5th SUNDAY OF EASTER (B)

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. 

Jn 15:1-8

v. 1. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.”

The Old Testament characteristically gives an historical interpretation to the figure of Israel as the vine of God's planting. In later Judaism it became possible to give a mystical interpretation of the metaphor. The appearance of the story of the vineyard in Mark I2:1-9 suggests that it is right to continue an historical interpretation here in John.

My Father is the vine grower:

He has in his care both the vine itself (Jesus) and the branches (the disciples). The metaphor well sets out the intimacy of the relationship between Christ and his disciples. It must not be counted against it that it cannot, in the nature of things, depict as forcefully the intimacy of the relationship between Father and Son as between them and the disciples.

v. 2. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit:

This can be taken to make a primary reference to the Jews as the first unfruitful branch to be cut off. This would be a parallel thought to that of Romans 11:17,  where the rejection of the Jews is brought into Paul's attempt at a theodicy. Cf. also Mt. 15:13 and 21:41. But it seems more evident, in view of the words “in me”, that the first thought was of apostate Christians.

He takes away ... he prunes:

There is a punning sequence in these two verbs, suggesting that the two operations are not decisively different. Both are certainly meant to serve the same end - the rich fruiting of the vine.

v. 3. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.

The mention of “pruning” (=cleansing) was probably intended to recall the “cleansing” offered to and accepted by the disciples at the supper when Jesus washed their feet. And though the statement here refers to a “word”, that could well be the case; for the mere act of washing, as was noted, is in itself inoperative. Word and deed form a unity, and their final togetherness is in the actual crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord. And the proclamation of both manifests them as the salvation of God.

v. 4. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.

Remain in me, as I remain in you:

The meaning is that of seeking unceasing loyalty from the disciple.

v. 6. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.

Here the movement of metaphor is not an immediate help to clarity. But the disciple who ceases to “remain in Christ” is in the position of the branch that is no longer on the vine stock. The branch is no longer a branch but just a piece of wood. And it is treated properly as a piece of wood when it is cast on to the fire. There is no implication of eternal fires of judgment in the verse. A disciple remains a truly human person only as he accepts Christ and remains in him.

REFLECTION

 When the Psalmist sang (Psalm 80:9): “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out nations and planted it” even the most unpoetic of persons would have known that the “real vine” of the song was not a horticultural plant that chanced to be removed in some way from Egypt to Palestine, but was rather the people of Israel, whom God had delivered from oppression by the hand of Moses, and had brought them to some security of a new home in the land of Palestine. Yet, as the Psalmist himself and many a prophet knew and testified, Israel had been a “fruitless” vine. The baptism which John had offered his contemporaries was an open acknowledgement of the fact that Israel had not been a “true” Israel or people of God; that she had failed to produce in the world the fruits which God sought of her.

“I am the true [the real] vine” (v. 1). The life of God-with-man, which is the real essence of Israel's proper existence, has now begun. The true, the real vine has been planted. Like all vines, it will have branches, and like all vines, it will need attention. It will need dressing and pruning, and useless branches will have to be cut away and destroyed. But the vine will continue to bear fruit. The relationship of vine and branch conveys to the disciples a real sense of the profound intimacy of thei relationship to Jesus Christ. Just as a hand is not a hand unless it be joined to an arm of a lving body, and cannot do the work of a hand unless it is so joined, so a vine branch is not branch unless it is joined to the vine stock, and it cannot bear grapes unless it is so joined. Jesus had already spoken of the intimacy of the disciples being in him and he in them: the figure of the vine is a happy illustration of that intimacy.