Cooperation is a fruit of the Spirit

Just before he was killed, Jesus described himself as the vine with his disciples as the branches (John 15:1–8). It should be a powerful meta­phor but its substance gets lost a little when few of us properly under­stand agriculture, so let’s start at the beginning: we must drink if we are to live. If we live in a hot, arid country, then we can’t drink the local water because there may be none, or microbes make it unsafe. So we drink ‘wine’—fruit juice that has fermented slightly to stop it going off. And if we need wine, we need grapes; and if we need grapes: we need vines, and lots of them, to live. When Jesus says he is ‘the vine’ he is a saying he is vital to life. In contest, he clearly means spiritual life.

It gets better. He is the vine and we can be the branches, meaning he offers his spiritual life to us. To extend the spiritual metaphor further, his spiritual life can flow through us but, to do so, requires that we become a part of him. He therefore talks about ‘ingrafting’, which was widely performed in the Middle East during the first-century, particularly in the vine­yards, because it increased the yields of fruit, increased the amount of wine produced, and ensured that more people could live.

Next, we recognise how Jesus speaks of one vine but with many branches, so one Lord Jesus but several offshoots. Those many branches can each bear fruit only if the sap of life courses through their fibres, hence Jesus talk of ‘abiding in him’.

We can also remember how in response to his New Commandment, Jesus notes how the world will know we are disciples if we have love one for another (John 13:34). That ‘love’ is a translation of agapé, which is always a costly form of love for it is always giving of self. It typically looks outward, which explains why some older Bible translations render it as caritas—hence ‘charity’. And in translating this agapé love as ‘charity’ explains why Christianity is so rarely lived in solitude, or at least is difficult to live successfully when alone. This time think of St Paul’s later concept of ‘the body of Christ’ which collects disciples together and lets them cohere as a spiritual entity.

These jig-saw pieces can fit together in many ways, but the picture on the box generally looks like unity.

As a life-giving vine, Jesus supplies the spiritual goodness needed by all but, in a local context, the branches that help distribute his life-giving goodness are congregations. A few definitions: ‘congregation’ here means a group of people wanting to serve Jesus. They may convene in buildings (‘churches’) but may not; they may serve a single denomination or many or neither; they may, in fact, seek the Kingdom but come from an altogether different faith, or have none.

One simple question can act as a litmus test of whether a local congregation honestly wants to act as one of those branches as it distributes spiritual goodness from Jesus’ one, true vine: when it seeks to build the Kingdom of God, it asks, ‘Is this congregation willing it share its vision, members, resources, itself, with other local congregations?’