Speaker: Pastor Stephen “Tig” Intagliata
Bible Passage: John 15:1-11
Summary: Jesus says he is the true vine, and he invites us to abide–make our home in him– in order to bear the fruit of the Spirit. To abide means to 1) share in Jesus’ purposes, 2) depend on Jesus, and 3) become joyful fruitbearers. Let us follow the example of the early Anabaptists, who were able to stay faithful and even love their enemies in the midst of persecution because they cultivated a deep spirituality of abiding in Jesus and his love.
There’s a story of Mrs. O’Reilly who was walking down the street, and coming the other way is Father Flannagan. He says “hello, Mrs. O’Reilly…and how is Mr. O’Reilly? Didn’t I marry you two about 5 years ago? She says, “That you did, Father.”
Then the priest says, “And are there any little ones yet?” She says, “no, not yet Father”. Then he says, “Well, now, I’m going to Rome next week, and I’ll light a candle for you.”
Fast forward several years later and they meet on the street again, and he says, “Well, now, Mrs. O’Reilly, have you any little ones yet?” She says, “Oh, yes, Father. I’ve had three sets of twins, and four others; ten in all.”
The priest says, “Now isn’t that wonderful! And how is your husband?” And she says, “he’s gone to Rome.” And he says “To Rome? And what’s he gone to Rome for?”
And she says, “To blow out that candle!”
I come from a large Catholic family, so I couldn’t resist sharing this story. My parents took seriously God’s command in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Today we’re going to look at fruitfulness, but in a different way. While having children is one way to be fruitful, this is not what Jesus is talking about here in John 15.
You know, there has been some talk in the news lately that every woman’s role in life is to have and raise children, and if they don’t, they’re considered second class citizens.
Jesus never measured fruitfulness or purpose this way. When I read where Jesus talks about bearing fruit in our passage today, the fruit I think he means is in line with the apostle Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5,
The fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Jesus specifically mentions the fruits of love and joy in this passage, but I think that we can keep all of them in mind.
And with this kind of fruit, it doesn’t matter if you have 10 children or if you’re childless and have cats or dogs.
No, what does matter regarding our ability to be fruitful is how closely connected we are to the Vine, or as Jesus describes it here, how close we abide in him as the true Vine.
As we sang a little bit ago, Jesus is that vine, and we—you and I– are the branches. So this morning let’s ask a few questions:
What does Jesus mean when he says “I am the Vine?”, and “What does it mean when he says “Abide in me?.” And finally, “What is the result in our lives when we abide in Jesus?
Here are some different translations of the phrase Abide in me: “stay with me”, “remain in me”, “Live in me” and “make your home in me”. They each give us a little different twist on what Jesus is getting at here.
In this passage alone, we hear the word “abide” eleven times! The Greek word for abide, meno, is used 40 times by John in his gospel and letters!
We see this word at the beginning of his gospel when Jesus first encounters John and Andrew.
Jesus asks Andrew and John “what are you looking for?” and they respond with “Where are you staying?” This shows us that they want to be close to Jesus by staying where he is staying that night.
I can just hear them singing that classic song by
Ben E. King: When the night has come / And the land is dark / And the moon is the only light we’ll see / No, I won’t be afraid / Oh, I won’t be afraid / Just as long as you stand by me.
This is the beginning of these disciples’ journey with Jesus their new rabbi. In the Jewish world a common blessing that people would say to a disciple of a rabbi was “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.”
In other words, may you stay so close to him that the dust of his sandals rubs off on you, as a symbol of his teachings and lifestyle rubbing off on you as well.
Now a couple of thoughts on the translation “make your home in me”. This was radical for Jesus to say, because he’s redefining where God can be found. In the Jewish world, God resided in a particular location, you could only get close to God by being in that place.
First that place was the portable tabernacle like a tent that was set up at each place the Israelites stopped to set up camp on their journey to promised land.
Then after they get there, they built the Temple, which is where you had to go to encounter God.
But from the beginning of John’s gospel, he presents Jesus as the new temple, the place is now a person, God who has come into the world as a human like us.
The theologian N.T. Wright describes this incarnation. He says:
The word for ‘tabernacle’ or ‘tent’ is the word that John uses when he says “the Word became flesh and dwelt (literally tabernacled) among us” (1:14). The Word, the eternal self-expression of God,…pitched his tent in our midst. Only, instead of taking place in a building, in the Temple in Jerusalem, it took place in a human being.
How awesome is that! Jesus is here in our midst, wherever we are, and invites us to make our home in him as he makes his home in us. It’s what we might call a “mutual indwelling”.
You know, we all have this longing to be at home, to be in a place that is familiar, where we feel safe and accepted, where we feel that we belong.
If you’ve lived in a place a good amount of time, hopefully you have that comforting experience of feeling at home there.
Karen and I have moved around a lot as adults. But growing up, I lived in the same house from 1st grade until I graduated from high school and moved away to college.
My mom and my brother still live in the house—that’s 63 years now. I love being able to go back to that home when I go out to California. It will always feel like home to me.
In the same way, Jesus invites us to make our home in him, to become more familiar with him and develop a deep friendship, where we feel safe in his presence, where we know that we belong to him.
And here’s the best part: Jesus emphasizes in vs. 9 of our passage that our relationship with him is rooted in love—God’s love for him, and his unconditional, unwavering love for us.
Abide in my love, he says, and then right after he says, “I’m telling you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made complete.”
Friends, when we know we are loved with the deep love of God through Jesus, it can’t help but fill us with joy. This is true in our human relationships as well, right?
It’s election season, and I’ve tuned into some of both the Republican and Democrat conventions. This past week, on Wednesday night, there was a beautiful demonstration of the joy that comes from a home filled with love.
Anyone know what I’m talking about? Yes, Tim Walz’ son Gus, beaming while his dad was giving his speech, crying, and shouting “That’s my dad!”
That scene should touch all of us, no matter what side of the political aisle we are on. But since our country is so divided, and has different understandings of what masculinity is, some people on social media actually said Gus Walz behavior was weird and a sign of weakness.
Friends, I would say that people who think this have a warped understanding of masculinity and what real love in a family looks like. Maybe they’ve never experienced this kind of love, but it’s a love and a joy that we all crave to have.
And it’s the kind of relationship that Jesus invites us to have with him. Like any other relationship, we grow closer to Jesus by spending time with him,
through different kinds of prayer practices like what we talked about with the children, and through meditating on the scriptures, where we encounter Jesus in so many different ways. Or just by sitting in silence and enjoying his presence as a friend.
In the words of Martin Buber, it’s a relationship not of I-it, but of I-thou, where we truly know Jesus in a life-giving relationship.
As a Mennonite church, we are part of an Anabaptist tradition that was founded by people who valued this kind of relationship with Jesus.
Hans Denck, one of the early Anabaptist leaders, has this wonderful quote where he says: “No one can truly know Christ unless one follows him in life, and no one may follow him unless one has first known him”
Knowing Jesus and following him go hand in hand.
This idea of knowing and following, personal relationship and obedience is brought out powerfully in this little book called “Praying with the Anabaptists: The Secret to Bearing Fruit” by Marlene Kropf and Eddy Hall.
We know that the early Anabaptists faced all kinds of persecution and suffering to the point of martydom because of their convictions which weren’t in line with the state church of their time—
The two biggest differences they had were refusing to take up the sword in military service, because Jesus calls us to love our enemies; and they practiced believer’s baptism instead of baptizing infants. People should know what they’re getting into when they become a Christian.
The words of Jesus in our passage today were spoken when Jesus was about to suffer at the hands of the authorities, and his disciples’ commitment to him would be tested as well. He wanted them to remember to stay close to him, to abide in him.
Kropf and Hall say this: “Like Jesus’ first disciples, the Anabaptists of the early 16th century discovered a faith that met the challenges of troubled times. Though they were often persecuted and driven from their homes, they experienced the daily, comforting presence of the risen Christ among them…. To know Christ and to follow Christ were inseparable realities for the Anabaptists.”
You know, I think that sometimes we overlook the reality of the deep spirituality of the early Anabaptists. When I think of their legacy, I usually focus on their theology of nonviolence, and their ethic of showing love through concrete acts of service to people in need.
But it was their deep connection to Jesus, their spiritual grounding that gave them the inner strength to love even their enemies, and it gave them the courage to stay faithful in the face of persecution.
Theologian Gary Burge said it this way: “without some dimension of an interior experience of the reality of Jesus, without a transforming spirituality that creates a supernatural life, doctrine and ethics lose their value.”
Mennonite theologian and professor Willard Swartley added this: “The discipleship of the leaders of first-generation Anabaptism was deeply rooted in spirituality, drawing from the spiritual mystical tradition of medieval Catholicism.”
I can relate to that, as my spirituality has been shaped by Catholic authors as well.
So what does it mean to abide in Jesus, the true Vine? Kropf and Hall provide a good summary of this for us:
Jesus invites us to:
- share in his purposes: “How often have we decided, without consulting God, what we wanted to do, then asked God to help us achieve it? To abide, we must yield ourselves to God’s purposes”. P. 35
- depend on him: “Jesus says that the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine; we often feel that our wit and our willpower and working harder is what’s needed to accomplish good things. But fruitfulness comes as a result of depending upon Jesus.
- become joyful fruitbearers. As Jesus the vine flows through us the branches, we bear fruit with joy, not with resentment or pride, but joyfully. And that brings a deep contentment, peace to us.
Friends, joy is different from happiness. Happiness depends upon what “happens” to us; but joy remains even in the most dire and bleak circumstances.
We see this joy and contentment in the many stories of Anabaptists who suffered to the point of being martyred for their faith. I want to close with one such story that is in Praying with the Anabaptists.
You can find this story and hundreds of other stories in a book called “Martyrs Mirror”. It’s about as thick as the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary!
Maria von Beckum was kicked out of her home by her mother because she had joined the Anabaptist movement. Maria fled to her brother’s home, and was later arrested by the authorities.
Maria’s sister-in-law Ursula sympathized with Maria, and she accompanied Maria to prison. The two were then burnt at the stake—one after the other—for being considered heretics. While they awaited their death, they joyfully sang hymns of praise to God.
Hear the words of Pilgram Marpeck, one of the most important early Anabaptist leaders who lived in Southern Germany:
Our highest joy shall be that in heaven our names are written in the book of life. To show with unwavering faith and certain hope love toward the neighbor, and thus prove our love of God, is and shall be our highest joy.
Friends, like our Anabaptist forebearers, may we learn to abide in Jesus, the true vine. May we seek to continually nurture our relationship to him as the source of our life, our love, and our joy. May our abiding give us the strength and the courage to be faithful and hopeful, even in the most trying times. And through our abiding, may we joyfully bear fruit that blesses the people and the world around us, fruit that gives honor and glory to God. Amen.
