Abide in the Vine
John 15:1-2, 5-8, 26-27
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
Transcript
Please forgive any errors in this automatic transcript. Thank you!
I have a question to get us started. What is our primary job as Christians? I'm going to give you some options to think through. Is our primary job to be a good person, to read the Bible, or maybe to go to church, be a good person, or in this order, go to church, read the Bible. What do you think is our primary goal? I'm not going to make you raise your hand, but I want you to think about what your answer would be. I'm still not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I do wonder how many of you have figured out this is a trick question. The answer is really none of the above. All of these are good things, but our first job is to stay connected with God. Now, I fully recognize that, especially going to church and reading your Bible are ways we do that. But there are means. Our job is to stay connected with God and, I should add, connected with each other as the body of Christ. Our job is to stay connected with God. Being a good person, that's fruit. That's something that comes from a connection to God. There's plenty of other fruits. You can look at the fruit of the spirit. Those are fruits that come from a connection to God. But the connection comes first. The image that Jesus uses is that of a vine and a branch. That we are the branches. That Jesus is the vine, that the father is the gardener. And when we stay connected as the branches to Jesus, to the vine, we receive that nourishment and we can produce fruit, but we have to stay connected to him. If we're not connected, then we have fallen off or been cut off from the vine and we're just on the ground. Jesus says it's as good as just a stick to be burned in the fire. Y'all probably have a pile of firewood around your house. We. We do now, too. And that's what it's for. That firewood is there to be turned into fire, but it's certainly not producing any kind of fruit because it's not attached to a tree anymore. Sometimes. These sticks don't get used for fire. They become dogs. Chew toys. Dogs love sticks. I've got two dachshunds. Um, and neither of them have done this. Oh, but you know what? My Labrador growing up. Let's talk about him. Midnight. He was my first puppy. And, um, he had this, uh, very nice large pen that my dad built for him. And the opening is like, it's probably about as wide as. Yeah, it's just part of the pulpit. And he found himself a stick as a very adventurous little lab puppy that was about this wide. He was so excited to take it back to his house. And so what does he do? He runs full force with the stick and boom, right into the opening. He did not figure. I don't think he figured out how to turn to get in. Did we help him? No. We watched from the window because it was funny. Sometimes sticks get used to be chewed on by dogs. I have a dog story for you. That wasn't just a random dog story, but I'm gonna put a pin in it for now, before we can understand what it means for us to be connected to the vine, connected to Jesus. We have to understand what that connection is. We are being called to connect to the Trinity. What does that even mean? What is the Trinity? And for this, once again, I'm switching to my professor Leah hat. Um, last time Phil said I needed a slide to denote when Professor Leah was on and off. And I just thought this baby was really cute. Except now I just kind of want to pinch it, but I gotta focus. So, Professor Leah's on. Let's talk about the Trinity, and you're going, oh, no, not the Trinity, Leah. Yes, the Trinity is Trinity Sunday, where we remember and celebrate. God's nature is Trinity. The Trinity is three persons in one being technically not a contradiction. Three persons, one being not a contradiction, but certainly a mystery. The three parts of the Trinity are equal in power. Equal in glory. There's no hierarchy, but they do have different roles that they play. It's something that can't fully be comprehended by us. I'm explaining it as briefly as I can, but we can accept that at the very least. Again, not a contradiction. Certainly a divine mystery. And my favorite thing to tell people when they struggle with this theology is if you could understand the nature of the Trinity who created you, your mind would be greater than that of God, and you are not God. So that person you're imagining isn't God either. God must be greater than you. He made you. And so of course, you're not going to fully understand a God who can create us. So it's a mystery. And because it's so difficult to understand, people have been trying to simplify it because I get it. It's so difficult to understand sometimes. And so I'm going to switch back to my my pastor hat or stole in this case. This is really funny. I'm really cute. Um, so switching back to Pastor Leah. Jesus invites us into that relationship, but we don't understand it. Not fully. We can't, but people try. So the more people have tried to understand the Trinity and make it fully comprehensible. I'm not talking about the fact that, yes, it is difficult. It's a mystery. But there are also those who have tried to take it and say, okay, let's make this something we can fully understand. You get the imagery of the egg, you've got the egg shell in the yolk and the egg whites. And, and that's kind of like God. Problem is, those are three different substances, all part of the egg. Yes, but there are three different substances. God is all one substance. And because I told you, I've switched back to the pastor hat, I'm going to tell you the story about the dog now. Those grandfather, his name was Hayward, had this tiny little Chihuahua named Chico who was his very best friend. It was the sweetest relationship, but also hilarious. Hayward was a I, you know, a full man. Yeah. Six two three hundred and twenty five yeah. There you go. He was a he was a big full man. He was, uh, when I met him, I think he was already in his nineties. Right. Yeah. But still getting around pretty well. And, uh, but his way of getting into his favorite chair was to kind of just toss himself backwards. It was the easiest way to get in. That's also Chico's favorite place to sit. And did he look to see if Chico was there before he threw his three hundred and twenty pounds into that chair? No, Chieko saw him coming and just made the fastest dash he could. He didn't always make it out in time. Somehow he always survived that. But then he just nuzzled himself down right next to Hayward. They were. They were two peas in a pod. They shared coffee in the morning. Don't give your dogs coffee. But they shared coffee in the morning together. They both had a little bit of a neurotic relationship with cheeseburgers. If we went out, we had to bring him a cheeseburger. It wasn't an option if we walked to the fridge. We had to get the dog a piece of cheese because he would tremble and shake because he loves cheese that much. Very much. Two peas in a pod. They. They were perhaps true soulmates. His pop and that little dog. But are they the same? We might say that broadly, like, oh man, it's like they're the same person. But of course we know they're not. One is a large human being and the other one is a tiny Chihuahua. They are not inherently the same. They're not made of the same stuff. And how this relates to the Trinity is one of the ways people have tried to break it apart and break apart. That connection is to say, well, Jesus is kind of like the father, but he's not divine in the same sense. He's not really made of the same stuff. It's a bit like a Chihuahua and a human man that somehow have the same personality. But in order to understand what that relationship is within the Trinity, we have to reject that. That's actually heresy. To say that Jesus is less than the father. The Trinity is one. We have three persons, one being three persons, in, one being one nature, who have loved each other since before any of us were here. Eternal. That's a hard concept for us to grasp to. God is eternal. When it says in the Bible, God is love, you notice it doesn't say God made love. God is love. God is love and always has been between the three persons of the Trinity, always doing what's best for each other, always looking out for each other. And then when they made us, they invited us into that. We might be a little bit like the Chihuahua in the story actually says we were made like God. Of course we are not God, so maybe we're more like the Chihuahua, where we have a lot in common, but we're a little different and certainly less powerful. But we're made to be like God. We're invited into that relationship with him, that relationship of love that has always been. That's a big concept to grasp, to put our minds around something that's always been. And we get to be part of that eternal love, Like a branch on a vine. Like a branch on a vine. So how do we do that? Now, certainly my trick question at the beginning when it says going to church and reading your Bible, yes, those are great ways to engage and stay connected with God. But there's other ways too. In fact, we've named some of them in this service so far. And the word itself is service. When we do the things of God, like how we're partnering with Young Memorial, when we do the things of God, like when we partner, as we have with Murphy Harp's children's centers, to support kids in foster care. When we do the things of God, we receive that new nutrients from the vine. It's not just about aligning your hearts with God, it's about being the hands and feet of Christ that when we do God's work, we are receiving. His his goodness, which creates good fruit in us. And yes, that creates good fruit. Perhaps you um. Perhaps you volunteer for something. And in that moment, God uses it to create more patience in you. Or God uses it to teach you about true peace, true contentment in any situation. And suddenly you, being the hands and feet of Christ, has produced new fruit in you, and certainly in those that you are ministering to. When we do the things of God. We are staying connected to that vine. There is a term in scripture that Jesus calls the advocate. But in the Greek, it's Paraclete. Paraclete is a fun word because there's no good English translation for it. We're all kind of just guessing Paraclete. And that's not true that we're guessing. There are so many different words that can mean Paraclete, but any one of them on their own is not enough. It can mean advocate. It can mean intercessor. It can mean counselor, it can mean helper. All of those things and more are all part of this word, Paraclete, which Jesus says is what the Holy Spirit is picking up the job that Jesus started and the Holy Spirit picks up. Jesus bore fruit in his disciples when they stayed connected to him. You remember, they didn't do it um, perfectly, right? They had a lot of times they were very confused about what Jesus was doing. Very, very confused. But it didn't matter that they didn't fully understand. It mattered that they kept coming back to Jesus, that they were committed to Jesus, and that he bore that fruit in them. And so Jesus is saying, when I leave you, you are not alone. You're not going to have to make this fruit by yourself. That's not even possible because you're just a branch. I am the vine. And now the spirit is who connects us to God. The Spirit indwelling each and every one of us, the spirit, the Paraclete, who connects us. And so he connects us through Scripture, reading through time together in worship, through service, through fellowship, together, over a meal. He connects us to each other, strengthening the branch that is Macedonia. And he connects us to himself where he pours himself into us. And it's our job to just stay connected to that branch and just say, yes, I receive what you're giving me, and I'm willing to do whatever you want. I'll tell you a story. When I was in youth, we had a. A youth missions called lap. We lived in Lawrenceville. It's called Lawrenceville Assistance Project, and you might have learned that I am not the most physically fit kind of person. Never have been. Don't. I'm not really interested in learning how to put shingles on a roof, but that's important. It's important to do, especially when you're going around into people's homes and helping make repairs. And some of my peers who were also like fifteen or sixteen years old were doing a great job. But I that was not my thing. If there was a place to paint, that's where I was. I could paint. But it was through lap that I learned that when we serve God, when we serve people to serve God, that is a that is something that forms us. And what was so surprising to so many of us who participated in Lap is we had this very teenager mindset of, I'm going to go in and help you, and you're going to be so glad for my help. But so many times through the conversations and the connections that were made as we worked on these people's homes and the connections we made with the homeowners really was life giving. It poured life into us. It gave these teenagers a broader perspective than they typically had. And so through service, God connected us to that vine, strengthen the branch that was that youth ministry and formed each and every one of us. Yes, the the, the youth time was great. The time of learning was great that we had throughout the year. That's important. But the doing in many ways is where we see God creates some incredible fruit and each and every one of us. So I want to encourage you. Yes, look for the fruit and celebrate it, but also focus on staying connected. Stay connected to that vine. There will be no fruit without the vine. Stay connected to the vine. Yes. Through prayer. Yes. Through Scripture reading. Yes. Through coming to church and yes, through fellowship and service. Any of those doors that God gives you to walk through to strengthen your relationship with him, take them. That's not me saying you need to go out and do all the things and work really hard. I'm telling you, look for the ways that God has opened some doors for you to walk through to strengthen your relationship with him, and to tell others about the life that's found in Jesus. When you're connected to that vine. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you that you are with us. I thank you that you give us everything we need to produce fruit. That when Jesus left, we weren't left alone. The father you sent the Holy Spirit for us. I thank you for inviting us into that eternal relationship. That relationship of love and support. That has always been. That's one thing that was not created. It has always been. And we thank you that we get to participate in that love. Help us to stay connected to you, not out of obligation, so that we can experience more of that love and share it with others. Amen.