Suffering vines make better wine – 28 April 2024

Friends, upon return from the great drive to and from Queensland this last two weeks, our minds are full of green plants. It was green from Broken Hill all the way to Brisbane.

Time from some talk of greenery today.

John 14 and 15 are Jesus’ final words to his disciples before all we know happened thee first Easter. It is often called the ‘farewell discourse’. This part of the discourse contains the last of the I AM words around which John tells his whole account of Jesus (I AM Resurrection and life, the Gate for the sheep, the Good Shepherd, the Bread of life, the Living water …).

As Jesus leads his troubled friends out into the night after that last meal, and heads toward those green olive trees in the garden of Gethsemane, he speaks in pictures of another known and loved green plant – grape vines.

This whole discourse is words of a good shepherd. This is ‘Good Shepherd’ or ‘Pastor Jesus’ at his best.

When they really need it, both in this garden and later on to refer back to, Jesus reassures his people for all time that the Father is the vine keeper who keeps Jesus and his people together as one, no matter what drought, flood, frost or disease comes at them.

And the way we stay alive in the Vine is not under our own steam but under the consistent care of Father. John uses one word to describe this gift – ‘abiding’ or ‘remaining’.

I suspect that you, like me and those intrepid first disciples like the sound of this. We want to remain with Jesus, and we like the idea of him remaining with us, and the Father tending us; even pruning us (maybe).

But the idea is one thing. Life is another. What about those moments when we would rather leave, let go, take control of the season and tend ourselves – especially in the suffering that we experience.

Leaving Jesus is the very thing these very people would do within a few hours of these reassuring words. Jesus surely knows this about them and us. Why else would he urge his friends to remain in him if it was not possible and often desirable for them to leave him and his Father’s tending?

It is possible to ‘tend ourselves’. The whole world is urging us to leave – leave faith, leave trust in Jesus, leave the truth of his Word alone, leave any trust there is even an ultimate truth, leave the gathered church community….

I listen to a comment this week from an Aussie pastor from Adelaide who has been serving in New York City for 20 years on what he is seeing among younger New Yorkers.

John Tyson from Church of the City says that with the demise of the Church, people are looking to attach their identity to something else.

Tyson says that the essence of sin and how it maps itself out in secularism is not any particular moral violation. It’s not the breaking of rules as such. [Sin] is the construction of an identity without any reference point towards God.

Jon goes to Romans 1 where Paul says, [people] did not acknowledge [God] or give him thanks. As a result, my life is not lived with an overall response of gratitude and worship. No, “I am self-defining and entitled. I’ve made myself and I have obligations to nobody beyond myself’.

Tyson says that this is the essence of how modern people, form their identity. The sin is that there’s not a reference point towards God. He concludes,

So do I! This pull to self-identity is so strong that I get caught up in it too, as do other Christians and whole communities.

I find Luther insightful on this battle we live as Christians ‘in the Vine’; in his community – a church.

Luther agrees with everyone when he says that this word of Jesus saying he is the vine and we the branches of the same vine with the Father tending us is a beautiful comforting picture of our sure identity in Jesus.

This picture of who we are is more than a wishful thought about how we should be. It is a truth of how we actually are in God’s vision. This is a promise, a spiritual realty in Jesus’ new resurrection kingdom; a vision of this risen Jesus and his people. This identity in Jesus will sustain these disciples when the going gets rough, as it soon does for him and them.

And this suffering will not cease for these disciples after this dark night in the olive grove or even after the joyful light of the same upper room from which they have just come after those three days, when the risen Jesus arrives unexpectedly to greet them with peace.

No. Jesus is saying here that the suffering He will experience will be their experience because they are of the same vine.

Sounds depressing. But it does not need to be. Luther suggests that;

How can this be – suffering as pruning and pruning as grace, not condemnation or lack of care by God?

This takes faith! Luther agrees.

So, being a Christian is being in Jesus and that means sharing in his glory AND HIS PAIN because in the Father’s love, we are of the same vine, the same ilk, the same DNA.

So, our suffering and struggle are also his. In fact, as branches of Jesus the Vine, suffering is the Father’s ‘secateurs work’ he does to keep us growing, moving, coping, so we are being transformed to the likeness of Jesus through it all.

A conversation between branches and vinedresser – The Father and you …

‘Please do’, says Pastor Jesus. ‘Trust my Father’s tending’.

Friend, your roots might be being hacked around a bit at the moment.

You might be feeling a little ‘cut back’ and vulnerable.

You might be feeling the manure the Evil One throws at you – accusing you, shaming you, dragging up all that is wrong about you…. again, re-reminding you of your sins as if they have not already been forgiven by Jesus or bad enough that he would throw you on the fire.

Hear him still:

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