Jesus’ most important parable/analogy? – John 15:1-10, Part 1

Before each worship service, my church has a brief prayer time before each worship service. The host, worship leader, singers, and preacher gather in a small circle to pray that the Holy Spirit will work in and through us, because we desire our worship services to be meaningful, formative. 

When we pray, there’s a passage of Scripture that is always on my mind. Every week.  I don’t mention the passage of Scripture each week during that short prayer, but I’m thinking about it when I pray, “Lord we need you.”  Every time our serve teams meet we begin with a prayer time, and I’m thinking about it, “Lord we need you.”  Every time our Leadership Team meets, we begin with prayer, and I’m thinking about it, “Lord we need you.”  

Whether it is about how to continue becoming the church family that God wants us to be, whether it is about supporting the advancement of God’s Kingdom in our community, making disciples, worshiping God, building healthy relationships in our church family, or any aspect of the life and ministry of our church family, I think about that passage of Scripture, the one that leads me to pray, “Lord, we need you.” 

That passage is what we’re studying on the blog this week: John 15, verses 1-10. In this passage, Jesus teaches a parable/analogy that we can learn much from. 

In the last sentence of John chapter 14, we read tat Jesus and the disciples have just left the Upper Room where he washed their feet, served them the first communion, and revealed that Judas would betray him and Peter would deny him.  Then he told them he was leaving them, but he would send the Holy Spirit to them because God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit wanted to make their home with and in the lives of all his followers.  Now Jesus has a parable/analogy to help his disciples understand how important this teaching is about God making his home with us.  Look at John 15:1-2,

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

Jesus is not referring the English ivy along my driveway.  Some vines like English ivy grow and grow, but they don’t produce fruit, and thus there is no need for pruning, unless you don’t want them to cover everything.  Jesus is saying that he is like a vine that has the capability of producing fruit, and thus the branches on the vine must pruned.  That means there is also a farmer, God the Father, who does the pruning. 

You should see the peach tree in our back yard.  I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to caring for that peach tree.  But this past year it clearly needed to be pruned.  Growth was too high, too wild, and last year’s peach crop was poor.  So I got my pruning shears, and I started cutting.  I did not do research about how to prune.  I just started trimming. 

I had a rough goal of thinning out the branches.  Peaches had already started growing on the trees, so I plucked off the tiny peaches, leaving only the big ones.  There were still a ton of big ones, thankfully.  But in the end, if you would look at our peach tree, I think you would laugh.  Branches are sticking out in all kinds of crazy directions. 

My peach tree does not look like a peach tree at Cherry Hill Orchards.  Located near me in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Cherry Hill has rows and rows of beautifully trimmed peach trees.  Why does my tree look so different from theirs?  Because I’m not a pruner like the pruners who work for Cherry Hill Orchards. 

Thankfully, God is not a pruner like I am pruner.  God knows what he is doing.  God is like the pruners at Cherry Hill.  Jesus says God cuts off branches that bear no fruit, and he prunes the fruit-bearing branches to make them even more bountiful.  The point here is that Jesus wants to bear fruit.  Jesus wants his life to produce more life.  God’s act of pruning is consistent with his love. 

But the image of a pruner cutting off branches and pruning still might cause us to squirm a little bit.  We might be thinking, “Is God going to cut me off from the vine?  Is he going to prune me?  Will I have to change something about my life?”  Those are scary questions.  I’d much rather not ask those questions because I’m not sure I want to hear the answers.  I myself often wonder if I am serving God sacrificially enough.  I know I have some struggles, some selfishness, some sins.  Am I in trouble?

Notice that Jesus wants us to bear fruit and to be pruned so that we will be more fruitful.

When Jesus says this, at first glance it sounds very familiar.  In our American context we so often evaluate worth based on a very specific definition of success, “bigger is better,” winning is everything, getting more people involved, more money, more likes, more views, more buildings.  You are deemed worthy if you are leading or even you are just a part of something that is growing in that so-called successful way.  Is that what Jesus is talking about?

We’ll find out in the next post.

Photo by Jaime Casap on Unsplash