John 15:1-8 2021 Mulching, pruning, fruiting.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Our daughter and son-in-law just bought their first house in Toowoomba. The soil is beautiful, but the mature garden was a neglected jungle which had thrived on the recent rains. He is keen on composting, so we cleared an area, his brother made composting bays with stood up pallets and star pickets, and we fired up the hired 4 inch wood chipper. Boy, was it noisy, even with ear protection, and the thicker branches jarred my hands, but it steadily turned the cut down branches and weeds into barrow loads of mulch, interspersed with layers of horse manure. Satisfying work. Nothing wasted.
Mulching. Last year Angela and I joined 3 other pastor friends for a wine evening by zoom, with Stephen and Prue Henschke from the Henschke Wines in South Australia. They are the quiet rivals to Penfolds Grange for top Australian red. The surprise of the evening for me was Prue Henschke, who manages the vineyards. We had sent in a question about the impact of climate change, expecting the answer to be they were exploring newer varieties. No, she was passionate about her mature old vines continuing to cope well with climate change, through excellent mulching.
Our text does not mention mulching, but it is all about vineyard management – our heavenly Father working with us and among us. It’s about staying connected to Jesus, who calls us his friends. It’s about being shaped, pruned and cleaned up, in order to produce good fruit. It’s not about me and my stunning separate individuality, but about being part of something much bigger than just me. It’s about being comfortably supported with lovely, life-giving mulch.
These words of Jesus are not spoken in a pretty vacuum. This was his last meal with his disciples mere hours before his arrest and death. He is literally sharing the love with them, footwashing, careful conversation, to strengthen them and help ground them for what was to come. For Jesus was literally about to go through the shredder of death on the cross, with the unexpected shock and the wonder of the resurrection on the third day.
‘You have already been made clean by the word I have spoken to you.’ Every Sunday Jesus speaks words of forgiveness to us. Those words have power and truth in them, because Jesus did the hard journey for us, into death, into the cost of sin even though he was innocent; into darkness though he was the light of the world, and into the total loss of power, dignity and the ability to maintain control. He did all this for us, and with us, entrusting himself into his Father’s hands. That trust was answered with Easter – new life on the other side of death and failure. He is the true vine, who gives life to every branch connected to him. Going back to our other gardening image: he is the mulch that gives us what we need to survive what ever is happening in the climate around us. We are made clean by Jesus’ word of forgiveness and acceptance to us. Now we learn to trust that. Now we learn to trust that we are growing and producing in the right way.
Shaping, pruning, made clean through Jesus’ word. Each different type of grape variety has it’s preferred way of being pruned. Too much growth – the effort goes into lots of leaves, with little fruit. The pruning too tight – exposed bunches get sunburnt.
Shaping, pruning, made clean through Jesus’ word. There are times for all of us when we don’t ‘get it’.
Our old ways of controlling, directing, or feeling good no longer work as well as they once did. We are no longer the super confident 20 year olds who were ready for anything. We’ve been shaped and pruned by events, by our own fears and worries, and we have also done good things that we could never have imagined. And somewhere in all that is the master gardener shaping us, not to make life harder or to punish us, but to have us be well connected to Christ, and to bear fruit.
Two things: let go what has been pruned. What do I have to learn in this situation, that I am not getting, yet. How do we transform into mulch what we need to let go off. In Jesus’ time, the prunings weren’t wasted – they fired up the little cooking ovens.
Grow what has been shaped and is well connected. Forget about self. When it goes wrong, back track to see what happened.
The promise is that as we are connected to Christ – there will be fruit for others. It will come out of our personality, our passions, the way we deal with things, our empathy, our wisdom that is put into loving action. The faith that God is with us, in the painful as well as the successful, the easy and joyful as well as the hard. On our own, we run out of strength, out of sap, out of nutrient. Connected to Christ, everything gets transformed and used.
