Tim Reardon noticed grapevines with neither leaves nor fruit on the return drive from a family vacation. His surprise at this led him to do some study on vines present and past — and learned that to grow larger and sweeter fruit, grapevines must be pruned. This would have been common knowledge during Jesus’ lifetime. But we can miss out on some of the meaning in Jesus’ stories and parables without that knowledge.

Our passage in John 15 comes just before Passover — it’s springtime, and the grapevines are beginning their cycle. Jesus offers a parable to agriculturally attuned people at the beginning of a growing season. He tells them he is the true vine — meaning that he’s a trustworthy root. The disciples at this point understand that Jesus is moving toward his death. Tim also notes that Judean farmers of Jesus’ day adopted the Roman practice of trellising. In this practice, Jesus would be the source vine, and the branches would be trained upward onto the trellis. The vine keeper here is God. Pruning, the culling of branches, occurs only at the end of the season, so that the vine does not have to expend energy healing from trauma — and removes only deadwood. Here, Jesus uses another word for pruning that means “cleaning” — a minor trimming that ensures adequate sunlight and distance for growth. It also turns out that not all branches are meant to bear fruit — because grapes only grow on one-year-old branches. There are always branches left to grow the next season’s fruit. These branches are not cleaned or pruned in the same way, and are essential to the life of the vine. The “taking up” of branches is the lifting up to the trellis. The vine keeper is tending to all the the branches, as the people of Jesus’ day would have understood. And so it is the whole vine that moves toward fruit, not simply some branches. The primary job of we the branches is to remain in the source vine — Jesus — so that the whole vine prospers. The branches support one another— bound together in a common purpose — we remain in life together so that we may grow together. And we bear the fruit of love.

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