May 17, 2026
Abide in Me and Bear Fruit
John 15:7-17
If you have ever wondered if life in Christ is mostly a list of things to do or do better, listen for the word of God.
7 If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become[c] my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants[d] any longer, because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
A few years ago, researchers coined the term “productivity anxiety.” It came from an organization called “Workhuman” who surveyed a thousand full-time workers and found that four out of five experience this “productivity anxiety.”
It is the persistent, gnawing feeling that no matter how much they accomplish, there is always more they should be doing.
The researchers were careful about the definition. It is not the anxiety of failing. It is the anxiety of succeeding and still not feeling like enough.
That feeling is not limited to work.
The passage we just heard comes from the last conversation Jesus had with his disciples before his arrest. It’s called the “Final Discourse.” Jesus is preparing his disciples for life after the Resurrection – though they do not understand that yet. What will it be like for these disciples when Jesus is gone? What should they do? How will they continue?
He offers this image: a vine and its branches. Stay connected to me, he says, like branches to a vine. Abide in me, and I in you, and you will bear fruit.
If you hear the words “bear fruit” and your brain immediately starts calculating – what kind of fruit? how much? am I bearing enough? — that’s the way our culture has trained us to hear this. As an obligation. But that’s not what Jesus is saying.
In this passage, Jesus issues only two commands. The first is: abide. The second, near the end, is: love one another. That’s it.
He does not command fruit. He describes it. The fruit will come, he says, as the natural result of staying connected to the vine. Fruit bearing is not the assignment. Staying connected to him is the assignment.
The Greek word is menō, one of John’s favorite words and it means to remain, or dwell, to make your home somewhere. Eugene Peterson translates this in The Message: “Make yourself at home in my love.”
About six months ago, I noticed something in myself at home that puzzled me. I was feeling a kind of nostalgia and pride over small things that I’d never felt before. I would stand and look at a shrub and remember planting it and feel so proud of how it had grown and thrived. I would look at a room that we reoriented years ago and changed to fit our family and feel such gratitude at how the arrangement had worked for everyone.
Honestly, it made me feel old. I wondered if I was becoming too nostalgic. Then it dawned on me: I’ve lived in this house longer than I’ve lived in any house in my life, as a child or adult. Only ten years, but a long time for me. And we’ve made this house “home.” We’ve changed it, and rearranged it, we’ve settled in. It’s home.
That is the invitation Jesus extends to us in the life of faith. Not work harder or produce more. Settle in. Make yourself at home in his love.
The Father has loved the Son. Jesus has loved his disciples. He chose them. He appointed them. It’s all done. God has built the house. We are invited to make it our home.
The writer Oliver Burkeman spent years as a journalist covering productivity — writing a column on how to optimize your days. He read everything, tested everything, and eventually arrived at a conclusion he didn’t expect. He wrote about it in a book called “Four Thousand Weeks” — which is the rough number of weeks in an 80-year life.
His conclusion was that the whole apparatus of our productivity culture cannot deliver the one thing people actually want from it. What we want is the feeling that we are enough. And that feeling, he said, is not available at the end of a to-do list or a performance review. It cannot be produced.
What Burkeman sees from a modern vantage point, Jesus says to his frightened disciples. The disciples are not called to do heroic things. They are called to make themselves at home in his love. They are called to be his friends.
Jesus said, “I do not call you servants any longer. I have called you friends.”
A servant does the job and does not need to know why. A friend is trusted and loved. Jesus says: everything I have heard from the Father, I have made known to you. He trusts them with everything — including, in the next few hours, the cross. They are his friends.
A scam has been going around — some of you have gotten it — where you receive what looks like an Evite to a dinner party. But when you open it, it’s a fraud that hacks your email. I got it and didn’t click on it, but I noticed how I felt when I read it. There was a passing delight and joy – someone wants me to come to their party! Someone wants to be friends. That’s why I almost clicked!
And that instinct is closer to the surface than we admit. We live in a time of enormous connectivity and real loneliness. We are contributors, volunteers, workers, spouses, parents, patients, clients, leaders. What many of us are hungry to be is friends.
Jesus calls his disciples friends. He said: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” The friendship is started from God’s side. God sends the invitation, and it is not a fraud. God seeks us, wants to be connected to us, like a branch to a vine.
So what does a branch do, once it is attached to the vine? What’s the job?
Stay attached, that’s all. In staying, it bears fruit. Not because it is straining to produce fruit — but because that is what living branches do when they are connected to what gives them life. The fruit comes by grace.
You can till and plant and water and fertilize and weed. But you cannot make it grow. The fruit comes by grace. Life in Christ is no different. You study, you pray, you worship, you serve, you take into your mind and heart the words and life of Jesus. But you cannot make it fruitful. The fruit comes by grace.
The poet and farmer Wendell Berry, who worked his land by hand with old fashioned tools for decades, wrote this poem about work and grace:
And yet no leaf or grain is filled / By work of ours; the field is tilled / And left to grace. That we may reap, / Great work is done while we’re asleep.
No leaf or grain is filled by our work. Our commission is to stay connected to the vine, and the fruit comes by grace.
Jesus names what the fruit looks like: love one another, as I have loved you. The fruit is the life of a community of people who love each other with something like the love Jesus has for them. Sometimes it is laughter, and sometimes it is tears; sometimes it is singing together, or sharing, or laboring, or learning; and sometimes it is suffering with and for one another.
The love of Christ can be costly. Greater love, he says, has no one than this — to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The cross is not far from this sentence.
We live in a world that is so fractured along lines of grievance and class and ideology and starved for friendship. Participation in institutions that nurture community is low. Trust between people who hold different views is lower.
We sort ourselves into communities of the like-minded and isolate ourselves in communities of the virtual. And the skills of genuine friendship, of mutual love across difference and disagreement, are going unused and unexercised.
What Jesus describes here is a different way of being in the world. A community formed not by same-ness but by shared love for one another. That is the fruit. A community bound by God’s choice to draw us into God’s own life of love.
People who are at home in the friendship of the living God should find it harder to treat other people as disposable. People who are at home in the friendship of the love of Christ should find it easier tend to extend a meaningful love and grace to others.
This is what fruit looks like. Many call themselves Christians, but you will know them by their fruit. It is not a program for making things better. Not a strategy for saving the world. It is a way of being with people that is learned on the vine.
Jesus promises that this way of life is what our heart most deeply desires. He says: “I have said these things so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
He does not promise productivity. He promises joy. It is not the satisfaction of a crossed-off list. It is joy, the settled gladness of being at home in your soul, where you belong, with the one who knows you and chose you. Home is here, Jesus says, available now with him.
Today, we are baptizing two young children. Baptism is not enrollment in a program. It is, in the language of this passage, a grafting in — a branch that is joined to the vine. The person being baptized is not being handed a to-do list. They are being welcomed home, named, called, and chosen.
That is how it works for every one of us. We each have our stories about how we came to faith — a crisis, or a conversation, a faithful family of origin, or just a long accumulation of Sundays. Those stories are real.
But underneath our choosing there is God’s choice. Before we found the door, God had already made the way for us to come home.
The disciples are on the threshold of chaos. When Jesus is arrested, everything falls apart, they will scatter, and fail, and try to regroup, and find their way forward in a world where everything has changed and nothing is sure.
This is how Jesus prepares them for a challenging future: make yourself at home in my love. You are not my workers. You are my friends. Stay close to me.
The sinking feeling that you are not doing enough, that is not the voice of the gospel. The gospel says: you are chosen to be God’s friend. So, make yourself at home in God’s love. Everything else, the fruit and the joy, is grace.
Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina