KATHLEEN RUSHTON explains how the vine imagery in John 15:1-7 speaks of friendship with Jesus and abiding in God.

The culture of the Hebrew people was rooted deeply within an agricultural world. They were familiar with wine making and the delight of wine. Viticulture and wine played a major role in daily life, and so they became rich sources of imagery for describing the relationship of God with people and land. Israel is the vine God brought out of Egypt, planted in cleared ground, yet it was burnt with fire and cut down (Psalm 80:8-16). Jeremiah tells us that Israel, the vine planted by God as “a choice vine from purest stock”, then degenerated, becoming “a wild vine” (Jer 2:21). God is the keeper of the vineyard (Isaiah 27:2). Jesus knows his audience will not only understand agricultural language and imagery, but also will be reminded of many scriptural associations.

Today, biblical vine imagery is a challenge for today’s readers. We are surrounded by large commercial vineyards and supermarkets where the focus is on mass production, economic investment and profit. In A Spirituality of Wine, theologian Gisela Kreglinger writes of her experience of growing up on a family winery in Bavaria where wine has been crafted for centuries. Kreglinger insists on using the terms “viticulture” and “vintner” to describe vine growing and wine making because these terms carry with them age old practices which enable us to rediscover the image of God’s planted vine.

Productive Where Little Else Grows

The grapevine is able to suvive and thrive in the most adverse conditions, in ways that other plants cannot. It flourishes in stony soils and on steep hillsides. There where little else grows, vines are most productive. Natural and living organisms of root and soil interact to produce fruit. A great mystery is how the combination of sun, soil, rain and vines is able to produce such a delightful liquid. Likewise, the great mystery of Jesus’s fruitfulness — his finishing the works of God, his “handing over the Spirit” to the women and the beloved disciple (Jn 19:30) — is that it comes to pass where seemingly no life can be found: on the cross.

Significance of Pruning

Pruning is an unsettling image. Its purpose is not the cutting back in itself but the hope for fine, abundant fruit. Like the branches of the vine, people are “pruned” to abide in the vine, so that they may be more fruitful. This promise of abundance (Jn 10:10) is not without being pruned of our addictions. A journey of pruning and healing is a life-giving practice of restraint and cutback, which along with “abiding”, offers a language of love and fullness to describe discipleship. This differs from the language of self-sacrifice and self-denial in the synoptic Gospels which require taking up our cross to follow Jesus (Mk 8:34; Mt 16:24; Lk 9:23) — language not found in the Fourth Gospel.

“Abiding” suggests a community of interrelationship, mutuality and indwelling. It expresses Jesus’s relationship to God (Jn 15:10), Jesus’s relationship to the community (Jn 15:4, 9) and the community’s relationship to Jesus (Jn 15:1, 7). For Dorothy Lee, “abiding” is “an icon of wholeness and intimacy” which moves “through suffering, to accept the reality that life and fecundity come through pain and death, through pruning and the pierced side” (Jn 7:38; 19:34).

Being A Community of Friends

The vine and the practices of viticulture were used to describe the process of training students in philosophy. Pupils were to be shaped in the way that young vine shoots are tended. The vine is associated with the wisdom of God. In the Torah we find Divine Wisdom compared to a vine: “Like the vine I bud forth delights, and my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit” (Sirach 24:17). For the philosophers, joy came from virtue. For the Evangelist, the joy and virtue summed up in Jn 15:13, comes from friendship with Jesus who lays down his life for his friends.

When pruned, the vines are tied to wires which are supported by poles spread throughout the vineyard. The vines are supported by this wiring structure (called “trellising”) and directed in their growth. These vineyard wire structures are like the structures and rules in a community which guide, support and give stability to the common life. When we live without such structures — when we try to live an entirely independent life — we become easily hurt and have no direction. We wither and bear no fruit.

Vine and branches constitute a group of friends. The disciples are Jesus’s friends, not his slaves (Jn 15:13-14). The directness with which Jesus spoke about pruning is in line with the ancient ideal of a true friend. The opposite was the flatterer who sought to curry favour and so would avoid commenting on another’s faults. Jesus’s authentic friendship is the both the source and norm for the disciples’ relationships with others.

When we open ourselves to the love of God in Jesus — when we permit God, the vintner, to prune our lives to bear fruit — we become free to love one another. As a vineyard is to grow good grapes for good wine to bring joy to humanity, so the members of the Church are to love one another, discover true joy and share this with the world.

God’s Garden and Economy

Disciples are to be grounded in God’s economy which is based on mercy, forgiveness and love not on competition and maximum profit. We are not autonomous and isolated consumers but branches connected together and nurtured by Jesus. We are cared for by God the vintner, who tends the vineyard by watering, pruning and protecting day and night (Isaiah 27:2-3), by guiding it to thrive and be fruitful (Hosea 14:7) and by growing it to become a fruitful nation and a blessing to others (Is 27:6).

The viticulture image conveys the biblical hope of transformation through justice for all. The neglect of the poor affects the whole vineyard. God, Isaiah warns, “enters into judgment with the elders and princes . . . you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” (Is 3:14-15). God’s vineyard will only flourish if the powerful and strong reach out to the poor and vulnerable.

This is a very different understanding of human flourishing from the contemporary focus on maximising production and profit. Production of wine now often interferes with natural organisms by the use of chemicals and fertilisers. This can tend towards a posture of working against something — against nature, against problems — rather than working as part of creation.

Consumerism, which for many is like a spirituality offering a sense of identity, belonging and comfort, needs to be pruned.

The pruned vines — our abiding communities — offer peace and belonging. The image of vines declares that wars will cease. Soldiers are to turn swords into pruning hooks. The Hebrew word for pruning hooks refers to the special knife a vintner uses to prune vines. Then people “shall all sit under their own vines . . . and no one shall make them afraid” (Mic 4:3-4).

Although we may read biblical imagery differently today, vines remain an interconnected and dynamic reality. The language of viticulture can refresh the Christian imagination and what it means to be Church today. Creation and redemption are intertwined. The vine offers a rich and organic view of the Christian life through a spirituality of joy in the earth and our senses. 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 225, April 2018: 22-23.