Day 35 - Tuesday, March 28
Title: WORDS OF INSTRUCTION ON THE WALK TO GETHSEMANE
Scripture: John 15:1–27

“I am the real vine, my Father is the vine-dresser. He removes any of my branches which are not bearing fruit and he prunes every branch that does bear fruit to increase its yield. Now, you have already been pruned by my words. You must go on growing in me and I will grow in you. For just as the branch cannot bear any fruit unless it shares the life of the vine, so you can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me. I am the vine itself, you are the branches. It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful. For the plain fact is that apart from me you can do nothing at all. The man who does not share my life is like a branch that is broken off and withers away. He becomes just like the dry sticks that men pick up and use for the firewood. But if you live your life in me, and my words live in your hearts, you can ask for whatever you like and it will come true for you. This is how my Father will be glorified—in your becoming fruitful and being my disciples.

“I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. You must go on living in my love. If you keep my commandments you will live in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and live in his love. I have told you this so that you can share my joy, and that your happiness may be complete. This is my commandment: that you love each other as I have loved you. There is no greater love than this—that a man should lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I tell you to do. I shall not call you servants any longer, for a servant does not share his master’s confidence. No, I call you friends, now, because I have told you everything that I have heard from the Father.

“It is not that you have chosen me; but it is I who have chosen you. I have appointed you to go and bear fruit that will be lasting; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

“This I command you, love one another! If the world hates you, you know that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own. But because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of it, the world will hate you. Do you remember what I said to you, ‘The servant is not greater than his master’? If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you as well, but if they have followed my teaching, they will also follow yours. They will do all these things to you as my disciples because they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. The man who hates me, hates my Father as well. If I had not done among them things that no other man has ever done, they would not have been guilty of sin, but as it is they have seen and they have hated both me and my Father. Yet this only fulfils what is written in their Law—‘They hated me without a cause.’

But when the helper comes, that is, the Spirit of truth, who comes from the Father and whom I myself will send to you from the Father, he will speak plainly about me. And you yourselves will also speak plainly about me for you have been with me from the first.

Poetry & Poet: 
“(grapes)”
by Matthew Minicucci

my father was such a radical he believed in           
love, like the stiff bother of

bunch-stem still attached to                                          
grocery store grapes, or

pedicel, so oft-left like                                                   
spinrose, or some soldier’s 

helmet crest, horse hair                                    
plume, which can be removed

the same as any thorn or spine                         
from any other soft red-fleshed fruit—

cut with scissors, washed                                             
hand over hand in this bright night

white bowl my mother purchased                                  
at a school craft fair—

and it’s not, I realize, death                                           
I’m afraid of

but pain; that the point of rupture becomes                    
what’s always opposite the green stem

a scar you’ll always see,                                   
no matter how bold it is,

this veraison, almost bloody                                          
against all you have left

ABIDE TO LOVE

When I visited Robert Murray McCheyne's church, springtime had awakened from the long darkness of the Scottish winter. Yellow gorse covered the countryside and tulips were blooming along the banks of the Tay. As a young man of twenty-three, McCheyne faced a hard struggle. In 1836, he arrived as a new minister in Dundee, a growing industrial town full of tenement houses, factories, mills, overcrowding, poverty, disease, and hardness of heart. Much needed to be done, but McCheyne’s emphasis was not on programs, committees, or action points. Instead, he spent much time in prayer and sought personal holiness and likeness to Jesus, believing that the effectiveness of his ministry depended on the depth of his own relationship with Christ. Although he died before he turned thirty, McCheyne lived long enough to see revival sweep through the dark streets and awaken people to the love of Christ and transformed lives. His writings reveal a passion and commitment to Christ that continue to impact readers today.

As a professor, I find a swift application for myself in McCheyne’s life. Certainly, my students need well-phrased questions and carefully crafted lectures, but much more than that, they need me to be abiding in Christ and communing with him. Otherwise, all my efforts to teach them will fall far short. As Jesus reminds us in the passage for today, “you can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me.” Jesus says that the one who does not share his life is like a dry and withered stick. In contrast, the one who follows his commandments and abides in his love becomes a growing and fruitful branch, a person overflowing with joy and life. First, Jesus talks to his disciples about their need to abide in him as a branch draws its life from the vine. Immediately afterward, he tells them to love one another. This sequence is not an accident. Walking closely with Jesus, listening to his voice, obeying his words, and delighting in his love is the only way that we can love others well.

Ever more frequently, those in our society, perhaps even we ourselves, are struggling with challenges that feel insurmountable, but not when we remember that we draw from the source of life himself. We will shortly be celebrating Christ’s resurrection from death, his rising again with a power that also awakens others from death to life. The closer we are to him, the more that our coworkers, family, friends, and acquaintances will also be drawn to his life. As we gaze upon the depiction of Jesus as the grapevine by Ukrainian artist, Ulyana Tomkeyvch, and listen to the choir sing the words of the passage, let us take a moment to reflect. Do we want to love well? Then first we must know what it means to abide.

Prayer:
Father, you are the source of our life. Our love flows from your love. As David prayed, we also pray that you would search us and know our hearts, that you would see if there be any grievous way in us. Please prune anything in us that is not of you and draw us into closer communion, so that we might love others as you have loved us.
Amen

Dr. Laurie Wilson
Assistant Professor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab