I have been studying some of the agricultural picture Jesus uses in his parables, and find myself studying John 15.
John 15 carries the picture of Jesus as a vine, and his disciples as branches. Simply put, the parable teaches that those who "abide" in Jesus will "bear much fruit." This will earmark them as followers of Jesus and bring glory to God the Father.
The other gospels include similar thematic material. Both Matthew and mark, for example, include a story of Jesus cursing a fig tree for failing to bear fruit. In Matthew's gospel, the story appears immediately after Jesus' famous visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, in which he upturns the tables of the moneychangers and drives out the sellers of doves and lambs.
Mark ties these two stories together even more strongly, actually inserting the tale of Jesus' rant against the Temple into the middle of the story of the fig tree. Both authors, I suspect, saw a strong connection between Jesus displeasure with an unfruitful fig tree and his displeasure with what he found going on in the Temple. The moral to the story, it seems, is that God will judge the unfruitful Temple in the same way that Jesus judged the fig tree.
Combining these two images is not a new idea. The prophet Isaiah (Chapter 5) presents us a poetic picture of a well tended vine that bears no fruit. He invites the reader to judge between the vine and the vinedresser. Of course, the unfruitful vine must go. For Isaiah, the vine is a symbol of Israel, who failed to bear the fruit of justice and righteousness. He foresees the destruction of Jerusalem and the resulting exile as God's judgment against Israel for failing to be fruitful as his people.
Matthew and Mark both see echoes of this in the withered fig tree and in Jesus' word spoken against the priestly authority of the Temple. They see both as prophetic, declaring God's displeasure with Israel for failing to bear the fruit of justice and righteousness.
John also tells the story of Jesus' visit to the Temple, but in his gospel, this story is placed at the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry. The story of the fig tree disappears, reappearing (at least thematically) in Jesus' final words to his disciples before the Passion. We're pretty sure John had access to the gospels of his fellow evangelists before he wrote his own. He will be well aware that he is taking two images that have been seen together in the earlier gospel tradition and splitting them apart. He has, in a sense, taken the prophetic act of judgment against Israel. apart from the prophetic word and placed them at either end of Christ's public ministry... like bookends. In so doing, he places the entire ministry of Jesus into the context of prophecy against the Jews.
We're uncomfortable with this. As modern Christians, most of us have developed a well justified distaste for anti-Semitism in any form. To discover that the gospel writers (especially Matthew and John) are so patently judgemental against the Jews sends us back-pedalling.
Many scholars rush to tell us that the gospels are written aginst a backdrop of conflict between early church and synagogue. The stories of Jesus' life and death are heavily influenced by the tensions between jews and Christians at the time of their writing. They inform us that Jesus probably didn't say any of that anti-Semitic stuff we read in the gospels. The church added it later to justify their own break with their Jewish roots. Jesus was, afters all, they remind us, a Jew himslef.
This last point, though, deserves more careful observation. Jesus was Jewish. So, presumably were Matthew and John. Recent scholarship around the gospel of john has dispelled the once prevalent myth that John is a "Greek" gospel far removed fromjewish roots. We have come to understand that John, in its day, was intensely Jewish. Ditto with Matthew, who quotes the Tanak like a Rabbi.
What we fail to grasp, I think, was that what Jesus, Matthew, and John are doing in their teaching is the most fundamentally Jewish thing they could do. They are doing what Isaiah and Jeremiah and Elijah all did before them. They are entering into prophetic confession. Jesu' critique of the Temple should not be seen as anti-Semitic, but as prophetic. It is the word of warning offered from one jew to another, the corrective word of the prophet offered to the peple of God.
Read in this light, John's gospel carries a message of confession. It is not "Those evil jews finally got what they had coming." It is "O Lord God, what have we, your people, done?"
The old saying says "Confession is good for the soul." This most certainly true. But the greater role of confession may be to bind people to one another and a common vision.
John, in invoking the image of the vine in chapter 15 is following in the footsteps of Isaiah, sounding a prophetic judgement against the people of Israel who have failed to bear fruit. What he does with the image is also intensely Jewish. He outlines a new hope.
Just as Isaiah promises a "shoot out of the stump of Jesse," Jesus offers a hope for the rebuilding of god's people: "If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit." Jesus life and ministry stand not only as a confession for God's people that they have failed to bear fruit, but shines a light forward. BY choosing to follow the path of Jesus, the people of God can find restoration and fulfill their ultimate destiny as a change force in the world.
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