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The Vine

In John chapter 15 we have recorded for us a remarkable metaphor to help us understand our relationship with the Lord and with each other. Here it is (Jesus is speaking):

"I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If anyone remains in me and I in them, they will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, they are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

The world's biggest and oldest grape vine is at Hampton Court Palace in England. I used to live near Hampton Court and I visited the vine several times. But I never thought the Black Hamburgh vine of Hampton Court would explain the metaphor of the vine. Until one day I went to the Palace with a friend from the church I attended in London.

She was a lovely lady, a former professional ballerina with a diploma signed by Dame Margot Fontaine. But in her prime she had accepted a ride home from a party with a drunk driver. There was an accident that left her with terrible injuries and permanent brain damage. It ended her professional career. However, she did become a Christian.

The brain damage was, in one way, a gift. It took away all inhibitions and now she can simply walk up to anyone and start talking. In my opinion this has made her better at personal ministry than any of her church's large ministry team! Each Sunday she sets out to greet one visiting person or family and host them for the entire day. Some of these visitors are not Christians and have come to faith as a result.

The vine at Hampton Court Palace was planted about 1768 by the famous Capability Brown, an English landscape magician of the day. The vine lives inside a greenhouse of close to twenty metres in length. The glass of the greenhouse covers a wrought iron frame and the vine is guided along the frame. You can get close to the vine but it is beyond touching range.

We were in the greenhouse and my friend immediately walked up to a man who was the only other person there and started talking to him - not something I am very good at!

As it happened (Providentially, I believe) the man was the vinekeeper. Or at least he was half of the team that looked after the vine. He and his wife had the responsibility of caring for this magnificent plant. He came from a family of gardeners that went back 900 years. Only in England! So, yes, he knew his stuff.

In the piece of scripture we quoted above, the Greek words for clean and prune are the same. This can be a little confusing. The gardener can help us here. His wife spends about three months of every year scraping the branches with a dull knife. She removes the loose flakes of bark, sometimes leaving the branch looking quite naked. The reason for this is that grapevines have numerous parasites. Some parasites attack the leaves and others go after the sap through the branches. When the parasites are not removed they consume the nutrients the vine needs to bear fruit and consequently the fruit suffers. Scraping the loose bark removes the hiding places. Usually the scrapings are also burned to destroy the parasites.

The parallel is clear. The word that Jesus spoke to the disciples cleaned them in just the way the gardener's wife cleans the vine. In our lives there are many sinful areas that take the nutrients away from the fruit. The remedy for us is the same as for the disciples. We take heed to the word and thereby we eliminate the hiding places of our sin.

The gardener prunes the vine to increase its productivity. We should be careful not to confuse pruning with the removal of dead branches. Sometimes even productive branches are pruned from the vine in order to make room for new growth that will become even more productive. So, both cleaning and pruning are required.

With a vine as old and valuable as this one at Hampton Court Palace, it is no wonder it is entrusted to such a competent and caring couple. I thought back to the words of Jesus in describing marriage. The two become one flesh (Matthew 19:5, referring to Genesis 2:24) and function together. It also occurred to me that the duty of scraping the bark from the branches fell naturally to the wife. Perhaps we should recognize the maternal side of God in his care for us, his children.

The vine is different from most other plants. For one thing, it must be cultivated and constantly cared for. Left in the wild, it simply grows along the ground with all its parasites and whatever fruit it bears being lost to hungry birds. It cannot bear much fruit unless it is taken off the ground, trained over a framework, cleaned, pruned and cared for. We can see this in the many images we have of the vineyards of France, Italy, California, Australia - and almost any country where the climate permits vines to grow. Commercially, vines are trained over what look like wire fences. But the vine at Hampton Court Palace is special and I like to think it presents a better image for God's vine.

The need for a structure presented me with a difficulty. As you have probably figured out from the page on Theology of Structure, I cannot believe the structure is the organized church we have been given by dictators with wonky theology and even wonkier lives. So, I asked a friend who is a Bible translation consultant what the structure of Christianity is. Her reply was simple.

'It's love.'

And there you have it. Perhaps our latter day concept of virtual structures can help. With computers and modems we are interconnected without being in the same place, or even at the same time. And so it is with Christianity. God is the gardener who trains us over his structure of love. His love for us, our love for Him, our love for each other and our love for those who need the Saviour. That is the prerequisite for bearing fruit. Not a structure of buildings and budgets and careers and titles.

I asked the gardener how long the vine would grow and how old it could get before it died. He said he didn't know. The branches are trimmed at about twenty metres but that is only because of the size of the greenhouse. And it was planted in 1768, or thereabouts, from a cutting brought from a living vine in Essex (which is no longer with us, the vine that is, not Essex). Cuttings from the Hampton Court Palace vine are still sold and produce new vines, hopefully for equally caring owner/gardeners. The vine still produces around 300 kg of grapes each year and could produce more, the gardener told us, if allowed to.

This is quite different from most plants which grow from a seed or cutting, attain a mature height and then die in due course. OK, like any metaphor you don't want to drive it too far, but isn't it a lovely and comforting illustration of our Creator/Saviour's love and care? If we remain in Christ we bear fruit. And if he prunes us it is not discipline, it is so the vine will bear even more fruit.

I think the image of pruning needs to be looked at closely because in Christian work it is often lamented that a worker goes sick or dies prematurely while they are in their most productive years. Instead, this should be viewed as pruning and instead of lamenting perhaps we might look to the new growth coming along and encourage and support its growth. Every Christian is safe with the Saviour and if we are pruned we are no less safe.

The image of the vine is profound. For those readers who are able, I really recommend a visit to the vine at Hampton Court Palace. But I am not a fan of much else at Hampton Court! We will later address some equally profound but alarming lessons from this fascinating historical place.