May 2025
‘I am the vine, and you are the branches’
John 15.5 (GNT)
We are with the first disciples in the Upper Room. Jesus is teaching them some of
the most profound truths about his relationship with God the Father, the Spirit
and with them, his chosen disciples. Here is the seventh declaration of His
Person, beginning with the words of the Divine Name, ‘I AM’; the two words that
run throughout the Bible when God is speaking and revealing His identity.
Jesus uses metaphors in the richest possible way to help his disciples know what
he (and therefore God) is like. They would probably understand better than we
can today the meaning of the ‘True Vine.’ In the Jewish scriptures, this is
recognised as the symbol for Israel (see Isaiah 5.1-7, ‘The Parable of the
Vineyard’). The vine stands for that which Israel was being called to be. Jesus
here proclaims himself as the fulfilment of Israel’s purpose. He is the True Vine.
‘I am the vine, and you are the branches’, Jesus declares. Here he is drawing the
picture of a Vine and its branches being organically One. He is the whole Vine
and we, as branches are incorporated into him. This is captured in the words of
the second part of the verse: ‘Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear
much fruit; for you can do nothing without me’. This is the most fundamental
meaning of what a Christian is. There is a mutual indwelling; God literally within
us. All forms of Christian worship, discipleship and prayer emanate from this. In
his commentary Readings in St John’s Gospel, William Temple writes ‘this is not a
theme for words but for the deeper apprehensions of silence’.
There are many truths in this picture of the Vine that are worth contemplating in
silence.
The pruning of the branches and the cleansing of the vine is one. The maturing
of the vine to bear more fruit is another. The treasure of the grapes that are taken down still another; the
vine living to give its lifeblood. The vine is cut back to the stem. The branches are thrown into the fire and burned. For, as Eleanor Hamilton King writes eloquently
about the True Vine in her poem ‘The Disciples’: ‘the next year blooms again, not
bitter for the torment undergone, nor barren for the fullness yielded up’.