The Fruit of the Vine

In the spirit of our university semester drawing to a close, here's a pop quiz! 

What was the first commandment God gave to human beings? Any guesses? Maybe some of you thought of one of the Ten Commandments, the Law given to Moses for the Israelite people on Mount Sinai. But it is before that. Or you might have thought of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants, or God’s command to Noah to build an ark. But it is before that. Or maybe you even thought of God’s commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even then, you’d be wrong. 

The first commandment God gave to human beings was given to Adam and Eve, but it was not a warning about sin. Rather, he said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” I always tend to think of this fact about this time of year, when the weather has finally gotten nice, the flowers and trees are blooming, and all of nature seems to be singing. Springtime is an inherent reminder of God’s desire that all of his creation flourish.

Still, what about all of those commandments? Everyone knows that Christianity is a religion with commandments. “Honor your father and mother.” “Do not kill.” “Do not commit adultery.” Don’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent. No sex outside of marriage. Fast for an hour before receiving the Eucharist. And so on, and so on. If God’s desire for us is to flourish – not just to populate the earth, like Adam and Eve – but to prosper in every way, how do a bunch of commandments help us to do that?

We hear the answer in our second reading today. For the past several weeks, this reading has come from the First Letter of John. If you have never read is particular letter straight through, I would encourage you to do so. It is one of the more beautiful explanations of the Christian faith and a simple guide to how to live as a follower of Jesus. The author of the letter – who was most likely either the Apostle John or one of his close followers – speaks about how the apostles and disciples were privileged to follow Jesus in his earthly ministry: to hear him preach, to see him heal, etc. But it was only after his Passion, Death, and Resurrection that they came to understand there is an even more important way of relating to Jesus – through love. Love is the tie that binds every believer to God, whether we have seen Jesus or not. God is love, as St. John says, and we love God because we recognize that he first loved us in Christ. Jesus is the proof of God’s love and the one who has made us like himself, so that we are now called children of God.

Edward Burne-Jones, The Tree of Life (detail), c. 1888

How though do we love God? St. John tells us – by keeping his commandments. That is the heart of the message we have heard in this reading the last few weeks – that the proof of loving God is to do what he has told us. As we heard today, faithfulness is proven not merely in words and speech, through mere lip service. Rather faithfulness is shown by action – by what we do “in deed and in truth” as he says. At the heart of every commandment is the choice of whether to love God in that particular way, to acknowledge that he truly loves us and that apart from him we cannot flourish or prosper. Following the will of God, obeying his commandments – even the ones we don’t like! – are the way in which we remain in the love of God that sustains us.

In the Gospel today, Jesus tells us that apart from him we can do nothing. It sounds almost like an insult; but it is a reminder of how truly we depend upon God's goodness for everything. Think about what commandment of God you are having the most trouble following. Is there a rule of the Church that you don’t like? Is there a commandment that you constantly seem to break? Rather than dismiss that thing as unimportant, or resign yourself to it as something that you can’t overcome, think of it instead as precisely the place that God wants to lift you up and help you to flourish. The life of the Vine is extended to you precisely there, so that as a branch on the tree of God, you can be healed and made whole. Love is the tie that binds you to Jesus, but each of us must open ourselves to receiving the life-giving grace that he wants to communicate.

There is of course a flip side to the image of the vine and branches which is more challenging. As any gardener knows, there are some plants, and some parts of plants that do not flourish. They droop and sag; they do not use the nutrients given to them. They fail to truly bear the life of the Vine within them, and as such, they do not bear fruit. When we fail to keep the Lord’s commandments – when we say, “NO,” to what he asks, or ignore his commandments – then in doing so, we resist the very life that sustains us. The Lord’s command is for us to bear fruit; he wants our relationship with him to flourish so that our life grows and spreads beyond ourselves to touch the lives of others and to communicate to them the same life from the Vine that is within us.

Therefore, we must be pruned. The gardener knows that a plant only truly thrives when it has been formed in the correct way. At times, this means doing something which on the face is counter-intuitive – trimming it back, cutting away parts of its life that are easy and superficial but which prevent fuller and deeper growth. We are pruned as well. Whenever we encounter loss, challenge, grievance, disappointment, hardship, or insult, – in any wound that we suffer – there is a temptation to focus only upon it and upon the pain of that present moment. Instead, the Lord invites us to accept our pruning, to embrace the opportunity of letting go of something – even something good – so that we can cling more fully to him, and stay rooted in the divine life that comes from the Vine.

Friends, our faith does indeed have commandments, and commandments that we must follow, but Christianity is not ultimately a religion defined by rules. Instead, it is the full expression of what God first said to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply.” How connected are you to Christ? Have you remained in him, so that he can remain in you? We are branches on the tree of God, but in order to bear fruit, we must be careful not to separate ourselves from the Vine. The fruit that Jesus expects us to bear is the fruit of faith, hope, and love, the fruit of charitable service, the fruit of self-denial, the fruit of Christian mission, the fruit of spreading the Gospel. May the Eucharist we will soon share – when we will partake of the fruit of the vine transformed into the Lord’s Heavenly Vintage to nourish us – help us to remain rooted in him, so that we can bear much fruit.