There are many legends in many cultures concerning how certain flowers came into existence. Germany has a legend which tells about the origin of the primrose. Apparently Saint Peter once heard a rumor that some wayward souls were trying to slip into the back door of heaven rather than entering through the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter got so upset by this that he dropped his keys; whereupon they fell to earth and grew into primroses.
Then there is a Persian legend about the origin of tulips. A young man named Farhad was in love with a beautiful woman, Sharin. One day Farhad received news that his lover was dead. In his grief, he jumped off a high cliff and fell to his death. Sadly, though, the message had been sent by a jealous rival, and Sharin was still actually alive. But where Farhad's body had landed, there appeared a new, beautiful flower: the tulip. (1)
The beauty and majesty of living things has always captured the imagination of creative souls. A clever preacher once compared the life of faith to a garden. He said that in his garden he would plant three rows of squash: squash gossip, squash criticism, squash indifference. Then he would put in three rows of lettuce: let us be faithful, let us be unselfish, let us love one another. Finally he would add turnips: turn up for church, turn up with a smile, turn up to serve others. (2)
Have you ever noticed how Jesus was able to take everyday things, like flowers and gardens, and turn them into eternal truths? Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower." Now there were vines growing all over the place in Palestine. And when Jesus said he was the "true vine," people knew right away what he was talking about. But besides being familiar with vines in the everyday sense, the people of Palestine also thought of themselves as God's vineyard. As the prophet Isaiah proclaimed, "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel." (5:7) So what did Jesus mean when he said, "I am the true vine"?
WELL, FIRST OF ALL, HE MEANT THAT OUR STRENGTH COMES FROM OUR CONNECTION WITH HIM. Life begins with the vine. Branches cannot grow by themselves.
Donald Grey Barnhouse tells about a grapevine in Hampton Court near London that is about 1,000 years old. Some of its branches are 200 feet long, and its single root is at least two feet thick. Because of skillful cutting and pruning, that one vine produces several tons of grapes every year. And even though some of the smaller branches are 200 feet from the main stem, they bear plenty of fruit because they are joined to the vine and allow the life of the vine to flow through them. The great truth Jesus that is trying to tell us is that if we want life in all its fullness, then we must connect to the "true vine," the very source of life. "Abide in me as I abide in you," Jesus said. We draw our life from him.
Gary Parker recalls the time when he and his college roommate, Mike, went to Whitewater Falls, South Carolina to see the beautiful waterfalls there. This was a favorite spot for Gary and many other people to gather on Saturday afternoons to watch the waterfall cascade downward. But that day Gary and Mike decided that they wanted to get a little closer than they had before.
They hiked through the woods and stepped gingerly across the glassy rocks to a lookout point very near the falls from which they could see the water drop off. The footing was slippery, and the spray was cold, but they were closer to the waterfall than either of them had ever been before, and the view was fantastic. Mike wanted to go just one step farther onto a rock that was just a few feet nearer the rapids. But as he eased himself onto the wet rock, worn smooth from years of running water, his feet slipped and he tumbled into the foaming river.
Fortunately he managed to grab a rock spur and save himself for the moment, but his grasp was weak, and he wouldn't long be able to keep himself from being swept over the falls by the raging stream. Seeing his friend's plight Gary immediately grabbed hold of a sapling and stretched out over the water as far as he could in a desperate effort to reach his friend. It was a struggle between life and death as each tried to reach the other while clinging to their own anchor. Then, suddenly, Gary had Mike's arm and pulled him onto the safety of the rocks. Mike was wet, shivering, and frightened, but safe. Of his heroism Gary simply says, "All I did was lend a hand to a friend; I acted as a source of help when someone I cared about called for it." (2)
What a graphic picture of our relationship with Christ! We are about to go under, and we reach out to him. And once we are connected with him we can face any and all obstacles. Just as the branch takes its life from the vine, so we find abundant life in Christ. That is the first thing this text is saying to us.
IT ALSO SAYS THAT OUR LIVES ARE ABOUT BEARING FRUIT. The closer we are to Jesus the more we will want to do those things that are pleasing in his sight. What good is a branch on which there is no fruit? But bearing fruit does take some effort.
Experienced gardeners know that there is a lot of work involved in planting and caring for a garden. There's much more to a garden than throwing a few seeds on the ground and waiting for them to grow. Careful attention and preparation must be given to the soil even before anything is planted. The seeds must be watered on a regular basis. Weeds must be pulled.
And once the plant is growing, careful attention must be given to the branches if the vine is going to produce fruit. To produce as much fruit as possible the branches have to be pruned, which involves more than just trimming around the branches. If you've ever watched a gardener prune a plant, you might think that the gardener has cut too much off the plant and killed it. But the next year the vine is thriving once again. But if a vine is never pruned it will not produce much fruit.
Like the vine, we, too need to be pruned. We need to take stock of ourselves and ask, what needs to be pruned in my life? What is preventing me from bearing fruit? We need to allow the Master Gardener to prune away our excess baggage of things and meaningless pursuits. Then we will be ready to fulfill our reason for existence: we will be ready to bear fruit.
A man on a busy street polished his customers' shoes with great enthusiasm. It was evident that he enjoyed his work ” turning a pair of scruffy leather shoes into a shining work of art. He also enjoyed talking with the men whose shoes he polished; he even enjoyed polishing the shoes of men who buried their noses in the morning newspaper.
There was one regular customer who was a professor from the old Soviet Union. The professor noticed how happy the shoeshine man was. He watched the man shining his shoes so cheerfully and enthusiastically, and he couldn't figure out what made him so happy in such a miserable world. One day the professor could no longer hold his curiosity, and asked the shoeshine man, "Why are you always so happy?"
This surprised the shoeshine man. He paused for a moment, scratched his head thoughtfully, and then said, "Jesus. He loves me. He died so God could forgive my badness. He makes me happy."
This wasn't an answer that the professor had expected to hear, and he went back to his newspaper without another word. But it was those few simple words spoken by the shoeshine man that eventually brought the professor to Jesus Christ. (3)
When we submit our lives to Christ we will naturally bear fruit ” like the man shining shoes. A lot of effort goes into a garden, but the end result is worth it. Our strength comes from our connection to Christ. Our purpose is to bear fruit.
AND WHEN WE BEAR FRUIT WE ARE GLORIFYING GOD. That's an essential idea for our time. Our tendency today is to place ourselves in the limelight, to glorify not God, but ourselves, and then to wonder why we are so unhappy. There is an old saying that a man wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small package. Our chief end, according to the old catechism, is to glorify God. Jesus says, "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples." If our world does not seem as cheerful as it once was, it may be because most people do not have this as their main purpose in life. I'm afraid I don't know very many people whose main purpose is glorifying God. When we live a fruitful life we bear witness to God's presence in our world.
An outspoken atheist in the early part of this century, Charles Bradlaugh, challenged a preacher named Hugh Price Hughes to a public debate in London. The preacher gladly accepted the challenge, but on one condition. He wanted to bring one hundred men and women to the debate who would be witnesses for the redeeming love of God. These men and women would demonstrate for unbelievers how God had turned their lives around. The preacher asked his atheist challenger to do the same thing: to bring one hundred people whose lives were helped by not believing in God.
The debate never took place. The atheists never showed up. Reverend Hughes and the one hundred men and women with him turned that proposed debate into a worship service. One by one these Christians shared the good news that through the power of Jesus Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God had melted their hearts and remolded their lives. (4) Their witness glorified God.
The world desperately needs men and women whose sole purpose is to glorify God. It is a sad commentary on the state of the church that many people do not perceive much difference in the way church folks live and the rest of the world. It reminds me of a story about a French light-house keeper who worked near Calais. As he was showing his lighthouse to some guests one day, one of them asked what would happen if one of the lights went out. His response was an emphatic "Never!" He said that if he permitted that to happen, he would live in fear of being responsible for a ship crashing into some unseen rocks along the coast. And then he went on to say, "Sometimes I feel as if the whole world is looking at my light." (5) That is how we ought to feel ” as if the whole world is looking at our light which glorifies God.
God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. We stay strong by being connected with him. Our purpose is to bear the fruit of love, hope, and joy in the world. When we do, we glorify God. Jesus said, "Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit."
1. Laura C. Martin. GARDEN FLOWER FOLKLORE. (Chester, Connecticut: The Globe Pequot Press), pp. 63, 72.
2. Gary E. Parker. THE GIFT OF DOUBT. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1990), pp. 103-104.
3. Ruth Bell Graham. LEGACY OF A PACK RAT. (Nashville: Oliver Nelson, 1989), p. 187.
4. James W. Moore. HEALING WHERE IT HURTS. (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1993), pp. 101-102.
5. EMPHASIS, Jan-Feb/1992, p.12.