The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Reverend Michael J. Moffitt
Sermon: John 15:1-11 “I Am the Vine and You are the Branches”
Today is called “Rogation Sunday”. This explanation is from Rogation Days: A Rookie Anglican Guide by Joshua Steele.
“The Sixth Sunday of Easter (the fifth Sunday after Easter Sunday) is traditionally known as “Rogation Sunday.” This is because the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the following week are known as the “Rogation Days,” days for fasting and prayer. The Thursday of that week is the feast of the Ascension, which comes on a Thursday, the fortieth day after Easter (when Easter Sunday counts as the first day).”
The Collect of the Day that we read this morning gives us direction as to the nature of our prayers during this week as we ask God to give us a deeper love for Him and the anticipation of the promises that we have received in Christ.
Today we’ll consider our Gospel from John 15:1-11 where Jesus likens himself to a vine, his followers as the branches and the Father as the Vinedresser.
British evangelist and author Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live.” This statement captures the very essence of the gospel. The problem with humanity is not just moral failure but spiritual death. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in Ephesian 2:1,“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” The gospel is not about behavior modification; it is about resurrection and the return to a right relationship with God through the death and resurrection of the Son.
When the full weight of sin and redemption is left out there seems little reason to run to the Lord Jesus for salvation. The gospel loses its urgency without the full weight of sin and man’s desperate need of redemption. If sin is just a minor flaw to be fixed rather than a death sentence from which we must be rescued, then the cross is reduced to an inspiring story rather than the pivotal moment in human history.
David Wells critiques this trend in his book, No Place for Truth: Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?” He argues that evangelicalism has become more about meeting felt needs than proclaiming the holiness of God:
“Evangelicalism has trivialized God, replacing Him with a deity who is useful but not sovereign. This therapeutic gospel reassures but does not transform”.
This is why many people can sit in church for years and never truly understand the gospel. They are told that Jesus loves them, but they are not told that His love required Him to die in their place. They hear that God wants to bless them but are not told that following Christ means taking up their cross.
The tragedy of a diluted gospel is that it creates false converts—people who believe they are Christians because they attend church, pray, and seek God’s blessings but have never truly repented and surrendered to Christ. Jesus Himself warned of this in Matthew 7:21.
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven"
This message shaped the early church. The gospel was not presented as a tool for personal happiness but as a radical call to die to self and live for Christ. The early Christians did not attract followers by offering motivational talks instead they preached Christ crucified a message that many found offensive. In our gospel reading this morning Jesus once again clears up any doubt of what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. John 15:1-2,
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
Jesus begins with the final “I Am” saying from the Gospel of John. Unlike the previous sayings this one was directed at those who had already come to him but now needed to know how they could remain with him. “I Am the bread of life”; “I Am the light of the world”; “I Am the door”; “I Am the resurrection and the life”; “I Am the way, the truth and the life” were all invitations to come and believe in Jesus but “I am the true vine” revealed the source of life for those who would be attached to the vine. The union that Jesus was offering was one of intimacy with him and this would be their sole source of the new life.
Remember that Jesus had declared in John 6:38 “For I have come down from Heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me.” He came down to earth as a human and humbly accepted the limitations that would by necessity come with that. Part of that would be to submit to the pruning that the vinedresser would demand. In using the grapevine as a metaphor Jesus is drawing the disciples’ attention back to the way that God had referred to Israel in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 5:3–7 the prophet quoted God, the gardener, as he spoke of Israel his vineyard, “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!”
Again in Jeremiah 2:21 God asks the question, “Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?”
Here as in Isaiah God, the vinedresser cared for his vineyard but got sour grapes. As a result he will destroy the vineyard. This theme of judgment is seen in every use of this metaphor in the Old Testament. So when Jesus refers to himself as the true vine he is pointing to how he had come to be the true Son of God, the one who would be faithful to the will of the Father. Remember the stories of Jesus directing his disciples away from the hypocrisy of the Jewish religious leaders when he declared himself the “light of the world” as he pointed out that the Pharisees were walking in the darkness of their father the devil.
Three weeks ago we talked about Jesus who revealed that he is the “Good shepherd” and his sheep hear his voice but that others would not hear his call because they were not of his fold. He had formed a new community of those who would walk away from the lies and false direction of religion and instead would follow the Messiah who had come to their rescue.
This was not a rejection of Judaism but instead was pointing to the fulfillment of all that they had been looking for. The identity of the people of God with a particular nation would be replaced with the God/man Jesus Christ who brings to himself the new people of God comprised of people from all nations and tribes. Israel, the vineyard planted by God in the Promised Land, is now replaced by Jesus, the true vine.
So what is the role of the Father as the vinedresser? In this context it is twofold: to make sure that the vine is healthy, and to cut off and burn any branch that is non-productive or dead.
A grapevine is a very strong and long-lasting plant, and it develops very deep roots down into most types of soil. If properly cared for they can be very productive for many generations and in the Old Testament times the grapevine was a symbol of blessing and prosperity. However, in order for this to happen the vinedresser must carefully attend to the vine lest it get out of hand and become unhealthy. Pruning was the simplest way of getting rid of old growth or vines that were not healthy and productive.
When Jesus submitted to the will of his Father he was trusting in the care and wisdom of the vinedresser. Even though he was arrested, tortured, and crucified by the Roman government at the prompting of the Jewish authorities Jesus was never outside of the plan of God for his Son and for his children. It seemed like Jesus had been severed from his followers when in reality the vine was merely being pruned.
The more dominant emphasis in this passage is actually focused on the branches that are attached to the vine. Jesus established a new community that pulled away from the hypocrisy and coldness of the Pharisees and instead began to follow Jesus the Good Shepherd. The major function of this new community was to bear witness to Jesus and the revelation that he was the Messiah—the King of kings and Lord of lords and the only hope for all people in all places. This community would be seen in contrast to Israel and its fruitlessness.
The community that Jesus was establishing would be known by the fruit that they bore and so the question is, “what is this fruit that Jesus is referring to?” Some have suggested that the fruit in this passage refers to the result of bearing witness to Jesus, which brings converts to Christianity.
Others have suggested that the fruit refers to the ethical virtues that are characteristic of those who have been changed by a relationship with Jesus Christ. Certainly the later writings of the Apostles were exhortations to bear witness to Christ through the example of being those whose life is characterized by love, righteousness, and peace. Even though both views have merit I think that what Jesus is teaching us about bearing fruit has everything to do with being connected to the vine. Look again at John 15: 3–5,
“Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
When the nourishment of the soil and water flows through the grapevine into healthy branches that are connected to the vine the result is clear to see. There will be fruit of the same sort that the vine has been designed to provide. Jesus taught in Matthew 7:16–17, “You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.”
Jesus as the true vine was assuring those who would abide in him as he had abided in the Father, would be supplied with the life-giving Spirit that would produce the fruit that was desired, the kind of fruit that the vine was designed for. If the fruit that came off of a section of branches was different than what should be produced, then something had happened to the connection between the vine and the branch. This happened to Israel when they stopped feeding off of the relationship that they had with God and allowed themselves to be corrupted by the evil of the pagan nations around them. The result was that the vinedresser removed them from the vine and threw them into the fire. The Israel that had entered the Promised Land as the people of the covenant allowed themselves to be corrupted by the pagan nations and their demonic idol worship and there was no longer any similarity to the fruit that God desired from them but instead they became sour grapes.
The same is true for those who profess to be disciples of Jesus Christ today. If they are connected to the vine then the fruit that they bear will be evidence of that connection because the Holy Spirit that flows in and through them will produce the characteristics of the Spirit. This image of fruit reveals what is at the heart of both Christian witness and ethics- a supernatural union with God. The result for those who stay connected through word and Spirit is that they by nature produce the fruit of the Spirit which Paul writes of in Galatians 5: 22–23,
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
When after honest examination we realize that our lives are not characterized by the fruit of the Spirit of God then one of two things is probably true.
First, there is a break in the connection with the vine and foreign matter has leaked into the vein corrupting it. This happens very quickly if we allow our focus to turn away from the things of the Spirit to the things of the flesh. Israel did not fall in a day but allowed compromise to become such a part of their culture until finally they felt more at ease with paganism than they did with the God of Israel. There are so many ways that our enemy seeks to get our attention by appealing to our desires for the things of the flesh. As Christians, God is calling us to bear witness to the power of Christ by living through the power of his Holy Spirit and according to his Holy Word. The second possibility as to why a life may not be characterized by the fruit of the Spirit is that there is no connection to the vine in the first place. This is very common when the relationship of a professing Christian is with the denomination or local church but not through a personal connection with Jesus Christ. If there is no flow of God’s Spirit there will be no fruit of his Spirit either. The warning of our passage this morning is that if the branch is producing no fruit then it will be pruned and thrown into the fire. If there is no evidence of fruit then there should be no confidence in the connection.
Jesus ends this section of our gospel lesson by calling us to faith and a life characterized by a flourishing and growing relationship with him and the Father through the Spirit.
Consider the issues that those who have walked away from Orthodox Christianity in favor of what they call “Progressive Christianity”. The primary issues they now are advocating for and calling good: abortion, same sex marriage, ordination of homosexual and transgender persons to ministry, the Bible no longer has authority over lives, the path to God comes from many places not just Jesus and I could go on within each category with the myriad implications resulting from each. You will notice that each of these issues stem from desires of the flesh fighting against the fruit of the Spirit and they usually couch their opinions as loving and a deep desire that people be happy with who they are. If you have turned away from the truths of God’s word the result will not be happiness.
At the core of these issues is a decision that must be made. There is no middle ground. Will you seek the fruit of the Spirit found only in union with Christ and pay the price of that decision regardless of what it is? Or will you seek to be at peace with the culture surrounding you? Once again you may have noticed that those are the only two choices- it’s Jesus or not Jesus. Let’s pray.
