Jarrett McLaughlin
“I Am So You Can: The True Vine”
April 18, 2025
John 15: 1-20, selections
Scripture:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.
Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…
‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.
Meditation:
Abide – that is the crucial word here as Jesus bids farewell to his disciples.
We have spent the season of Lent walking through the “I am” statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John – we now interrupt the story of his passion to rewind the tape and overhear as Jesus makes his final self-revelation on the night before his death. Sharing a last supper and a final moment before the very worst would happen – Jesus says to this befuddled group of disciples, “I am the true vine.”
And yet what instantly grabs our attention in this text is less “I am the true vine,” but rather the frequency of the word “abide.” 10 times in 11 verses, Jesus invites the disciples to ‘abide.’
The most striking thing, though, is the preposition.
Most often, when we use the word abide, we attach to it the preposition ‘by.’
I will abide by this law.
I will abide by that custom.
I will abide by the speed limit because it is safe for me and for others.
I will abide by the tradition that we will conclude this service in darkness and leave in silence.
When we ‘abide by’ we are obeying, conforming, complying.
Power loves it when we ‘abide by.’
That kind of compliance is what Power demands.
What is Power unless it can bend you to its will – or break you if you do not.
Power has all manner of tools designed to make us bend.
Power withholds funds;
Power denies rights;
Power dismantles liberties;
Power forecloses on futures;
Anything to bend others to its will.
And for those who refuse to bend, there is another set of tools.
Power detains and deports;
Power suppresses and incarcerates;
Power fashions crosses and forces you to carry them before fastening you to them permanently.
Power breaks those who dare to defy.
Power will not rest until all abide by its cruel designs.
But Jesus….Jesus does not ask us to abide by.
Jesus does not seek to bend us to his will.
Jesus does not coerce or compel.
Jesus does not threaten or terrorize nor does he crucify.
Instead he invite us to abide – in.
And that preposition makes all the difference.
I am the true vine…
Abide in me and find belonging.
Abide in me and bear fruit.
Abide in me and discover the love you have longed for your whole life.
Abide in me and lay your life down for another.
It’s amazing how a tiny, two-letter word changes everything.
I was recently introduced to a poem by Joshua Luke Smith.
Maybe you have heard it, too – it’s called “Sunflowers in Babylon.”
His verse includes these words:
Are we not standing in the gardens planted by our forefathers?
Are we not reaping a harvest we didn’t sow?
Are we not leaning on the limbs of an oak and standing within the shade of a forest
that someone else chose to grow?
How fickle we have been, tossed by every changing wind,
Giving in before we have become a witness.
Yes, there is the life we live, but there is the unlived life within us,
And between the two stands the resistance.
So distracted by our greed and our lust to succeed,
We have gathered into barns instead of casting out our seed.
And yet it is the backs scarred by wooden beams and the sacrifice of fools
That remind us of the actions that actually move us closer to renewal.
Did you hear of Fukushima?
When the sea brewed and the earth hurled herself into the ground,
A nuclear site erupted. An invisible storm rained down,
Contaminating the land and poisoning the food.
They evacuated thousands, but for those that couldn’t move,
They stayed housed in, surrounded by elusive clouds that lingered like ghosts,
Becoming suspicious of the air that they once innocently consumed.
And yet, amongst the chaos, there was a monk, dressed in crimson hues,
Who walked through those fields planting sunflower seeds within the ruins.
And over time, they grew and they removed the poison,
Sunflowers, offering themselves as objects of both beauty and atonement.
They drew the cancer from the ground into themselves until it was broken down
And now stand where sunflowers lift their golden crowns.
Abiding by versus abiding in – it makes a world of difference.
Jesus does not bend us to his will.
Jesus bends his own will for us, laying down his life so that we might live.
And he invites us to do the same – to abide in him and bear fruit for generations as-yet unborn.
We may never be thanked for that work of abiding.
In fact, he warns us to expect hatred, resistance, even crucifixion.
But we are standing in the shade of a forest that Christ himself chose to grow.
We are beneficiaries of a garden that he grew with the seeds of his sacrifice.
“I am the true vine,” he says.
As we resume the story of Good Friday – perhaps he is not the vine just yet.
Perhaps now he is only the seed.
Defeated, buried – (blow out candle)
but concealing the promise of more life than we thought possible.