There was a video a few years back that went viral in which a mother asks her young child what God’s name is. The young girl very seriously replies, “Howard.” The mom asks, “How do you know his name is Howard?” The girl first responds, “Because.” But when mom pushes a bit more, she says, “Our Father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.” This little girl was not the first to make that mistake. There was another viral video from a year or two earlier of an older gentleman who also believed that God’s name is Howard. But in our passage from the gospel of John for this morning, we learn that God has a different name.

Jesus says to this disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” The word in Greek that is translated as vinegrower here is the word gheh-ore-gos’, which comes from combining two words: ge meaning “land or earth” and ergon meaning “work.” Ge is the word from which we get the word geology, which means “the study of earth.” And from ergon we get the term ergonomics, which is the “law of work” or the principles behind how things work. An ergonomic chair is one that has been designed to support the principles of how a person’s body works when sitting. When these two words ge and ergon are put together, you end up with the word gheh-ore-gos from which we get the name George. So Jesus is the vine and God is George.

George works the land and takes care of the plants that grow on the land. We know that to be true from our experiences with the natural beauty all around us. But in the passage we read from the gospel of John, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. Jesus is speaking of how his relationship to God and our relationship to Jesus work. It is the ergonomics of the God/humanity relationship. Jesus is the vine, God is the George (the vinegrower), and we are the branches. We are the part of the plant that bears the fruit. And when it comes to plants, without the fruit, the plant has a lot less value.

We have a peach tree in our front yard. A few years ago we planted the pit of one of the Colorado peaches that we had purchased through Summit College. We actually planted two pits, but only one grew. Now, is it a nice size tree that continues to grow leaves and expand in size every year. But it has not once to this point produced a peach. Jesus says of the vinegrower, “He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” I suppose if we took that tactic with our peach tree, it would be nothing but a trunk with no branches. Perhaps that is not the exact image that Jesus is going for though.

Now, I’ll be completely honest that I have never actually grown grapes, so I don’t really know anything about pruning a grapevine. But after watching a couple of videos on pruning grapevines and reading a few commentaries on this passage, I noticed a couple of things. First,it is not only the unproductive and dying branches that get pruned. Oftentimes, healthy productive branches get pruned in order to create even more growth for the future. And second, the word translated as “he removes” often means “to raise or lift up.” I think that difference could be significant for the meaning of Jesus’ words there. So, I want to take a minute or two to look at each of these things individually.

George the vinegrower prunes the productive and healthy branches as often as he does the dying and unproductive ones. Oftentimes this passage is looked at to say that those who don’t follow Christ will be pruned from the vine and thrown into the fire of hell. But if the branches that are pruned are destined for hell, then plenty of people who ARE abiding in Christ will be thrown into the fire as well. In the videos I watched about pruning grapevines, what I saw was that the vinegrower would trim away almost all of the branches, leaving only two per vine. Most of those pruned branches were in good shape. They weren’t diseased. They hadn’t begun to dry up. They were perfectly healthy. But the vinegrower knew that if she pruned the vine down to just two branches, then those branches would be far more productive.

What I think that means for us is that being pruned is not a sign of being cut off from God. In fact, I would argue that being pruned means growing even stronger in the Lord. Sometimes we have to be torn down in order to be built back up. I love perennial plants. One of my favorites is asparagus. We had a wonderful patch of asparagus plants in our garden in Iowa before we moved here. The amazing thing about asparagus plants was that the more you pruned the stalks of asparagus as they came up, the more stalks would come up. If we just let them come up and go to seed, the production would slow. The first few years, that was difficult because we only got a handful of stalks to come up. And you do need to leave some to go to seed to help the plant regenerate for the next year. Pruning those early healthy stalks leads to more fruit. And allowing some of the stalks to die also leads to more fruit. For us that might mean ending healthy things at the right time to make room for growth in other areas.

That leads us to the word that the NRSV translates as “he removes” in verse 2. The word in Greek is airo, which means “to raise up or lift up.” In Jesus’ day, grape vines were allowed to sprawl across the ground and the bunches of grapes would just be lifted off the ground so they wouldn’t rot against the soil. But occasionally the vinegrower would lift the whole plant up toward the sun to get it more light so it would grow better. That seems like perhaps what Jesus was referring to here. The branches that aren’t bearing fruit are lifted up to get more sunlight with the hopes that they will start to improve and produce fruit. Perhaps that is why nowadays we grow our grapes on trellises. Then they get the sunlight they need.

Jesus goes on to say, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just 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. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus asks us to abide in him. And he tells us that he already abides in us. What Jesus is telling his disciples is that he is the true source of life.

So, how do we abide in Jesus in the midst of a world that is trying to pull us away from faith, away from truth, away from love. Abiding in anything can be hard. Even when we want to abide in Christ, there may be times when we are hanging on by a thread. I just finished reading a book for my Doctor of Ministry class that was the story of a man who was in a car accident in which his wife, mother, and daughter were all killed. In an instant, he became a single dad of his three other children who along with him had survived the accident. His faith was tested. “How could God let this happen?” he would ask himself and others. He was nearly ready to abandon his faith altogether. But even when his faith was tested to its limits, Jesus never stopped abiding with him. And that is true for us as well. No matter how far we go away from God, no matter how distant we feel from him, no matter how small and fragile our faith is, Jesus does not leave us. Jesus continues to abide with us.

I want to share with you a poem I discovered by Paul Laurence Dunbar, entitled “A Hymn.” The words speak to this pulling away as God continues to hold on to us, continues to remain with us. Dunbar writes:

Lead gently, Lord, and slow,

For oh, my steps are weak,

And ever as I go,

Some soothing sentence speak;

That I may turn my face

Through doubt’s obscurity

Toward thine abiding-place,

E’en tho’ I cannot see.

For lo, the way is dark;

Through mist and cloud I grope,

Save for that fitful spark,

The little flame of hope.

Lead gently, Lord, and slow,

For fear that I may fall;

I know not where to go

Unless I hear thy call.

My fainting soul doth yearn

For thy green hills afar;

So let thy mercy burn—

My greater, guiding star!

Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and God is George the vinegrower. God will prune us sometimes in order to help us grow. But Jesus abides in us always. And God’s greatest desire for us is that we might bear much fruit…the fruit of love. And that we might be Christ’s disciples, following his example. We may struggle sometimes, but if we continue to abide in Christ, we will grow back stronger. Thanks be to George, the vinegrower, our loving Father. Amen!