Sermon - 4/28/08 Your Faith Journey - Finding God Through Words, Song and Praise

Easter 5 B – 04 28 2024

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for his departure. This part of the Farewell Discourses. Jesus knows he will be going home, and he wants his disciples to be prepared. This is a pastoral moment, reminding them that they will not be alone, as he says “I am the vine and you are the branches.
Vine and branches – connected to each other. They are intertwined to the point that you have to work hard to tell one from the other. Jesus and his disciples are best friends. This sounds so good until Verse 2 comes along. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 
Notice Jesus says that if the disciples are bearing no fruit, the branch is totally removed. It is those who are bearing fruit that will be pruned in order to bear more fruit. The disciples have already been bearing fruit, thus Jesus wants them to continue.
This is true, in order for new buds to form there needs to be trimming or cutting off. How many flowers do you have to cut off once they have bloomed and begin to wilt, before new ones can form and grow? Just like the Easter flowers that I have at home.
Jesus actually says that any branch that does not bear fruit needs to be cut off. Wait a minute does this mean that Jesus is letting his disciples know that as they continue without him that they will be expected to continue changing? I believe so. At this time, they don’t know what those changes will look like. Throughout their life with Jesus, what they have been taught and had been doing has come into question.
His disciples had questioned him as he continued to reframe their faith. Jesus was letting them know that he wouldn’t be there physically ready to answer the way that he had been. At the same time, he was reassuring them that he would not be leaving them alone.
You see Jesus says, this cutting off or pruning is not what cleanses you, but it is the word that he has spoken to them that cleanses. He says I know that you are scared of this pruning or cutting off, but it is not about your salvation, rather it is about bearing fruit. When you abide in me and I in you an d do the cutting or pruning, you will bear fruit, people will see me in you.
Cutting and pruning means change and I doubt the disciples were looking forward to it, but yet what had they been doing since they began to follow Jesus. Jesus had been reframing the law that they had learned. Jesus had been teaching that in order to love one another, meant that one would need to change their way of thinking and their actions.
The disciples had been doing it, but did not always find it easy. It often went against the culture and government’s laws. They were often in a difficult spot and as we move into the early church, sometimes they were jailed or stoned.
There are times in our lives that we are challenged to make changes that are not easy. Jesus is letting his disciples know that without cutting or pruning or making changes that they would not remain connected to him and would not be bearing more fruit. When we are not connected to him we began to die and lose the strength that we receive from him.
This cutting or pruning is not something that we do by ourselves. Jesus doesn’t say, “I’m going to sit and watch you stumble through fear while you see the change that could be made or make attempts to do it as Jesus knows that not one of us can make changes on our own. Jesus says apart from him, we can do nothing.
Unfortunately, my call here is to stir the pot and ask questions, as well as make suggestions on how to do things differently. This may make you feel uncomfortable. Although, my job is not to force you to do something.
There have been a number of events recently that people just expect to happen the way that they have always been done. If I don’t know how they have been done, they may not happen the same way. The seven last words of the