From the Lectionary for 28 April 2024 (Easter 5B)

John 15:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

~

"The image of the vine and the branches in John 15 gives us a powerful image of closeness both between ourselves and God and also with each other through our grounding in God.

"Each of us is a branch connected to the vine which is Jesus. Jesus is telling us that the desires of each and every one of us must be rooted in His Desire, which is the same Desire as that of his heavenly Father. Between Jesus and his Father, there is no rivalry and Jesus does not enter into rivalry with us. From our side it tends to be a different story. We experience rivalry so constantly that it is very hard to imagine a relationship without rivalry. Just note how political and social debates are saturated with it.

[...]

"We often think of union with God as individualistic but that is not so. On the contrary, union with the vine unites us with all of the other branches. This means we share our union with the vine with everybody else’s union with the vine. It is by being united to others through Christ that we have the ability, through grace, to act towards others in God’s Desire rather than through our rivalistic tendencies. Since there is no rivalry in Jesus, there is no way that Jesus would encourage rivalry with others who are connected to him. [...] God abides in us insofar as we love one another. If we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves off from other people and if we cut ourselves off from other people, we cut ourselves off from God.

"The image of the vine and the branches is, above all, Eucharistic. The Eucharist is a public event. The wine in the Eucharistic celebration is the blood of Jesus that he gave to heal all of us of our violent ways. The blood of Jesus on the altar shared with each of us makes present to us the death of Jesus at the hands of persecutory humans as it also makes present the risen life of Jesus. In exchange for the way we betray Jesus with our violence, we receive the gift of life through deep union with Jesus, a union like that of the branches to the vine. We associate blood with violence, such as with the term “bloodshed,” but blood is the life within us and it is life that the Risen Jesus gives us through his Blood. This is the wine, the blood, that flows from the vine to the branches to connect us to Christ and to each other."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post "On Being Branches Connected to the Vine" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2018/04/26/on-being-branches-connected-to-the-vine/)

~

"I don't know whether you've ever seen a vine close up but the interesting thing about is the vine itself looks dead. It's gnarled and looks like a dead stick basically. Not so the branches. The branches are green and supple and come out of it and, obviously, the fruit. [..] But there's this strange juxtaposition of this apparently dead stick out of which comes so much life. And I think that's part of the image that Jesus is using here. He's talking about how he, the risen Lord, is the dead and alive one. He is the one who is apparently dead and in whose death we are buried so that we can become alive and become him. I think that that's what he's talking about. He's talking about how we can share his dead and alive quality and how sticking with that dead and alive quality, not running away from it, is what's going to allow us to be pruned and turned into bearers of fruit.

"One of the remarks that I wish I understood better and I raise it as a question more than anything else: “You've already been cleansed or pruned by the word that I have spoken to you.” So that something about his speaking to us, what he spoke to his disciples before this, before the speech which is given during the Last Supper, something about the words which he speaks to us, they enable us to live in this dead and alive space without running away from it. And it's that that allows us to begin to yield fruit, because he's quite clear that what he wants is, as it were, for all his sap to rise through us. [He] talks about this at the end: “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.”

"So, abiding, dwelling, making our home in him - that's the sense, which means making a home out of his words, allowing his words to correct us, to nurture us, to nudge us. It's difficult to know exactly what's meant, but this dwelling with his words alters our pattern of desire, such that he is able to desire through us and that our desire is his desire. [...] That's the sense of us actually finding ourselves in a home in him, becoming a co-part of it 'sapped in' into the home, so that we're actually part of it, and it actually flows through us. That I think is part of the richness of what's going on here.

"[...] So this business of remaining in his word, it's a curious thing: how do we do that? What does it look like to find ourselves remaining in the word, allowing the sap to rise in us, allowing his words to nudge us, to correct us, to nurture us? That I think is part of what he's saying is going to be what our life is like from now on. It's going to be listening to the word, dwelling in the word, allowing ourselves to become his self by our imitation, by being taken over gently by his Spirit. And enabled to find ourselves actually wanting amazing things, much bigger things than we could have imagined, and getting them - bearing fruit.

"And this whole thing being on an adventure with a very careful, very caring, very wise vine grower who knows where to prune, who knows where to sift, who knows how to carry us through the times when we think that we're just bits of deadwood and no good at all, is aware that there's a season when the sap will come and we will turn into the fruit that we might fear that we were never going to see."

- James Alison, from video Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYk6IfBBPI)

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog post, and for extensive discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter5b/]