Of Vines Vineyards and Abiding!

United Broughton/Croxton/Chapel

3rd May at 11 am at St Paul's, Croxton.

John 15.1-8

In thirteen days’ time I will be celebrating a birthday, when thanks to some catchy lyrics from Paul McCartney I will be able to ask my wife if she still cares for me and if she will still look after me!

There are a few odd things about getting older that kind of creep up on you and take you by surprise.

Just the other day as I was driving somewhere I was listening to Radio Stoke. (Radio One is way too loud!)  That might be bad enough, but then Gardeners Question Time came on – and I went on listening - and listening with interest.

(With huge respect for all lovers of gardening of more tender years)

However I remain largely ignorant about all matters horticultural.

Having been in Ministry for nearly thirty years we have traveled around a fair bit and have had to deal with some pretty neglected gardens during that time. I remember digging down into the back garden in a council house we lived in during our Luton days.

As I dug down it became like a bizarre archaeological dig, I found a mattress and all sorts of other stuff. Eventually we found a path that must have been at least 2 feet down, buried under soil and other stuff.

The Vicarage Garden in Luxulyan in Cornwall however did beat us. It was huge and had become a veritable wilderness. I was always scared I would lose one of the children and have to send out a Search and Rescue Team.

Our current garden in the Manse at Stafford is basically okay, but just been neglected for about a year. So I am trying to re-establish the borders as one of the first task.

But I don’t really know whether what I am digging up and consigning to the tip is a good flower or plant or a pernicious weed. I can tell the basic stuff, I know what dandelions look like and nettles and brambles. I am also transplanting some stuff and pruning the Wisteria and Honeysuckle that was growing at the front of the house and taking over everything and blocking out light.

‘I am the vine and my father is the Gardner.’

(You were wondering when I would get around to the Gospel reading weren't you!)

Jesus himself may have been a gardener as well as a carpenter come builder. 1^st century Palestine was an Agrarian society.

However Jesus isn't merely using a horticultural metaphor, but saying something far more profound. When we read our Scriptures we need to learn to see links and patterns, we need to take cognizance of echoes and themes that we have come across before.

We have to learn to do that because we are not 1^st century Jews living in Palestine.

So what do we hear when Jesus speaks of the vine?

We should hear a rich and deep metaphor that was very much part of the warp and weft of how the Jewish people thought of themselves.

The picture of the Vine is a picture of Israel transplanted from Egypt and placed in the Promised Land.

Psalm 80.8-11 ‘You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its boughs to the sea, its shoots as far as the river.'

In Isaiah chapter 5 we read a very well-known piece about a Song of the Vineyard. About how Yaweh had planted this vineyard, nurtured it and tended it and looked for good fruit and yet it yielded only bad fruit.

Then do you recall the story of that we find in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke – sometimes called the Parable of the Tenants.

The story tells of a man who planted a vineyard and a built a wine press and a watchtower. (Nothing to do with J.W.s)

He rented out the farm to tenants. At harvest time he sent servants to collect some of the fruit. But the tenants beat him and chased him away. Eventually the owner sent his son, thinking they will show respect to him. But instead they killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.

That story needs to be read in the light of Isaiah 5 and other related passages.

So you can see why this story about the vineyard in John 15 is not simply a 

good horticultural illustration.

This is a story that is as deep and as rich as the very best and most expensive of red wines – wines that have a long, long history.

‘I am’ – the well know motif of John’s Gospel. I am the true vine – here Jesus declares that in him is Israel personified, he is now Israel coming into the Promised Land.

And he brings with him a new people – those who will abide in him, those who will stay close to him.

Those who will accept the pruning and cutting away of long held and deep traditions so that the true vine as God intended can flourish.

Now I did have one bush in our current garden that I think was some kind of rose bush. However it had become so long and spindly it was hard to tell, and most of it was dead anyway. So, down went the lot, cut right back almost to the roots.

Those branches I cut off would soon die and find their way to the tip.

‘…apart from me you can nothing.’

It is a partnership – the whole enterprise of God is to bring about a new heaven and new earth, a redeemed and restored cosmos - as we read in Romans 8. 21-23…

‘…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.… ‘

Can I ask you this morning how big is your concept of God, of the Jesus story, of the Lord’s Prayer that is often on our lips but in reality far away from our hearts and even further away from our hands and feet in making it a reality. 

Of course, of course, there are some massive questions that we in our generation face, in the same way each generation has had to face.

Where is God in the appalling disaster in Nepal. Where is God protecting His people as Isis continues to rampage and brutally kill and murder with impunity men, woman and children?

Those and many others like them are hard questions to face.

I remember many years ago visiting Speakers Corner in London when I lived not far away. On one occasion someone took me to task about the Christian faith and successfully deconstructed so much of my belief and made it sound like so much bunkum.

I walked the couple of miles home in sombre mood. However as I walked I kept thinking, maybe, but Jesus is real. I know Jesus is real, I know that I have experienced his love for me.  I know the love, care and support shown to me by others of God’s family.

I was cut, pruned, taken right back to the roots, but remained in Him.

Gradually I grew back, and I grew back stronger and more fruitful.

None of us like to be pruned, but think of it this way.

My Father is the Gardener, a skilled Gardner, who is not like me with my honeysuckle, randomly hacking away at each and everything.

Pruning a vine is a skillful operation and the gardener needs to get in very close to the vine.

When things are most painful, when it seems the pruning is almost unbearable, it is then that your Heavenly Father is the closest. 

So, we may not have a ready answer to those who would quiz us about our faith in God when disaster strikes.

We may not have a ready answer, but we can know Jesus. We can abide in Him. Rev 3.20 ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ 

We can take faith in the resurrection as sure evidence that Jesus as Israel personified has entered the Promised Land. We can become part of a new faithful people peculiar unto God who are being rooted and established.

Mixing metaphors and referring back to the passage from Romans, childbirth is painful, even for Princesses. However there is joy in new life, new hope and new promises.

So, let me ask you again, how big if your God?

And let me ask you how fruitful are you?

In the back garden of our home in Hove, Sussex we had a pear tree. How did I know it was a pear tree – because it produced pears?

However we tried to harvest the pears one year and it was complete waste of time. The tree hadn't been pruned and tended and looked after. The fruit produced were very small and bitter and fit only for insects to enjoy or the compost bin.

What fruit am I bearing and what fruit are you bearing?

A few weeks ago I was at a Church Army Gathering. This brings together 

Members of the Church Army Mission Community. Among those gathering are our retired Officers, many of whom have served in God’s vineyard for many, many years. And it shows, their bodies may have grown weary but their spirits remain strong and from eyes that may have become dull physically, the light of the Spirit shines brightly.

When someone tells me that they have been coming to church all their life I would expect to see some good fruit. We have a list of what some of this fruit looks like in Galatians 5:22-23

'But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.'

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Try putting your name against that fruit and see how you measure up!

However remember we all are a work in progress!  God loves us just as we are, but loves us enough not to leave us that way.

I would expect that if people have been abiding in Jesus for decades then it would show.

My wife and I will have been married for 33 years this year. One of the things a number people have noticed is how much we are beginning to look alike. (Much as some say is the same for pets and their owners!)

Now we don’t know what Jesus looked like physically, and that’s not the point anyway. The point is that we abide in him and bear fruit.

This is how we will show we are disciples.

There is a world of difference between being a Church goer, a follower of Jesus and being a disciple.

The Greek word for disciple is mathetes, which means “learner,” the word indicated “thought accompanied by endeavour.”  This meant that a disciple was not merely a person who was learning something as a fact but was actively learning to adhere to the principles of whoever he was following.  In the ancient times, when a person chose to become a disciple of another person, the disciple would follow his teacher everywhere. 

He would live where he lived, he would sleep where he slept and he would eat where he ate. He would be with his teacher every moment so that he could learn everything about him. 

Augustine of Hippo wrote…

‘Jesus Christ will be Lord of all, or he will not be Lord at all.’

I am the Vine (said Jesus) – the true Israel, sent to do all that Israel was meant to do, to be a light to the Gentiles, to show to a watching world what it means to live a life as an authentic human being lined up with God’s will plan and purpose.

As disciples of Jesus we are called to work and labour in God’s vineyard, so that we may see a realized Lord’s Prayer, where His Kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. That means right here and right now!

Let us pray – (Ignatius of Loyola)

Teach us, good Lord, 

to serve you as you deserve,

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not to heed the wounds,

to toil and not to seek for rest,

to labour and not to ask for any reward,

save that of knowing that we do your will. Amen.