Sermon: John 15:1-8, May 2, 2021

05/02/21 • -1 min

A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on May 2, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on John 15:1-8. You may play the audio of the sermon here.

A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text this morning is from Gospel according to St. John, the 15th chapter:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Thus far the text.

My dear friends in Christ,

He is risen! He has risen, indeed. Alleluia! And because he's risen, you can abide in him and, because he's risen, he can and does abide in us. Now, what does that mean? In looking at all of these different things, all these different texts from today, I really want to preach on all of them, but I don't think that you'll give me the time to do that. So I had to choose the Gospel lesson and that's perfectly fine because everything else is supporting that gospel. It's a beautiful thing. Normally, after Easter, the Church’s tradition is to read her way through the book of Acts. And, often, it doesn’t always line up completely with what we find in our Gospel lesson, but we find today, it actually ties in very well. The Spirit speaking to Philip motivates him to go out into the desert and sit with this Ethiopian eunuch and teach him all about Jesus. And John picks this up in his epistle lesson, where he talks about abiding in Christ, because Christ is the love of God.

By the way, if anybody ever throws at you, and this is a common refrain from today, God is love, you should be prepared to respond to it. They’ll tell you God is love, therefore you've got to love anyone. You can't show any discrimination whatsoever towards anyone or the life choices that they make, because you say your God is love. And we can say that is true. God is love, but God is not this ephemeral love that's out there. God is love in that He sent his son Jesus Christ. By this, we know that God loved the world, that the son of God took on human flesh and came to die to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. That's what God is love means because God is love in the life, death, and now resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was very tempting to preach on, as well. But, let’s look at a different theme.

We know that Jesus can abide in us because Jesus is the son of God. He is God himself. And he has all power and authority. And because he's promised that he shall be with us to the very end of the age, we know that his word is truth. We might even say his word is gospel truth. And that truth tells us that he is with us. Now, the question is how, how? I got to tell you, I was teaching the third article of the creed to the school students this week. And it's so exciting to teach through that. It's wonderful to teach about the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus, because that's the heart and soul of Christianity. But if it's not for the third article of the creed, we have no life because the third article of the creed is all about what the Holy Spirit is doing in you and through you, what the Holy Spirit gives you through his church, the means by which you will be saved, the word, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. And through those means you find then the the joining of the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, the life everlasting. Because you have these things from the Spirit, you may know that Christ abides in you.

And so when we ask, how is it that Christ can abide in us and we in Christ? we see very plainly, it is by the power of the Spirit. We're getting very close to the Ascension of our Lord; it's coming up in just a couple ...

05/02/21 • -1 min

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