Sermon for April 28, 2024 - The Fifth Sunday of Easter

We live in a culture that expects us to be fruitful and productive. We are encouraged to produce, to accomplish, to achieve. We are rewarded for our efforts and applauded for our successes. Our ability to produce or to achieve heightens our worth in the eyes of others, and often in our own eyes as well. We feel good about ourselves when we are able to accomplish important tasks or achieve ‘success’; we despair when we feel that we have accomplished little, or when our accomplishments seem less significant than those of others.

God is interested in our fruitfulness and productivity as well, but in ways that are significantly different from those which society values. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus reveals the source of fruitfulness, drawing on the familiar imagery of the vine and the branches. Let us explore that image a little more closely, by looking at two things: the source of fruitfulness and the signs of fruitfulness.

In his illustration, Jesus makes it very clear that we are not the source of our own fruitfulness. Fruitfulness is not the end result of careful planning or dedicated effort on our part. It is not the product of our own cleverness, ingenuity or insight. The fruitfulness that God desires and values is not something we can produce on our own. Just as a branch is helpless to produce fruit apart from the vine that is the source of its fruitfulness, says Jesus, so too are we helpless to produce the fruit that God desires apart from God, who is the source of that fruitfulness.

Jesus explains to his disciples that the life-giving connection they have with him is the same life-giving connection he has with the Father. “I can do nothing on my own…,” he tells his disciples. All that he says and does proceeds from his intimate connection with God. He is here to do God’s will, not his own. It is to be the same for his followers.

Everything depends on maintaining and strengthening the communion we have with God in Christ. We bear fruit by remaining connected to Jesus, just as he bears fruit through his connection with the Father. We are not the originators of the divine grace that comforts and heals and saves; we are simply mediators and instruments of this grace. Jesus and the Father make their home within us, living and acting with us. It is their divine life, the life of the Trinity, which flows through us and produces fruit. God joins God’s strength and life to ours, making a fruitfulness possible that we could never have achieved on our own.  God is the source of our strength, and the cause of our fruitfulness.

Steve has a small plant on a side table by the large window in our apartment which he has to rotate once in a while because its leaves insist on turning towards the sun. It is as if they know that the sunlight is their source of life, so they position themselves to receive as much of it as they can. So too, do we look to the Lord our God, who is the Source of our true life.

The Word became flesh in order to lead us into communion with God. But this close connection with the life of the Trinity is not an end in itself. It is meant to produce fruit. The prophets criticized the people of Israel because they lost sight of the reason for their calling. They forgot that the vine the Lord had planted and tended did not exist for itself, but in order to provide fruit. So too, God’s invitation for us to “abide” in God as God abides in us is not an invitation to settle down and get comfortable. It is a call to mission, a summons to fruitfulness. We are meant to share the fruits of the divine life with others. So, what are the signs of fruitfulness? What sort of fruit are we to produce?

Our readings today suggest two fruits in particular: love and obedience. Because God’s nature is love, it is natural to expect that our union with God will make us more loving towards others. “God is love,” the author of First John reminds us, “and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them” . Again, he tells us, “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; whoever does not love does not know God”.

Our union with God produces the fruit of love. “We love because he first loved us”. As we experience ourselves as beloved children of God, unconditionally and forever loved by God, we learn to love others with the same love that has been so freely given to us. As we are forgiven, so we learn to forgive others. As we are accepted, so we learn to accept others. Love is God’s very nature, and therefore it is the chief characteristic of the shared life we have in God. Love is the sign of the community which Jesus called into being, the Church. It is the fruit which God values above all others. Really, it’s all about love.

A second sign of a fruitful life in God is obedience. “If you keep my commandments,” Jesus tells his disciples, “you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. This obedience is not the obedience rendered to a military commander; rather, it is the fruit of a loving relationship.  It arises from the desire to please the one whom we love, rather than from the fear of punishment. “There is no fear in love,” First John reminds us, “but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment”.

Jesus indwells us, and calls us his friends. He reveals himself to us, so that we may together be one heart, one mind, one spirit, with nothing between us or separating us.  We are not servants, but friends, dear ones who are deeply loved, and the obedience we offer rises from the desire Jesus inspires in us to live in intimate union with him. Sometimes it seems that we are so busy being God’s servants and “working for Jesus” that we forget that he wants us to be his friends, to live in union with him and to receive his love. We must remember that our friendship and intimate union with him is the source of our fruitfulness. He has chosen us for this purpose.

Here, then, is how our fruitfulness differs from the fruitfulness which the world expects and encourages. We are mediators of God’s grace, God’s love, God’s power to save and heal. As branches we receive the life of the vine and pass it along to others. The fruitfulness is not ours, but God’s. God is its source; God alone. In the words of Jean Vanier, “The glory of human beings is not first and foremost to do or produce things or to build beautiful monuments or churches, to write wonderful books or to create new technology. All these will pass. The glory of human beings is to communicate life, pouring the oils of compassion on suffering people. It is with Jesus and in him to transform others, to help them move from inner death, sadness and aggression to inner peace, joy and fullness of life.”

This is the measure of our fruitfulness, the fruitfulness which originates with God and flows through us to others. This is the fruitfulness that God values.