Philip Comfort has translated these passages, which were poems in the original Greek, into modern English verse. Watch the video below then read silently through the poems. After taking time on the video to familiarise yourself with the poems, take time on the second reading, to ponder and notice.
Jesus, the True Vine
John 15:1–17
1 I am the Vine; my Father, the vineyard’s Master.
2 He lops off every unproductive branch
and prunes every fruitful one
to yield even more than before.
3 You’ve already been pruned by my word.
4–5 I am the vine and you are the branches.
Live in me and I will live in you.
The branch cannot produce grapes by itself;
it must draw its life from the stalk.
As I live in those who live in me,
they will produce many clusters of fruit.
The branch can’t grow without juice from the root.
6 If you don’t stay attached to me, you will wither away.
And the master will gather all the useless branches
and throw them into a burning pile.
7 If you stay attached to me
by keeping my words alive in you,
you can ask me anything you desire,
8 as long as it has to do with producing fruit,
for that is how to glorify the Master.
9 As my Father has loved me, I have loved you.
To live in me is to live in my love.
10 As I obey my Father, you need to obey me,
11 then you will stay in my love
and will overflow with my joy.
12 This is my command I want you to heed:
love one another as I have loved you.
13 There is no nobler love than to lay down
one’s life for a friend.
14 You are my friends when you do what I command.
15 From here on in, I will not call you servants,
but my friends, because I will tell you everything
the Father has revealed to me—and more.
16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you to be
my living branches producing lasting fruit.
Whatever you ask the Father in my presence
will be given to you.
17 I give you these instructions
so that you would love one another.
Philip Comfort, The Poems and Hymns of the New Testament. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com
Somehow, I had missed the internet sensation that was Peanut Butter Baby. My husband happily educated me recently, and together we marveled at the exuberant happiness of the young toddler coated in peanut butter. While we all need more childlike exuberance, faith, and wonder (see last month’s post on “Gentleness”), there are advantages to being an adult. One of them is having a degree of self-control.
This poem in John 15 follows the one in John 14, which focused on peace (see the post on “Peace”). Just as in John 14, Jesus is preparing his disciples for his imminent death. After reassuring them of the Spirit's presence once he leaves, he elaborates on the theme of mutual indwelling, illustrating what the presence of the Spirit looks like through the metaphor of a grapevine. This simple imagery beautifully illustrates the interconnectedness between Jesus, the Spirit, and his followers, the branches.
This indwelling is mutual. To stay connected, obedience is necessary, requiring self-control, but this obedience is wrapped in love. This results in a life of fruitfulness as part of the vine.
There are two neat bookends in this passage. First, there's a reminder that all the fruit of the Spirit and our fruitfulness are rooted in a relationship with Jesus. Second, Jesus explains what real love looks like and references his own upcoming sacrificial example of love, stemming from obedient self-control. Thus, we come full circle. Starting with a description of love, we see its ultimate example about to be fulfilled, leaving us with the call to replicate that and "love one another." Indeed, all the fruit of the Spirit is an outworking of such love.
I've tried to convey the imagery of the vine by using a fugue format at the start with four small contrapuntal melodies. The first is a variation of the Spirit motif, and the last is the Love motif. (See the post on “Love” for both motifs.) Two of the fugue melodies are reused and developed, and the full Love motif is restated near the end. There are subtle references to several other piano pieces in the suite before concluding with the Spirit motif as a final bookend.
Naomi! Something has happened! I really liked this one - a departure from your usual style somehow. Maybe it's the fugue structure? It just ... really worked as a musical piece. The ekphrastic connection to The Vine discourse from John is subtly present.