02 May 2021

Living and Abiding in the Living and Life-Giving Vine

From the beginning, Man has had an intimate connection to the dirt, to the soil, and to the produce of the soil.  Not only did God form the first Man, Adam, from the dust of the ground, but He then placed the Man and his wife in the midst of the Garden of Eden to tend it and care for it.  The Lord made Man in His own Image and Likeness and gave him dominion over the earth to manage and subdue it, to bring forth fruits of various and sundry kinds to the glory of the Holy Triune God.

God is not an entrepreneur, and He’s not out to make a living for Himself.  He creates all things, and He still preserves them, not to gain something for Himself, but rather to give Life and to share Himself with His own creatures for the sake of His divine and holy Love.  He does not need Man to feed Him, but He feeds Man, and He opens up His hand to feed and nurture every living thing.  But in His grace and mercy He creates and calls Man to share in His glory by the bearing of good fruits and by the giving of life to others.  So has He created you to live and bear good fruits in Him.

You live by faith in Him, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Thus do you receive His Life and His Love in yourself.  And relying on Him, you bear the fruits of His Love and share His Life with your neighbors.  That is the good and gracious Life for which the Lord your God has created you.

But there is a problem.  The soil has been cursed because of Man’s sin.  The Fall of Adam & Eve has had consequences, not only for them and all their children, but for the earth itself, the ground from which they were taken.  All of Creation suffers as a consequence of Man’s rebellion and sin.

The soil is cursed, and it does not easily bring forth plants.  It requires hard work, the sweat of your brow and blisters on your hands.  The Garden and the Vineyard are choked by weeds and thorns and thistles.  The earth is polluted, the sun is beclouded, and the rain is too much or too little.  The plants and the people produce more foliage than fruit, and though they might look impressive, they do little or no good.  The fruits of the Vineyard are rather wild and sour, idolatrous, and selfish.

Where God, the great Gardener, works to give Life and feed Man, Man works and competes and struggles and strives to feed himself and to horde whatever he gets.  Instead of the Life and Love of God for which you are created, there is the so-called “law of the jungle.”  Everything is amok.

Consequently, because the Lord your God is a good Gardener and He desires His Vineyard to live and grow and thrive, He cultivates the Vineyard and prunes the branches.  He removes whatever is detrimental, harmful, and unproductive, and He provides all that is needed for a fruitful Life.

But who, or what, or where is the Vine that can survive the curse and consequences of sin?  Where is the Vine that can thrive in the cursed soil, among the weeds and thorns?  And where is the Vine that can survive the Father’s pruning?  Where is the Vine that shall not be cast off and burned?

It is only in Christ Jesus, the true Vine, that the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts shall survive and flourish and bring forth the good fruits that He intends to the praise and glory of His Holy Name.

Christ Jesus is the one true Vine, the true and perfect Man.  And His Father has planted Him in the midst of the wilderness, in the midst of the desert, in the midst of all the weeds and thorns.  He has been planted as a Seed into the ground, crucified, dead, and buried.  And as a Seed He has sprung forth from the earth, He has risen from the dead, a vital and productive Vine, surging with Life and bearing good Fruits, that the entire Vineyard should thrive with divine Life and holy Love in Him.

He has suffered the pruning, the cutting away, and the casting aside, but He has prevailed.  He has remained faithful and fruitful in the face of it all.  He has proceeded in faith, trusting His Father in all things, even unto death.  And He has proceeded in Love for His Father, for you, and for all.

Thus has He gone to His death, and thus was He planted in the dust of the earth.  And so has He been vindicated in His Resurrection, because He is the Righteous One.  He rises from the earth, and He is strong, and He is mighty, and He is full of “Sap” that flows with the very Life of God — for you and for all.  You have Life because you have been grafted into Him, into His Body.

Abide in Him, therefore, by faith in His Word, as He abides in you with His Gospel — and so bear good fruits in Him; for apart from Him you can do nothing.  But understand the order of things.

You do not become a branch of the Vine by bearing fruit.  You bear fruit as you are a branch of the Vine.  It cannot work otherwise.  It is the Vine that produces and brings forth His fruits in you.

You can’t bring a dead branch to life by purchasing clusters of grapes from the store and somehow tying them on.  But as a branch abides in the living Vine, it has life in itself and so bears fruit.  That is how it is for you, as well.  Apart from Christ Jesus, no amount of working and striving, no matter how impressive, will bring you to life.  But as you live and abide in Him, He lives in you.

Everything depends on His Word and the preaching of it, as in the case of the Ethiopian Eunuch, on his way home from the Feast in Jerusalem.  He has a portion of the Holy Scriptures, the Prophet Isaiah, and he is reading intently.  Yet, by himself he cannot understand what he is reading.  So the Spirit of Christ Jesus sends one of His messengers, one of His ministers of the Word, to explain the Scriptures to that man, to preach Jesus to him, and to baptize him in the Name of the Lord.

So it is by the preaching of His Word that Christ Jesus comes and abides with you; and it is by the hearing of His Word, by faith in His Word, that you abide in Him.  It is His Word that does it all.

It is by His Word — by the washing of the water with His Word — that you are grafted into Him in your Holy Baptism; and just like that Ethiopian, you are crucified, dead, and buried with Christ.  You also are a seed, planted in the ground.  And you also share His Resurrection.  You also surge from the earth.  You also grow and mature and live and are fruitful, because with that washing of the water with His Word — by that Holy Baptism — you are in Christ, and you are a new creation.

He has made all things new by His own Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead.  For His own Body, crucified and risen, is the Firstfruits of the New Creation.  And you also belong to that New Creation, as you are baptized into His death and so also share His Resurrection and His Life.

As His Word was at work there in the waters of your Baptism to raise you up to newness of Life, so His Word daily returns you to the significance of your Holy Baptism.  Daily His Word “waters” you with the Life-giving Rain of the Holy Spirit, so that you do not wither, waste away, and die, but by His grace you continue to live, to thrive, and to grow in the Vine.

You are already clean by the Word that Christ Jesus has spoken to you.  His Word of Absolution has not been a lie.  Your sins are forgiven.  Still, He speaks the Gospel to you, that day by day He may “wash your feet” and “water your soil” and sustain you in His Body and Life; that you might not be fruitless but fruitful; that you might live by faith in Him and in love toward your neighbor.

Your God and Father cares about you, and His desire is that you would live and thrive in His Son, Christ Jesus.  To that end, He does prune you.  With His Word of the Law He exposes your sin and cuts it out of your life.  Although that is painful, He does not aim to hurt or destroy you.  He would rather remove the clutter and open you up to the Life that He bestows through His gracious Gospel.

It is by and with and in His Word and Ministry of the Gospel that the Life of Christ Jesus flows into you.  For the Gospel is the forgiveness of all your sins, whereby everything is accomplished.  Nothing any longer stands in the way of the Life that you would have in Christ Jesus, as you are filled up with the vitality — the life and health and strength — of His Resurrection from the dead.

It is likewise by His Word that the same Lord Jesus Christ gives you the nourishment of His own good Fruits — the Fruits of the true Vine — His Body, crucified, risen, and given to you; and His holy, precious Blood, shed for you upon the Cross, and poured out for you to drink in His Supper.  So your body also is given life, and your body also is grafted into the Body of Christ Jesus, as you eat His Body and drink His Blood in faith and with thanksgiving.  Your body also is redeemed and sanctified for the Resurrection and the Life everlasting with the Holy Triune God in Paradise.

So does He abide in and with you, and you abide in and with Him, heart, mind, body, and soul.  And so do you bear good fruits to the glory of His Name, not only in your heart and mind, but in your words and actions, in holy faith and holy love.  You pray, praise, and give thanks.  You confess His Word and call upon His Name.  And you move to help your neighbors in their need.

In faith and love you worship God.  You go up to the true Jerusalem of His Church, to worship the Lord your God at the Feast of Christ Jesus, who is both your Good Shepherd and the true Passover Lamb of God — and not only that, but also the one true Vine in whom the entire Vineyard of the Lord lives and bears abundant fruit.  You worship Him from the heart, you prostrate your body and life before Him in the humility of repentance and the confidence of faith.  You lay hold of Him in faith and love in the Liturgy of His Gospel, and you rest yourself in Him who gives Himself to you.

It is not only with your heart and mind, but with your lips and your whole body that you worship Him, as you are able.  So have Christians from the start always done things with their bodies in the Liturgy, in prayer and devotion.  So, for example, you fold your hands when you pray, and you make the sign of the Cross upon your forehead and your heart, as you received in Holy Baptism.  You stand in the presence of God to praise His holy Name, and you kneel in reverence before Him as He comes to serve you with His forgiveness and to feed you with His Body and His Blood.  Such things are not necessary.  You will not make yourself righteous by doing any of these things.  You are already righteous, as you are already clean, by faith in the Gospel of Christ Jesus.  But in such ways your body participates in your confession of the faith and in your worship of the Lord.

Much the same thing is true with respect to love for your neighbor.  The fruits of love toward God also flow in love toward your neighbor, not only in the words that you speak, but also in tangible deeds of kindness and charity.  With your body, redeemed and sanctified by Christ Jesus, and fed upon His Body and His Blood, you love and serve your neighbor in his or her bodily needs.

This is how the Vineyard bears the good Fruits of the true Vine.  And this is how you, one of His branches, live in faith and love and bring forth the Fruits of Him who has become your Savior.

It is ever and always His Word that actually produces these Fruits in you, in your body and life, in your words and actions.  His Word produces these good Fruits in you because it is by this Word that your God and Father loves you and bestows His Life-giving Holy Spirit upon you in Christ Jesus.  It is by and with His Word that He gives you Himself, His Life and health, His strength and vitality, because it is by and with His Word that He forgives you all of your sins.

His Word is likewise the scaffolding and trellis upon which the branches of the Vine may grow.  For His Word is your Light upon your path, and it shows you the way in which you are to go.  His Law does not bring forth fruits; His Gospel does that, Christ does that.  But His Law guides those works of faith and love that He brings forth in you according to His good and gracious Will.

His Word enlightens before you the path by which Christ Himself has gone ahead of you in faith and love.  It is the path of compassion and great kindness, of long-suffering patience, slowness to anger, ready mercy, and free forgiveness.  Above all, it is the path of forgiveness in Christ Jesus, whereby you have Life and Salvation in body, soul, and spirit, and you forgive others in turn.

By the grace of God, by His Word and Holy Spirit, as a branch of the true Vine, abiding in Christ Jesus, you bear good Fruits after His own kind to the glory of His Holy Name and for the benefit of the neighbors He has placed alongside of you in this body and life.  For it is by Him, in Him, and with Him that you live, as surely as He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns eternally.

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

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