Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
Carlo Carretto was a leader in an Italian youth movement called Catholic Action. He was an effective and respected leader, but in 1954, when he was 44 years old, he left his career behind and joined a community in the Algerian desert called the Little Brothers of Jesus. He went into the desert, because he became convinced that his assumptions about the Church were all wrong. He needed to get away from all the action to give himself some perspective, to give himself some time and space to see things in the light of God’s perspective. Here’s how he looked at things before he went away into the desert: “After creating the world, God went away to rest; with the Church founded, Christ had disappeared into heaven. All the work remained for us, the Church. We, above all those in Catholic Action, were the real workers, who bore the weight of the day“ (Letters From the Desert, p. 14). God had done the initial work of creating the world, and then, for a brief period, Christ appeared on earth and founded the Church. But having founded the Church, Christ had departed. Now He expects us to work for the Kingdom of God, but we’re more or less on our own. He’s given us instructions in His Word, but the “weight of the day,” the real burden of the work, rests on us.
In this section of John’s gospel, Jesus is preparing the disciples for His departure. He’s spent the past three years with them, instructing them, modeling the life of the kingdom. They’ve seen Him in all sorts of situations, casting out demons, healing the sick, miraculously providing for the crowds, confronting the religious authorities. And the idea is that they are to carry on His ministry after He is gone. That’s why they’ve been with Him for the past three years; it’s been a time of training. It’s been a time of preparation. During one of my years of graduate school, I was assigned to teach “Introduction to Western Religions” at Temple’s Ambler campus. I had been required to take a seminar the previous year on teaching religion at the college level, and when I received the assignment they told me I was supposed to cover Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And then I was on my own. The assumption was that my previous studies and training should be sufficient for the assignment I was given. Apart from turning in my grades at the end of the semester, I don’t think I had contact with the school leadership that whole semester. Something like this is happening with the disciples. They’re near the end of their training, and within a few days Jesus will be departing from them. So these chapters we’re looking at now are His instructions preparing the disciples for His absence.
But there’s this difference. They’re not really going to be on their own. They’re not being sent out away from Him. Things are going to change. He’s not going to be there with them in the flesh. But they’re going to be connected with Him; they’re going to be in union with Him, like branches connected to a vine. They’re not going to be on their own, like I was in the classroom at Temple, or like Carlo Carretto imagined he was in Catholic Action. Listen to Jesus’ words, as translated in The Message: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.... This is how my Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.” They ‘re to maintain an intimate connection with Him. If they try to do it on their own, they’ll be headed for disaster: “apart from me you can do nothing.” All the things we do in connection with the church; all the behaviors that we associate with living a Christian life, are meaningless, unless we’re maintaining a close connection with Jesus Christ.
We often enjoy having cut flowers in our house. They bring something of the beauty of God’s creation. They add color and a sense of life to the atmosphere of our home. For awhile. No matter what we do, they eventually wither and die, because they’ve been disconnected from their source of life. Those flowers that initially bring a sense of life, eventually become a vision of death. As Christians, we’re not to be like cut flowers. We need to maintain our connection with Jesus Christ, the source of our life. If we don’t, we’ll eventually wither up and die. We may be able to keep up appearances for awhile, like cut flowers in water, but eventually it will become clear that we haven’t followed Jesus’ instructions to “remain in” Him. We’ve become disconnected from the source of our life and are now dead, decaying branches.
But if we stay connected with Jesus, if we “abide in” Him, He promises that we will bear much fruit. As is often the case, if you look into several commentaries you’ll find that there are a variety of opinions about what Jesus means by fruit. Some argue that this is the fruit of a transformed life, essentially the same thing as the fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes in Galatians 5. That’s what Peterson has in mind in The Message translation: “when you produce grapes – when you mature as my disciples.” Others insist that Jesus is talking about the fruit of our witness, people who become Christians because of our ministry. I’ve even heard sermons that questioned the salvation of anyone who wasn’t a successful soul winner. If you can’t point to specific individuals who’ve come to Christ through your witness, they said, you’re not bearing fruit. You’re going to be removed from the vine if things don’t change.
With questions like this, it’s always important to look at the general context. In chapter 14, Jesus has been talking about the importance of obedience. We show our love for Jesus and the Father by living in growing obedience to God’s Word. In the next section of chapter 15, Jesus commands the disciples to love one another, then He warns them that they will be hated by the world because they belong to Him. And then, at the end of the chapter, Jesus tells the disciples that they are going to testify about Him. But this is something they will do, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. The emphasis is on their concrete acts of obedience, not on their success in producing converts. The whole context in this section is about the transformation that flows from their relationship with Jesus; so the fruit that He’s talking about here is the fruit of a transformed life. This includes testifying about Jesus, bearing witness to Him, but the outward, measurable success of our witness isn’t what He has in mind. That’s God’s responsibility, not ours. When people turn to God, it’s because He’s awakened them and drawn them to Himself.
For example, when Paul was preaching in Macedonia, Luke says one of the women listening to him was a worshiper of God named Lydia. And then he says “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14b). Why did she listen eagerly? Because the Lord “opened her heart.” She was a worshiper of God, or a “God fearer.” This means that she was a Gentile who was attracted to Judaism, but who hadn’t yet taken the step of becoming a convert. It was common for these people to attend synagogue worship regularly, but they remained on the fringes. So the Lord had been opening her heart for some time. Others had a part in the process, before Paul ever got there to preach the gospel. He was just the last person in the process. And it’s that way whenever someone turns to Christ; God is the one who opens our hearts, and He uses many people along the way to lead us to faith. Most of them have no idea that they’ve been part of the process. So it’s impossible to look around for fruit in terms of outward results in other peoples’ lives. The fruit Jesus is talking about here is the fruit that grows from our living connection to Jesus Christ. Here it is again in The Message: “This is how the Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”
One of those fruits is listed in verses 9-17. As branches on the same vine, they’re to show love for one another. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He’s not saying that we need always to have warm, benevolent feelings toward each other. He’s telling us to follow His example in laying aside our own desires and showing love in concrete ways, as He did when He washed the disciples’ feet in chapter 13, and as He’s going to do very soon when He willingly lays down His life. “This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends” (The Message).
Christians are called to love one another and to show that love in concrete acts of service. We saw that in chapter 13. John says the same thing in his first letter: “This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality” (1 John 3:16-19a, The Message). John, in this passage, is just developing and applying Jesus’ words: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Another thing that follows from our connection with Jesus is in verses 18-25: because of our relationship with Him, our relationship to the world has changed forever. We no longer belong to this world as we once did, and because of this the world hates us, just as it hates Him. When I was studying in the religion department at Temple University I noticed this: people in the department were very open-minded, for the most part. One woman was into new age spiritualities and she talked freely, with much enthusiasm, about her practices. We had Islamic fundamentalists, Buddhist monks, Jews, Hindus, and secularists with an interest in the phenomenon of religion. There was a real spirit of openness toward all these things. The only position that these people found really intolerable was believing Christianity. Why is that? Because Christians, in a way that is not true of any of these other religions, do not belong to this world: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
Why did the Roman Empire persecute the Church so bitterly during the first three centuries? One of the major reasons was that the Christians were seen as a group of people who didn’t belong. They somehow weren’t connected with the rest of society. One scholar explains it this way: “The Christian movement was revolutionary not because it had the men and resources to mount a war against the laws of the Roman Empire, but because it created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior. The life and teachings of Jesus led to the formation of a new community of people called ‘the church.’ Christianity had begun to look like a separate people or nation” (Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 119). This is just saying, in a different way, what Jesus said to His disciples: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
The only way they can possibly carry on in this way – being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, loving one another in concrete acts of service, even to the extent of laying down their lives, and enduring the hatred of the world – is to maintain a close connection with Jesus. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” We maintain a strong connection with Jesus through prayer, meditation on His Word, laying aside our own desires in service to one another (as in chapter 13), by growing in obedience (as in chapter 14), and by regularly gathering together to worship and encourage one another (loving one another in the body of believers involves the concrete act of gathering together regularly). May He be with us and bless our efforts to abide in Him.
