Fruit of the vine

By Tyler Tankersley

I do not have a green thumb. Anytime I try to either grow a garden or even care for a houseplant, I do not seem to have much work in keeping those plants alive.

I have no clue whether Jesus was a good gardener or not, but I do know that he often used agrarian metaphors and language to describe his message. He was speaking to a first-century context in which his listeners were far more connected to the earth than I am.

One of the most interesting plant-based metaphors he uses is when he tells his disciples: "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" (John 15:5).

Whenever I hear that verse, I have long pictured a normal-looking bush, but a friend of mine (who is a viticulturalist) recently helped me to understand Jesus' image in much greater depth. On a vine, the branches are entwined around the primary vine. It is impossible to determine where one branch stops and another branch starts. All of the branches run along the vine together as they grow out of the main, central vine.

It makes me wonder about how counter-cultural Christian community is called to be. The dominant message of the world seems to be that the individual is the most important unit and my goal as an individual is to protect my rights, my property, my ambitions, and my desires. However, in Christian community I am called to remember that there are no free-standing individuals. Instead, the fruitfulness of each branch depends on its relationship to the vine and nothing else. As New Testament scholar Gail R. O'Day says in her commentary on the Gospel of John: "What matters for John is that each individual is rooted in Jesus and hence gives up individual status to become one of many encircling branches."

That is not a message that everyone is going to see as good news. Many of us gravitate towards preachers and teachers that tells us that God wants nothing more than to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise. Such an interpretation of the Gospel is a self-indulgent myth that is dangerously popular in today's culture. Instead, Jesus gives us the difficult teaching of: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24).

It doesn't mean that we will not find fulfillment or joy by living for Christ, but what it means is that we will most certainly not achieve ultimate fulfillment or ultimate joy by living only for ourselves. Instead, we are called to be branches entwined around the true vine: Jesus Christ.

Keith Green has a song called "He'll Take Care of the Rest" that has these lines:

Remember,

He is de' vine

And you are de' branch

He loves to get you through it if you give him a chance.