When Jesus is said by St John to describe himself as the true vine the evangelist provides a dynamic vision, one of climbing, spreading and fruiting. It is one of scripture’s great images of revitalisation that touches on a receipe for our fruitfulness as a church and as individual Christians that is from the Lord himself.
Alone of the four Gospels St John omits the account of the institution of the eucharist. He more than compensates by this passage and the earlier passage on the Bread of Life. If we could think that participation in the eucharist was secondary to St John we would be brought up short by Chapter 6 verse 53: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 15 in many interpretations was originally the follow on from the account of the Last Supper and foot washing in John 13, an alternative last discourse chapter 14. Such a connection would explain the Eucharistic symbolism of union with Christ to death. The fruit of the vine is the means by which believers right up to this hour are made sharers in the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ in anticipation of the life of the world to come.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Our participation in the holy eucharist is captured here as surely as in the words of St Paul in 1 Corinthians 10.17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. To be Christian is to attend to God in union with Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. The eucharistic bread makes us one with Christ through the Spirit and through the unbroken apostolic succession of bishops and priests. We are branches grafted onto the true vine which is Christ inseparable from his church.
The eucharist is the great source of the church’s revitalisation. The church makes the eucharist and the eucharist makes the church. I am the vine, you are the branches. As often as we attend to God with wine and bread the work of redemption that centres on Calvary is set forth and the fruitfulness of the church, Christ our Vine, is increased.
Our dwelling together in the church as branches of Christ the Vine is most perfectly expressed in Sunday obligation to the eucharist. ‘The Lord’s people gather on the Lord’s Day the Lord’s House around the Lord’s table’. In this ordered gathering is both the image and the reality of Christ‘s body, head and limbs as Paul puts it or vine and branches a in St John. From the bread and wine offered and consecrated the Lord’s people draw revitalisation from the Lord week by week.
If only we believed it! The secret of church revitalisation is to see ourselves and believe ourselves to be what God is nurturing us to be.
If John 15 is indirectly a reminder of corporate worship it is directly a call to the prayerful discipleship of individuals. We attend to God in worship but also in personal prayer and the conscious stewardship of our lives. 4Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
Just as a natural branch carries the life giving sap through itself to serve the fruit so by divine power and consent of our wills we see God providing in us and through us to give life to the world around us.
John 15 has impact because it is full of commands. Abide in me what a wake up call! There are enormous implications. If our Christianity is self serving, if it focuses our selfish spiritual preoccupations, there will be little fruitfulness because we won’t be conduit branches but parasitical branches sucking in the experience of the Holy Spirit or Holy Communion or whatever grace comes our way. Abiding in the vine, in Christ, is a wake up call. It’s saying self reliance is out, or rather self reliance will get you so far, but not as far as the things that really impact this world and have significance in the next. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
A little branch of the vine can bear an enormous cluster of grapes because it is a conduit of life giving sap. A little faithfulness to Christ in scripture and eucharist and prayer can be enormously vitalising if it expresses a desire to be rooted in absolute dependence upon Our Lord and undoubting confidence in him. Part of the fruit this passage speaks of is prayer that cannot be misdirected because it is prayer that comes from obedient union with Jesus. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
The church’s mission is weak because her prayer is weak – which is my prayer and your prayer.
Church revitalisation isn’t about finding new techniques but investing the disciplines of worship and prayer with renewed expectancy of faith.
If your prayer is rooted in the Vine that is Jesus you know that you can ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
So be it – as we reflect for a moment and anticipate sharing once more in the offering of and communion imparted by the fruit of the Vine which will become our spiritual drink.
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