adapt the team to enable the good players play even better I may not be as happy today. That’s what Jesus is saying about God, he will remove the things which bear no fruit and work on what’s left to make it work to its full ability.

This verse on its own is, in my view, very dangerous to read on its own as it can be taken in so many different ways, and I do know somebody who uses this verse to back up his view that God uses natural disasters to “cut off” dead branches. I don’t believe this, and when read with the next few verses I believe it is talking more about living fruitful lives.

3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

Jesus is the vine as we have heard already and Jesus has made us clean. If we live lives which follow his teachings we are connected to him and so will bear fruit and in turn will be blessed, however if we fail to follow his teachings we will not be able to bear fruit.

I’m told that bringing up a child is one of the hardest things to do, because no matter what you tell them to do they will always do the opposite. “Go tidy your room” then you go up and find a room messier than it was in the first place, “Go to bed and go straight to sleep” only to find them reading or watching TV in their room 2 hours later. You don’t tell them what to do for your own good, most of the time, normally you are telling them to do something for their sake not yours.

Jesus is doing the same thing. He is saying if u follow me and my teachings your life will be so much better in the same way as a parent would probably say “if you learn from my mistakes you’ll avoid the pitfalls and enjoy it even more!”

The one thing I do know about gardening is that you can see when something is producing fruit and that when plants are doing so often it makes a garden look beautiful and can result in new plants blossoming up too. So when Jesus says “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit” he is not just saying your life will be better he is saying people will notice a difference in you, people will see Gods beauty in you and you will result in other peoples lives changing too.

Before Easter I challenged the evening congregation here to spend more time getting to know Jesus and his teachings because unless we know him well we can not say whether the choices we make are things of God or things of Man. Today’s verses emphasise the importance of doing this. By living Christ centred lives our lives will blossom, maybe not in the ways we expect but in the way where we are producing God given fruit. If we don’t live in a Christ centred way, and we become separate from Jesus and his teachings then we are like “a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”

Don’t panic I'm not going to turn this into a heaven and hell talk, or a life or death talk. I believe this part of the passage tells us what in our hearts we all know, that it’s a lot harder to use something which has broken down.

If we live lives which are separate from Jesus’ teachings we will not be producing the lives which witness to his love the way he wants us to. This means it is harder for him to use us. Imagine an artist having to choose which paint brush to use will he choose the brush with equal hairs all in the right shape and size or the brush where the hairs are all over the place. Most probably he will use the first one as he has more control over it and so is more likely to get a finished picture which is closer to perfection.

There are many cases in history of churches and Christian missions who started to grow in terms of numbers and spirituality only for seemingly no reason at all to suddenly stop growing and in some cases to completely fall apart. Many times a few months or years later people have reflected on them and there is often one common factor, a church leader making mistakes which result in the church moving away from a Christ centred approach to a man centred way of life.

I recently went to spring harvest and during the week there God challenged me a lot about many things but when I came home I restarted doing something I stopped doing at university due to lack of time. I started reading the Bible and praying every night before I went to bed. For me it wasn’t a big thing, I just felt it was something God wanted me to do. Suddenly things started to happen. I started to enjoy work again, I felt more confident, I was having more conversations about God and other issues and generally my life seemed so much more on track. I’m not saying God wasn’t using me before spring harvest but it showed me that the more I walk in Jesus’ influence the more God will use me, and that’s what the passage is saying, if your not connected to the vine you wont produce as much fruit and there’s a danger you may not produce any at all, then you may as well be thrown into a furnace as you’ll be no use to God.

There is one important thing which needs to be said here. A fundamental part of Jesus teachings is that of forgiveness and 2nd chances. God has given us the ability to make mistakes and to come back and say sorry and then be made clean again and again and again so he won’t reject you if you sincerely ask him for another chance and make the changes needed to be reconnected to him again. Then you will start to produce fruit again, in Gods time not yours.

The Final 2 verses say “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

If you are walking a relationship with Jesus and know his words and have made those words central to your life then the things you want to ask for will be things that God will want to give you and so he will. This in turn will be a witness to the world of both your love for God and Gods love for us.

The Psalmist says it is a “praise—life” where you do the things that you have promised in front of everyone. He talks about how everyone is welcome and all will get their fill if they are on the hunt for God. He talks about the four corners of the world worshiping God and giving control to him no matter how old, sick, rich or poor they are. This is what I feel God is challenging us to do, to live this type of praise life with Jesus’ teachings being our guide as if we do we will produce lots of God given fruit.

This week is Christian Aid week. Christian Aid were set up in 1945 as a response to the needs of refugees and churches after the 2nd world war. Since then it has worked where the needs are greatest, irrespective of race or creed and now works in over 60 of the world’s countries.

They list their values as:

Putting Life first
Struggle for justice
Speak out courageously
Test everything against experience
Work together with others.

I believe they show Gods love through action, and whether you feel able to give them money this week, or whether you agree or disagree with the way they do things I believe we can all benefit from following their example and asking God to let you experience his love and then find a way to put his love into action so that the wider world can see the fruits of his labour in you!

The next song we are about to sing says

Bread of the world, in mercy broken;
Wine of the soul, in mercy shed;
By whom the words of life were spoken,
And in whose death our sins are dead:

Look on the heart by sorrow broken,
Look on the tears by sinners shed;
And by thy feast to us the token
That by thy grace our souls are fed.

Use this as a prayer asking God to look at your heart, your tears and your way of life and ask God to challenge you where you need to be challenge. Then ask God to show you how to show his love so you can affect others hearts and how you can use your God given fruits.