"Trusting Jesus"

 

  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

 

            On Friday morning, our men's Bible study was discussing the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  What I got out of that conversation is that we do not live on solid ground, stable and secure. Rather we live on floating plates that move and collide and cause the ground to shake and the sea to writhe with great whirlpools and walls of rushing water. This is true of our emotional and relational and spiritual worlds as well.

            Day to day we go about living, and we think we are secure. The ground is steady beneath us. We think that surely we will prosper, life will be predictable and peaceful and orderly. We make plans and launch ventures on the basis of these beliefs. We may even build some nuclear power plants on the fault lines of our lives. It seems stable today. Things will work out. We may decide to build some bigger barns in which to store our excess crops. But then we discover that our security does not lie in the ground that we think is solid, and our security does not lie on what we build upon that ground. We live on floating plates, and they collide and cause the ground to shake.

            Where then is our security? In the text from John 15, Jesus speaks to the disciples just before he goes to the cross. The cross is a kind of earthquake that will shake the disciples' lives. Just before the cross, Jesus calls on his disciples to trust him. They already do trust him, but he is calling them here to a deeper trust. His long farewell speech continues, and he uses an image of trust. The image is not of a rock foundation and it is not of a fortress built into a cliff, where they could go to escape the shaking of the world. The image is that of a vine with branches. The point of it is that we must live in Christ and know that Christ lives in us.

            So Jesus calls us to trust God the Father, whom Paul described in Romans chapter 4, not as one who builds great fortresses into solid rock, but as the one who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. In a world of earthquakes and tsunamis of many kinds -- physical, emotional, and spiritual -- we serve the God of resurrection, the God of hope, the God of the New Creation.

            Trusting Jesus is often not something you do in one great leap of faith. For most of us it is a series of steps, stretching over the course of our lives. Today we are inviting you to take one step closer to Christ, to deepen your trust in him, to renew your connection to the vine that is the source of life. We are also inviting you to pray for and help people you know and love to move one step closer to trusting Christ with their lives.

            Many people have encountered experiences that cause them to say, "I can't trust anyone. I cannot trust the government, or my employers or my family members, or my church or even God in heaven." Many people have gone through times of disappointment or rejection or abandonment and they find trust very hard. So we strive to be independent, self-reliant and secure only in what we know and have attained by our own efforts. Jesus calls us to a radical alternative in life. He calls us to be fruitful branches connected to the living vine.

            Gary Burge puts it this way: "In order to sustain a genuine spiritual life in the world, believers must remain intimately attached to Christ."

           In the Old Testament, there are several passages that use the image of the vineyard. In these Israel is pictured as the vine planted and tended to by God for the purpose of bearing fruit.

           Isaiah 27: "Sing about a fruitful vineyard: I, the LORD, watch over it; I water it continually, I guard it day and night so that no one may harm it."

           "In the days to come, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit."

           Most often the vineyard is seen as unproductive or desolate in the Old Testament.

           Isaiah 5: "My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit."

            So now Jesus says that he is the true vine. He has taken the place of Israel. The church is not the vine. The church is the branches, dependent upon the true vine. The life that comes through the vine can only come from the Father, and so only the Son of God can be the true vine, the source of eternal life. The disciple is connected to the vine. Gary Burge writes, "The disciple is one whose life is utterly dependent on Christ. Discipleship is not just a matter of acknowledging who Jesus is; it is having Jesus spiritually connected to our inner lives." That means the disciple's life must be pruned. Jesus uses the word "cleaned," indicating that the issue is one of forgiveness of sin. The first step in connecting to the vine that is Jesus is dealing with sin in our lives.

            The result of the branches being connected to the vine is fruitfulness. Leon Morris points out the obvious when he says that there is no other use for a vineyard other than fruit. You cannot use the vine for timber, or make tea out of the leaves. You plant a vineyard because you want to harvest grapes.

            The fruit that Jesus talks about is a vitality of faith and a love for one another. This vital faith is not held privately, but is communicated to others. The disciples and the early church would never think about fruitfulness in Christ that did not include bringing others to faith in Christ. The fruit is the vital, joyful and loving relationship that you have with Christ. That gets expressed in relationships with others. The relationship we have with Christ is always one to be shared with others.

            The key to fruitfulness is found in remaining or abiding in Christ. The word "remain" is used eleven times in the passage. "Abiding" or "remaining" is not seen here as a mystical spiritual experience. It is simple obedience to the commands of Christ. It is learning to pray in the will of God. You do not receive the gift of life from God and then go off by yourself to enjoy it. The gift bears fruit when we are in close relationship to Christ. We remain in Christ when we join our life to Christ and recognize his presence in our lives.

            Jesus calls us to trust him more deeply, to take the next step on our relationship with him. A good example of this was on the Covenant Newswire this week. Stan Friedman wrote a series of articles from Haiti, where a medical team was providing care for people in an open air clinic in a tent city. Dr. Calla Holmgren, who led the team, said that "It is easy to get overwhelmed and saddened by the situations in some of these countries. I do sometimes need to work on being hopeful. I think it best to focus on individuals and care that can be provided to them rather than on a global solution. If I was in a refugee camp or living in a tent after a major earthquake, I would want someone to help me. Christ was not here to change governments or to make everyone middle class. However, when presented with someone who needed to be healed, he did it." Jill Johnson added, "What I cannot do, I must release back to God, and let him carry that burden. My part is just to take one step at a time. Just because I cannot see how the rest will be resolved, doesn't mean that I shouldn't do the small part that I can."

            Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the obstacles, by how big the task seems to be. We can feel that if we cannot solve the whole problem, or if we cannot witness in such a way to bring a person to a statement of faith, then we will just do nothing. We will leave witness to an expert. But the vine and branches image says that we are to stay connected to Christ, that it is important for us to be making those "one steps closer" to Christ. Then we can pray for others. We can do what we can, and trust God with the whole task. We can take the step from being friendly to being a friend. We can move from helping another person to loving that person. We can move from service to witness.

            What is your one step today? Can you trust Christ more deeply with your life? How can you help another person take one step closer in their relationship with Christ?

           Amen.