Welcome to the final week of our "So What?" series. You made it.
So what, right? Okay, so who remembers the movie Finding Nemo?
Never heard of it? Juan, we cannot be friends. Just kidding. So most people have seen it, right? So think about the beginning, not the tragic part that typically happens in a Disney-like movie where somebody gets killed, but what comes after that.
So Nemo has become tired of his dad being overprotective. He wants to prove something, that he's strong enough, that he's independent enough, capable of handling life on his own. He wants to make his own decisions, and he feels that he's no longer needing his dad to make them for him. Right? And what makes that moment so significant is where he starts.
Because Nemo isn't just anywhere in the ocean. He lives in an anemone. I was going to be like Nemo there for a second. Nenemone, nenemone, anemone. And that anemone is not just a place for him to hang out.
Right? It was his protection, his shelter.
The one place in all of that ocean that he was safe and able to thrive in a way that he couldn't do anywhere else. It was where he was meant to live. Connected. But in that moment, trying to prove himself, he swims away. Away from the anemone, out into the drop-off, the open water.
And it doesn't take long before things go wrong, because Nemo wasn't designed to thrive on his own. He was meant to live in connexion. And in a much deeper way, that's exactly what Jesus is saying in John 15. 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— as I also 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 you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. So it's that same connexion that gives life, the one that sustains it. And the moment we begin that we believe, um, or the moment that we begin to believe that we can move out on our own, that we can generate life, strength, or growth by ourselves, we quickly discover that we were never meant to live that way. So last week we talked about fruit in the life of the church.
And if we think about actual fruit today, we know this: once it's picked, it doesn't keep growing. But, you might be thinking, "Jen, it may not keep growing, but in some cases it does keep ripening, it softens, it sweetens, it becomes what it was always meant to be." So isn't that kinda the same thing as growing? No. Because it's not producing anything new. It's living off of what it has already received.
And that's an important distinction. Because Jesus doesn't say, "Come to me once." He doesn't say, "Start with me and then go continue on your own." He says, "Remain in me." Now the NIV translation that I just read, along with several others, uses, the word remain in an attempt to modernise the language, and usually I kind of agree with them, but in this context, remain doesn't really fully allow for the richness of what Jesus is saying here. So the other translations are more on point here, in my opinion, where they continue to use the word abide. To abide in Jesus is to live in an ongoing, life-giving relationship with him, one marked by connexion, dependence, and continuance. It means that we are united to Christ, and apart from that connexion there is no life.
It means that we don't produce fruit by effort, we receive life through our dependence on him. And it means that we continue to keep trusting, to keep returning, keep remaining in him day after day. Abiding is not about striving harder, it's about staying closer. And it's not about achieving more, it's about staying connected to where life is found. And here's why that matters.
It's possible to look like something is still developing, something that is— to appear that there is still growth happening, while no longer actually being sustained by a living connexion to Christ. To have a storefront, if you will, The appearance, the language, the activity makes you think that there's a great store there, but when you step inside, you find that the store is empty because they cut off their connexion to their supplier. Which means this passage is both an invitation and a warning. Don't just begin in him, remain in him. Because anything that truly grows, anything that truly lasts, anything that bears real fruit comes from staying connected to the source of life.
So does Jesus help us to abide in him? Because if we're honest, we drift, we forget, we start to rely on ourselves again. If we're honest, we've all done it, right? Yes, I think we can agree on that. But thankfully, Jesus left us with a means of reconnecting when this happens, to be recentered and rerooted.
He gave his church the practise of communion. So in our passage today, Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing." That means that our life is not something that we generate, it's something that we receive. Just like a branch receives everything from the vine, We receive everything from Christ, and communion is one of the ways that Jesus brings us back to that reality again and again. Communion is not just remembering, and it's not just a symbol.
Scripture tells us that it is a participation, a sharing in Christ himself. Because if you look at 1 Corinthians 10:16, it says, "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?" And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? So it's a moment where we don't achieve anything, we simply receive. And it's a time where we don't strive, we just stay. It's a time that we, when we come back once again to the source of life, and when we take the bread and the cup, we are reminded in a tangible, physical way that that our life comes from him, our strength comes from him, our forgiveness, our hope, our growth, it all comes from him.
Like a branch that never outgrows its need for the tree or vine, we never outgrow our need for Jesus. The growth requires ongoing receiving, not just occasionally, not once in a while, not just at the beginning, ongoing. Because when you look at how life actually works in creation, it's never a one-time event, is it? A plant doesn't just take nutrients once and then just grow and keep growing all on its own. Its roots are constantly drawing from the soil water, minerals, nutrients again and again and again.
The moment that receiving stops, growth stops. And even if it looks like it hasn't, which may be the case for a little while, because like we said earlier, some fruit can continue to ripen after it's been cut off. It softens and it sweetens, but it's no longer being sustained, and eventually it stops getting better and it begins to wither and shrivel up and go bad. It's used up what it already received, and once that runs out, there's nothing connected to it to keep it going, to keep it alive, to keep it growing and thriving. And that's exactly what Jesus is getting at when he says, "Remain in me as I also 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." He's not just talking about how life begins, he's talking about how life continues. And this is where we often get it subtly wrong. We understand dependence at the beginning. We know we need Jesus for salvation.
We know we can't rescue ourselves. But then somewhere along the way, we begin to live like growth is up to us. We might think, "Accepting Christ into my life made such an amazing difference in how I think and act, and so I'm good now and I can grow on my own." "I believe God loves me, but I still feel like I need to try harder to be worthy of it." Or, "God gave me what I needed, and now I need to produce the fruit." But these are not the teachings of Jesus. In fact, he says the exact opposite. The same way you begin is the same way you grow: in connexion, in continual receiving, in dependence.
Now you may be thinking— I could be reading your minds, maybe, maybe not— "Jen, what are you so wound up about? We read our Bibles, we pray, we give, we serve, we're faithful, we love Jesus." All those are true, yes?
You scared me there! But folks, I need you to understand that you can be doing all these good things, you can be doing them all and more, and still not be abiding in Jesus. If you think about it this way, just like we talked about last week, baptism marks the beginning of life. It's declaration that we've been brought into Christ, that we're now connected to the vine. But communion reminds us that this life doesn't sustain itself.
Growth in the Christian life is not about becoming less dependent on Jesus, it's about realising how much more dependent on him we need to be. We don't outgrow our need for Jesus, we grow deeper into that need for Jesus. Deeper dependence, deeper trust, deeper connexion, abiding in the one who gives life in the first place. But what happens when we don't abide? How can we even tell?
Because if we're being real, it's not just theoretical. There are seasons when we don't remain as closely connected as we once were. Seasons where abiding may come— become occasional or sporadic, I guess, instead of continual. And what's important to see is this: disconnection doesn't always look dramatic. It's not always a clear moment where everything just falls apart.
It's not always rebellion. It's not always about walking away. More often, it's actually really subtle. It looks like dryness, like opening Scripture but nothing seems to land, like praying but the words that you're speaking feel distant or just like routine. It looks like unsettled emotions, like being annoyed over every little thing when you would generally be able to just laugh them off.
Like getting angry over small issues that would normally not even disturb you. It looks like fatigue, not just physical but spiritual, where things that once brought life now feel heavy. It looks like just going through the motions, still showing up, still doing the right things, but something underneath it all feels thin. And this is where it connects to what we talked about earlier with joy. Because joy is not something we manufacture.
It's something— it's not something that we can sustain by effort. Joy flows from connexion, which means when connexion weakens, joy may not disappear all at once, but it may fade slowly and quietly and almost unnoticeably, until one day we just realise that there's something off. We feel empty. And that's what Jesus is warning about in John 15. When he says, "Apart from me you can do nothing," he's not just warning about failure.
He's describing a life disconnected from its source, where there may be activity but no fruit. Because it's possible to keep functioning, to keep producing something that looks like fruit, but without the life of the vine flowing through us, it won't last. So let's put all this into context for mission. Why are we doing this prayer-led discernment process?
I'll answer it for you. To develop the spiritual discipline of listening. Right? So that we can hear from God and understand from him what our next steps are. Where is he calling to focus our ministry?
Where is he already at work preparing the way for us to serve his church? Share his gospel of hope and love, partner with him in growing his kingdom. What's next for us? What needs are we being called to meet? How— who are we being called to love?
Where is he calling us to go, and how are we going to answer that call? So the prayer retreat last week— it was just last week, wasn't it? Okay, one of the things that became really clear, clear in that time was that we can sense— we as his church can sense when we are on mission with God and when we are not. And that understanding is affirmed within the body. Ministries can be started and even run for years and not produce any fruit, and that's because they're not actually serving God's plans.
Each one of us here is capable of coming up with ideas for ministry. We're even capable of coming up with really good ideas. But no idea is good enough to survive if it isn't coming from God. And no ministry will bear fruit without it being sustained by the source. So remember what we talked about when we were discussing branching out?
What was that the illustration for?
Service?
But here's what we have to hold on to: a branch, no matter how healthy it looks, no matter how vibrant, how colourful, or how full of life it once was, if it's cut off from the tree, it's not gonna stay that way. Because a branch does not have a life in itself. It only has life as long as it's connected. The nutrients don't originate in the branch. They come from the roots.
They move up through the trunk. They flow out into the branches. And the moment that connexion is broken, the flow stops. And at first it might not be obvious, but it can still look alive for a while. But slowly and inevitably it begins to wither because it was never designed to live on its own.
And that's exactly what Jesus is saying. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Apart from me you can do nothing. Not less.
Nothing. Which means even our service, our branching out, is not something that we sustain by effort alone. We should not be serving out of our own strength. We can't produce life through activity. We must serve out of connexion, out of what we are receiving, out of what is already flowing into us from Christ.
And here's the hope in all of this, because the moment we return to that connexion, the moment we abide again, life flows again. Not because we forced it, not because we earned it, but because that's what the vine does. It gives life to every branch that remains in it. So the call is not try harder to stay alive, the call is stay connected. Because everything that looks like life, everything that lasts, everything that bears real fruit comes from him.
And that's the hope in this passage. Not that we will never drift, but that we are always invited back. Back to the source, back to the life, back to the place where joy is restored. So if something feels dry, if something feels empty, The answer is not to strive harder, it's to return, to remain, and to abide. And as we think about all of this abiding, remaining, continuing to receive, it speaks directly into the season we are as a church right now, because this is a season of discernment, a season where, where we are asking where God is leading us.
What is he doing among us? How do we join him in it? And those are important questions, but here's what we need to be careful of. We can very quickly jump to strategy. We can start asking, "What should we do?
What's the plan? What's the next step?" And those questions matter, but they're not where we begin. Because in John 15, Jesus doesn't say, "Go and figure out how to produce fruit." He says, "Remain in me and you will bear much fruit." which means if we want to bear fruit in this next season, we don't start with strategy, we start by abiding. We start by staying close, by listening, by paying attention to where God is already at work. Because discernment is not about coming up with something new, it's about recognising what God is already doing and joining him there.
And that kind of discernment doesn't come from activity, it comes from proximity, from being close enough to hear his voice, from being connected enough to recognise his leading, from being dependent enough to follow where he leads even when it seems unclear. If we're not abiding, we may still move forward, but we risk moving in directions that are shaped more by our instincts than by his Spirit. But when we remain in him, our desires begin to align with his, our vision becomes shaped by his heart, and our steps begin to follow his leading. Because the life of the vine is flowing into us, and that is what we need most in this season. Not just good ideas, not just strong plans, but a deep shared commitment to remain in Christ, to listen before we act, to receive before we produce, and to follow before we lead.
Because the fruit that we long to see in our church and in our community and in one another will not come from how well we strategize. It will come from how closely we abide. And as we hold that together, as we seek him, listen for his voice, and remain in him, we are reminded that Jesus has not left us on our own to figure this out. He has given us a way to return, ways to recenter, ways to remain. And one of the clearest places that that happens is at this table.
Communion is more than a moment in the service. It's a time of reconnection, not because Jesus has moved away from us, but because we so easily drift from him, and the table becomes the place where we return. But it's important to understand how we come. We don't come to this table out of obligation. This is not something we do because we're supposed to.
It's not a religious box to cheque off. It's not a performance to get right. This is an invitation, an invitation from Jesus himself. Come, remain in me, receive again. And that means when we come, we come by grace.
Not because we've had a good week, not because we've been especially faithful, not because we feel spiritually strong. We come because he is faithful, because he has made a way, because he invites us to draw near. This table is not about performance, it's about participation. So what are we actually doing when we come? We are remembering.
We remember that our life in Christ began with his sacrifice, that his body was given for us, that his blood was poured out for us. We remember that we did not generate this life, it was given. But we are also recentering because life has a way of pulling us in 100 directions at once. Our attention drifts, our priorities shift, and our hearts get crowded. And at this table, we come back to what is most true.
Jesus is our life. Jesus is our source. Jesus is enough. We recenter everything around him again. And not only that, we're rerouting.
We are placing ourselves back intentionally into the place where life flows, back into dependence, back into connexion, and back into abiding. So come, come and be reconnected. Come and abide. Come to the table today in response to Jesus's invitation: Remain in me and I will remain in you. So come to receive again what we never stop needing: grace, life, and Christ himself.
So let's just take a moment now in quiet to bring our hearts before the Lord.
