Jesus said, ‘I am the true vine’. Jesus did not say, ‘I am as round as a dishpan, as deep as a tub, and yet the oceans could never fill me. What am I? A sieve!’ Nor did he say, ‘I hold water, yet am full of holes. What am I? A sponge!’We human beings have rather a thing for riddles, for puzzles of all kinds. November the 12th, 2004 may not strike you immediately as being a key date in history – but when I tell you that it was the day that a Sudoku puzzle was first published in this country, it may stick in your mind! Five years ago, the craze that is Sudoku was unheard of in this country, and yet now the magazine racks are full of endless volumes of such puzzles, such is the appetite for them. Pick up a discarded newspaper on the train, and the Sudoku section will be filled in, either perfectly neatly and correctly, with the minimum of fuss, or with the enraged scribbling of someone, desperate to work out which number they have put in the wrong place!
The year before that heralded the publication of Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’. This played right into our craving for puzzles, for cryptic clues and signs, as the characters race to solve the mystery. It remains an incredibly popular book, drawing on our obsession with puzzles and conspiracies. Hundreds of millions of copies have been sold in forty four languages around the world, reinforcing the notion that we human beings love a good puzzle. Even my current favourite – Doctor Who – plays on this each week, with the Doctor and his sidekick having to puzzle out what is wrong, (usually against the clock!) sort it out, and get back to the Tardis before the universe is destroyed!
Jesus often spoke in what sounded like riddles, refusing to be drawn in to making clear cut statements, and preferring to use metaphors, like the parable of the sower, from which people could draw their own conclusions. But what point did these metaphors have? Were they just riddles – cleverly designed to catch peoples’ interest – or is there something more to them?
Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus makes a series of statements that begin, ‘I am’. But he does not make statements that may help us historically, or in what we deem to be factual. He does not say, ‘I am six foot tall with a beard’, or ‘I am a Capricorn, born in Bethlehem’. What he does say seems rather cryptic, statements like, ‘I am the good shepherd’, ‘I am the light of the world’, ‘I am the living bread’ and, as we heard this morning, ‘I am the true vine’. Almost as mysterious as the last of the Timelords when he proclaims, 'I am the Doctor'!
But are these statements really as cryptic and confusing as they sound?
Firstly, they can be explained by way of the fact that Jesus is talking to people with reference to things that they understand. Were he to describe the true nature of both his relationship with God and with the Earth, were he to make cut and dried statements about who he is – we would not be able to understand. They say that were a human being able to speak the same language as a lion, neither would be able to understand the other, because their frames of reference are so difference. How ‘true’ this is, is beside the point, but how much more must it be the case between us and God? Therefore, that Jesus is able to talk to us using metaphors that we can actually understand is a great bonus!
The people of the Eastern Mediterranean, to whom Jesus was talking at the time, would have been very used to seeing vines, perhaps even to growing them. They would have understood the reference – knowing full well that the branches were dependent on the stem of the vine, and also that, in order to bear much fruit the branches needed pruning and caring for. So they are not puzzles, not statements designed to cause confusion, but rather to promote understanding within the framework of our understanding.
The second thing to note about these statements, is that they are not so cryptic after all. Jesus says ‘I AM the true vine’, not ‘I am LIKE a vine’. Saying ‘I am like a vine’ would prompt a discussion as to the nature of a vine, and how this could relate to Jesus. Perhaps Jesus would come out as looking rather green, leafy, and trained to grow up a trellis.
But he does not claim to be LIKE a vine, rather he says ‘As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I AM the vine, you are the branches’.
In this positive statement about Jesus, we see something of the nature of God. Christ is not LIKE a vine, sort of wooden and leafy – rather he IS the vine to our branches. In HIM we have our being, in HIM we have life. In the same way – Jesus is not LIKE bread, sort of warm and doughy – he IS the bread of life. By him are we nourished, fed and sustained. Similarly Christ is not LIKE light – he is THE light of the world. In him are things made clear, in him we rise out of darkness, like children waking out of sleep.
But what about us? Well, let’s apply the same principle. We are together, children of God. Not like children of God, it is not AS THOUGH we are the children of God… we are the children of God, sisters and brothers in Christ, and as we heard in the first reading this morning – it is in living our lives accordingly and keeping the commandment to love one another that we know that Christ abides in us.
Christian Aid week is upon us – and if we do nothing else, let us all ask the question ‘who is my brother, or who is my sister’, and, looking around the world – seeing poverty, injustice, hatred and greed – let us resolve to love one another as He loved us… not LIKE we are brothers and sisters – but as true brothers and sisters in Christ. For it is by our actions that we may come to realise that Christ abides in us, and that we are indeed the branches to his vine.
