The Vines in Our Veins

Midweek Vespers

The First Week of Easter

A Reading from John’s Gospel:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you.

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. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I 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.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Reflection by Andrew Murray (1828-1917):

All the vine possesses belongs to the branches. The vine does not gather from the soil its fatness and its sweetness for itself—all it has is at the disposal of the branches. As it is the parent, so it is the servant of the branches. And Jesus, to whom we owe our life, how completely does He give Himself for us and to us! …

All his fullness and all His riches are for thee, O believer: for the vine does not live for itself, but exists only for the branches. All that Jesus is in heaven, he is for us: He has no interest there separate from ours; as our representative He stands before the Father.

And all the branch possesses belongs to the vine. The branch does not exist for itself, but to bear fruit that can proclaim the excellence of the vine; it has no reason of existence except to be of service to the vine. Glorious image of the calling of the believer, and the entireness of his consecration to the service of his Lord! …

He feels that he has but one thing to think of and to live for, the kingdom of his blessed Lord—the bringing forth of fruit to the glory of His name.

But now, blessed be God! Jesus has been glorified; there is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus; the promise can be fulfilled … The great transaction which took place when He was glorified is now an eternal reality …

In our place, on our behalf, as man and the head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the divine, and His human nature constituted to the receptacle and the dispenser of the divine spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man …

Just as in Jesus the perfect union of God and man had been effected and finally completed when He sat down upon the throne, and He so entered on a new stage of existence, a glory hitherto unknown, so too now, a new era has commenced in the life and the work of the Spirit. He can now come down to witness to the perfect union of the divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it.

Daily Thoughts on Holiness,

as reprinted in For All the Saints.

Further Reflection:

The Parable of the Vine is, at heart, an image of union: the union of believers one with another; the union of all peoples and all things within the natural world; and most importantly the union of the Creator with Creation in the person of Jesus Christ.

One of the greatest dictums in Eastern religion is the famous phrase, “Atman is Brahman”—that is, the self, the soul, who we most truly, deeply are, is grounded and rooted in God, in who and what God is. He is the Creator, not simply at the beginning of time, but at every moment, every breath. He is subsistent existence itself, the Source and Ground of all being, and everything that exists only exists insofar as it exists in Him.

We draw our being from Him, as branches draw sustenance from the vine. And He gifts this life to us freely, not as a tyrant but as our loving parent, our Father and our Mother. Cut off from God we wither, for God is who we are at heart: Atman is Brahman, after all. We are made in the Image of God.

That’s why Jesus is not simply a man but every man, every human being. He is the New Adam, the new humanity. And He is also God—which is possible not because two unlike natures have been stitched together in a manner reminiscent of Dr Frankenstein, but because union with God is our nature and our destiny and who we truly are. Christ is fully human by being fully God. And this is the life He would share with us all.

Imagine, if you will, a world of invisible vines connecting everything and everyone, filling them with life, pumping existence into our veins, and I think we may begin to see what Jesus tells us here. We begin to see the Spirit of God vivifying all the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.