It Starts with the Vine, not the Fruit

Ministry leaders of all contexts, traditions, and roles know on some level the experience of trying to produce “fruit” and only finding frustration.

I don’t deal well with frustration – just ask my sister about our marathon Monopoly sessions growing up. Frustration, of course, is an old part of the human story. “Cursed is the ground because of you,” God says to Adam after Adam’s failure to trust the Source of all good to lead him to the good, instead rushing toward, well, fruit. “Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” (Genesis 3:17-18). From Eden to now, this shared human experience of frustration originates not from God but more fundamentally from our subtle rejection of God that says, “I’ve got this. I know how to achieve, produce, take care of myself, control what’s happening.” It’s a powerful myth we tell ourselves about our own ability to choose the good, our own ingenuity, our own hard work.

And so it goes on Monday morning when I find myself unimpressed by my sermon.

So it goes at the church board meeting after the outreach event planned weeks ago didn’t quite have the attendance everyone hoped.

So it goes when the treasurer hands over a bad report despite months of an expertly-designed capital campaign.

So it goes spending years taking up the hard work towards justice — only to find injustice multiplying everywhere.

So the Disciples thought it was going that Passover night, the night Jesus was betrayed, the night before he would take up a crown of thorns onto his own head. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower,” Jesus tells them. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:1, 9).

Is it really as simple as all that, Jesus? Well, yes, it is. In the preface to his superb, short work on the Apostles’ Creed, Ben Myers speaks of this abiding, this possessing of everything we need.

The Christian faith is mysterious not because it is so complicated but because it is so simple. A person does not start with baptism and then advance to higher mysteries. In baptism each believer already possesses the faith in its fullness. The whole of life is encompassed in the mystery of baptism: dying with Christ and rising with him through the Spirit to the glory of God. That is how the Christian life begins, and to seek to move beyond that beginning is really to regress.

– Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism (Lexham Press, 2018), xv.

It’s crucial for pastors and congregations to remember that, in a fundamental sense, there is no going “beyond” our relationship with God or advancing to something else, as Myers puts it. Clinging to the vine that is Christ is not something to do from time to time as needed, but continually, daily.

We often relegate our relationship with God to the periphery in order to get the “real work” done. We pay lip service to it, but we worry about being so “heavenly minded, we’re of no earthly good.” Jesus’ vine metaphor in John 15 teaches us that the only way towards any kind of lasting good is to abide – remain, continue – in Jesus. “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last . . .” (John 15:16).  Seek Christ, and he promises the fruit will follow. It often happens in ways we neither expect nor plan. But from the perspective of the eternal God, the fruit will come in ways that truly last.

Jeremiah reminds us:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jer 17:7-8)

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Questions for Reflection:

• In what ways is our relationship with God “simple”? In what ways does it not feel that way at all?
• What frustrations are you experiencing now? How do they show you ways your ministry or church is seeking fruit but missing Jesus?
• How is the Spirit leading your ministry or church towards a deeper relationship with God? What is getting in the way?