Part 2: Fruit that Lasts Amidst the Rubble

While trying to keep up appearances of cool in Starbucks, I turned to a piece of Scripture recommended to me by my nun: John 15. Here are some excerpts:

"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.... No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing...I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.

I often have some degree of internal push-back when Jesus says stuff like: "apart from me you can do nothing." C'mon, can't you give me some credit here? Why does it always have to be about you?

But as I considered this passage against the backdrop of Genesis 3, it all made much more sense.

As Jesus is about to leave his disciples, he's giving them a vision for the future, directions for how to proceed after he's gone. And so Jesus is equipping them to deal with reality: "apart from me you can do nothing."

This is not a prescriptive threat of retribution should the disciples try something on their own (along the lines of "if you don't behave, you'll get a spanking.") It is a description of what will happen should they try to proceed apart from abiding, remaining, staying connected with him (more along the lines of "if you touch the hot stove, you'll get burned."). This isn't a threat, it's a making aware of natural consequences.

And the reason is simple. When we abide as a branch in Christ, we are drawing life from a new source: from the Land of the Trinity. This is a life-sap, an energy, a power, that is fundamentally different from the energy we run on here in the Land of the Ruins.

If we do not abide and draw life from this new source, we are still stuck inside the same broken system. We have no redemptive or transformational power to offer to the orphans living among the ruins other than more "self"-help in the already-saturated self-help marketplace; a place so full of thieves and wolves feasting on bewildered orphans who were made for glory and instead find themselves wandering shiftlessly among ruins.

I am 35 today; I am going on my 13th year of campus ministry, my 11th year of marriage, my 6th year of parenting. In all those areas, I long to "bear fruit that will last." But apart from sinking my life-roots deeply into Christ, I am simply attempting to pleasantly re-arrange the rubble here in the ruins--moves that will be quickly buried under before too long.

And that's at best. In my worst moments, to attempt to live, be in ministry, be married, or parent apart from abiding Christ is an exercise in Babel-tower building, moving around the rubble as an exercise in ego-gratification and an attempt at making a name for myself.

So here's my birthday gift to myself: to commit these next 365 days abiding, to pressing my life roots more deeply into the Land of the Trinity. To draw my life more fully from this place, that I might bear real fruit in all areas of my life--fruit that will last.