Understand who Christ is and what we are called to do’
By Craig M. Kibler, Staff Writer, October 30, 2007
FAIR OAKS, Calif. – “We will understand who Christ is and what we are called to do” if we understand the theme of the vine and the branches, the audience was told during Monday morning’s worship service for Convocation IV of the New Wineskins Association of Churches.
Randy JenkinsThe Rev. Randy Jenkins, pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Ala., told the more than 400 people in the sanctuary at Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church that, “I’ve fallen in love. I think that my wife would understand.”
He went on to explain that life had been wonderful, “doing ministry, life was good, but we want to know others like ourselves out there. I went to a meeting in Chicago [at which the thinking for New Wineskins got its start]. In a room there, people were on their knees praying and singing. So, it’s such a blessing to come to a time and a place like this where I have good friends in Christ, whether they’re staying or moving on to other denominations.”
In a sermon on the vine and the branches in the Gospel of John, Jenkins read verses 15:1-5:
“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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
“‘I am the vine; you are the branches,'” he repeated.
“I know we all have an address where we house our stuff, our physical address,” Jenkins said. “If you asked people where they live, they would say they live in the moment – they don’t give a thought to an extended time, they don’t understand the consequences that are down the road.”
Attitudes and patterns
He said some people live in the past, with attitudes and patterns in the past, and can’t get out of those patterns. Jenkins illustrated this idea by telling the story of a newlywed couple.
“The newlyweds,” he said, “had oatmeal for breakfast. The husband ate half, then put the rest in the icebox. He came home for lunch, opened the icebox, but it was empty. The oatmeal was gone.”
“Honey,” he said, “where is my oatmeal?”
“That half bowl?”
“Yes.”
“I threw it out.”
“You threw it out?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I was going to eat it.”
“What do you mean? There’s more in the cupboard.”
The husband, Jenkins said, had grown up poor and never wasted anything, but the wife had grown up not needing to worry about that. “Sometimes,” he said, “we are stuck in our pattern of life and can’t seem to get out of it.”
There are, he said, “seven famous words: ‘We never did it that way before.’ How we live will shape the way we think and act and, ultimately, what we will do. For the believer, you can only live in Christ.”
Apart from Christ, Jenkins said, “we can do nothing. It doesn’t matter what we do because it will be bad fruit, not good fruit, not pleasing to our heavenly Father. Christ must be all that we are concerned about, those things that are pleasing to our Lord, if we are going to produce what is pleasing to God.”
Chief end of man
Citing the Shorter Catechism, he asked the audience, “What is the chief end of man?” They responded, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”
Part of the glorification, Jenkins said, “is the bearing of fruit. This is part of what we are to do. Any tree that does not bear fruit will be cast away. There are plenty of people who are showing their leaves, saying the right words that Christians are to say and saying them in public, but do not bear fruit.”
The idea of a vineyard is seen throughout the Bible, he said. Genesis 9:20 – “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard” – went right to Noah’s drunkenness, Jenkins said. “Three years of pruning and cultivating and caring for that vine before it was harvest time. He planted a vine and then partook of the fruit.”
He also cited Isaiah 5:1-7, the parable of the vineyard:
I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.
Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?
Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.
I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.”
The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
By the end of it, Jenkins said, “the scene is very different – and here comes the judgment.”
John 15, he said, is about the vine but, “more importantly, about relationships, about our relationship in Christ, our relationship with the world around us, and our relationship of impacting the world for Christ.”
Craig M. Kibler is the Director of Publications and Executive Editor of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. He can be reached at cmkibler@layman.org.