Abide in Me
It’s not like we were loose branches out searching for
a vine to connect to. No, Christ did that for you. He did that. You abide. We
were dead branches destined for fire, but in loved He saved you. He grafted you
into Himself when He brought you to faith. He tells us, “You are already clean through the Word I have spoken to you.” Through
the Word that brought you to faith, He has already cleansed you. He has washed
you clean of all sin. He has won for you a place in His family. A place at His
wedding feast in heaven. You are already
clean. Because you are cleansed through pruning.
Branches don’t really have any choice. Of either
remaining or departing from the vine. If a branch departs, it would be because
of its own decay, a pest, or because the gardener has pruned it off.
Jesus reminds us. “I
am the true vine, and my father is the gardener.” Your heavenly Father -
the Master Gardner - grafted You into the Vine. And gives You all the blessings
that come with it. Even though it hurts.
Your Father - the Master-gardener - Tends the vine. Directs
the vine. Prunes the vine. So that it may grow in ways which produce fruit. It
should be no surprise that God’s way is the way of His creation. It is a way
that sees through death and decay to new life. It should also be no surprise,
that we who are connected to Christ, the true Vine, through the method of
pruning to promote growth.
What actually happens when you are not connected to
the source of life? You end up cut off, withered, useless, like the branches
and scraps we clean up from our yard and haul away and burn.
If you've ever seen pruned bushes, you know it's not a
pretty picture. Sometimes, in fact, a pruned bush looks so ravaged that it's
hard to believe it will ever bear fruit or flower again. But cutting away the
dead growth - is the only way for new
life to take place.
Being a branch doesn't spare you that. The question
isn't whether you'll experience some difficulty, some cutting, the question is
whether that will be toward new growth or will be just the beginning of more
withering.
Martin Luther tells a delightful dialogue about what a
vine might say to the gardener if it could speak:
The vine sees the vinedresser, or gardener, coming
with his pruning shears and other tools to work around it and says: "What are you doing? That hurts, don't you
know that? Now I must wither and decay, for you are removing the soil from
around my roots and are tearing away at my branches with those iron teeth. You
are tearing and pinching me everywhere, and I will have to stand in the ground
bare and seared. You are treating me worse than any tree or plant."
And the gardener would then reply: "You are a fool and do not understand. For
even if I do cut a branch from you, it is a totally useless branch; it takes
away your strength and your sap. Then the other branches, which should bear
fruit, must suffer. Away with it! This is for your own good."
Then the vine
would say: "But you do not understand! I have a different feeling about
it!"
The gardener declares: "But I understand
it well. I am doing this for your welfare, to keep the foreign and wild
branches from sucking out the strength and the sap of the others. Now you will
be able to yield more and better fruit and produce good wine."
The same thing is true when the gardener applies the
cow manure to the root of the vine; this, too he does for the benefit of the
vine even though the vine might complain and say: "What in the world are you doing? Isn't it bad enough for you to hack
and cut at me all day long, trimming this and cutting off that branch? Why, now
are you putting that foul smelling stuff at my roots?! I am a vine, to yield
delicious grapes to make wonderful wine, and you are putting that terrible
smelling stuff near me, it will destroy me!"[1]
Of course, we
know well that the badly smelling manure does well to put fertilizer and
nutrients into the soil so that the vine might grow and prosper and produce an
even better crop.
What Luther is saying here, indeed, what Christ is
saying, is that sometimes life hurts. Sometimes life stinks. But God the
gardener knows better than we the branches. And He has our best interests in
mind, though it may not always seem so to us.
Apart from Jesus, we die. That’s the reality. Sin is a
withering disease that would destroy us. But with Jesus. And in Jesus. There is
life. His death on the cross. And His rising from the dead. Bring new and true
and eternal life to all His people. In this Easter season we are continually
reminded that Christ is the source for our life – life with God, and life even
from the dead.
Faith prays for
God’s will to be done. Not our will. And with such a prayer you can never go
wrong. Sometimes behind God’s apparent, “no”, there is an even bigger yes. As
Paul says, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes"
in Christ.” -2 Corinthians 1:20
Faith prays that we will remain in Christ. That our
sins are forgiven. That our eternity with God is secure. And faith is never
disappointed.
Faith prays that we stay connected to the True Vine.
That we receive our sustenance from Him. That we bear much fruit, in him. Faith
prays that we find our life, always, only, in Him. And faith is never
disappointed.
“I am the Vine,” Jesus says, “You are the branches.” “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”
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Words-1,090
Passive Sentences-5%
Readability-86%
Reading Level- 4.0
[1] Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.); Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.); Lehmann, Helmut T.
(Hrsg.): Luther's Works, Vol. 22: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1-4. Saint Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1957 (Luther's Works 22), S. 22
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