The record in John’s gospel — the last supper and the walk to the Mount of Olives — is interrupted by four chapters (John 14-17) in which Jesus talks to his disciples. In John 13:38 Jesus predicts Peter’s denial; then we have to wait until John 18 to read about Jesus going to the Mount of Olives with his disciples.
Surely at this moment in his life — with the crucifixion so close, and the impending excruciating pain that it would entail — Jesus must have considered these last words with his disciples to have been of prime importance. Therefore they must surely be a very necessary message to us also.
Part of this message Jesus felt was so important — for all disciples — is set out in his description of the true vine and the branches in John 15. Describing God’s people as vineyards bearing fruit would not have been a novel idea to the disciples:
“I will sing for the One I love a song about his Vineyard:
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
And planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
And cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
But it yielded only bad fruit” (Isa. 5:1,2).
“The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice but saw bloodshed; For righteousness, but heard cries of distress” (v. 7).
In John 15 Jesus uses the same figure of the vineyard but says in verse 5: “I am the vine and you are the branches.” Moreover, he says in verse 1 that God is the gardener who cuts off the branches that bear no fruit. Remembering the importance that Jesus gave to these last words to his disciples, we have to ask ourselves: what is it that Jesus requires us to understand?
Who are the “clean” ones?
In John 15:3 Jesus says, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I will remain in you.” Words such as these have led our community, in some cases, into an attitude similar to that of the Pharisee. The Pharisee went up to pray at the temple: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” (Luke 18:11,12). The Pharisee was so deluded that he felt the urge to congratulate himself on being “clean”, as though it were all his own doing!
But what Jesus meant by verse 3, and what is required of us if we are to remain in him, is described for us a bit further on: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love… My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (vv. 9,12,13). This is a repetition of what he told his disciples earlier in the upper room (John 13:34,35). Another aspect is given in John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last.”
Jesus felt it necessary to tell his disciples that he was the only true vine, and it was through “abiding” in him alone that they might be connected to God and His Kingdom (John 15:4). Only by abiding, or remaining, in the vine could they produce fruit that would last, nourished by that love they had seen in him.
The Samaritan
The quality of what Jesus exhibited and which is required by each one of us is, I believe, nowhere better explained than in Luke 10. We read here of the Good Samaritan, exemplified by Jesus and to be followed by us.
In the parable, a man was beaten, robbed and left for dead. Both a priest and a Levite refused to stop to help him; but a Samaritan, a person despised by many Jews, not only stopped to help the victim but also took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he even left money with the innkeeper, and promised to give him additional money when he returned, if necessary.
The question for now is not whether we would have helped out to the same extent, but rather: what kind of person was the victim? Was he a robber, an evildoer or an adulterer — the sort whom the Pharisee of Luke 18 would have disdained? Was he a drunkard or a drug addict? If, in Jesus’ story, the traveler had been a woman rather than a man, could she have been a prostitute or a woman of loose morals?
Closer to home, and in relation to our own ecclesias, is the one who “fell among thieves” a brother or sister who has not attended the meeting for some time, from whom we have withdrawn? Or is it a sister whose violent marriage ended in divorce and who has remarried a kind, gentle and caring man — but who is no longer, according to our view of matters, able to break bread with us? The answer is: we are not told because to Jesus it did not matter.
Paul exhorts us: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 4:32 — 5:2).
Bearing fruit
Jesus also tells his disciples, in John 15:16, to “bear fruit, fruit that will last.”
Elsewhere Jesus says, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:37,38). Do we want to be vessels from which streams of living water flow? “By this he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (v. 39).
We shy away from the thought of receiving God’s “Spirit”. But Jesus makes it quite plain that in order to bear lasting fruit, as commanded in John 15, we have to be connected with God’s holy Spirit. How is this? If we remain in the True Vine, which is Jesus Christ, then the Spirit of God will work to produce in us the fruit of that Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness” (Gal. 5:22,23). These spiritual fruits come from God; they are fruits of the True Vine, and they cannot be produced by anyone who is not part of that Vine!
As we remember the sacrifice of Jesus, let us ask ourselves: do we manifest those qualities demonstrated by Jesus, and requested by him of his disciples immediately before he was taken to be crucified?
If we do, then his prayer for us will not be in vain:
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:24-26).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One