Welcome to Hope United Church, Toronto!
Fruitfully intertwined
Last week, John provided the image of a good shepherd to describe the close relationship between God and Jesus, and between Jesus and us. Now, John uses another image, that of a vine and its branches, to help – and to challenge – the early church community, and ours today, to understand and describe our close working relationship with Jesus.
In Jesus’ time, people would have been very familiar with grape vines. The image appears in the Hebrew Scriptures several times to describe Israel. And today, even if we have never tended a vineyard, most of us have seen a grapevine at one time or another. Looking closely, we see the many entwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends.
This is not just intricate, it’s intimate. The vine shares with its branches the very nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant. Even closer than the shepherd there on the hillside with his sheep, this vine is one with its branches.
