Sixth Easter, 2005:

A woman bent down to pick up a bag of apples in the grocery store.  Her back went into a terrible spasm and she froze in position and let out a loud shriek in pain.  Another shopper leaned down and with empathy in her voice said, “If you think the apples are high, wait until you see the price of the peaches!”

Good fruit does come at a high price.  That’s generally as true of spiritual fruit as it is with natural fruit.  Both require some tending, some feeding, and some pruning in order to produce as intended.  Growth that just happens, without any tending, any cultivating, or any nurturing rarely results in positive yield.  Sometimes we would have volunteer plants to sprout up in unusual places on the farm.  My granddad and uncle would yank them out to the ground saying, “They won’t amount to much out here alone.”

The lesson from John 15:1-8 deals with the vital teaching Jesus gave his followers about how to bear good fruit.  He calls himself the true vine and God the Father is the vine grower.  Branches that do not bear fruit are cut away and those that do bear fruit are pruned in order to bear even more fruit.  Those who abide (live in) Jesus and allow Jesus to abide (live in) them bear much fruit.  Attempting to live and produce on our own does not work, he said, and such attempts lead to withering.  Withered spirits rarely do so by themselves; they tend to cause others around them to wither, as well.

Be clear, dear people, in your thinking.  Bearing fruit that result from being grafted into the true vine is what we must be about on this Christian journey.  That our fruit be genuine, true, authentic, and reflective of the true vine needs to be a primary concern for us. 

We spend a great deal of our time, energy, and money seeking the authentic article, the real thing.  Saying that something is the real thing sells more than a popular soft drink.  On occasion Shirley and I have watched The Antique Road Show on public television.  From time to time people will bring in an article to have it appraised and find out that they have the genuine, very valuable, piece.  Often people will be told that what they think is valuable is really a well-made fake.

Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, we have to settle for a reproduction.  Certain genuine articles are so rare or so expensive that most of us cannot get them.  Very often our language trips us up and gives away what we are about.  Things are advertised as “genuine antique reproductions.”  “The next best thing to the real thing,” or “indistinguishable from the real item, except by an expert,” are phrases used to entice us.  We become so accustomed to settling for the next best thing in so many areas of our lives, we are tempted to do the same thing in the spiritual realm as well. 

The Gospel from John talks about the real thing, the genuine article, authentic fruit that comes from abiding in the true vine.  So, why abide in the true vine?  Why worry about what kind of fruit we produce?  Why would Jesus the Christ teach his followers such a thing?

I would want to suggest that the first reason he said what he said is because he is who he is.  He said, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vine grower (the true owner of it all.”  Therefore, all others are copies, counterfeit, or pale reproductions.  We are to be branches of that true vine.  It is not our race, our social station, our nationality, or our religious denomination that makes us branches of the true vine.  The only thing that can do that, that can make us living, fruit-bearing branches of the true vine is to have, in faith, an intimate, living, soul-feeding relationship is and with the only one who is the true vine, the one we know as Jesus the Christ.

The second reason he said what he said to his followers is that he understands in a very real way that useless always invites disaster.  That is the first principle of the whole Christian enterprise.  Our usefulness comes as we are grated into, abide in the true vine.  If we go off by ourselves, give our allegiance to that which is counterfeit, depending on our own abilities to find the proper nourishment for growth and direction, we will always fail to bear good fruit and we lose the vital feeding that comes only from the true vine. 

All good fruit-bearing branches must be pruned.  That is to say, those things that lead to disease and malformation must be laid aside as we live in the true vine.  The pruning occurs as we recognize those things about ourselves that lead to negative production and as we ask the owner of the vineyard to remove those hurtful defects from our character.  Pruning, while not pleasant and very often painful, is always a voluntary activity between the branches and the owner of the vineyard.

Finally, the true vine said what he said to his followers to remind them that they were about to undertake an awesome responsibility.  Our disciple-

ship is proven as we bear much fruit.  There is no way around that responsibility.  That also means that we proclaim by word and deed to others who we are and whose we are.  As never before, we need to bear fruit that brings glory and honor to the owner.  That means patterning our lives after the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  We need to arrange our lives, our prayer time, our times of meditation and quiet, and renew our commitment to join with others in regular worship so that there is never a day when we give ourselves to opportunity to forget that the owner of the vineyard is the genuine source of all that we are and all that we have.  Such an arrangement will help insure that the fruits of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and compassion will be born on our branches.  Those are a few of the good fruits that result from our relationship with, in, and to the true vine. 

St. Paul said it best in I Corinthians, “So faith, hope, love abide; these three.  But the greatest of these is love.”

Remember that we are branches, Jesus the Christ is the true vine, and the Father is the owner of it all.  And remember that the true vine said these things because he is who he is, that uselessness invites disaster, and we share the awesome responsibility of bearing good fruit.  As we abide in him and he abides in us we watch in awe and wonder as the good fruits are produced and shared with others.

Not doing those things simply means that the fruits sown by the great adversary; hate, revenge, narrow-mindedness, envy, malice, judgmental attitudes, resentment, ignorance, and a whole host of others will continue to grow.  Those bad fruits are always much more expensive than the good ones.  And that is just too high a price to pay.  Amen.