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Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, hallelujah.
I am the true vine, says Jesus, and my father is the vinedresser.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, what comes to mind when I hear that phrase, “I am the vine,” I almost automatically fill in the second phrase. I don’t know if this happens in your imagination as well. I am the vine, says Jesus; I’m the vine, you are the branches. And it seems like that’s what naturally follows; in fact, it does. In verse 6 in our text, that’s what Jesus says: “I’m the vine and you are the branches.”
And that’s the basic idea of all of these “I am” statements that Jesus gives to us. I am the Good Shepherd; that means we’re the flock. I am the way and the truth and the life; that means we are the ones who are on the way and who are given the truth and who are made to live in him. I am the light, and we are those who sit in darkness and are enlightened by Christ. I’m the gate of the sheep, and we are the sheep that go through the gate.
But interestingly enough, in this particular text, in John chapter 15, Jesus is giving this to His disciples as they’re on their way from the upper room down to the Garden of Gethsemane. So it’s holy; it’s already Good Friday, but it’s what we would say Thursday night. Jesus is between the washing of the disciples’ feet and the praying with such intensity that His sweat is drops of blood. He’s on the way, and He’s teaching them this: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.”
As far as I can tell, this is the one “I am” statement of Jesus that is more than just about us and Jesus. It’s about us and Jesus and God the Father. It’s a Trinitarian text. And I think I have a sense of why, but the main point of Jesus’ preaching here is not even that He’s the vine and we’re the branches, but that He is the vine, we are the branches, and the Father is the vinedresser. He’s the one that prunes.
Now, I think Jesus has this in mind because He’s looking forward and knows what’s coming: His great pruning, His affliction in the garden, His crucifixion on Calvary. He sees it coming. He sees the trouble. He sees the pain. He sees the sorrow and the blood and the cross. He sees it on the way, and He sees it as the pruning, the good, healthy, holy pruning of God the Father. And he’s teaching us in this text to see our own suffering in the same way.
Now, I want to admit to you all that I read Luther’s sermon on this text probably four times this week. I kept going back to it, and I thought about just preaching Luther’s sermon to you, just reading that because it’s so good, but I thought that’s kind of cheating. So I printed it out, and it’s in the Narthex; you should take it home, and that’s your homework to take a look at.
But I’m going to kind of follow his outline as he thinks about this because he has this beautiful picture. He says, “Can you imagine being a vine and you see the vine dresser coming? There are a couple of things that catch your attention, namely his shears, his pruning hooks, his wheelbarrow full of manure, and you say to the vine dresser, ‘Hey, this is terrible. What are you doing? Look, poking, cutting, ripping, tearing, chopping, tying, digging, scraping, you’re horrible to me.’ And the vine dresser says, ‘Look, you don’t even understand what’s good for you. This is good. This is for your good. I’m doing this so that you would bear more fruit.’ And the vine says, ‘Well, I just don’t see it that way.’ And the vine dresser says, ‘That’s because you’re a fool.’ That’s Luther.”
We don’t see it that way, right? We don’t see the troubles of this world, the afflictions of this world, all of the bad things that are happening to us outside and inside: the world afflicting the church, and even the troubles that we have as a family or as individuals. We don’t see them as the Lord pruning us. We see them as the devil attacking us, or the world overwhelming us, or our own sinful flesh having its way with us. We don’t see it as a gift, but rather as an affliction. We see it as torture, as trouble.
But this is why Jesus is preaching to us, Himself first. It’s why He’s explaining His own suffering and then preaching to us, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.” He cuts off that which doesn’t bear fruit, and that which does bear fruit, He prunes.
So the sufferings in this life, the trouble that you have in this life, is pruning from God the Father, who loves you and who does it so that you would bear much fruit. There are some examples to consider. For example, Saint Ignatius, who was a disciple of John the Apostle, was being led to Rome to be martyred, and he writes about it. He was going to be thrown into the arena to the lions, and he’s reflecting on his being devoured by the lions before it happens, which is kind of gruesome to think about. He says, “I am like wheat that must be ground into flour so that I can be baked into bread that would be useful for God. The teeth of the lion are God’s millstone.”
Can you imagine it? He’s thinking that to be made useful, he’s got to be devoured by the lions so that instead of being grain, he can be wheat that can be baked into bread. And so he goes joyfully to his martyrdom, fearlessly.
Or St. Agatha, who Luther also preaches about; it’s one of his favorite martyrs, and he preaches about her on this text. I remember St. Agatha was a young girl who was being tortured by the pro-council because she refused to marry him. In fact, the pro-council, Agatha had made a vow to be a student of the Scriptures and kind of a nun before there were nuns. The pro-council went to Agatha and said, “You should marry me.” And she said, “No, I’m married to the Lord and to His church; I’m going to serve Him.”
Then the pro-council says, “Well, if you don’t marry me, I’m going to kill you,” which I don’t think is a winning engagement proposal, really; “I’m going to burn you at the stake.” And Agatha said to him, “Your fire only lasts for a few minutes, but the fire of the one who will judge you lasts forever.”
Then she left the presence of the pro-council, going to her death, and this is what the story says: skipping, like a young girl, as if she was being led to a dance or to a wedding. Can you imagine it? With joy, because she was being led to a dance; she was being led to her wedding, she was being led to death, which is the worst thing, but which is the best thing. She was being brought to Jesus.
It was for her, as the church sings, and there’s this old Thomas Aquinas hymn written about the martyrs who says this: when the world and the devil afflict the Christian, unknowingly they lead us to bliss. That the devil comes and tries to do his worst to us, but what is the worst that he can do? He can kill us and usher us into the glorious presence of Christ. Unknowingly, all the afflictions that the world and the devil would bring upon the church are actually for our own good, so that we would bear much fruit, so that we would cling with hope to the promises of God, and so that we would at last stand before Him in glory.
What can the world do to you? What can the devil do to you? The worst thing is the best thing. It’s like… this is the picture, and it’s the best picture I’ve got until I get another one.
So you’ve heard it before, but this is where it fits. If you can imagine that you’re walking along the street and some thugs come and grab you, tie your hands behind your back, put duct tape over your mouth, and throw you into the back of an unmarked van, and they drive you to Texas Roadhouse and drop you off with gift cards, which is where you wanted to be in the first place, right? Thank you.
Wrong. That wasn’t nice of you. This is what the devil… when the devil comes to attack you and afflict you, he’s bringing you closer to Jesus, the thing that you want in the first place. Can you see it? Remember Joseph? This is in Genesis chapter 50. He was… his brothers sold him into slavery, and he was in… he was a slave and then he was in prison and then he was serving… he was in prison again and all this stuff until the Lord exalted him and made him second in charge over all of Egypt and used him to rescue the people and even his own family. He says to his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
And so it is with every single trouble that you have in this life. The devil means it for evil; the world means it for evil, but God means it for good, and he uses it for good, for you.
Now this is hard to see. When we’re the vine, it’s very easy to see the scissors and not the hand that operates the scissors. It’s very easy for us to see the shears and the saw and not to see the kind face of the vinedresser who is operating them for us. But this is the point: the Lord sets limits. The devil and the world are the tools that God the Father uses to prune. And He means it for good.
If you want to see that He means it for good, you have only to look to the cross of Jesus. I think this is why Jesus gives this picture at this time in John chapter 15, because He sees that He is about to go and receive the worst that the world and that the devil could offer anybody in His crucifixion.
But more than that, He was going to endure the wrath of God, but He knows that it’s good, that it’s on purpose, that it wins salvation, that it is the way that we come into eternal life, that the devil who thought that he had conquered on Good Friday had become an accomplice to the greatest and most beautiful act that ever happened in the history of the world, the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you, devil, for pushing Jesus to the cross and for holding Him with the nails and for being God’s devil to accomplish the salvation of the world. Can you see that?
And that is also what’s happening in our own lives, that the devil comes along plotting, thinking he’s going to destroy us, but he goes only so far as the Lord lets him and accomplishes only what God the Father wants him to accomplish for your good, for His glory, and for the sake of the gospel.
We are the vine that’s being pruned by, not the devil or the world, but by God the Father who is the vinedresser. And this is so important because while the eyes of our flesh see only the troubles of this world and the disastrous difficulties that we’re surrounded by, and it looks like it’s only getting worse, and we see all of these troublesome things in the world, and we worry about it, we distress about it, we think, “Boy, today’s bad; tomorrow’s probably going to get worse.”
And we feel it in our own bodies, in our families, in our consciences, in our hearts, and in our minds, and in our hopes, and in our dreams. We feel all of this trouble. Here Jesus comes to us and says, “All of this is a gift from God the Father who is pruning you and using it for your good.”
And by that word, the Holy Spirit starts to open our eyes to see that all the afflictions and troubles in this life are given to us by the One who loved us, from the hands that not only created us but that are also bringing us through this life to stand before Him in life eternal.
Now, one of the key things that we have to know by faith is that the Lord sets a hard limit on all of our afflictions. It looks to us, it looks to me, though, like the devil has free course, like the devil can just do what he wants, like the world is winning, like the church is just being beaten down and soon ready to be devoured. But that is not true. The Lord sets hard limits. The devil can go this far and no farther. The world can go this far and no farther. Your enemies and the troubles that afflict you can go this far and no farther.
The Lord, and this is good for us to remember, that if the devil had his way, we would have all died in despair years ago. If the world had its way, there would be no church at all, no faith on earth; this would be spiritual, and everything would be destitute. It would be nothing.
So the Lord has set this hard limit on all of these troubles because He means to use them for our good, that you would, as Jesus promised, bear much fruit.
And so we have to trust the Lord Jesus; we have to trust what He says. We have to pray that the Holy Spirit would enlighten the eyes of our hearts so that we would begin, and I’m not… I don’t want to suggest that this is easy; this is hard. For me, it’s hard for all of us. But Jesus invites us to believe this: that all the troubles in life—and this counts for the physical troubles, for the mental and spiritual troubles, especially for the persecution that comes upon us as Christians and for being in the Lord’s church—that all of this trouble, that this is the vine dresser pruning the vine, you, the vine, the branch, so that you would prove to be His disciples, so that you would bear much fruit, so that you would abound in faith and hope and love for God and for your neighbor.
Jesus gave us the promise: “I am the vine, you are the branches. My Father is the vinedresser.” God be praised. Amen. May the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia.
