I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
St. John 15: 5
A church had this sermon theme on its outside sign: “A Fruitful Life Requires Jesus”. Love, the fruit and so proceed to the vine, the root, the source. No, it is the opposite in the Bible “Jesus requires the fruitful life.” From the vine comes the branches and the fruit. From Christ comes the Christian. This is plain from the Gospel lesson for today. He uses the word abide some 8 times so that we have the fruitful life in Him. It’s not, so you want to be a branch, find the vine. The inherent nature and purpose of the Lord’s creation is to make fruit. The gardener plants seed for one purpose: produce, fruits and vegetable, as the Lord requires fruitfulness. It is His doing and our tending, abiding in Him to plant, water and wait. Notice the main difference in the two statements: “A fruitful life requires Jesus”, the subject of “a fruitful life” is you and I, not the Lord. We’re in charge. “Do you really want the fruitful life?” “Here are the 5 steps to the fruitful life”, or others might preach that the fruitful life is a certain attainment of material prosperity, the “prosperity Gospel”, your best life now, etc. And so you need to accept Jesus to have the fruitful life, then Jesus is our branch. Jesus does not grow out of us. We grow out of Him! If we don’t, we will be unfruitful and cut off.
Like I said, it’s just the opposite. We are the branches. “The Lord Jesus requires the fruitful life”, who is the subject? Yes, the Lord. “I am the Vine”, not you or I: we are the branches, the Lord is Vine, and so the life of the grapevine. His will, His word is that we are clean in His forgiveness. His will, His word is that we know His peace. His will, His word in a world bent in upon itself, fills us with His love to so love others as He first loved us. His will, His word is we are found in Him and to so find others as a Shepherd searching today for His lost sheep. His will, His Word is fruitfulness unto eternal life as we abide in Him, if we do not then we are cast aside. His will is His Word in His words which are His life for you, not your best life, but His life for you, knowing His love, His grace, mercy and peace.
How do we know this? Answer: I heard it through the grapevine! Jesus is faithful in all the words of the Bible. Every word from the mouth of God is bread. I heard it through the grape Vine: This is my body, This is my blood.
The saying, “I heard it through the grapevine.” actually refers to gossip. When someone passes on gossip it’s usually to help, I just thought you should know what they’re saying about you. Or you should know about Sally so we can help Sally. The false prophets and spirits are gossips about God in all their fine theories about the Lord who loves us. They will say Jesus is not from God and He came in our flesh. Test the spirits. Hear them but do not listen to them that is obey them. The false spirits lead us from our Lord who so loves us. All those who deny Jesus came in the flesh are spreading gossip and rumors under the pretense to help you. The false spirits primarily say Jesus is not the incarnate God, come in the flesh. Gossips distort the truth. They do not state it correctly. Heretics are gossips. They speak as if they know but they do not, they trim the message to their own flesh and to acceptance in the world. Jesus was a good teacher, a social revolutionary, a way to God and the like. When the grapevine is the Lord Jesus we can hear and know that the Lord is good, His mercy endures forever. His Word of forgiveness and grace cleanses us. Abide in His Words He taught, His Words are true as is the entirety of the Word of God.
How does the Lord nourish our life as we abide in Him? Answer: I hear it through the grapevine. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. Abide in Him and His words abiding in us and so it is logical to hear Him is to pray to Him and for Him and it is done. This is child-like faith. We are heard as we hear Him, the grapevine.
“…everything has been heard, even though one does not know what has been heard. Even when Christ asked for His life, He was heard. But the flesh does not recognize how the hearing takes place. Therefore every prayer is heard, and whatever we ask for happens, even though we do not recognize in what ways it happens… God sometimes hurls us into greater evils in order that He may put an end to the evils. And thus He has heard our prayer.” (Luther)
The Father will prune us. He will cut off the suckers that take away from fructification. The wild shoots. Sin is a sucker. Sin sucks. It takes life away and deters the true Vine. His pruning is confession and absolution.
How are we made clean by His Word? Answer: Baptism and Faith. We heard today another witness in the Bible of a man made clean by Jesus: the Baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch. He heard the Word and the Word was poured over him in the waters of rebirth in Jesus Christ the true vine. He heard it through the grapevine and Philip was no gossip, but he taught the Good News of Jesus who suffered and died and rose, as Isaiah prophesied 5 centuries before the Incarnation. And according to a reliable tradition, the Ethiopian eunuch did bear much fruit, even though there could never be fruit from his body. He went home and may have told of the Gospel of Jesus as Philip told him. From early on, Ethiopia became a Christian nation and today Ethiopia has one of the largest Lutheran church bodies on earth, a whole lot bigger than all the Lutherans in the United States. I dare say, if we could ask the Ethiopian eunuch so how did you bear much fruit, tell us your secrets for the fruitful life? His answer: it was not me. It was the Lord Jesus. “This fruit is not mine; it is the Vine’s” (Luther, page 226 LW vol. 24). He spread the truth, not gossip He was in charge of all the treasure of the Queen of Ethiopia and on that day, in the arranged meeting with Philip, the eunuch heard of the treasure beyond measure: the unsearchable riches of Christ.
How do we know this? Answer: I heard it through the grapevine! Jesus is faithful in all the words of the Bible. How does the Lord nourish our life as we abide in Him? Answer: I hear it through the grapevine. He came in the flesh.
Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
The Lord uses the word abide as an imperative, a command. We are to keep His commandments, wrote the evangelist John. And he wrote, “And His commandments are not burdensome”. His commandments relieve our burdens. As His command,Come to all who are burden and heavy lade and I will give you rest…” As His command, Take eat, take drink, this is My Body, this is My blood. Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Forgive your brother even 70 times 7 as I have forgiven you a humanly speaking unforgivable debt. Love one another as I have first loved you. Go ye therefore and teach all a nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I hear it through the Vine we are to love as He first loved us. The devil hates the Holy Spirit’s fruit, especially the first one: love. We do not love to be saved but we have been so loved so we are saved to love. “We derive the greatest joy from the fact that we have people to love, either a wife or children, and we thank God, who gives us people to love.”-Martin Luther, commentary on 1 John 4: 11 And in all His freeing commands, it is the true Vine, Our Lord Jesus, we can do nothing without Him.
I hear it through the grapevine. Look again at the picture of the icon for this sermon. The icon with the depiction of the branch coming from the Lord’s side reminded me of the creation of Eve. It also shows Jesus squeezing grapes into a Chalice to be for His blood. Remember the Lord took a rib from Adam’s side to make a helpmate suitable for him, his wife to whom he would be married. The Church is the bride of Christ. We come from the Lord’s side by His grace and favor, His love just as when the Roman soldier pierced the Savior’s side, blood and water flowed out, so we are nourished in the Word of God, Baptism and Holy Communion.
Concordia and Koinonia 
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