From a certain point of view, I am glad that the BBMP construction along the Iblur stretch has proceeded at such a snail’s pace. Were it not for that, I would not have been able to have a certain conversation with Prayerna a couple of weeks back. On our way back home she asked me how the trees along that stretch happened to bend toward the center of the road. I gave her a short, rudimentary lesson on horticulture.

Our passage for today includes a few ideas from horticulture that Jesus brings up in order to teach his disciples some important things. I wish to focus on only one idea – connectedness.

In v. 5 Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Being a person with a scientific bent of mind, I wanted to test this idea. Is it really true? Or is it simply a spiritual platitude we keep repeating to ourselves? But how does one test this idea?

Since Jesus introduces this idea in the context of horticulture, I decided to test it using horticulture. Now I did not have many seasons of experimentation at my disposal. So I had to modify the conditions slightly.

Jesus speaks of being a vine and the purpose of a grapevine is to produce grapes. But fruit production is a long time consuming process and I did not have such time. However, there are plants that produce no edible fruit and which propagate by producing colorful flowers. Flower production is a much shorter process and the cycle from bud to death of a flower often takes no more than a few days, a short enough period for me to perform my experiment.

Gladioli make very nice cut flowers. After being cut they last a few days in a vase with water. The purpose of a gladiolus plant is to produce these flowers that attract insects for pollination. And so a gladiolus that has a vibrant inflorescence that attracts insects can be said to be analogous to a vine branch that produces good fruit.

They are also available in a wide variety of colors from which one can choose depending on the occasion or mood. Many of these colors have been produced by extensive and painstaking hybridization techniques, a tribute to human ingenuity and God’s gracious beauty in creation. But to my chagrin I realized that some florists attempt to bypass the laborious processes and simply dip the cut end of a white gladiolus in colored water.

A similar deception occurs with grapes too with the gas ethylene being used to hasten the ripening process. However, producers of fine wines in Europe decry such practices vigorously with the claim that vine ripened grapes taste superior to grapes ripened off the vine.

So in order to perform my experiment, off I went to the florist and purchased three gladioli – two white and one yellow. I also purchased the color the florist suggested to me. I wanted to test the hypothesis that artificial methods produce inferior inflorescences in the gladioli.

I kept the yellow gladiolus and one of the whites as controls. These were kept hydrated with plain water. The other white was the experimental gladiolus and was hydrated using yellow colored water.

What was the outcome of my experiment? Well, here are my gladioli. As you can see, I now have two yellows and one white. However, one of the yellows is artificially yellow.

Which one? Raise your hand if you think the artificially colored flower is the one in my right hand. Raise your hand if you think it is the one in my left hand.

From a distance it is very difficult to decide. Would the artificial coloring produce a darker hue or a lighter one? Would the short cut produce an even shade on the petals or a variable shade? Would the falsely colored flower prove to be less attractive to insects or more? We do not readily know the answers to these questions. We really do not know what effect a short cut would have.

But there are differences. I intentionally chose single colored flowers because our passage speaks of only a single trait – our connection to Jesus. Had I chosen gladioli that were multi colored the difference would have been stark since there would have been no way of guaranteeing that the colors ended up in the parts of the flower appropriate to them.

But with a single colored flower it is more difficult. One has to get really close to determine the difference. Since the artificial coloring is not a part of the DNA of the flower, the outer portions of this flower tend to be darker than the inner portions. Remember that this is supposed to be a uniformly colored flower. This effect is quite predictable. The color accumulates at the rims of the petals because there is nowhere else for it to go.

But in the flower that is naturally colored the shade is uniform because the color is a part of its DNA and not something added on externally.

The exact differences do not matter. We must remember that Jesus is not really a grapevine and that we are not really branches. He has used a powerful metaphor and we should deal with it responsibly and never forget that it is a metaphor.

It will not do, for example, to say, on the basis of my experiment, that a false Christian will have a colorful external life but a dull internal life, that they have a show of spirituality but lack an inner conviction, or that the life of a Christian is uniformly filled with Christ-likeness. Those differences arose from the choice of flower that I made. Different control flowers would have given rise to different differences.

But Jesus’ point is that there is a difference. There are branches that bear fruit and those that do not. But he does not tell us how to determine if another branch is fruit bearing or not. Jesus does not want each of us to mount our own personal inquisition to determine who is a genuine Christian and who is not.

He does not even tell us how to determine if we ourselves are genuine Christians or not.

His point is simple: In order for a branch to produce fruit it must stay connected to the vine. It is not a difficult point to grasp. Even a person like me, who has very little experience with plants, recognizes that a part of a plant that is cut off from the plant cannot survive long. In order for long term survival, it must remain organically joined to the plant.

Now the Gospel of John does not include the institution of communion. To explain this lack, many Christian scholars have suggested that the ‘I am the bread of life’ saying and Jesus’ exhortation that follows constitutes John’s institution of communion. Now it is true that John has arranged his material in a thematic manner rather than in a chronological manner. However, it seems to me that even thematically communion belongs here just before Jesus goes out finally to be tried and put to death.

The Gospel of John was written a few decades after the other Gospels. And John would have had adequate time to decide what to include in his Gospel and what to exclude. Many early church fathers, recognizing the differences between John’s Gospel and the other three labeled John’s Gospel a ‘spiritual gospel’ or a ‘theological gospel’. In other words, John provides not just the simple events that happened but the meaning of the events. When we realize this we can understand John 15 better.

John 15 captures the crux of communion when John recalls Jesus’ words ‘remain in me as I also remain in you’. John is telling us that communion is about bringing once again to the forefront of our minds the fact that we are connected to Jesus. Through this act we reaffirm our connectedness to him and our utter dependence on him. Through this act we experience his words: If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

(Sermon preached at Christalaya, Koramangala on 17 March 2013)