Jesus the Agronomist                                                            John 15:1-17

John 15:1-8, last week’s gospel reading, and this week’s verses 9-17 form one discourse on the interrelatedness of the church. We have the image of the vine, Jesus, and the gardener, Jesus’ Father, and the branches, you and me. The interrelatedness, connection of the three together, which was last week’s verses 1-8, is important in understanding this week verses 9-17. For it is only when we, the branches, are and stay connected with the vine that we have any chance of producing, or bearing, fruit. If we think for one second that somehow we can produce fruit on our own, we are sadly mistaken, and I would have to ask what the fruit is that is being produced. Without Jesus the Vine, the only fruit we can produce is oppression, injustice, self-importance, verbal and physical violence, victimization, broken relationships just to name a few. You probably could name more.

In John 15 we are presented with a corrected image of Vinedresser, Vine and branches. We are given the image of the true fruit of righteousness through faith.

The image of vine is prevalent is Jewish literature and is often symbolic of the people of God with words like “the vineyard of the Lord.” The image of Judah’s failure to live in justice and righteousness is seen through the metaphor of fruit production. Isaiah 5:1-2 tells of God’s frustration with his beloved’s vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

In John, Jesus’ use of the “I Am” statements of verses 1 and 5, redefines the vine as Jesus himself. It is no longer a matter of individual identification with a community, but self-identification with Jesus, the Vine and in continuum with God, the Vinedresser. In verse 1, Jesus identifies himself as the Vine in the context of his relationship with God. "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. In verse 5, Jesus identifies himself as the Vine in the context of his relationship with us, his community of followers. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.  So that line of interrelatedness we have with Jesus combines with that line of the interrelatedness of Jesus with God, and puts us in an interrelatedness with God. 

We understand ourselves as the branches of the Vine when we see ourselves as Jesus’ disciples by faith and understand our call to obey his command to “love one another.” That is the fruit of the branches of the Vine that the Vinedresser looks for from his branches. For it is when our fruit of loving acts is seen that others will see our connectedness with Jesus and with God.

In this connectedness, or interrelatedness, Jesus challenges our western understanding of the church as individuals by projecting the image of the Vine and the branches. Hierarchy among the branches is excluded because we are all growing out of the one central Vine and are equally loved and tended by the one vinedresser.

If we would take serious this image, one’s measure of one’s place in the faith community is not how close to the roots one sees oneself, but how much one abides in the love of Jesus the Vine by what kind of fruit one produces in daily life. Fruit of compassion, healing, intervention, mercy, all which are found in the fruit of love. It is not about power and governance, but about the love of the Vine and the vinedresser and the fruit of branches to whom they are attached and are given life.  

And we produce the fruit not for ourselves nor the Vine nor the Vinedresser. The fruit we are called to produce is for those outside the hedges who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness. The community of the world.

Amen.