The Fruit of Love

 John 15:1-8

May 2, 2021

 

The vine grower removes every

branch that bears no fruit.

And every branch he prunes to make more fruit.

This is true about grape vines,

but Jesus is talking about more than grapes.

Jesus is talking about our lives with God.

Wine on the Vine
Lisa Hill

 

It is apparent from these words that

fruit is the objective of our life with Jesus.

God wants fruit. God wants more than branches and leaves.

 

To get right to the point,

Jesus doesn’t just want us to be members

of church in name only, or just believers,

or just claim it on our emergency contacts

when we’re in the hospital.

Jesus wants more than that.

Jesus wants us to abide in him.

 

So not just a safe comfortable, platonic,

relationship with Jesus.

Not just seeing each other occasionally for dinner.

Jesus wants us to live with him, to abide with him.

 

We shouldn’t just be vines on the plant.

Jesus wants us to make a commitment of heart and soul.

And when we have that commitment, we will bear fruit.

 

But what is this fruit?

We know we’re not talking about grapes.

 

I’m also pretty sure that he’s not talking about

an easily achievable religious task list

like prayers, or attendance at worship,

or the number of converts

we can get  to Christianity,

or even hours of service.

 

I think that the fruit that Jesus talks about

is a much less tangible than that.

A fruit that is much harder to quantify and identify.

but you do know it when you taste it.

 

Today we’ve also heard from 1^st John,

A letter to a believers in the late first century.

Most scholars agree that this letter

is written by the same person who wrote the Gospel of John.

 

So Gospels are written as a story about Jesus,

and the letters, or epistles are theological

reflections on being Christian.

It is rare that we get two types of writing from one writer in the bible.

-          I’ll take that back, the gospel of John and three letters of John

are the only time in the bible we get both

the story and the reflection from one writer.

 

And the second reading for the day

really helps us to understand the gospel reading.

And John says in his letter:

 

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God,

and God abides in them. 

(you see why people think this and the gospel

were written by the same person?)

  

He goes on, We love -  because God first loved us. 

Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters,

are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister -

whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

 

I would say that the fruit of the vine

that Jesus in this gospel is talking about is love.

Love is the fruit.

 

And the word for love that John uses in his letter is “agape”.

Bible experts tell us, there are three

different words for love in Greek –

one for romantic love,

and one for love of a person you like that is not romantic

like a friend, or a family member.

 

And the third which is agape.

That is the love that we have for people that we

don’t necessarily like,

that we may have serious problems with,

maybe we don’t even know.

 

It’s Love that reaches out beyond a person’s faults,

beyond our own hang ups, beyond differences,

to respect another person, have compassion, understanding,

and honor and treat that person as a child of God.

 

Agape is the love the Martin Luther King, Jr. said he had

for the segregationists who hit civil rights protestors with fire hoses.

Not liking them, not condoning what they do,

but loving them in spite of their actions.

That love, Agape, is the fruit.

  

And If we say we love God, but do not

have agape for our brothers and sisters,

then maybe something isn’t connecting.

As Jesus said in the gospel, maybe our vines still need pruning.

 

These days are a test to our ability to bear

this kind of fruit that Jesus talks about.

We are divided. We keep hearing this and seeing it.

We are physically divided, and ideologically divided.

We are politically divided. Polarized they say.

 

People who have known each other for years

have stopped talking because they now

see each other as enemies.

Life-long friends, family members,

brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts,

half of my high school class,

we want nothing to do with them

because we are so polarized.

And forget about people we don’t know yet.

 

Now many of the things we’re polarized on

are very important and consequential,

and I don’t want to diminish any of those issues.

But when someone holds an opposing view to what we have,

(which seems to be almost half

the population these days),

the tendency is, not just to disagree with them,

but it is to hate them.

To label them as unredeemable.

To discard them and avoid them,

To dehumanize them, to not recognize them as people.

People are reduced to an itemized list of opinions,

and thrown away if they don’t pass one thing on this list.

 

Churches and religious people are famous for this.

Throwing people out, not just out of their churches,

but out of their lives and friendships and families.

As if a difference of opinion will soil their purity.

It’s like if there’s one diverse thought,

God will come tumbling off the throne.

 

And so many people think these days that

if we have love and compassion and see people

we oppose as human beings with multiple facets,

then we are and sympathetic with the enemy.

When you do that you’re a traitor to the cause.

To have compassion for people you disagree with,

and heaven forbid, love for them,

is unacceptable to many, many people.

 

But that is what we’re being asked to do.

To bear fruit. To have love for one another.

 

Jesus took sides.

Especially against the powerful and the strong.

He spoke up against abuses of power and religion

and stood up for the poor.

 

But he also asked us to pray for our enemies

and those who persecute us.

He ate with sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors.

Those who everyone else thought he was supposed to hate.

And he also went to the homes and ate at the tables

of the powerful and those who he spoke up against.

He healed the poor and the rich,

the powerless and the powerful

and he had compassion for all their suffering.

Whether or not he agreed for them,

he had agape, love for everyone.

 

Jesus life told a story of scandalous inclusion.

Such scandalous inclusion that people were mad at him.

Mad enough to kill him.

 

And Jesus wants us to abide with that.

To live with that. To rest in that kind of

scandalous inclusion that makes other people mad.

He wants love that drives everyone crazy.

 

So how is your fruit growing?

How is your agape love growing?

Are you driving people crazy with your love

for those you disagree with?

Or are you playing it safe with just a few chosen people?

Which vine do you have to ask God to prune?

Which hang up, prejudice, fear

does God need to help you out with?

I have my own list for myself.

 

Jesus never said love would be easy.

Bearing fruit takes lots of work and courage.

 

John says “We love because God first loved us”

God loves us. Agape love.

Beyond our own faults and fears and actions.

Beyond our deeds or lack of love for our brother and sister.

God loves us.

 

God is love.

And the fruit of God is our fruit.

And the promise of Jesus to his disciples

and to us is that God will help us to bear more fruit.

And the fruit that we bear,

that love,

will glorify God.