308 From The Ground Up

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From The Ground Up” originally shared on April 23, 2024. It was the 308^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   When Sally and I go to an American supermarket and I look at the produce section, I often think, “This is what brought down the Soviet Union.” Today, we’re going to see how our bearing much fruit is the expression of lives that have been transformed forever.

   It’s Spring-ish in Southern California.

   Armstrong Nursery stopped selling pansies here because the hot weather is coming.

   Yet, we’re supposed to be getting high temperatures in only the mid-60’s and a heavy mist-like morning rain for the next three or four days.

   “April showers bring May flowers”, but we’re not quite in May.

   Summer is coming, and we can see things growing and flowering and making allergy sufferers suffer, but in a way that tells us that we’re not quite there yet.

   Summer is being built, like vines, from the ground up.

   We have grape vines, and their branches, in our back yard that have been there at least since 1986, and probably since well before. They just sort of twine among our trees and bushes. But they all originate from a massive base. If they’re cut off from the base, they die.

   They need a foundation.

   Vines, like all healthy plants, need several things in order to live and to bear fruit: food, light, water, and air.  And they need a process to make those things beneficial to the plant: photosynthesis. And they need care to make the process produce the desired outcome.

   We are much like plants in that way. We need several things to live and to bear fruit, not just for today, but for forever. And we need a process to make them beneficial. And we need care to make it happen.

   Jesus describes what these things are, and how God makes them work together, in the Gospel text that will be read in churches all over the world this coming Sunday, John 15:1-8.

   He starts in verses 1-4,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

   Jesus is alive and our lives are totally dependent upon our relationship with Him. Jesus is the means by which we receive life that really is life, new life, eternal life now and forever. God the Father, the first person of the one-God-in-three-Persons Trinity, removes that which is not connected to Jesus in order to keep the dead parts of the vine from attracting the spiritual equivalent of insects and disease that would harm the living vine.

   This life is maintained through Jesus; food: the bread and wine that is the body and blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, light: Jesus the Light of the world, water: the Baptism that cleanses us from sin, death, and the power of the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe it, and air: the power of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

   Vines also need the right space, the right temperature, and the right amount of time to bear fruit.

   Just like us. In our lives, we pray and trust God’s guidance to know God’s calling for us to serve in the right place, in situations where we can be of best service, and for the right amount of time.

   For example, I’ve heard it said that clergy don’t retire, they just get put out to pastor. 😊

   When I retired, I just knew it was the right time, and that the space and the environment for Sally and my future service was going to be different, but that we would still be “pastoring”.

   This is true of every Christian life. The live of we, the branches, comes from and is sustained by the life of the vine: Jesus.

   And Jesus gives our lives everything we need in order to accomplish everything that God gives us to do.

   Jesus continues in verses 5-6,

5 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. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

   What is the fruit of Christian lives? It’s the new life, the transformed life, the born again life, the result of the living relationship with the one, true, living God that is the purpose for our creation from the beginning of time, the life that is given to all who repent and receive it.

   Paul describes that fruit, in Galatians 5:22-23,

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   The consequence of that “fruit” is that we “branches” who abide in “the vine” Jesus in turn bear much fruit. We become the means through which God draws others to a living relationship with him, new life in Jesus!

    Natural Church Development is a church development program that is based on the belief that all healthy living things grow and reproduce. If they are not reproducing, there is something wrong that must be corrected. Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is living the Christian life ourselves and leading others to receive the gift of faith from God.

  What is the purpose of a branch of a vine? It’s to bear fruit, but not primarily to provide food. That’s a secondary benefit. The primary purpose of a branch of a vine is to produce more grapes, whose seeds produce more branches from the vine.

   Programs don’t grow churches, though. People do. People guided by the Holy Spirit, whose lives have been transformed, whose lives demonstrate the fruit that comes as the result of being connected to the vine, Jesus.

   Sin separates us from God, and we can’t save ourselves. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is life. Hell is separation from Jesus and, as the bumper sticker says, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?”  😊

   What is the result? Jesus concludes Sunday’s text in verses 7-8,

7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

   Let’s look at that verse 7 again. In the middle of that verse, Jesus says, “ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” That’s the part some people like to hang onto.

   But it begins with a great big “If”. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,”

   To “abide” means “to live.”

   Whatever we do is the outcome of abiding in Jesus. If we are living as a new creation, if we are abiding in Jesus, our desire will be only to do His will.  What we “desire” and what we “ask” will only be God’s will, and God’s will will be done.

   God’s will, Jesus says, is that we bear much fruit and become his disciples.

   And what does that produce? God will be glorified.

   That’s what becomes the outcome of everything that we do, of our worship, of the ministry of our churches, of our service to others.

   The outcome of our lives is not that people glorify us. In fact, if everyone speaks well of us, that is cause for concern.

   The outcome of lives in which we abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in us is an outcome that comes only by the grace of God. When we bear spiritual fruit and become the disciples of Christ, it is God who is glorified.  

   There are many vineyards in Southern California. We don’t have to go far to see one in action: Joseph Filippi Winery & Vineyards and Pierre Biane Winery in Rancho Cucamonga and Galleano Winery in Jurupa Valley, and San Antonio Vineyard in Ontario, to name a few.

   But we need travel no distance at all to see “The” Vine, Jesus. He lives within us, and we are his branches.

   In the Old Testament, that is, the Law and the Prophets, the vine is a metaphor for Israel. When Jesus says that He is the vine, he is telling us that he is the fulfillment of the history of salvation among his people, he is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets for all people. We live now in the living relationship with God for which God created us. It was accomplished for us on the cross.

   Jesus gave his life, was buried, and then took his life back again. He rose, from the ground, up.

   We have been made and are nourished from the ground up. Like the branches from a vine.

   Salvation has come through the gift of faith, the restoration of that relationship in Jesus Christ. We have already died with Christ in our baptism and so we will rise with him to eternal life now and in the life to come.

   As Jesus says, in John 12:24,

24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

   It’s Spring-ish in Southern California.

   But among God’s faithful people, it’s time to bear fruit.