Thomas Kleinert
For thousands of years, people have crushed the fruit of the vine to make wine. Grapevines are among the oldest known food crops — seeds have been found at early Bronze Age sites near Jericho, dating back to around 3200 BCE, and in northern Iran, archeologists dug up wine storage jars that are about 7000 years old.[1] According to Genesis, Noah was a man of the soil, and the first to plant a vineyard.[2] Vine and vineyard became important metaphors for Israel’s ancient poets and prophets to speak about the relationship between God and God’s people. And it’s no coincidence that cups of wine are central to the Jewish observance of Passover and to our own sacred meal, the Lord’s Supper.
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I don’t remember much about my first year of kindergarten. I vaguely recall a brick building behind the church, hooks in the hallway where we hung our coats and jackets, and that I carried a brown leather satchel, just big enough for a small sandwich and a piece of fruit. One thing I remember quite vividly, though, is the wall that faced the playground: two stories high, it was completely covered with grapevines, and all the branches and leaves grew from only two vines, planted in a sunny patch near the sandbox. Somewhere in the middle up there a small balcony jutted out, just big enough for a folding chair and a book. In my memory, I’m standing in the corner of this little balcony, and Sister Rita is there, sitting on a folding chair. I’m not looking down to the playground; I’m looking at the wall around the balcony door, the jungle-like curtain of branches, leaves and twigs that covers the entire stretch between earth and sky, and I notice, just above the spot where the iron rail meets the wall, a cluster of little blue grapes. I tasted grapes before, big green and black ones that my mother sometimes would bring home from the market, but finding these little gems growing right by the playground was magical. “May I eat one?” I asked Sister Rita, and she said yes. I can see my hand reaching over the rail, and I can almost feel the blue pearl between my thumb and the tip of my forefinger as I carefully pluck it from the cluster. It wasn’t the juiciest or sweetest grape I ever ate, but at that moment, and even now, that little blue pearl had the whole wonder of life in it.
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Jesus talked to the disciples for a long time the night before he was crucified, to prepare them for what was coming. He washed their feet so they would remember what greatness looks like and how love translates into simple, obedient action. His words conveyed comfort and assurance, when the events of the next few days would disrupt their lives and certainties in ways they couldn’t imagine. Yes, one of them would betray him, and one of them would deny him. He would lay down his life for them, but to them it would feel like it had been taken. He would return to the Father, but to them it would feel like abandonment. That night, facing the turmoil and the chaos about to descend on them, Jesus talked to the disciples about the deep reality that would continue to form them in community and sustain them: “Abide in me as I abide in you. I am the vine, you are the branches.”
Abide he said; seven times the word appears in just four verses. Abide is an old-fashioned word we don’t use much in everyday speech. Of the 17 uses listed in the dictionary, eight are obsolete. It’s like the word belongs to another time. “To abide” evokes notions of persevering, continuing, lasting, staying, being at home. No wonder the term is rare. What it means is rare, in this or any time, and, as Dean Lueking observed, its absence diminishes us.[3]
It diminishes us because without the capacity to be in a place, to be in a moment, or to be with another person, we are being pushed further and further into fragmentation and isolation. “Abide” is a key word in both the Gospel of John and 1 John, used to characterize the foundational reality of love between God and Jesus and the disciples and Jesus as mutual indwelling, as being at home with each other.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
Six times Jesus speaks of bearing fruit in these eight verses. It’s a theme, not a quick comment: The life of Jesus bearing fruit in the fullness and wholeness of all of life, and our lives bearing the fruit of his life. Even the phrases wind around each other like branches on a vine: it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. But the promise of fruitfulness, the promise of fullness and wholeness emerges from the persistent rhythm of abide, bear fruit, abide, bear fruit, abide… “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
Nadia Bolz-Weber climbed through the branches of this text, and at one point stuck out her head from behind the leaves and said, “[Vine and branches, and twigs off of branches] are all tangled and messy and it’s just too hard to know what is what. If I’m going to bear fruit I want it attributed to me and my branch. If I’m too tangled up with other vines and branches I might not get credit.”[4]
She knows what she wants, and we know exactly what she’s talking about. If it’s all about bearing fruit, we want some credit for our productivity. So tell us about trees, planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.[5] But the image is not of a Jesus orchard where you find the spot you like, plant yourself and put down roots, and start producing. Jesus is the vine, and we are all branches, and “our lives are… tangled up together. The Christian life is a vine-y, branch-y, jumbled mess of us and Jesus and others.”[6]
And that is how we bear fruit. Together. Belonging to him and through him to each other and to the One he has identified as the gardener, we bring forth fruit. The gardener, the vine, and the branches are all three essential for the awaited harvest. The jumbled mess of Jesus and others and us is where life becomes real and abundant, because the vine is true and the gardener is good.
We don’t make ourselves fruitful, but we do choose where we want to abide. We choose where we want our soul to be at home. “Abide in me as I abide in you,” Jesus says, and risen and firmly rooted, he abides with us, providing all that is needed for blossoms to emerge and fruit to ripen.
What might the fruit be, and whose is the harvest? We know how much the gardener-God loves the world. So try this on: The fruit is the wine of the kingdom. The fruit is the love of God flowing freely, inside-out, as it has since the dawn of time. Our gifts, our financial contributions, our work, our advocacy, our prayers, our study, our service—all of it, are channels for love to flow and life to be transformed. The fruit is the love of God flowing freely from the vine to all the branches, and flowing through us to touch and heal the wounded, embrace the excluded, and love the unlovable, until the whole jumbled mess becomes finally and fully recognizable as the holy communion of life.
That’s a mighty big picture. So let me close with a simple story. It comes to us from The Brothers Karamazov:
Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here, woman, he said, take hold of it and I’ll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.[7]
The angel wept because love is so strong and yet so weak. The humble gift of an onion is the path from hell to paradise, strong enough to pull us all out, because even the smallest act of kindness participates in God’s love for the world. Yet love is weak when we’re afraid to let it do its work.
So don’t be afraid, abide. The gardener is good and can be trusted. The vine is true and can be trusted. The wine of the kingdom flows, and all will drink.
[1] See http://eol.org/pages/582304/overview and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_vinifera and https://www.penn.museum/blog/collection/125th-anniversary-object-of-the-day/7000-year-old-wine-jar-object-of-the-day-24/
[2] Genesis 9:20
[3] F. Dean Lueking, “Abide in me ...” Christian Century 114, no. 13 (April 16, 1997), 387.
[4] Nadia Bolz-Weber http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/yearb/easter5gospe/
[5] Psalm 1
[6] Bolz-Weber
[7] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), Kindle location 8494ff.