St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church

St. Andrew's exists to proclaim the Gospel and to share the love of God in our church and in our community

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May 2, 2021

May 2, 2021 “Here is Water” Acts 8: 26-40, 1 John 4: 7-21, John 15: 1-8 In this morning’s Gospel reading from John, Jesus teaches the disciples about Himself and the Father with the image of the vinegrower, the vine, and the branches. Throughout the Gospels, the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, this type of image is comes up a number of times in different ways: God is the vinegrower or the farmer, Jesus is the one separating the good vines, trees, or crops from the bad ones, And there is always a promise (or a curse) that what does not bear fruit, what does not produce grapes or figs or wheat or goodness, will surely be thrown into the fire. In Matthew, Chapter 3, even before Jesus’ arrival at the Jordan, John the Baptist preaches about the one who is coming after him, the one who is carrying his winnowing fork, who will not only “clear his threshing floor and [sic.] gather his wheat into the granary” but who will also burn the chaff with an “unquenchable fire”. Likewise, in both Matthew, Chapter 21 and Mark, Chapter 11, Jesus curses the fig tree because it will not bear good fruit. And in Matthew’s version, the tree withers as soon as Jesus issues His curse, so that, as He commanded ‘no fruit would ever come from it again.’ Again, in Luke, Chapter 12, Jesus speaks in frightening urgency about not the wheat or the tree that is to be burnt up, but directly about the fire itself: Luke 12: 49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Taken together, these images about fire, about a Jesus whose job it is to gather up, to curse, and to build the bonfire, we can see why there exists an image or a conception of Jesus and His church that seems focused only upon these things. There is a problem; however, if the only Jesus we have is the bonfire Jesus. This Jesus comes with obvious and difficult questions for us: Well, what if I’m not on the right side? What if I haven’t produced enough good fruit? What if I am destined for the chaff pile and not the wheat harvest? For years, so called “fire and brimstone” preaching has made much hay by casting Jesus in this light: ‘Jesus is angry with you’ ‘Jesus hates your sinful ways’ ‘Jesus wants nothing more than to come back to this world, gather up the sinners, and burn them forever’ This preaching is dramatic; it is scary (or even terrifying), and while it can be effective in calling people to repent, it often only gives one side of Jesus’ multi-faceted nature. If we trust in the Scriptures, then yes, one of Jesus’ jobs is to gather and to separate; to gather the wheat and to burn the chaff; to curse the fig tree and to stoke the fire that he has been sent to kindle, and yet, if this were all that Jesus was, if this were the entirety of Jesus’ nature, He wouldn’t be Jesus. If God needed a judge, jury, and executioner, He could have, as He always had (throughout the Old Testament), sent another prophet, or another judge. He could have sent a plague or a great fire or a conquering army, but God didn’t do that. No, God saw fit not to send another prophet or another fire or flood to his people; rather God saw fit to send Himself. God sent Himself in Jesus Christ. Why? Well as the old saying goes: “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” But what was it that God needed doing? What was the thing that God needed to step into human flesh in order to accomplish? Not mere separation or mere destruction, what then? As Jesus Himself says in our Gospel reading this morning, God came in Jesus Christ not merely to do the work of a farmer, a vinegrower, but so that we might know that vinegrower, and to know the lengths He has gone to for us. Or, as Jesus, God-made-flesh Himself says: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower” Now, again, this might not seem like Good News. So God is a vinegrower? Jesus must again be here to help with the harvest, pruning vines and burning up the bad ones, this isn’t any different than what we have heard and what we have feared. Yet listen to what He says next. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. ‘He removes every unproductive branch in me…’ ‘in me…’ Not out there. Not out there in the world, or out there in the pews, but in me, Jesus, God’s only Son. Not only this. Not only is Jesus the one undergoing the removal of the branches, but He continues: “Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” Not only are we surprised to find out that Jesus is the one whose branches are cut back, who is being made to undergo the sorting and cleaning that usually seems to be aimed at us, but there is even more, that the good fruits of Jesus’ vine also undergoes pruning in order that more fruit may be available through Him. How gracious is our God? How merciful and sacrificial is Jesus Christ that He undergoes all for us? But Jesus continues: “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.” “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.” This word of Jesus’ is one of the greatest comforts in Scripture: “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.” I don’t know about you but I can never hear that enough times: “You have already been cleansed” (how?) “by the word that I have spoken to you.” Friends, whatever is bothering you today, whatever weight you are carrying today, whatever little devil is sitting on your shoulder saying “you’re not good enough” I invite you to just take a moment and let all of that nonsense go. Drop the weight. Flick the devil off. Unknot your stomach or your neck or wherever you are carrying that burden, And hear this again: “You have already been cleansed… by the word that I have spoken to you.” Friends, despite all of those things, those doubts, those fears, those burdens, let’s just for a moment give Jesus the floor. “You have already been cleansed” (Have I?) Well, have you heard the Gospel? If you’ve watched this far in the service you’ve heard part of the Gospel, that’s a pretty good start. You have already been cleansed by the word Jesus spoke to you. Not because you made yourself perfect Not because you chiselled off every rough edge yourself But simply because you have heard the Gospel You have heard that Jesus is the Son of God, you have heard that God sent Himself to die and rise again in order to save us and atone for our sins, you have heard that Jesus loves you, and we are therefore free to love one another and ourselves, so go ahead. If that isn’t comfort enough, if that isn’t convincing enough, we can go further: If we really have been invited into Jesus’ story if we really are abiding in Jesus as He is abiding in us, how do we know for certain? How did this happen? And how can we be sure that we have heard Jesus’ Word, as He says? (Friends, this answer is assured for us as truthfully as Christ rose from the grave on Easter morning, the proof of that is a different conversation, but I’m happy to have it with you) If we want to know for certain that we have been cleansed, that we have heard Jesus’ Word, we need to remember whose Gospel we are reading: the Gospel of John And when it comes to John, that Word is not only crucially important, it is also likely not what we are expecting. John starts his whole Gospel, the whole story of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection with these words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What came into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (And finally, my favorite verse in all of Scripture) The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” -John 1: 1-5 While people have been teasing apart John’s opening explanation and John’s Word (“Logos” in the original Greek) for centuries, I will limit myself to just one observation: The Word is the one with the authority. The Logos is the one with the authority. If we doubt that we have been cleansed by Jesus’ loving grace, if we doubt that we have heard the Word Jesus speaks about, let’s not be too quick to condemn ourselves. The Word, rather than being a message or a speech, is, in fact as much God as Jesus Christ is. The Word existed in the beginning. The Word has been with God, since that beginning. The Word, as John explains, was God. This beautiful arrangement, as described by John; this description of the Trinity whereby God, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Word) are co-eternal and co-equal with the Father is meant for our salvation, our life, our cleansing. For as much as we may worry For as much as we may doubt, or wonder, or fear if we are really loved by God, the answer is simple: YES. We are loved by God by the simple assurance that Christ’s Word of love has made it so. Or, as John says later, “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4: 7). So then, if we accept, or try to accept that we are loved by God and cleansed by the branch clearing and pruning happening within, what are we to make of the world? If God is so free with His love; if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all involved in the gifting and sanctifying of this love, what are we to make of a world that so clearly does not know it is loved? What are we to make of a world where there is so much justifying, so much proving, so much pleading and stealing and fighting over not just love but simple acceptance, simple peace? If we return to our Gospel reading with this understanding of who God is and the love He intends for us, we can find the answer: [Jesus continued] 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. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If we bring into this text the understanding given to us by Christ and His Word (if we trust not in our own doubts, but in the authority of that Word) that what God wants us to learn from the images of the vineyard and the fire is not fear, not hopelessness, but rather the opposite: the freedom that comes from knowing we have been loved since the literal beginning of time, what changes? What changes is this: that while those branches cut off from Christ (those branches that are not bound by Christ’s abiding love) are gathered, thrown into a fire, and burned, this is not what God wants for us, and it is not what God wants for you. Friends, the Good News and the promise of this morning’s Gospel is this: if you will abide in the Christ who is already abiding in you, you will be saved. This salvation is not just available; God is trying to reach you with it. If you abide in the Christ, whose Logos, whose Word has been loving humanity since before there was a humanity, God will get what God wants: namely, to have you and to enjoy you forever. Friends, God wants nothing more than to save you, than for you to know that you have already been saved by the God who stops at nothing to reach you with His transforming love. This is the Good News for us this morning. Just one last thing: the Word that Jesus uses to describe His Father’s happiness at having us in His abiding love is this: “glorified” “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” (John 15: 8) This word “glorified,” rather than specifically describing God’s “happiness” or “joy” at having us in his love is actually closer to “illumined/illuminated.” “My Father is [illuminated] by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” And this is the greatest news of all: that when God is glorified, when God is illumined, He is illuminated not only for Himself, or for His Son, or for His Word. He is not even only illuminated for us, rather, He is ‘illumined,’ He is ‘glorified’ for all of humanity, so that more and more people will come to know the truth that they are loved, and so that God’s joy will be fully complete. Friends, hear this Word, accept this promise, glorify the Father, and be at peace. Amen.