Sixth Sunday of Easter; 5 May 2024; Easter 6B (RCL); Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17.
This passage in John’s Gospel continues the “I AM the vine” speech. Just as we are to abide in Jesus in order to bear fruit, Jesus has abided in the Father’s love, and we are to love one another as Jesus and the Father have loved one another, and as Jesus has loved us — that is, to entrust our lives to one another. Notice that Jesus does not exhort us to obey his commandments (as does the author of the First Epistle of John), but rather to keep them. The verb used for “to keep” implies guarding or protecting something precious. Without too much of a stretch, we could translate this, “If you treasure my commandments.”
The First Epistle seems to be written into some sort of controversy in the Johannine community, and so lines are more strictly drawn there than in the Gospel (though the Gospel draws some pretty sharp lines between the followers of Jesus and the synagogue — the lines in the Epistle seem to be internal). Obeying commandments speaks of a more dire situation than treasuring commandments.
Last Sunday’s Gospel ended with the promise that if we all abide in Jesus and Jesus’ words (commandments) abide among us, we can ask God for whatever we desire and it will be done for us, and that what glorifies the Father is that we bear much fruit and become Jesus’ disciples. Clearly, we are to be asking to be fruitful.
This week’s Gospel gives the same promise (so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name), provided that we bear fruit that will last. The idea of fruitfulness carries a whole range of overtones or valences. Prosperity comes to mind, as does all the legislation in the OT regarding the offerings of first fruits and not gleaning one’s field to the edge and leaving grapes on the vine for the landless and poor.
Actual fruit, of course, will not last, but eventually rots. But the fund of social good will built up by sharing fruit, by not harvesting to the edge of the field, and leaving grapes on the vine, will endure within the community. The great flaw in our way of thinking is to see prosperity in individual terms. A money economy necessarily begets competition (money is a limited resource, a zero sum game). An economy of fruitfulness is an open sum game. When my happiness depends on the happiness of all, together we will create the conditions for all to prosper. I think that is what Jesus means when he says “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that my Father will give you (all) whatever you ask in my name.”
When we have entrusted our lives to one another, we can’t help but know that my good and the good of all are inextricably linked, and hence will see prosperity as mutual, and therefore an open sum game. In those circumstances, we can ask the Father whatever it is we, together, desire, and it will be done for us.