Vine and branches

In John's Gospel, Jesus tells his friends that he is a vine and they are the branches. Some Old Testament prophets, like Ezekiel, had used the image of a vine to talk about Israel; they had been put in their land by God in the same way that a gardener would plant a vine, choosing the right place for it and taking care of it. But Jesus says that he is a vine - or rather, he says that he is the true vine. God the Father is the gardener, but it's Jesus, rather than the nation of Israel, that is the vine.

Anyone who chooses to follow Jesus, he says, is a branch of the vine. God, the gardener, will prune the branches to make them more fruitful, or will cut off the branches that don't bear any fruit. This seems rather worrying - I often don't feel like my life is very fruitful: does this mean God will cut me off and throw me away? - but Jesus goes on to say that anyone who remains in him will bear much fruit. I might not feel fruitful, but I'm reassured that remaining as a branch of the vine is all that's required for fruitfulness.

In fact, Jesus doesn't only say in verse 5 that the fruitful person remains in him; he says that he, Jesus, also remains in that person. So being fruitful (achieving your potential, or being the kind of person you were meant to be) doesn't only involve you staying in Jesus, but also him staying in you.

Of course this makes sense if you think that we have the same relationship to Jesus as the branches do to a vine. In a real vine, the sap, the water and oxygen, flows between the main trunk of the vine and the outermost branches. If you were to look at the different parts of a vine, you would find that they all have the same DNA. We are who we are (and we become the best, most fruitful versions of ourselves) not only because we are in Jesus, but also because he is in us.

This is also part of the parallel between Jesus, the true vine, and the vine that was the symbol of the nation of Israel. Israel had a covenant relationship with God: they were his people and he was their God. Israel were God's nation, but God, through his presence in the tabernacle and the temple, was also part of the nation of Israel. The Jews gained their identity because they were part of God's people - look at all the genealogies in the Bible - but also because God was part of their nation. He was the God who was universal, unlike the gods and idols of other nations, but who was also very specifically present among them. In the new covenant that begins with Jesus, we find our identity because we are in him, because we are all parts of the Body of Christ, but also because he is in us.

An individual branch, separate from the vine, is not only unfruitful, but stops being a branch. A branch that's cut off is just a stick. We find our real identity not by being ourselves, but by being part of something bigger.