March 7, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

HANGIN’ IN WITH JESUS!
John 15:1-17
Third in Sermon Series: Journey to the Cross

Have you noticed lately how some people seem to be getting spring fever? Cindy commented last Sunday afternoon how many people were dressed in springy clothes last Sunday—and ditching the heavy coats of winter. I don’t know about you, but I’m really ready for spring!

As most of you know, Cindy and I were in Ohio just a couple of weeks ago. They’ve had a ton of snow there this year! There was probably a foot of snow on the ground in the Cleveland area when we got there and it seemed like it snowed more every day!—and, from what we’re told, it’s just kept snowing! Enough already! I got home to Idaho, and to my amazement my tulips and daffodils had sprouted through the ground! On taking a closer look, some of our bushes are beginning to bud. Spring is going to be here soon!—at least in Idaho!

It was about this same time of the year when Jesus spoke the words I want us to look at this morning. Maybe things were starting to sprout there, too, prompting him to illustrate his point by referring to dynamics of nature and of farming. Most people in the ancient Middle East knew something about vineyards. They were part of their lives. So, when Jesus spoke about grapevines and its branches, they all got the picture.

It’s actually part of the last things Jesus got to say to His disciples before going to the Cross. He wasn’t days away from the Cross now…just hours…so you know that what He had to say was pretty significant. Listen as I read the words of Jesus from John’s Gospel, chapter 15, beginning at verse 1—
[Read John 15:1-17, NIV]

I really like Jesus’ organic analogy, because it paints a picture for us of the kind of relationship each one of us can have with Him—a living, breathing, growing, dynamic relationship. Like branches that sprout and grow off the main vine, we must remain vitally connected to Christ. We’re the branches; He is the Vine.

I don’t know if you’ve worked with plants before or not, but maybe some of you know what it’s like to work in a garden or flower bed. I know, maybe your mom or dad or maybe your wife made you do it! But have you ever come upon a branch or a stem that looked like it was still alive, but when you got to messing around with it, you discovered that it was barely connected anymore to the main plant. Maybe the leaves hadn’t even withered yet, but all it took was one gentle movement and suddenly you found yourself holding a piece of the plant that was no longer part of the plant! Maybe you were afraid you’d get into trouble for breaking it off, so maybe you tried sticking it back into the middle of the plant…but the truth is that it wasn’t going to live. It had actually already died—it just didn’t appear dead yet. But give it a day or two, and you’d find a limp, shriveled up stalk of your plant—even if you tried sticking it back into the middle of the live plant!

Branches don’t grow unless they’re connected to the main plant—the vine, if you will! Branches that are no longer attached to the main plant shrivel up and die—because they aren’t getting proper nourishment from the plant. They’ve got to have the vine, the plant, from which they can grow! And if they’re not connected, they certainly won’t bear fruit—if they’re fruit trees—or flowers, if the plant is a flower—or grapes, if what we’re talking about are grapevines! It just won’t work. And even those of us who don’t know diddly-squat about growing things can pretty easily figure that out!

Jesus’ point was that the effectiveness of believers is dependent upon us being vitally and thoroughly connected with Christ. If we’re not connected with Christ in a vital relationship, then we’re not getting nourished. If we’re not getting nourished, we’re going to die, spiritually speaking. Whatever fruit is produced in our lives won’t be good fruit—it certainly won’t have come from Him or reflect Him in any way! The fruit of our lives will be unacceptable to Christ.

Jesus took the analogy a step further in saying that the Heavenly Father is the gardener. Now we understand that the gardener is the one responsible for getting water to the plant and nourishing it with fertilizer and trimming it back as He sees fit in order to help it be most productive. He’s an expert in these things—just as the diligent farmer of the vineyard has learned his stuff. So our Father protects and cultivates our growth so that we can produce all the fruit we possibly can.

And we are to bear fruit! Fruit-bearing is the natural consequence of a branch that has a healthy connection to the vine. It’s going to produce fruit! And the fruit of the follower of Jesus is not what we do as much as it is the character of Jesus Christ growing in us—His character reproduced within us and shared with us in love. This fruitfulness in the life of the follower of Jesus is as natural as grapes being produced by the branches of a grapevine. It’s simply to be expected—and if it’s not happening, it’s a clear sign that something’s wrong. The truth is that Jesus, in this analogy, leaves no place among His followers for “fruitless” disciples—those who are not growing in Christlikeness.

And the greatest attribute—the most important fruit we are to see growing in our lives—is Christ’s attribute of love. Jesus was looking around at His disciples—good men that they were, but certainly human—oh, so human! They were imperfect people, as they were about to prove in the scenes of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. But Jesus is expecting them to learn to love one another and learn to love others just as He has loved them! It wasn’t His pipedream for them—it was His absolute expectation of them! And the presence of such love in their lives would be the clear indicator of whether or not they were truly connected to the vine—and the absence of such love the clear indication that they weren’t.

And what He was asking of them was an impossibility, wasn’t it? How many of us can love everyone with a Christlike love simply on our own good nature? Oh, sure, we can love those who are easy for us to love! But God’s love prompts us to love all people—even the prickly ones, the thorny ones, the strange ones! It’s generally easy to love people who are a lot like us, but confronted with people who are entirely different from us we find that love isn’t always so easy!

How deeply are we to love one another? Jesus isn’t talking about just tolerating one another—not picking fights or not further irritating one another when we’re together! He’s not even talking about just being nice to one another! He’s certainly not speaking of some vague sentimental feeling. The kind of love Jesus expected of His followers has far more depth and strength than mere feelings. Rather, it’s a tough reality that is lived out in obedience. The kind of love that Jesus was speaking of is the kind of love that He was about to demonstrate to them all—the kind of love that prompts someone to lay down his or her life for their friends. Now that’s love! And it’s the kind of love we cannot produce in our lives unless we are vitally connected to the Vine, Jesus!

And it’s seen not just in physically laying down our lives for others, but in giving ourselves to them—giving them our time and our energies, taking care of their needs, authentically opening ourselves up to them, rather than hiding behind the masks that make us look so much better than we really are. Loving others means being real with them even about ourselves—because otherwise we come across as these perfectly put-together people who are reaching down to help someone who pitifully needs assistance! We need to somehow recognize that we are on this journey together! Even as your pastor, I’m not before you as someone who has it all figured out, helping pitiful you who must need my noble assistance! No! We’re on this journey together! The Lord may have put me in the front of the pack—but we’re clearly on this journey together! And along the way we’ve got to keep figuring out how it is that we are to love one another.

I was thinking the other day about how some of the things I do and say may have offended some of you or somehow made you feel unappreciated. It’s a challenging thing to come in as a new pastor—even more than two years into it now—without knowing all the rich and wonderful history of your lives and the life of this church. Some of you have been around here a long time. You’ve invested your lives in this church and have served nobly for many years—and then a new pastor comes along and treats you like everybody else—and, of all things, this new pastor occasionally suggests changing some of the things in which you have taken such personal pride and delight. Others of you have come to this fellowship in recent months and years, and we don’t know much about your past. Maybe you’ve been entrusted with a lot of leadership in another church body across many years and have been deeply loved and respected, and now you may feel like you’re treated like nobodies. I’m so sorry.

And then there are young people who look at this 53-year-old man and wonder how in the world he can possibly understand the world in which you live, and the challenges you face, and the garbage you have to put up with! And he stands before you week after week, so neat and tidy with his coat and tie on, and you’re thinking, “My world just ain’t that neat and tidy!”

I know that one of the greatest challenges within any body of believers is to learn to know one another and cherish one another as we all long to be loved and cherished. And Jesus understood that. I think that’s why He talked about this matter with His disciples on the night before He was crucified. He knew how challenging it would be for them to love one another, deeply and authentically, and how challenging it would be for them to live out His magnificent love for people in their own lives as they encountered people here, there and everywhere. And so Jesus was making it clear that the only way they could ever live out this fruit of Christ in their lives was to remain vitally connected with Him.

We also need to acknowledge that Jesus indicated serious consequences for failing to produce such fruit in our lives. His analogy was that the gardener cuts off any branch that does not produce fruit and throws that dead branch into the fire! Wow! That’s harsh! I don’t like those words from Jesus—but it’s what He said! It seems so much more severe judgment than what is now socially or politically correct in our culture, but Jesus was never one to sugarcoat the truth—and we need to hear His strong words of warning.

The analogy Jesus used was that of pruning. Pruning is necessary for any vine. When we lived next door to Burl and Viv Pipkins our first six months in Meridian, we had a grapevine on our property, right beside their house. Evidently Burl had been pruning it for years and knew what he was doing, and so he did it again. It was a necessary thing for the grapevine. Dead wood is worse than fruitlessness, for dead wood can harbor disease and decay. An untrimmed vine will develop long rambling branches that produce little fruit because most of the strength of the vine is given to growing wood. The vine-grower is concerned that the vine be healthy and productive. The pruning process is a picture of the divine dealing with our humanity. God removes the dead wood and disciplines the life of the believer and the body of the church so that it is directed into fruit-bearing.

Now, I don’t pretend to understand all the complexities of what Jesus is saying here. I don’t want to read things into His imagery that isn’t there, but neither do I want to miss what He was trying to say to the disciples and to us today. But it seems to me that there is a strong word of warning here for Christians that challenges the popular notion which some call “eternal security”—that once we are saved, we can never lose our salvation—regardless of what we do. I don’t believe that the Bible teaches eternal security, but I might also note that neither do I believe in what I’ve often called “eternal insecurity” which has made many Christians feel continually tenuous in their relationship with Christ, never enjoying the confidence that God clearly wants us to have as His children! But without going deeper into this theological argument, let’s just acknowledge that Jesus is clearly indicating here that Christians who fail to remain in Him and who fail to produce the fruit of righteousness and Christlikeness in their lives are treated like the fruitless branch that the Gardener cuts off and throws into the fire. And to avoid that, you and I must carefully give attention to remaining in the vine—in vital union with Christ!

And there are wonderful blessings in store for those who remain in the vine! First is the promise Jesus gave that—
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. (John 15:7)
It’s not the first time Jesus had spoken such words. Some have taken it to be the magic genie in a bottle—you rub the side of it just right and you get whatever you want! That’s not where Jesus was coming from. We’ve got to see it in the context of what He was saying—regarding our vital connection to Him and the whole-hearted obedience that thrives on that connection. He wasn’t promising to gratify every whim, but as we give ourselves to seeking the Lord’s will in our lives, the Lord will grant every request that helps accomplish that goal. And it’s a wonderful promise, because we’re not left hanging to our own devices! Jesus walks with us—and supplies everything we need in life to become the persons He wants us to be!

The second blessing I noted is the joy that Christ brings into our lives in the context of this vital relationship with Him. Look at verse 11—
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11)
Despite the many who have concluded otherwise, Jesus wants our lives to be full of joy! I like that! I need that!

One author noted that it’s a mystery and challenge to our way of thinking to note that the nearer Jesus came to the Cross the more “joy” became part of His vocabulary. And that does seem strange to our comfort-seeking American perspective! We so often confuse happiness and joy. Joy grows out of an intimate relationship with this One whom we love and serve, while happiness, even though it’s frantically pursued, turns out to be a disappointing illusion—like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that never ends up being there! But the more deeply we enter into a loving, obedient union with Jesus, the more full and complete is our joy in life. It’s like the music that comes from a musician who works and works on the creative discipline—and delights in the end result despite all the work of the process!

And let’s not neglect the blessing of Jesus calling us His “friends.” Jesus has broken down the wall which separates the master from the servant. Because His disciples are His friends, Jesus has opened His heart to them, holding nothing back from them. And, in the end, the “greater love” of Christ’s death would liberate them so they could give themselves with abandon as Christ’s “friends.” This friendship is more than casual acquaintance—it’s a partnership. Jesus has invited us to be partners with Him in His great mission in our world. Oh, we must never forget Who is Lord and who isn’t, but may we never forget the magnificent mystery of Jesus choosing us to be His friends!

The bottom line for us from this passage? Without Christ, we can do nothing! We’ve got to stay vitally connected to Him by prayer and obedience or we die—spiritually speaking. It’s that simple—and that challenging! No amount of diligent planning or endless effort or spiritual event-making on our own can produce the kind of fruit Jesus wants to produce in our lives! We can’t do it without Him! But if we obey Him and rely upon Him and stay vitally connected with Him, He can and will produce fruit of righteousness in and through our lives which will exceed our imaginations.

Just think of what was ahead for the disciples? Who would ever have imagined that they would have had such an impact on the world as Christ’s Holy Spirit empowered them and worked through them! I’m sure they were as shocked as anyone! But apparently Jesus wasn’t shocked at all…it was exactly what He had in mind for them…and for us.

And as we strive to stay vitally connected with Christ, let’s make sure that it’s Him where clinging to, and not just forms and traditions that have become important to us. We live in a world of rapid change—and for many of us those changes are frightening and unsettling. Our human nature is to resist changes that upset our applecart—and understandably so. But let’s make sure we don’t confuse remaining in Christ with hanging onto our way of doing things—whatever those ways might be. Let’s be careful what we’re willing to bleed for—or what we might want others to bleed for!—when it comes to the many changes taking place in the church world today. Throughout the ages, people have discovered the necessity for change in how the church carried out its mission—but those who have done it right, have done so without doing away with Christ Himself. He is the One Essential that remains changeless—leaving much of what we do vulnerable to change.

I’ve been trying to think of what analogy we might use to help us “remain in the vine” as Jesus has clearly instructed us to do. I was thinking of it in terms of holding hands—holding tightly onto the hands of Jesus. And my mind went back to the childhood game, “Red Rover, Red Rover.” Do you remember that? Two teams would stand facing one another, with every member of that team holding hands. They’d call out to someone on the other team, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Tyler right over!” And Tyler would have to charge his way, hopefully breaking through the hands held tightly on the opposing team.

And I got to thinking…Jesus wants us to hold that fiercely onto His Hand, and yet somehow I believe He understood what a group effort it would be. That’s why He instructed us to love one another—with a deep love, the kind of love that would cause us to lay down our lives for our friends. I believe Jesus understood that staying connected with one another—fiercely holding onto one another hands—was one way we’d stay vitally connected with Him.

I want to ask you to do something this morning that may feel uncomfortable to some of you (but then forgiveness is easier than permission, isn’t it?). I want to encourage you to take the hands of those beside you…even stretching across the aisle if you’re on the end. It may mean you’re holding hands with someone you don’t know, or someone a generation or two removed from you…Good! What a wonderful reminder of how much we need one another in the journey of walking with Jesus and trying to keep hold of His Hand…And I want to pray for you—and for us collectively—as we endeavor to keep hold of the hand of Christ, even as He journeys to the Cross. May the grip of someone else’s hand in yours remind you today of God’s grip upon your hand, and may He help us to stay vitally connected to Christ that we might bear the fruit of Christlikeness in each of our lives and in our life together as a church.