St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Fifth Sunday of Easter/Year B: John 15:1-8
May 2, 2021
Week by week we affirm our faith in the familiar words of the ancient Nicene Creed. I suspect that although they may be memorized, there are familiar words that do not make a whole lot of sense unless someone guides us into deeper understanding.
For example, we say that “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father…begotten not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.” What is this business of begetting versus making? What does this have to do with our gospel passage in John, in which Jesus proclaims himself as the true vine and his Father as the vinegrower?
Twentieth-century author and lay theologian, C.S. Lewis, in his classic book, Mere Christianity, offered one of the best explanations for begetting versus making:
“When you beget,” said Lewis, you beget something of the same kind as yourself…but when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself…What God begets is God, just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man.”[1] Tapping into this concept of begetting versus making may help us to better understand Jesus’s message to his disciples, and to us, in our gospel passage in John today.
Jesus said to his disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes to make it bear more fruit” (vv.1-2). It is worth noting that Jesus’ audience is the existing community of faith. And, by virtue of our baptism, we are included in what Jesus called, “every branch” in him. It is clear that God, the vinegrower, expects the branches, the community of believers, to yield fruit that is born from God—that is the ultimate objective. Living branches are solely dependent on the nourishment and physical structure of the vine in order to produce the expected fruit.
As the branches of Jesus’ vine, the community of believers—can only manifest the characteristics of their source of life—Jesus, through him all things were made. The branches of the vine exist to fulfill a specific purpose—to bear fruit. In terms of the faith community, the bearing of fruit means increasing the community of believers. This spiritual fruit cannot come into being without Jesus. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” said Jesus (v.5). Just as branches are incapable of living, let alone bearing fruit apart from the vine, so too are we, incapable of bearing God-glorifying fruit apart from the Son of God—the true vine.
St. Paul’s is a branch brought forth from the vine of Jesus, a branch that is expected to bear much fruit. But how do human beings become a part of the true vine, the eternal life source in order to reflect, in this created world, at this appointed time, the life of the world to come?
Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s body—and it is indissoluble (that’s the “We believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”)—it can never be taken away. Without baptism the biological life of humankind and the spiritual life of God remain disconnected. Through baptism, the soul is cleansed of sin in order to make space for new life.
Incidentally, the Greek root word for “prune” and for “cleanse” is the same. So, we see the connection with Jesus’ use of the vine imagery and baptism. Apart from Jesus, there is only disconnection from God, resulting in failed fruit, distorted by sin or no fruit at all.
When we are baptized we are empowered to become the fruit of God in the world—we are to bring forth more of what we are becoming. As God-fruit, we are to beget more God-fruit. And, that fruit is love. Baptism is the first step, but it is not the only step; we are to stay in Jesus in order to become fruit and bear fruit.
The word, abide, starkly contrasts anything that indicates being apart from. The epistle in First John emphasizes the mutuality of abiding presence—we abide in God and he in us. To mutually abide is a state of being in which one intentionally enters into another’s presence and stays there. First John suggests that when we love God’s people, it is that intentionality, driven by love, that sustains us in the abiding presence of God. In the action of loving our neighbors—we abide in God who is the source of all love and who is love itself. In the lasting presence of that divine love, our human nature is necessarily transformed by that love so that when God looks at his created human beings, he sees his only begotten Son. And, when the human beings of this world see us, they, too see God’s only begotten Son.
“Apart from me you can do nothing,” said Jesus. Certainly, this is a message to individual believers, but it is also a message to the faith community. As the body of Christ, of which Jesus is the head, the church cannot fulfill its mission in the world without Jesus. As a faith community, we must hold each other accountable to keeping Jesus as our focus, and be vigilant, as we nurture the soul of this new, growing and vulnerable congregation. We must guard against the falsehood of self-reliance, functioning apart from Jesus. It is something that can happen unintentionally resulting in a spiritually-deficient congregation. Such a congregation is incapable of producing fruit that glorifies God. God is glorified by authentic and intentional relationship with his son, Jesus, which bears ripe fruit in the world, with the sweet-smelling aroma of Christ.
As vessels of God’s abiding love in the world, we are tasked with showing up in the world as loving beings who work to connect people with the love of God through Christ. Philip’s willingness to be led by the Spirit to join the a stranger, the Ethiopian eunuch, in the eunuch’s chariot, is one example. From that one meeting, Philip proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus, and subsequently baptized him.
We are to do the same by going out into the world, being led by, and empowered by, the Holy Spirit to baptize new believers and to nurture them to the full stature of Christ throughout their natural lives. In our shared life in Christ, our fruit is our deepened faith. Our fruit is the growth and vitality of the faith community. Our fruit is bearing the hope in Christ’s resurrection that this world of despair has already been cleansed—pruned—to make space for the life of the world to come. May we be so empowered to be fruitful and to multiply. Amen.
[1] Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster). 1980, p. 138
