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ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

Maybe it was the way it was worded, or maybe it came at a time when I was looking for a fresh new beginning in a ministry that had grown stale. I don't know, but when I first read it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It was what the Dutch Jesuit scholar and mystic Henri Nouwen once told a gathering of Baptist ministers: "Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. A lot of people are always concerned about: 'How can I help people? Or help the youth to come to Christ? Or preach well?' But these are all basically non-issues. If you are burning with the love of Jesus, don't worry: everyone will know. They will say, 'I want to get close to this person who is so full of God.'"

For me, that was such a striking statement that I decided to test it against Scripture. What would Jesus say? I turned to the fifteenth chapter of John's Gospel and read for the hundredth time his teaching on the vine and the branches. I had always assumed he was saying that fruit results from the abiding life. But as I read it again, I realized that he is saying more than that--much more--and the unity of the entire chapter jumped off the page at me. What I saw in a new way was the interplay of three relationships crucial to fruit-bearing: communion with God, community, and communication with the world.

I believe Jesus is teaching that we bear fruit that will lastwhen we live in communion with God, live in community, and communicate our life in Christ in the world.

The first relationship essential to fruitfulness is Communion with God.

I had a high school buddy in Ohio whose family had an apple orchard, and in the fall, when the apples were ripe, we would hang out at the orchard and eat apples. When you pull a Jonathan apple off the tree, wipe it on your shirt, and bite into it, there is a satisfying “snap” and the flavor explodes in your mouth. As I recall, I never wondered why apples were growing on those trees. I took it for granted that apple trees produce apples. It was the most natural thing in the world.

That is a pretty good metaphor for the way things ought to be in the Christian life. Among other things, Jesus was results oriented, so he talked about fruit. Through the image of the vine and the branches, Jesus teaches the way of fruitfulness. Distilled to their essence, his words teach clearly and unmistakably that fruitfulness is possible only by a life of intimacy with God. That theme is stated clearly in verse four: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me.” Only with the abiding life is there fruit in the Christian life.

This passage affirms that there are levels of fruit bearing. He chose us and appointed us to bear fruit (vs. 16), but there are some branches that bear no fruit (vs. 2). The branch that abides bears fruit (vs. 4). A branch is pruned so that it bears more fruit (vs. 2), and the individual with an interdependent relationship with Christ bears much fruit (vs. 5).

The San Joaquin Valley of California, with hundreds of square miles of orchards and vineyards, is the most productive valley in the world. I have been there in winter, and one of the most remarkable things was to see the radical way the grape vines are pruned. They are cut back to the nub, to the main trunk, to the vine. There is simply nothing left of the branches. The purpose becomes evident in the next growing season: no energy goes into old branches, but all of the energy of the vine goes into new, fruit-bearing branches.

In his desire to bring us to the place of fruitfulness, God cuts away everything in our lives that is not the life of Jesus. The pruning, through trials, is radical and painful, but it produces fruit unto eternal life.

Henri Nouwen once observed, "Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself. I find it very important to stress that we are wounded healers; we don't have to run away from our vulnerability as if we don't hurt.”

In the summer of 1996 I joined a gathering of 41,000 pastors in the Georgia Dome. In the opening address, Pastor Jack Hayford challenged us to genuineness in ministry. He spoke of the loss of the power of God in Israel when the Ark of the Covenant was taken out into battle, because the people who took the Ark were looking for a trick, a good-luck charm, a talisman, but they did not have a relationship with God. It was a classic case of “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mark 7:6).

But David pursued the presence of God and brought the Ark back to Jerusalem. Hayford went on to say that the ministry is not a matter of sharpness of mind, or skill honed by training, but the life of the Spirit flowing through us. He said, “Everything boils down to my own private worship walk with the Lord.” He spoke of private worship, of daily being broken before the presence of God, in the physical posture of face down before God. “Breakthrough never happened around me,” he said, “until breakup happened within me.”

Jesus said it simply: “Without me, you can do nothing.”

The second relationship essential to fruitfulness is living in Community.

Twice, in the middle of his teaching on the Vine, Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”(vs. 12 and 17) In counseling, when someone says something twice, we start counting. Something important is being said—something worth exploring. Jesus doesn’t explain his command—he just makes it an integral part of his teaching on fruitfulness.

When we follow Jesus’ argument in its context, we discover that not only is it impossible to bear fruit without communion with him, it is equally impossible to bear fruit without love for our brother. In verse 14, he says, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” What is his command? Love one another. My love for God is intertwined with, and measured by, my love for my brother. John states the principle in his First Epistle, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also” (1 John 4:20-21).

Nouwen was right. Ministry happens when we live in communion with God and live in community.

My friends David and Karen and their three children live in community—in the thick of it. They built a house in Pie de la Cuesta, Mexico, right on the beach. The beach is steep there, and at night the pounding of the raw Pacific surf on the sand sounds like distant thunder. The surrounding neighborhood is marked by poverty and tawdriness, tiendas and tacquerias, bars and clubs, and there, in the middle of it all, their home is a light in a dark place, a center for reaching the surfers, the beach bums, the alcoholics, the addicts, and the perverts. They have been threatened. They have been burglarized and David’s tools have been stolen. Slander and graffiti have been painted on the wall in front of the house.

It is there that they minister. They visit homes broken by alcoholism, violence, incest and divorce. They talk to the people from the bars. They visit the local jail. They joined in a local fiesta, opened their fence, let people swim in their pool, and sold 600 hotdogs at cost. They pile guys in their van and take them surfing. They have Bible studies. They explain the gospel to whoever will listen. But most of all, their house has become a place where young people can come to hang out, to talk, study the Bible and pray. David and Karen have made mistakes and asked forgiveness. Their home, their lives, their marriage, and their family are an open book. And they are reaching the lost of the lost—people that no one else is reaching—because they are living out the reality of Jesus. The last I knew, over 50 of their neighbors have come to faith in Christ, and they meet there for worship and Bible study each week. David had no intention of starting a church—it just happened—because he and his family live their lives before God, and live in community.

The third relationship essential to fruitfulness is communication of the life of Christ in the world.

Jesus begins the last section of this passage by orientating us to the dilemma we face as his followers. “If the world hates you,” he warns, “keep in mind that it hated me first.” He explains that just as he did not belong to the world, neither do we; just as he was persecuted, so we also can expect persecution. But in no way are we to escape the world. It is clear that, while we do not belong to the world, we are to live in the world. And our traveling companion on this alien journey is the Counselor, the Spirit of Truth, who testifies of Christ. Jesus gives us the command to partner with the Holy Spirit in communicating Christ to the world--“you also must testify” (vs. 27). Our mission in the world is to communicate the truth about Christ by the power of the Spirit of Christ.

And so we have three mandates, which together are essential to fruitfulness: Abide, love one another, and testify.

When Jack Driscoll became a believer at the age of 35, he left an executive position with AT&T to work with the down-and-outers in the Bowery in New York. He then got ordained, and in 1989, he and his wife Carol followed a call to serve in Mexico, where they now minister in the wayside town of Matehuala. Jack and Carol truly have the gift of evangelism. Wherever they go is an adventure. They travel without a schedule, expecting divine encounters, and an incredible number of people are drawn to them—to their gentle, yet engaging spirit—and they come to know the Savior. The Driscolls live simply, live in communion with God, live in community, and see every encounter as an opportunity to communicate Christ.

Recently, I saw them again, on their way through Dallas, heading south for the border. I noticed a verse from the Gospel of John painted on the back window of their van, artistically done in calligraphy and decorated with flowers. I asked Jack what kind of response they have gotten from that. He said, "In the twelve years we have been doing it, over 50 people have come to know the Lord because of it." He said, "Just last week, a woman and her daughter came out of a store, read the verse, and asked Carol about it, and Carol led them to the Lord."

As we talked, what struck me was that this was no gimmick. It was simply another way for them to engage people in conversation about their soul. And when they do, those folks encounter Jesus.

Jesus’ teaching is true, that we bear fruit that lastswhen we live in communion with God, live in community, and communicate our life in Christ in the world.

A question worth thinking about is, what is fruit? Is it evangelism? Is it the fruit of the Spirit? Jesus does not explicitly define fruit in this passage, but I believe he does so by implication. Bearing fruit is simply reproducing the life of Jesus. Just as apple trees produce apples, so too, when the life of the vine flows through the branches in the real world, fruit is produced. If I am living in communion with Christ, and living in community, I will reproduce the life of Jesus. When I forgive my brother from the heart, I reproduce the life of Jesus. When I introduce someone to Christ, I reproduce the life of Jesus. When I show a kindness, I reproduce the life of Jesus. The life of the vine is produced by those who live in the vine, in community, and in the world.

Written by: Jonathan Edwards