The text this morning is from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to John:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! And through His death and resurrection He has made Himself to be very life-giving vine from which all goodness flows. He is the vine. You are the branches. And that is all through Jesus’ work on the cross for you.
I have a tree in my backyard. We moved into our house in 2016 and one of my favorite places is sitting looking out towards the backyard and looking at this tree. It’s not really all that special, it’s just there, and I think it’s kind of pretty. All that summer, the tree just provided leaves and shade. When the fall came, I was mowing around it and I noticed a single stem, a single branch, rising from the tree trunk. And as I looked at that branch, I noticed there were marks on the tree where other branches had been cut off by the previous owner. So, I cut it off. I didn’t think much of it. The next summer, a bunch of branches started growing, then a bunch more. Soon, the trunk was filled with them.
It was weird to me, because none had come the rest of the summer of 2016, but a year later, they were all there. And finally, I turned my eyes upward. I had missed it through the winter because there were no leaves, but I saw, amidst all the beautiful leaves, dead branches staring down at me. And I realized that the tree was growing these branches to make up for the dead ones, or because there were dead ones, it could grow anew. So, I got my ladder and my saw and began to cut off the dead branches. Sure enough, a few weeks later, even more sprouts began to come out of the tree.
Dead branches do a couple of things. One, if they’re diseased, they can make the whole tree unhealthy, spreading its illness everywhere and killing the whole tree. Or two, dead branches can fall off and take other good branches down with it. Now, I’m not an arborist, nor am I a vinedresser; I’m just someone who tries to take care of what I’ve been given. I would imagine that taking care of a vine is much like taking care of a tree, only with much more precision, smaller cuts, smaller everything, in order to bear good fruit. A branch that doesn’t bear good fruit, if it’s sour, if it’s diseased, will make more branches and those will be just like the parent branch.
So it is for the Church. Jesus is the vine and the Church is the branches that spawn off from Him. You, individually, are a branch coming from Christ. And the Christian’s job is to bear good fruit. What is good fruit? Jesus says in the Gospel according to Luke that good fruit is when a person, who is in Christ, out of the good treasure of his heart, produces good, brings forth good. These are the good works that you do, to take care of your spouse, your family, your students, your teachers, whoever is your neighbor. This is love and service within the vocation God has given you. That’s good fruit.
If you are in Christ, you will bear good fruit. Your heart is receptive, your ears hear His Word, you are in Christ, therefore, He is the treasure of your heart. That’s what faith does: it puts Jesus front and center. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. And so it is that you have come to faith, that by hearing His Word, whether that be first through its proclamation to you or first through the waters of Baptism, that Jesus has come to dwell in you, to abide in you, that you may always abide in Him.
If you have this faith, then, you will produce the good fruit. You will be doing works that are pleasing to God, not because they’re good works, but because you are a good branch. It goes like this: the act of changing a diaper seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but the Christian who does it does a good work toward their neighbor, their little one, and God is delighted in that good work. However, a pagan who changes the diaper on his little one does a good work towards that neighbor but God is not pleased with their work for they are rejecting Him and His Son and they cannot earn His favor. For the Christian, God’s favor is upon them as it has been won by Christ. For the pagan, God’s favor can never be reached because no sinner can do it.
All of this is because Christ is in you. He has washed you with His blood, He has fed you and strengthened you with His body and blood, He has placed Himself in your ears, on your minds, on your tongues. Christ is in you, therefore all your good works toward your neighbors are pleasing to God Himself. But it doesn’t mean that you get left alone to do what you want. Because you are a good branch of the good vine, you must be pruned. A branch that is left alone on the vine does what it wants, never gets checked, rots away because it’s growing too much in the wrong direction. That’s not okay with God.
So, He prunes you. He cuts you back so that you can grow correctly. The sufferings that we bear in this life are indeed from God or are allowed by God. It’s not that He wants us to suffer, but that through suffering He comes to make Jesus ever more present and real to us. When the cancer diagnosis comes, when your children fall away, when your home burns down, when you lose your job, whatever it is that is causing you to suffer, like Paul, we give thanks to God in all situations. It may not feel good, it may not be fun, but if you look at it as an opportunity to rely on the strength of Christ instead of your own strength. And as you rely upon Him, you grow stronger. In your weakness, He is strong and He makes you strong.
Besides this, as you suffer in this life, as you are pruned back to grow the right way, these are light, momentary afflictions in comparison to the life that has been promised to you through Christ. Because He dwells in you, you believe in Him. And by believing, even though you die, you shall still live. You will live forever in His resurrection. You shall be raised as He is raised from the dead. And He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
It is not that God hates us that we suffer, but that it is a consequence of sin in this world. God then uses this sin for His glory, to make way for you to do good works, for you to shine with the light of Christ like a city on a hill. We are called to do good, and we are given the power in Christ to do so.
Yet, there are some in the Church, some who have been in Christ, who fall away. They become diseased with the power of sin, the submit to the infection of the evil one, so that they must be cut off from the elect, the chosen people of God. These branches are cut away completely; there is no saving them. They cannot produce good fruit. Try to imagine an evil person in the paradise which is to come in the resurrection from the dead. We are all living in peace, united with God in Christ Jesus, perfect and sinless. Now imagine a single being in that garden who is evil. What would be the result? You might think, oh, it wouldn’t be bad, we’d know not to pay attention to them. But, now think of the Garden of Eden. Think of what happened to Adam and Eve, bewitched, betrayed, bewildered by Satan, who lead them astray into sin.
God must cut off the evil, diseased branches from Christ, lest they infect the whole vine. And He doesn’t just leave them on the ground, where their infection can fester, but throws them in the fire where the disease is burned away. This all happens to those who reject God’s Word, who turn from the promises of Christ. It comes to those who are comfortable in their sins, unrepentant, doing lip service to the Gospel. It comes from those who reject Christ and His work and want to earn heaven for themselves. These diseased branches must go away for the fruit they will bear will ruin everything.
But, you who are in Christ, who repent of your sin, who confess your sin, who are forgiven of your sin, who are strengthened and sustained by Christ’s Word and Sacraments, you shall glorify God the Father, for you will and you do even now bear much fruit. You show yourself to be a disciple of Christ. You show yourself to hear His Word and His command, you go out and you do the good works of faith, the good works of your vocation, you please God. You pray for that which God has promised. Whatever you ask God for, according to His promises, is given to you: life, forgiveness, salvation, resurrection. God is pleased with you, my friends, for Christ is in you and you are in Christ forever, for He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment