I am the true vine … you are the branches.  If anyone abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will abide in my love… (John 15: 1, 5-6, 9-10).

As we’re thinking this month about Home for Christmas, we listen this week to the last of Jesus’ seven “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel.  Jesus has told us that he is Bread, Light, Door, Good Shepherd, Resurrection-and-Life, Way-Truth-Life, and now: True Vine.  

What do we do with Bread, how do we respond to it, receive it?  We take it into ourselves.  And with Light?  We walk in it, seeing everything by it.  With a Door?  We walk through it, we enter by means of it.

And with the Vine?  By abiding; by remaining-in-relationship, by dwelling-within.  By coming home, making ourselves fully at home with the God who has made his home among us in Jesus.

Jesus begins our passage by rooting us in relationship, his relationship to the Father: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” (verse 1).  This is a relationship of fruitful love: the Father desires the Vine to grow and flourish, to be fruitful and spread out widely.

And we are in that Father-Son relationship: “As the Father has loved me…”  There is simply no way to comprehend, quantify or measure the Father’s love!  How much does the Father love the Son?  Into that we have been joined in Christ!

The life of a branch isn’t in the branch, it is not branch-generated or branch-maintained.  It is the super-abundant, overflowing love-life of Father-Son-Spirit that is the “sap” that runs throughout the Vine and into each of its members.  

Yes, Home for Christmas requires us to heed Jesus’s warning as well as receiving his graciously generous welcome.  If a branch attempts to join itself to another vine, any of the many “untrue” vines, it will wither, become brittle and fruitless, and eventually need to be removed. As a branch abides, lives in, dwells within, makes itself continually at home in thatrelationship, there will be much fruit.

How do we make ourselves at home in this greening, growing love?  “If you obey my commands, you will dwell securely in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and abide in his love.”

Does a branch have to work hard to bear fruit?  Must it toil and strive, ever anxious that it is not doing enough?  Of course not!  Imagine walking through a glorious vineyard: if we had ears to hear, would we hear moans and groans, sighs and straining?  No: we would hear the flowing music of love endlessly given, love ever more deeply received.

As a branch receives, it generates: “If you make yourself at home in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit …” (verse 5).

What is one way God would like to be ‘more at home’ in the house of your life?  And a way you would like to be more at home in God?  How might you pray, and practice that kind of ‘home-making’ in these weeks before Christmas?