Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
This past week I was talking with a person who owns a small vineyard. We began talking about it because of this gospel. This man described how much pruning of the vines was necessary. The year the vine will grow six feet, then you cut it back to one foot. The second year it will grow to ten foot and then you cut it back to one foot again. On the third year after it has been severely pruned then it can bear good fruit. The vineyard owner explained that the other years the vines would bear fruit, but that the grapes would be the size of a raisin and useless for wine. The third year it would bear grapes that were meaty and ready for eating or winemaking.
The early church community was connected to Christ the vine through their lived experience of Jesus. The discipleship was formed and informed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The first disciples were Jewish and they were grafted to the Body of Christ through both their Jewish faith and through their baptism. In some early church circles the believers thought you needed to become Jewish in order to follow Christ. As time went on the Holy Spirit made clear to Paul, Barnabas and eventually Peter through a gathering of the Apostles and presbyters that they discerned that everyone could be attached directly the vine of Christ. One could argue that this was the Holy Spirit’s way of pruning the early Church so that it would better fruit.
While care of vineyards would have been familiar to the people to whom Jesus preached, this knowledge is less common today. Still for each of us, the process of pruning and grafting is accomplished through our baptism. In Baptism, we were made clean to become a new creation connected to Christ so that we will bear great fruit.
Staying connected to the vine and the vine grower is not as simple as being baptized or claiming Christ as your Lord and Savior. Jesus reminds us that the point of being grafted to vine is that we must bear fruit. How is it that we bear fruit? How do people recognize Christ through us?
Through baptism we ‘put on Christ’. As disciples, who are baptized, we have been grafted to Christ. Therefore our lives must model Christ. Consider how you are being called to model Christ today. Perhaps you are being called to be a healer, or to be a teacher. Maybe there is someone who is not aware of the gospel and you are called bear to witness to them.
"Lord, every day you challenge us to remain in You, for without you something is missing. Grow our discipleship so that our lives actively reflect that we are grafted to You the ‘True Vine’ who lives and reigns one God forever. Amen! Alleluia!"
- Michael Montgomery