This text came up years ago when I served the Watkins Glen Presbyterian Church, right in the heart of wine country, so I went on and on about grapevines: how they are trimmed and tied up this time of year, how the vineyarders prepare them for the growing season so they will bear bigger and more grapes, and how the branches trimmed off end up in big piles, which are burned, composted, or turned in to grapevine wreaths! Dick Bornholdt smiled at me at the door and said, “Well, you’ve grasped the basic tenets of viticulture, but I’m afraid you’re not quite ready to do it for a living!” Whether fruit trees or grapevines, both common around me, when the growers do their pruning, they look for new growth that goes horizontally. Sideways growing branches will carry fruit, so they are carefully left to bear. But the shoots that go straight up will only grow leaves, and the workers snip them off so they won’t sap precious energy and nutrients from the rest of the plant. The vertical shoots suck energy away from fruit production (which is the main point). That’s why the trees in an apple orchard are nice and round and compact and dense with fruit and why a wild apple tree is tall and scraggly and has fewer apples. Likewise, there are tight vines under cultivation and scraggly grapevines in the wild. Jesus’ warning here is that Christian discipleship is a matter of fruit production. Christianity is a matter of generating major quantities of good quality fruit for Jesus. Growing straight up is distracting from the real point. Those distractions, says Jesus, will be ruthlessly pruned away for the sake of the whole tree. That makes a lot of sense, but it’s also pretty harsh!
On a personal level, we all have assorted traits or preferences or quirks or favorite things that may need to be pruned a bit. Getting mad often at others has to be hacked off right at the start. But some of those pet things which distract us or draw energy from our beings might need to be trimmed only a bit, just to make sure that hobbies or favorite sports or whatever don’t take over. Over-working is clearly a problem for many people in our society (including many of us in this congregation!), which may greatly interfere with our spiritual growth and life. If we throw all our energy into just a few things, like an over-emphasis on work or getting money, we will discover that we have a couple of branches shooting out, but no strong horizontal branches and very little fruit by which Jesus can judge us a productive tree; we are out of balance. A little of a lot of things is ok, but we have to keep our lives rounded.
The parable of the branches abiding or being pruned also bears reassurance. When we are connected to the root of life and grace, Jesus Christ, the true vine, we abide in his life, just like the trunk and branches and buds and blooms and bunches and grapes do. We draw nourishment, draw life, life itself from being branches of the vine which is Christ. The old phrase is to stay “rooted” in Christ. That’s how our spiritual cells get fed, how we grow and blossom and finally bear fruit... which is, after all the whole point of being a grapevine or an apple tree. The images for a Christian life abiding in God are all about fruit. It’s not about being purely ornamental, although a grace-filled life is attractive. Nope, the parables are of olive trees, date trees, grapevines, grains, fruit trees— species that produce something for the benefit of others. So there is an end product, a result, by which our Christian life is assessed: did we produce fitting fruit, and abundantly? Obviously, to produce good fruit we must draw from the roots and trunk, from vine, and take up good nutrients, soak up the sun of righteousness, and produce. Abide in the vine, and so bear abundant fruit.
I love that quaint old Middle English word, “abide.” In this day and age of individuals going off on their own and “doing their own thing,” “abiding” reminds us that we need each other and that we need God’s Holy Spirit abiding in and through and among us to give us the Life of Christ. It may be a quaint word, “abide,” but it is a wonderful experience, a life-giving experience, to abide in our Lord Jesus Christ, the true vine from which we grow in grace. We draw our nourishment and support and life from the vine which is Christ. As 1 John says, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
In Christ,
David
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