Love the Vine, All Loves Excelling
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
May 3, 2015
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Bear Fruit.
That’s a consistent message in the gospel. Jesus says in the Parable of the Sower, “the ones sown on the good soil… hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” The Apostle Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5: 23-24).
And now, here in John, Jesus tells us once again to bear fruit. If fact, He says that if we don’t bear fruit, are “like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (15: 6). There are stark choices implied: bear fruit, or die.
There’s also a stark reality that the Parable of the Vine suggests: that we can’t bear fruit UNLESS we are tied into the vine; and that if we aren’t bearing fruit, we AREN’T tied into the vine. In other words, the vine is Jesus: we can only bear fruit if we are tied into Jesus; and if we aren’t bearing fruit we are clearly NOT tied into Jesus. So we better be tied into Jesus.
And we better know what kind of fruit we’re supposed to bear.
Paul of course gives us a good list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Those are excellent gifts. So there you go, be perfect at love joy peace patience kindness generosity faithfulness gentleness and self control. Otherwise, you’ll be tossed into the fire and burned.
Not.
In First John we have a very clearly defined fruit. God is love, John says, and if we are united to God, then we will love. We will love our sisters and brothers, and not in some amorphous, “I have really good feelings about you” kind of way. No, love is concrete: it results in actions. It results in us treating others, even our enemies, as we would prefer ourselves to be treated were we in their shoes. Love is more than, “I love Muslims or poor people or people of other races generally as a class”—it is “I love that Muslim, that poor person, and that particular person of a different race specifically.” Love is more than, as the Book of James observes, telling a hungry person to “eat, be well.” Love is giving that hungry person food.
The way that it is proved that we are united to the God of love, that we are branches of the vine who is Jesus Christ our Lord, is by us bearing the fruit of love in our lives.
So stop goofing around and do it. What, you don’t love everybody? Or do you find yourself sometimes loving people, and other times wishing they’d go away? Are there some people you just can’t bring yourself to love? Are some of them even right here in this church? Or you try to love them, but they never seem to respond, to love you back; no matter how much you love them, it’s never enough. Well, uh oh, looks like you’re in trouble. What’s wrong with you? The rest of us are so good at this. We must truly be tied into the vine; we must truly be one with God. I don’t know about you, though.
Not.
We’re focused the wrong way. We act as if we’re individual branches trying really really hard to make fruit pop out of us. Good for you for understanding how important it is, but you will never succeed that way. You’ll only get frustrated and disappointed in yourself and others. No branch can produce it’s own fruit. Focus your attention the other way. Focus it on the vine that is the source of your life. Focus on Jesus. Focus on God.
Here’s the grace of the Gospel, the only grace that really matters. Humans are meant to be in oneness with God. In fact, the whole purpose of eternal life, of life after death, is to be totally and completely one with God. Eternal life is eternal because it takes and eternity to know an eternal God. But we aren’t naturally united to God the way we should be. Through the grace of Jesus Christ, though, a miracle has happened. We can begin to be united to God in this world, in this time. That whole, complete relationship is right there for us. God dwells in us, and we dwell in God, through Jesus Christ. Though we often don’t see it, though we often get sidetracked and fool ourselves into believing otherwise, none of us is whole, none of us is truly fulfilling our purpose in life, none of us is who we are meant to be, until we are fully united to God. And by the grace of God, we don’t need to wait til after death to have that. We can have that now. Eternal life starts NOW.
Strictly speaking, human life is fruitless unless we are united to God. So the fact that in Christ we can bear any fruit at all is a miracle. So lighten up on yourself a little bit. As Jesus says in the parable of the Sower, some who yield fruit yield a hundred baskets, others yield sixty, and others yield thirty. The point is not how much fruit you bear, but the joy God has that we are bearing fruit at all. As Emily Dickinson wrote:
Not that We did, shall be the test?
When Act and Will are done?
But what Our Lord infers We would?
Had We diviner been—
God is happy for us to produce fruit, to strive for it, to constantly improve at it, and is fully aware we will never be perfect at it. Our love is proved in that we constantly, every day in every way, get better and better. This not only makes us better people—by God’s grace it proves we are diviner people than we would have been otherwise, and God sees us as diviner than often we see ourselves.
But we won’t get better at it unless our focus is not self-improvement, but our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Jesus is the source, and as we focus on Him, through prayer, through study of Scripture, through seeking His face in our relationships with our neighbors, with nature, with the world around us; as we continue to grow in love and knowledge of the God of Love and Jesus Christ the vine, then naturally we’ll produce more fruit. Naturally we’ll get better and better at loving neighbor, stranger and enemy; naturally more and more of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control, will be apparent in our lives. We won’t be perfect at it, but the point is that we are improving, we are growing, we are by God’s grace starting to become the people we are intended to be. But, ironically, this is because our focus is not ourselves, but God. We have the relationship we secretly long for, the true, deep relationship with God that makes us whole. Focus on that.
This is true of loving our neighbor, as well. There’s no question that we can get better at loving our neighbor without focusing on God. But focusing on loving God, who is love, who loves everyone without distinction, makes us better able to love other people the same way God does. We’ll always reasons and excuses not to love as we should, totally, completely, and without reservation, in real concrete actions; but if our focus is to learn to love from the God of love, we’ll be infinitely better at loving than we would have been otherwise. We’ll be forced to examine the root of our prejudices and assumptions and fears; we’ll realize more and more that love is not some broad good intention, but something real and concrete and risky; and we’ll be willing to take the risk to love. But we aren’t naturally inclined to do that without heavenly support and guidance and the occasional divine swift kick in the seat of the pants. In order to love, we must focus on the God of love. In order to love, we must be fully tied in to the vine—Jesus Christ.
And by the grace of God, we are branches of that divine Vine, and so we will certainly produce divine fruit.