The Vine-Branch Connection

Text: John 15:1-8

It is increasingly clear that the difference between our insides and what’s outside is not that great.

It turns out that we are not independent creatures, isolated by skin and by preference from the biologic soup in which we live, or from the physical wear and tear on our various parts. Nor are we isolated from our insides, as if our selves were separate from the organic machinery that toils day and night to keep us working. We know too much now. We know we are creatures among many, pretty tiny compared to the world. And inside of us are many creatures, pretty tiny compared to us. We do not live alone, and we cannot survive alone. We—our selves, our beings—are a mass of biology in a mass of biology, organized and inspired by the spirit. Or as Genesis puts it, we are dust out of which God has formed us with God’s breath.

John, the writer of the today’s Gospel passage, who preceded us by about 1900 years, seems to have known all about this. This business of insides and outsides. Abide in me as I abide in you, Jesus says in John. John is all about abiding. It is hidden a bit in our Bible, because John uses one word translated variously as dwell, and remain, and stay, and live. There are many dwelling places, says Jesus, using this word. Where are you staying? ask the disciples when they first meet Jesus, using this word. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth, it remains—using this word—it remains just a grain, Jesus teaches the crowd.

God lives in us. We live in God. Or you might say we remain in God and God in us. It is a two-way street.

It is one thing to think that God lives in us. As if God were our motivating force, or our soul, or our source of goodness. As if God were inside of us, struggling to shine through all the garbage and fear that we dress ourselves in. Or as if we were all Tin Woodsmen, empty but for God as our living hearts.

So it makes sense when we hear Jesus say, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Fruit cannot grow unless it is connected to the vine—that’s what it says in the bulletin that the children here get. Without God, we are unmotivated, uninspired. It is a parasitic relationship, in the nicest way. Jesus is the source of all life, and we live on that source.

That may make sense, but that is not what Jesus says here. Live in me as I live in you, he says. This is exactly reciprocal. Live in me in the same way as I live in you. The original is even more clear: “Live in me and I in you. Just like that!” This is a pretty weird notion. Jesus and we are in symbiotic relationship. We are, as the scholars say, mutually in-dwelling. We are dependent each on the other.

I am the vine, Jesus says, and you are the branches. The vine is strong compared to the branches. The vine is tough. The vine is big. The branches are more fragile. The branches are small. The branches hang on the vine and depend on it. Precious water comes up the trunk of the vine and nourishes the branches. The vine connects the roots with the leaves. Without the vine, the branches die.

The vine seems to be as God must be. The source and strength of all things. The branches cannot live without the vine.

But that is not the whole story. Because neither can the vine live without the branches. The leaves live on the branches, and collect the energy of the sun. The sugar that feeds the vine comes from the leaves. The vine lies dormant until the leaves emerge. If you ever had a grape arbor—there is one outside my window at home—you know the difference between the naked vine in winter and the luxurious expanse of leaves that fill it and flesh it out when the weather warms. The vine provides the constant, dependable strength. But the liveliness comes from the branches, and it is on the branches that the fruit lives.

Evidently there is something we do, we who are the branches—you are the branches—that completes the vine. Something we are that fulfills at least a part of Jesus, at least a part of God.

When we say that Jesus abides in us, we imagine Jesus being our center, necessary for our existence. Can we therefor say that since we abide in Jesus in exactly the same way, that somehow we complete Jesus?

Or perhaps we might imagine that living in Jesus is like living in a strong, safe house, a place of protection and comfort. In that case, since Jesus abides in us in exactly the same way, can we therefore say that somehow Jesus finds the same things when he lives in us? Does it make Jesus feel good to live in us?

The vine needs the branches. But the branches need one another also. The branches nourish each other. Supported by the vine, they feed the whole, they feed each other.

We are called to love one another. In the verses that immediately follow today’s reading (and which we’ll hear next week), Jesus gives us a new commandment. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” he says. We feed one another by caring for one another, by loving one another. The fruit of the vine is in one sense the purpose of the vine. The fruit of the vine is the work of the vine in the world. The fruit is the manifestation of all the energy and biology of the vine and its branches working together. Our care for one another is the fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches, said Jesus. Those who live in me and I in them bear much fruit. The branches—us—represent God in the world. God is glorified, says Jesus, when the branches bear much fruit.

Perhaps this sounds a lot like good works. Especially to Lutheran ears, which are supersensitive to words in that category. But the words of Jesus here in John are not about salvation, or getting into heaven by doing good things, even when good things means loving other people. This passage is not about future glory and spiritual accomplishment. It is about how God works through us in the world now.

The official motto of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, our denomination, is “God’s work, our hands.” We are not observers in this world. The branches cannot live without the vine, we cannot live without God’s creating and foundational force. This is not a choice but biology. Branches cannot choose to hop off the vine. We depend on the vine. But neither do the branches just hang around on the vine. We are not spiritual couch potatoes in this endeavor.

For the writer of the Gospel of John, there is no distinction between our spiritual existence and our physical existence in the world. There is no sense that what we do in the world is either a cause of a good life in Christ, or on the flip side is it a result of that life in Christ, or is it even a sign of our life in Christ. It is not separate from it.

Instead, it is exactly the same as our life in Christ. Who lives in us. And in whom we live. He inside us and we inside him.