Some years ago I attended a day long course run by our local Stadtwerke which not only supplies our gas, water and electricity, but also offers home and garden improvement courses. The course I took part in was to learn about the maintenance and pruning of fruit trees.
We learned about the shapes of different kinds of fruit trees and the way that branches grow. We also learned about common parasites and diseases and how to recognise which branches should be cut away and which branches should be left alone. In our reading today Jesus describes the work of God in our lives like that of a skilled Gardener, but to what extent are we to understand that the suffering which we endure in life is part of God’s “pruning” process?”
Only this week a funeral was held for a sixteen year old Christian boy who died for the want of a replacement heart. Are such human tragedies part of God’s so called ‘pruning’ process or is such suffering simply a ‘fruit’ of being human and weak like fruit trees subjected to diseases and parasites?
In our bible reading today we catch a glimpse of Jesus’s last hours as a free man. As we know He spent them with His disciples teaching and praying with them. Earlier that evening, Jesus’s disciples had joined their Master for a Passover meal during which He washed their feet (John 13:1-17). After teaching them further Jesus and His disciples went out into the night together (John 14:31).
On the way to the Kidron valley and the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was later to be arrested, they would have passed the great temple and it is likely that this was the moment that Jesus spoke the words recorded in our gospel reading today.
We are told in the scriptures that the temple constructed by King Herod the Great took 46 years to build (John 2:20). It was a huge building constructed of colossal white stone blocks each of which were 25 x 12 x 8 cubits in volume, that is just over 300 m3. That’s big!
Josephus, the Jewish Roman historian records that the entrance portal of Herod’s temple was highly ornate decorated with a golden grapevine under the crown work with branches hanging down from “a great height, the largeness and fine workmanship of which was a surprising sight to the spectator”
(THE ANTIQUITIES of THE JEWS – Flavius Josephus, Book 15, Chapter 11 § 3)
The Nation of Israel was sometimes pictured in the Old Testament as being God’s vineyard or grapevine. Isaiah wrote a song about the Lord’s beloved vineyard (Isaiah 5:1) and the prophet Hosea likened Israel to a “spreading vine” (Hos 10:1). , Psalm 80 describes the nation of Israel as a “transplanted vine from Egypt” (Ps 80:8), but in most cases such imagery was used in conjunction with a rebuke. Despite the continuing care and devotion of the One who planted it, the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah lamented that the grapevine has continuously only produced poor fruit:
“Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit” (Is 5:2)
It could be that Jesus had such scriptures in mind when He proclaimed Himself to be the “True vine” (John 15:1). Jesus is the true embodiment of the Israel of God, planted into this world and beloved of His Father. Unlike Israel, Jesus produced only good fruit.
But what of the matter of pruning? What did Jesus mean by the loving pruning process of the Father who is the Gardener?
Within less than 8 hours from the time Jesus spoke these words, the disciples would see their Master stripped, beaten and nailed to a Cross. Quite literally the True vine would be pruned. Within the same time frame the Gardener would carry out further necessary pruning. Judas Iscariot was a diseased branch which needed to be cut off the vine.
Later in Acts we read of the “pruning” of other would-be followers of Christ like Ananias and his wife Sapphira who attempted to defraud the Church (Acts 5:1-2). They, like Judas, were lured by financial gain and they were cut from the vine too.
In the coming persecution, the early Church was to be severely pruned, a pruning which would last nearly 500 years, but the skilful hands of the Gardener resulted in great growth and fruitfulness. The early Christian writer Tertullian wrote in his Apologeticus, L.13, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
Through His words Jesus warned the disciples that persecution and the sinful influence of the world would be the cause of many falling away, but His followers must remain faithful and His words must remain in them. Secularism would lead to much dead wood and corruption in the church would cause some of the branches of the Gardener’s beloved vine to become diseased.
Jesus counselled His followers that if they wanted to bear fruit they must stay connected to the True vine that is Christ and let His words remain in them, (John 15:7).
We like a grapevine are subject to disease or to suffer through the actions or inactions of others. Lust for power, belief in scarcity of human resources and exploitation of the earth’s resources is at the heart of much of human suffering. God doesn’t cause it although He does allow it by allowing us the freedom to choose our own path with its inevitable consequences.
Jesus’s word recorded in John 15 affirm that there is a purpose behind human suffering which only the Father truly knows for He is the Gardener. All we can do is trust the Gardener’s skill and have faith that He always works for our good. We may not understand how, but God can use even the death of that young boy to serve some greater purpose.
We are to:
Trust in the Gardener and stay connected to the “True vine” without whom we cannot live fruitful lives.
You can trust that the Father as Gardener cares deeply about you. He understand what is needed in your life, but takes no pleasure in your suffering. He always has your best interests at heart. Know that your suffering may be a necessary part of His pruning, but it may also simply be because you are human.
Our hope lies beyond this veil of suffering and tears and not on this side of heaven. There is no better place to be than to be part of the True vine and if we do remain connected to Him all the resources of heaven are available to us.
Pruning is never going to be a pleasant experience, but we could not be in better hands and the joy of knowing Jesus far surpasses any suffering we may experience.
What a privilege it is to be part of the Lord’s “True vine” with our Father as the Gardener.
Amen