Love is the Fruit

John 15:1-8

May 3, 2015

The vine grower removes every

branch that bears no fruit.

and every branch he prunes to make more fruit.

It is apparent from these words of Jesus that

fruit is the objective of sharing our life with Jesus.

God hopes for fruit.

To get right to the point,

Jesus doesn’t just want us to be followers

or just believers, or members, or worship attenders.

Jesus wants us to abide in him.

Not just wave hello from afar and

have a safe, comfortable platonic, relationship with Jesus.

Jesus wants us to live 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?

I would say it is obvious that Jesus is not talking

about farming or growing grapes or anything else.

I’m also pretty sure that it is not about any kind

of tangible thing either like good works,

or prayers, or attendance at church functions,

the number of converts to Christianity,

or even hours of service to our neighbors.

I think that the fruit that Jesus talks about

is a much less tangible thing,

This fruit much harder to quantify and identify.

but you do know it when you taste it.

 Today we’re 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.

So 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?)

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.

As bible people 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 condoning what they do, but loving them anyway.

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.

This week is one of those weeks where

seem like the world is falling apart.

This is the kind of week that tests our capacity for bearing fruit.

There’s that terrible tragedy that keeps unfolding in Nepal

Ninth-grader Tremaine Holmes
shakes hands with Captain Erik Pecha Sait Serkan Gurbuz/Reuters

with more than 7,000 dead so far.

And the unrest in our own country 

in the streets of Baltimore where yet again another young man of color was killed by police, and protests turned into riots.

  

Now even though Nepal is thousands of miles away. Even though we will never meet those people, Reading about them and hearing on the news, we have compassion for them, we have love.

Many have rightly responded with gifts and prayers.

But  maybe it’s easier for us to have love compassion

for innocent victims of natural disasters.

But when it comes closer to home,

when it’s not a natural disaster,

and where clearly not all parties are totally innocent

can we still feel love?

The news media seems to want to dismiss

our brothers and sisters of East Baltimore as “thugs”

They focus on the fact that they destroyed

so much of their own neighborhoods,

and burned down their own neighborhood business.

But we don’t have to condone someone’s actions

to understand them.

Can we regard them as brothers and sisters?

Can we love these people, our people? Agape love.

Can we love our brothers and sisters

and have compassion for the plight of

those who have watched many of their own

killed by police without any recourse?

Can we have love and understanding for people

who have seen so many of their own incarcerated

and then released without jobs in neighborhoods

without any economic development or hope.

Martin Luther King said that

“A riot is the language of the unheard”.

Can we understand what it’s like to be so unheard?

And can we also have love for our

other brothers and sisters,

the police officers who are part

in this mess of a justice system?

Can we understand what it must be like

to be hated and abused by the neighborhoods that they serve.

Where they are trained to show contempt and to react in fear.

Where they are often punished by the system

and by colleagues and other citizens for showing compassion.

Even though we may not condone their actions,

can we understand them?

Can we love them?

Where is your love and compassion wanting?

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.

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,

will glorify God.