Sermon: I am the true Vine

I Am the True Vine | Rev. Laura Johnson | North Raleigh UMC

What did Jesus mean when He said, "I am the true vine"?

In this message from John 15, Rev. Laura Johnson explores the seventh and final "I Am" statement in the Gospel of John. On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gives His disciples one last image to remember: He is the vine, the Father is the gardener, and we are the branches. This beautiful metaphor reveals that the Christian life is not about striving harder or producing fruit through our own efforts. It is about abiding in Christ and allowing God's love to transform us from the inside out.

Drawing on John's Gospel and the rich tradition of Wesleyan and United Methodist theology, Laura reflects on God's grace, the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, and the invitation to remain rooted in the limitless love of Christ. As we abide in Jesus, God prunes away what keeps us from thriving so that our lives naturally bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, and faithful discipleship.

Whether you're feeling spiritually weary, longing for a deeper relationship with God, or wondering what it truly means to follow Jesus, this sermon offers biblical encouragement and practical hope. Jesus' invitation is simple yet life-changing: remain in His love. As we receive God's extraordinary love, we are empowered to share that same love with the world.

Scripture: John 15:1-17

At North Raleigh United Methodist Church, our purpose is to be a church where you can Belong just as you are, Become more like Jesus, and Be Love for God's World.

Topics: John 15, I Am the True Vine, True Vine, Abide in Christ, Rev. Laura Johnson, United Methodist Church, Wesleyan theology, grace, sanctification, Holy Spirit, discipleship, fruit of the Spirit, God's love, Christian living, love one another, Bible study, sermon, North Raleigh UMC.

Transcript

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Say to us today. Amen. So at my previous church, one of our members owned a working vineyard where they produced their own wine. And it was this beautiful place with picturesque outdoor seating, spaces of plenty under the shade of these beautiful trees. And so I had the idea that I would offer a spring Bible study in the actual vineyard. So I invited folks to bring their own chairs. We'd set up in the shade. I said the owner would open the tasting room so you could get a drink if you wanted to. And would you know this was the best attended Bible study I'd ever led at that church? Who would have thought if I'd known it was that easy, I would have just had everything at the vineyard. But as I was preparing the outline for that Bible study, I compiled a list of all the agrarian stories and parables in the Bible. I was especially looking for themes around vineyards or pruning or farming. And the list got longer and longer and longer, and I realized that these themes are everywhere throughout the Old and New Testaments, especially the theme of vines and vine keeping. Throughout scriptures, God is referred to as the gardener or the vine tender, and God's people were frequently referred to as the fruit of the vine, often as wild grapes that need much pruning. So here in John 15, Jesus is not introducing a new concept. Rather, he's reinterpreting this ancient concept in a new way. I am the vine, Jesus says. No longer is this a metaphor about the gardener and the grapes. Now it involves a third character, the vine, Jesus himself. And this is the seventh and final I am statement in the Gospel of John. And let me remind you that when Jesus makes these I am statements, he is intentionally using the sacred name of God revealed in Exodus. And so Jesus is telling us in no uncertain terms that he is God as he tells us about the character of God. And this final I am statement is made on the night before Jesus is killed. This is the last sermon he makes to his disciples, the last thing he wants them to remember about who he is, about who God is. And what is especially unique about this I am statement is that it's the only I am statement that explicitly tells us who we are in this scenario. When Jesus said, I am the bread of life, for I am the light of the world, he's telling us who he is, and how we fit into the picture is left up to our interpretation. But here Jesus clearly says, I am the vine. My father is the vine grower, and you are the branches. There is no interpretation needed here about how we fit into this parable. Jesus wants us to know we are the branches. So I'm curious if you would raise a hand. Are there any gardeners here today? Come on, I know there's more out there. All right, you guys can give me tips for my tomato plant later because I could use them. I love to garden. I'm not very good at it. I don't quite have the patience needed to tend plants well. And between the drought and my travels, this poor little tomato plant here has not yet produced one tomato. But I still brought it in thinking it might be a helpful illustration for us as we consider Jesus being the vine and us being the branches. Now, it doesn't take a master gardener to know that the vine is essential to a tomato plant. Without the vine, a tomato plant will not produce tomatoes. It is central to the survival of the entire plant. What you may not know is that inside the vine are very sophisticated systems that transport water and sugars and nutrients to the branches, and inside the vine are cellular systems that provide growth and help it to grow tall and have vertical support and have disease resistance. All of that happens in the vine. It is the source of life for the branches. And when the branches are healthily attached to the vine, they have the distinguished privilege of producing fruit. At least that's hypothetically the case when there's a good gardener who ensures that the soil is watered, that it receives the appropriate amount of sunlight, that the branches are pruned. And that's one of the big things that I'm terrible at doing, but is essential. When there's a diseased or dying branch that remains on the vine, it diverts precious nutrients from the good branches that could produce good fruit. And so gardeners will remove these hopeless branches so that the vine's nutrients will go to the branches that can thrive, that can grow in abundance. I am the vine, you are the branches. When we look at this plant, we can catch Jesus' meaning. He is the source of our life. He is the source of our positive energy, of our joy and our hope and our peace and our love of all of the spiritual nutrients that we need to thrive. It all comes from Him. Without Jesus, our vine, we do not have access to those spiritual nutrients that allow us to grow and produce the fruit that we were created to produce. And the same goes for God, the gardener. Jesus says, My father is the vine grower, the one who tends the branches and cultivates them to thrive. My poor tomato plant has not thrived because I have not tended it well. And I've had a couple people say to me, it doesn't look that bad. And I say, You should have seen it three days ago. When I wrote the sermon, I was like, I'm gonna bring this in. I gotta at least make it somewhat presentable. God is the good gardener. He's a different kind of gardener. Jesus tells us that God prunes or cleanses the branches that do not bear fruit in this passage in John. Prune and cleanse, share the same word. So we get this idea that when we trust in God, when we allow God to be the gardener of our souls, God rids us of the behaviors and patterns and thoughts that lead to spiritual disease and destruction and decay. God prunes us of our selfishness. God prunes us of our greed. God prunes us of all of the other vices that wreak havoc in our lives when we remain in the vine. God, the vine grower, is never neglectful. God knows what we need to thrive and gives it to us freely and generously because God wants us to live a full life and produce fruit in abundance. That's our job, our calling, our meaning in life is to produce fruit for God's kingdom, which leads to the question that I'm sure you're asking: what does it mean to produce fruit? Well, John's gospel has only one answer to that question: fruit equals love. Someone who produces fruit is someone who lives a life that is known by concrete deeds of love. Jesus is very clear in John's gospel that the only commandment we have as his followers is to love others as we have been loved. In verse 9, Jesus says, This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. This is what Jesus wants from us: to love one another. This is what bearing fruit looks like. Now we all know that loving one another is not as simple as being commanded to do so. I remember a time when my girls were much younger and they were fighting as only sisters can do. And I tried to intervene, I tried to bring about compromise, I tried to make the peace, and nothing worked. So I threw up my hands in frustration and said, Your sisters just love each other. As if we can love on demand or check off love each other from a to-do list on our days list. You and I know that love is not so simple or easy as all that. Because there are people in our lives who are difficult to love, who get under our skin. I mean, they're not here with us today, but they're out there somewhere. And more importantly, there are people in our lives who we refuse to love. They've hurt us or offended us or disappointed us and we don't want to love them. And yet Jesus' commandment remains. And so does our calling to bear fruit of love. So how do we do this? How do we bear fruit? Well, let me answer by pointing out that there are two ways to read Jesus' commandment in verse 12, when he said, Love one another as I have loved you. That word as is a very important one. It's the word kathos in Greek, and it can mean two things. It can mean that you're making a comparison, or it can mean that you're indicating a cause. So if you read it as a comparison, the meaning of the command is this: we are to love each other in the same way that Jesus loved us. This is the what would Jesus do mentality. Our role model is Jesus, and we're to love as he loved. The second way you can interpret this command, with the other use of cathos in mind, is the command sounds like this. We are to love each other because Jesus loved us. Or better yet, we are to love each other, and it's Jesus' love within us that enables us to do so. Jesus' love for us is the power that compels us to love others. Jesus' love for us is the nutrient that grows the fruits of love in our lives. I would argue this is what Jesus means when he tells his followers to abide in him. He says, abide 11 times. In these 17 verses, we are to abide in Jesus even as he abides in the Father. Abide, abide, abide. What does that word mean? Well, the dictionary tells us that it means to remain or stay with. And that's a great starting place for us to understand Jesus' invitation to abide. We are to remain with Jesus through the ups and downs of life, the twists and turns of the road. We are to stay with Jesus, especially when we feel tempted to wander. But the invitation to abide is more than that. To abide in Jesus is ultimately to abide in the love of Jesus. To abide in Jesus is simply to let Jesus love you. The first thing we learn as a child in the church is Jesus loves me, this I know. And it's the hardest thing for adults to wrap our heads around. Abiding in Jesus means we let God's love cover us and flow through us and ultimately transform us. This isn't a one-and-done type of thing. This is an acceptance of God's love every day, on our good days, on our bad days, when we feel like being loved and we are sure we don't deserve it. To abide is to let God love us. And if we are to bear the fruit of love for others, true fruit of love, we have to first let God love us. And the extraordinary thing is that God's love has no limits. Jesus foreshadowed this when he talked about his death with the disciples. He said, No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends, and I call you friends. This is what Jesus did for each of us. Jesus' love cost him his life, and he laid it down willingly so that we could have life. This tells us a great deal about God's love for you and for me. There are no lengths to which God will not go for us. There are no depths to which you can descend where God will not follow you. There are no problems too big that will scare God away from you. There are no mistakes too horrendous that will make God turn away from you. There is nothing you can do to make God stop loving you. I'm gonna repeat that because this is the hardest thing for us grownups to grasp. There is nothing you can do that will make God stop loving you. There is nothing you can do to make God stop loving you. God's love has no limits. And this love is deeply personal, meaning God has a special love just for you. Jesus said, You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I read that to mean that God created each of us. God created you just as you are as an act of love. God made you with the purpose of loving you because God delights in you. God chose you into existence and gives you breath and life. And this love that God has for you is so personal. God loves you for all your flaws and all your imperfections, for your failures and your successes, for your past and for your future, for your heartaches and your joys. God loves you for your public talents and your hidden quirks. God chose you and God chooses to love you every single day with that extraordinary personal love that He has only for you. And Jesus' invitation is simple and yet profound. Abide in this love. Allow God to love you. Trust that this love is genuine and real, and let it so fill you up that it overflows from you into a fruitful life, a life that is defined by deeds of love, a life that bears much fruit. When I look at my tomato plant, it helps me understand these words that Jesus said. That He is the vine, we are the branches. Because it helps me to realize that these words of Jesus gives us something concrete by which we can measure our connectivity to God. We can look at our lives just like we can look at this tomato plant and ask ourselves, am I bearing fruit of love? When was the last time I did something that was purely motivated by love? When was the last time I sacrificed something of myself in order to serve another? Or perhaps the best question, would others describe my life by deeds of love or by something else? But there's a difference between this tomato plant and us as the branches on the vine. In this case, only the gardener, myself, is to blame for its fruitlessness, but I have hope. I think it might. I think it might, especially being here in church, it's like getting extra blessings. Maybe it'll produce a lot of fruit now, but only myself is to blame for its lack of fruit. But when it comes to our lives, we cannot say the same. You see, we are on the vine. The gardener is working on our behalf all of the time. But unlike the branches on my tomato plants, we have to choose to abide in the vine. We have to choose every day to abide in Jesus, to let his love nourish our lives, our thoughts, our words, our deeds, to let the gardener prune off those things that need to go. Only then can we discover the fullness of life and the extent of our fruitfulness for God's kingdom. We don't produce fruit by our own muster, we produce fruit by abiding in God and letting God grow the fruit within us. So I urge you, as you leave worship today, as you go out into the world, I invite you to take stock of your own branches. Consider what kind of fruit are you producing, and then ask yourself how can I better abide in Jesus? How can I accept this extraordinary love that God so freely gives me? In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.