Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
In tonight’s Gospel, Jesus tells His Disciples “I am the true vine” and that if His Disciples abide in Jesus, they will bear much fruit as branches on that vine.
Jesus is the one who gives us life through the power of His gift of grace in our lives. Without Jesus, we cannot have life, not true life. We need Jesus to sustain our being. We need Jesus to make us whole.
But as Jesus tells us in this passage, being made whole is much more than just saying “yes Jesus, I want to be your branch.” It means letting Jesus into our hearts and being. It means being open to being transformed by our Lord.
It means wanting to do the work of God in the world. It means wanting to produce good fruits. No, doing good works doesn’t give us life, and they don’t make us whole. Only Jesus can do that.
But being open to Jesus means we open ourselves up to being fully His. It means we open ourselves up to doing His work in the world. It means doing whatever we can for the Glory of God.
That doesn’t mean we will always succeed. We are still on this side of our journey. We are not yet perfect, not in this life. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try. It means that when we fail to do good, we pick ourselves back up and try again. It means rededicating ourselves to the Lord, sometimes every single day. It means we turn to others for help when we fall, and when others fall, we do the same for them.
Jesus gives life to us no matter what. All we have to do is trust in Him. We may not always do what Jesus wants or act the way we should, but if we hold on to Jesus, He will continue to transform us. The hope is that this life-giving grace that Jesus gives us will cause us to desire to be more fully His so that we can be the branches of God reaching out to others in this world and providing that path back down to the true vine, to Jesus.