Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), May 14, 2006

Texts: 1 John 3:18-24, John 15:1-8

Jesus is the Key to a Meaningful Life

Let me tell you a parable about two apple trees. The one tree was great and mighty with branches reaching into the sky, full of luscious green leaves. This tree was proud that it was the biggest apple tree with more branches and leaves than the other apple tree. The other apple tree, however, was short and did not have many big branches or many leaves. For this tree was a humble tree. This tree allowed its branches to be pruned and cut back. The big proud tree made fun of the short, humble tree. Soon the time came for the harvest to be gathered. The short, humble tree yielded lots of big juicy apples. But the big tree yielded only small and worthless sour apples. That’s because it was so busy promoting itself, growing bigger branches and more leaves that it had forgotten what its purpose was: To produce apples.

Sometimes we also forget our purpose. What is our purpose in life? Is it our purpose to accumulate wealth and become financially secure? Is it to stay fit and healthy? To be popular and be well-liked? Or to help the poor and try to make the world a better place? If this is what you live for, you are like that big tree that grows much but produces worthless fruit. Why is that? Despite our best efforts, we will fail in making our lives meaningful doing these kinds of things. Eventually you too will die. Meanwhile, wars and famines and diseases will continue to ravage our world. Whatever you do makes little difference in the end. This was the conclusion of the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, after examining everything that life has to offer, says that everything is utterly meaningless!

But there must be more to life! Thank God that there is more to life. A lot more. God makes it possible for us to live meaningful lives by giving us what we need to produce good fruit that will endure. In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus encourages us: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8) The kind of fruit Jesus is talking about that glorifies the Father is described in our Epistle lesson in 1 John: “To believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us.” (3:22). This is the kind of fruit that pleases our heavenly Father. Jesus said: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5). We produce fruit as we stick to Him, keeping and obeying Jesus’ command to love another.

Being fruitful for God, however, is not an easy task. By nature we are not loving, generous and kind to others. The love we give to others is often measured to serve our own ends. We tend much more to “love with words or tongue” than “with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). The same is also true for our love for God. We tend to complain about the past, fret about the present and worry about the future. We find it difficult to really trust God to always have our best interests in mind.

I lived much of my life in the Niagara area which is known for its vineyards and award-winning wineries. Just a few weeks ago as I was driving along the QEW on my way to visit my parents in St. Catharines. I still saw farmers in the vineyards, trimming endless rows of grapevines. What struck me was how utterly bare they were cutting the vines. The vine was pruned right down to the main branches that were tied to the supporting wires. That was a lot of work and it was all being done by hand! This job kept the farmer busy over the whole winter from the end of the harvest until the buds began to grow in the spring. I suspect that the reason farmers take this job so serious is that it must make a big difference when it comes to harvesting fruit. All the man-hours spent pruning pay off with a bountiful harvest.

One of the keys to leading a fruitful life is to recognize that the farmer who comes to prune the vine does not intend to hurt the vine. His actions are intended to make it produce more fruit. The pruning is important for several reasons. It ensures that not too much energy goes into producing bigger branches and more leaves, but into the production of grapes. Pruning also ensures that air and sun can reach the whole plant, helping it stay free of rot and disease.

Jesus uses this illustration of grape farming to teach us an important lesson; a lesson on bearing the kind of fruit in our life that really matters. If we are to be fruitful we must allow God to trim and prune away anything in our life that hinders the work of the Holy Spirit in producing a vibrant faith and true love with actions. The things that hinder this work are the things in life that we tend to cling to; the things we think and worry about the most. Perhaps for us the most important of these is money and possessions. Our lives can get so consumed by the race to earn enough money to afford our lifestyles. A while ago I realized just how close money can be to my own heart when I had difficulty paying off the credit card bills. Talk about anxiety!

Another thing we idolize is our health. You only have to look at how much our nation spends on health care to see where our nations’ biggest idols are. Politicians know that voters value their health more than anything else, and that is where our dollars go. The billions we spend on health care in one year would be enough to feed the whole world! Now, I’m not saying that proper health care is not important. I’m just letting you know that if we as Christians regard our physical health as that important, we are probably neglecting our spiritual health, which is really far more important.

Other common idols we Christians have may include our family and friends. Again, money, health and family are not “bad.” They are all good because God created them for us. Rather, it is our attitude towards them that can turn these blessings into things which the devil uses to turn our attention away from our Saviour and Lord. We end up neglecting the spiritual fruit that makes our life worth living.

That is why God must come along every once in a while and do a pruning-job on us. A loved one gets killed in a car accident. A friend lets you down. A falling stock market chops the retirement nest egg in half. The doctor discovers a serious health problem. Many of us have experienced such challenges in life. And the older one gets, the more frequent they tend to become.

God prunes our lives in order to help us realize what our true priorities ought be. We should realize with Job that: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;” (Job 1:21). Naked. All these things, money, health and friends that we worry about so much today will mean nothing to us once we are dead. That is, everything, except for the spiritual fruit we produced by remaining in Jesus. This is the only thing that will last forever.

Remaining in Jesus means trusting Him for everything we need. This frees us to serve our neighbor in whatever vocation God has placed us. Today we celebrate Mother’s Day. Today we say “Thank-you” to our mothers for their loving, self-sacrificial service they provided. They gave us the gift of life and raised us over many years , putting in countless ours of hard service. Another thing we should also thank our mothers is for what they taught us. The most important thing a mother can teach her children is to show them what it means to trust the Lord Jesus. Without this loving, motherly service, most of us would probably not be here today. And without Jesus our lives would be meaningless, a chasing after things that do not bear fruit and which do not satisfy.

Through the blessed service of our mothers God has given us an example of what it means to love one another. And loving another, we glorify our Lord. For by serving our neighbour in our respective vocations, be it as a mother or father, a husband or wife, a parent or child, a teacher or student, an employer or an employee, a ruler or a citizen, etc God is glorified through us. In each of these relationships God has placed us, we have the opportunity to serve diligently and according to the faith God has given us. It is through our faithful service in these ordinary vocations of life, and especially that of mothers, that God is glorified.

When we come to accept this as God’s good and gracious will for us, along with the faith to see and accept His pruning work in our life as a blessing and not a curse, then we will experience a further blessing mentioned in both of our readings. Jesus says: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” (John 15:7). John adds, that when our hearts are thus at peace and “…do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him.” (1 John 3:20). We experience this blessing once our will and desire conforms to God’s.

Yes, this is the peace and confidence that your heavenly Father wants you to have this day. You have come to hear His word of grace, which has made you clean (John 15:3). May you continue to allow the Holy Spirit to use that Word of grace in your life to produce an abundant spiritual harvest! Amen.