Weekly Devotion

November 17, 2024

Jesus said, “I am the Vine, and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

We are meant to be tangled up together. We are meant to live lives of profound interdependence, growing into, around, and out of each other. We cause pain and loss when we hold ourselves apart, because the fate of each individual branch affects the vine as a whole. In this metaphor, dependence is not a matter of personal morality or preference; it’s a matter of life and death.…  

If God is the vine grower, Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, what should we do? We have only one task: to abide. To tarry, to stay, to cling, to remain, to depend, to rely, to persevere, to commit. To hang in there for the long haul. To make ourselves at home.  

But “abide” is a tricky word. Passive on the one hand, and active on the other. To abide is to stay rooted in place. But it is also to grow and change. It’s a vulnerable-making verb: if we abide, we’ll get pruned. It’s a risky verb: if we abide, we’ll bear fruit that others will see and taste. It’s a humbling verb: if we abide, we’ll have to accept nourishment that is not of our own making. It’s a communal verb: if we abide, we will have to coexist with our fellow branches.

I have spoken a lot about love. Love is central to the life of the church. Even though we know there are guidelines and instructions to follow for our wellbeing, love has to hold those guidelines together – not the other way around. We lead with love. We cannot lead with “proof texts”, dogma, and law.

Why? Because when we lead with law we remove ourselves from the centre where God is. God is love. Love weakens and disappears when relationships become transactional. Leading with law leads to a transactional environment.

Let me put it another way: we need to operate with love as our central motivation, not the fear of eternal punishment or the hope for eternal reward. In part, we need to decide to make love our motivation. I have a sense of when that happened for me. But also, we can cultivate that decision through careful observation, consideration, and contemplation of God. We need an experience of love from the Infinite One to pull us into that framework. That’s been in my journey, too.

Remember what I said last Sunday: “Our highest calling is to give ourselves in love to the Infinite One who is giving himself infinitely in love to us.” It’s a “tango” between myself and the Holy Spirit which requires both initiative and response on my part as the Holy Spirit leads. And this goes so much further than praying a prayer using certain words, or “signing” our Confession of Faith or other transactional acts.

This is why abiding is so important – so critical. We abide in Jesus through our devotion and commitment. We abide in Jesus through loving our neighbour – seeking our neighbour’s well being. We abide in Jesus when we abide in love with each other in church – discussing and working through different perspectives and opinions until we are walking in harmony.

…because apart from deep entanglement, we can “do nothing”.

David Wiebe, with some ideas from Richard Rohr’s recent Daily Devotionals.