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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Today, as you heard, is the Fifth Sunday of Easter, and our attention shifts somewhat from the Resurrection of the Lord to the deep fellowship that we have with Him, Who, with His Ascension, changed the primary way that He was present with His disciples (Pfatteicher, Commentary, 294). In last Sunday’s Gospel Reading, Jesus identified Himself as the Good Shepherd, Who lays down His life for the sheep and takes it back up again (John 10:11-18). With a transition that is not without a Biblical precedent (see Psalm 80:1, 8), in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus makes three identifications: Himself as the True Vine, His Father as the Vinedresser, and His disciples as the branches. In short, Jesus says that the True Vine’s abiding branches, including those of us who follow Him today, bear much fruit. Thus, to our consideration of the Gospel Reading this morning, I have given the theme: “The True Vine’s abiding branches bear much fruit”. Let me repeat that: “The True Vine’s abiding branches bear much fruit”.
To understand better Jesus’s identity as the True Vine in today’s Gospel Reading, we should consider briefly the people of Israel as a vine in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah’s love song of the Lord’s vineyard describes the Lord’s digging a vineyard on a very-fertile hill, clearing it of stones, and planting it with a choice vine; the song tells how the Lord built a watchtower in the midst of His vineyard, hewed out a wine vat in it, and looked for it to yield cultured grapes, but instead it yielded only wild grapes; the Lord asks what more there was to do for His vineyard that He had not done, and He announces judgment on His vineyard—removing its hedge, breaking down its wall, making it a waste, and commanding the clouds not to rain upon it—and, finally, Isaiah explains that the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant planting, and that where the Lord looked for justice He found bloodshed, and where He looked for righteousness, He found an outcry (Isaiah 5:1-7).
Do those “wild grapes” sound at all like the “fruit” that you and I produce? The Lord did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, and, along with Him, the Lord graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32). As we are asked in one of the Good Friday “Reproaches” that we sometimes use (Lutheran Service Book: Altar Book, p.521), what more could the Lord do for us that He has not done? When the Lord looks for “the finest of godly fruits” from us, why does He instead find “the most horrible of crimes” (Leupold, ad loc Isaiah 5:7, p.112)? Like the people of Israel, we think, speak, and act un-justly and un-righteously. We may not literally shed blood or leave people crying-out to the Lord, but we do not produce good fruit, or good fruit of sufficient quantity, which shows that we are not the abiding branches of the vine that we should be, even seemingly grafted into the True Vine. Sinful by nature, apart from Him we can do nothing. We certainly do not choose Him, as we will hear in next week’s Gospel Reading (John 15:9-17), but He chooses us and appoints us that we should go and bear fruit and that our fruit should abide. We choose only to remain or not to remain, and, even with that limited choice, too often we are “unfaithful and unfruitful” (TLSB, ad loc Isaiah 5:1-7, p.1096). We deserve first to be thrown away like a branch and wither and then for the Lord’s angels to gather us, throw us into the fire of hell, and burn us eternally—that is what we deserve, and that is what will happen, unless, enabled by God, we turn away from our sins in sorrow and trust God to forgive our sins, for the sake of His Son Jesus, the True Vine.
The people of Israel failed as the Lord’s vine in His vineyard (confer Psalm 80:7-19), but, where the people of Israel failed, God’s Son, born into human flesh as Jesus, the Christ, succeeded. The True Vine, Jesus acts justly and righteously, and so He produces not the wild but the cultivated grapes. Jesus bears the fruit that the people of Israel failed to bear—and that we fail to bear—and, with His death on the cross for their sins and for our sins, Jesus makes up for their and our failure to bear that fruit. In today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 4:1-21), the Divinely‑inspired St. John described how God showed His love by sending His only Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins, the sacrifice that satisfied God’s righteous wrath over our sins, that we might live through Him. Jesus is all Israel reduced to One, as it were, but, in Him, all Israel is not limited to one. Through faith in Jesus, God graciously forgives our sins and unites us to Himself. We depend on Him, and we have inner fellowship with Him: an organic, inner, living relationship, the closest-possible union. God gathers us to Himself and sustains us through His Means of Grace.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus says that His Father, the Vinedresser, prunes or cleanses the branches of Him, the True Vine, and Jesus tells His disciples that they are already cleansed or pruned because of the Word that He had spoken to them—the Word essentially is the means both of the Holy Spirit’s being given to and working in them (confer Hauck, TDNT 3:426) and of Jesus Himself’s dwelling in them. We especially think of and receive the Holy Spirit’s cleansing or pruning us through the Word with the water of Holy Baptism (confer Luther, ad loc Psalm 109:18, AE 11:357), as, in today’s First Reading (Acts 8:26-40), in which Philip told the Ethiopian eunuch the Good News about Jesus and baptized the man. And, Jesus says elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel account, that those who feed on His flesh and drink His blood abide in Him and He in them, and so we also think of and receive the Word with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, and so also for life and salvation.
The Vinedresser so prunes or cleanses every branch of the True Vine in order for the branches to bear more fruit. The True Vine provides the sap, the vitality, that is needed in order for us branches to bear any fruit at all, and so all the more does the True Vine provide the sap, the vitality, that is needed in order for us to bear more fruit. As St. Paul writes to the Philippians, God Himself works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). Daily we repent of our sins and are forgiven by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We confess our faith and support the preaching of the pure Word of Christ and the administration of His Sacraments. We live in His peace and joy! We follow the Commandments and do good works in keeping with our various callings in life. God has started true godliness in our hearts and wills to continue to support us in our great weakness and to help us remain in true faith until the end of our earthly lives (Formula of Concord, Epitome II:14). As St. Paul writes, again to the Philippians, we are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:11). Ultimately not the True Vine, much less its abiding branches, but the Vinedresser gets the glory.
The Gospel Reading for this the Fifth Sunday of Easter has made clear the two possibilities: branches of the True Vine that do not bear fruit the Vinedresser takes away, and branches of the True Vine that do bear fruit the Vinedresser prunes or cleanses so that they bear more fruit. In short, “The True Vine’s abiding branches bear much fruit.” May God the Vinedresser grant that we be the True Vine’s abiding branches and bear much fruit, to the glory of His holy name!
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +