JESUS IS THE VINE
GOSPEL OF JOHN 15:1) "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2) He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. … 5) I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
By the medieval ninth century, the city of Shiraz in Persia, among the European travelers and merchants had the reputation for producing the finest wine in the world. In ancient Persia the really but mistakenly thought that they invented the wine making through an accidental discovery when a princess found a sealed pot in a farmland with vineyards what she thought was poison.
Instead, she got a bit intoxicated by the liquid, and the same time liberated by the effect of the alcohol, so she determined the drink as an elixir.
And she was almost right as we no now, and doctors used to state, that a little wine can not hurt, though too much is definitely a poison. A lot of medications have the same description.
Mesopotamia, the Caucasian Mountains including Georgia and Armenia, but the Phoenicians and the Egyptians they had vineyards and wine making from very early eras, however through time Greece became a wine making universe, pervading all walks of life, like literature, mythology, medicine, leisure, and religion.
The Romans take the wine culture from the Greek, shipping vine clippings from Greece to Italy. When the Roman empire expanded enormously, the centers of viticulture soon developed in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and everywhere in Europe, including England, which was called Britannia by the Romans since Julius Caesar.
Mostly the Spanish took the viticulture to North America. With the trade routes the early explorers carried vines and grape growing treatises with themselves, and the culture of wine continues to spread around the globe today, with vines growing on every continent.
According to the wikipedia and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “75,866 square kilometers of the world are dedicated to grapes. Approximately 71% of world grape production is used for wine, 27% as fresh fruit, and 2% as dried fruit. A small portion of grape production goes to producing grape juice, as well. The land area dedicated to vineyards is increasing by about 2% per year.”
Beside the ancient enthusiasm regarding wine consumption, Christianity was a major factor in planting vineyards and grape cultivation all around the world, and many time monasteries as monks were pioneers in many countries, where there was no viticulture before.
However, despite the relationship between the grape and the wine still this image in our Bible text today, of the wine grower and the vine as a plant and its branches, is not about the consumption of wine, but it is a metaphor about Jesus and his relationship to his disciples or the disciples’ relationship to Jesus. It is practically a parable, and it is not about wine drinking, despite that Christianity and Judaism and many pagan cults of Greece and Rome had the wine playing a significant ritual role.
The old translation reads the God is wine grower, however the newer translation wisely says, the God is the farmer.
As the statistics said, 71% of world grape production is used for wine, and only 27% as fresh fruit, so the God the wine grower, might mean, that God, the farmer grow vine the plant with the explicit purpose to make wine.
Nonetheless, this parable is not about wine making in the garden, and not even about the miraculous wine making at the wedding of Cana.
Jesus was accused many times by his adversaries with non-sense and fabricated issues. The worst of them was that Jesus is helped by the Chief Demons to do witchcraft.
The milder accusations against him were like he committed excessive wine drinking, excessive eating, he socialized too often with obvious sinners like tax collectors, women of entertainment, also that he did not have an agreeable job as his father, who was a carpenter.
However, this parable is about the nature of the discipleship, which is not necessarily involves wine drinking as it is written in the Book of the Numeri, written by Moses, that the Nazirite “ shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of fermented drink, neither shall he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or dried. (…) ‘All the days of his vow of separation no razor shall come on his head, until the days are fulfilled in which he separates himself to the Lord. He shall be holy. He shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow long.’ ”
Regarding the nature of the discipleship, in the Gospel of Thomas, though it is not within the frame of the New Testament, the disciples said to Jesus, "We know that You will depart
from us. Who is to be our leader?" Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."
It can also be found in the teachings of the ancient sages, that Heaven and Earth were created by God for the sake of the righteous.
When they called Jesus rabbi, teacher master, his title was the teacher of the righteousness. No one can really authentically teach righteousness, just the righteous one.
The righteousness is that level of sainthood, so to speak, that level of holiness in a single person, that that particular person becomes so humble in his or her mind and in his or her heart, that he or she absolutely submits his or her own will to God.
These people do want anything else, but what God wants.
Normally, it is kinda hard to figure out what is God’s actual will. To that, the humble person shall shut out all the external and inner voices from his or her own heart in order to become able to listen to God, as it is written “Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ” The Lord was talking to Elijah in that whisper.
Jesus, the Teacher of the righteousness taught holiness to the disciples. The vine of the holiness on Earth was planted by God the owner of the Garden, and the disciples are the vine branches until they follow the path of righteousness, which is not wanting anything else but what God wants. In simple English, it means to do always but always the right thing, no matter what. May God keep us as branches in the holy vine, which is Jesus Christ, our teacher and master, our King and our Brother, by the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
