Video of the Divine Service is here. The sermon begins around the 27:25 mark.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus says that there is no in-between: there is only abiding in Jesus and bearing much fruit, or not abiding in Jesus and being thrown away and withering, ready to be thrown into the fire and burned. That is, there is remaining in Jesus and not remaining in Jesus. One is life, the other is death. I am the Vine, Jesus says, and you are the branches. It is the Vine that gives life to the branches, and not the branches to the Vine. The Vine has life in itself; the branches do not. No branch is going to grow fruit by itself. It is only the branch that is connected to the Vine that will have fruit on it.

I am the true Vine, Jesus says. So when you see a grape vine or a blackberry vine, you should think of the true Vine, Jesus Himself. Those other vines have a biological life, which is good as part of God’s creation. But Jesus has the true and eternal life, which does not end. I am the true Vine, and My Father is the Vine-dresser, the Farmer who takes care of the Vine and makes sure the branches produce as much fruit as possible. He is a skilled Vine-dresser. He knows what He’s doing. But sometimes His methods seem harsh and His tools seem sharp. When the Father prunes and cleans away all obstacles to fruitfulness, it doesn’t always feel good. It doesn’t always seem nice to our flesh. We may wonder, why is this happening to me? Why is God giving me this? And because God is over all things, He is the one who brings all things to us. When will this end? This suffering, this affliction, this burden, this difficulty. We feel the blade of the Vine-dresser’s knife.

But the Father says, it is not for your harm that I am doing this. I am not punishing you, but pruning you for fruitfulness. I am training you to grow well and produce according to where I put you and for the people around you. If we follow the story of the people in the Scriptures whom God chooses, we can see this at work. Consider Joseph, the favored son of his father, Jacob. He is stripped of his robe, thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, sent to Egypt, falsely accused, thrown into prison, forgotten, left there. I can’t imagine that Joseph always felt nice about those things. But he tells his brothers, you meant all this for evil, but God meant it for good, for the salvation of His people, for the good of His own will. Or consider Paul, who had persecuted the Body of Christ, thrown Christians into prison, perhaps had them killed. He stood by while Stephen was stoned to death. But God said to Ananias, who baptized Paul, I will show him how much he must suffer for My Name. And Paul has whole lists of the things that happened to him. Did it feel nice? Would the world have said that Paul was God’s chosen servant to bring His Word to the Gentiles?

But Joseph and Paul did not suffer these things because of whom they were. They suffered these things because they were branches, by promise and by faith, of the true Vine. And this Vine knows the pruning, cleansing knife of the Father. He was falsely accused, betrayed by His brothers, suffered as the One who comes in the Name of Yahweh. He died and was buried. Is this how the Father treats the Vine? But this Vine was cut down for you, under the weight of faithless branches, broken branches, foolish and idolatrous branches. Under the weight of your sin and death, the Vine was pinned to the trellis of the cross, pruned and purified in death for your salvation.

Of course, the life of God cannot stay dead. He rises from the ground in order to give this resurrection life to wild and unruly branches, to you and to me. As He says, if a grain of wheat remains as it is, it remains alone. But if it dies and is buried in the ground, it will bear much fruit. And so He dies, and so He rises, and so He bears fruit—which is, first of all, you. You are the fruit of His dying and rising work, the work of the Father, and the work of the Spirit. You, dead and withered branches, have been grafted in to the living Vine of God’s divine life (no pun intended). But the branches are not greater than the Vine, so there will be pruning: the Father will make you fruitful. He removes selfishness, apathy, complacency, our various sins, whatever stands in the way of our lives producing the fruit that the Father is seeking. Our suffering, the pruning discipline of the Father, is not the cause of our cleanliness before God. Jesus says, you are already clean because of the Word that I have spoken to you. You are already joined to the Vine’s cleansing and purifying life. You, like the Ethiopian, have heard the Word of Jesus, and you have been joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection in the water of baptism. And as he went rejoicing on the way, so do we, even in the midst of our suffering, even in the midst of the painful pruning. Because we know that it is the work of the Father, binding us ever closer to the Vine.

And He will have His fruit: the fruit of faith in good works, and the blossoming of prayer. If you abide in Me, Jesus says, and My words abide in you, then ask whatever you will, and it will be given to you. Because as Jesus’ words and promises abide in us, as we hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, they grow up, and fall from our lips. Especially think of the prayer Jesus Himself gives us: if we look around at the world, does it seem like God’s Name is holy? Does it seem like God’s will is being done, or that His Kingdom has appeared visibly and fully? Does everyone always have everything they need for this body and life? Are temptation, evil, the devil, and sin gone, so that there is no more need for forgiveness? Obviously not, because God has not finished His work. We hear the words and promises of God, that these things will be so, and we pray that it may happen, first among us and then in the whole world, that it may be on earth as it is in heaven. But Christian prayer can only happen out of the words and promises of Jesus. And Christian prayer is basically the fruit of trust in Jesus. To pray as Jesus instructs us is to trust that He will do what He said.

I am the Vine, you are the branches, Jesus says. You are clean because of the Word, and the Father continues His pruning, purifying work as long as you live in this world, in order that your life may bear the fruit of love for others, and the fruit of faith in Christ, which glorifies the Father. You are His disciples, and the branches joined to this Vine will produce fruit, because this is the work of Christ’s life, the Father’s work, the Spirit’s grace. He will do what He said. So we go, rejoicing on the way laid out for us.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 4/26/24