A friend once told me about their mandarin tree that only produced fruit every two years until her husband, the mandarin grower, got to it with a pruning saw and cut it right back – to almost nothing. Since then it has been fruiting with enthusiasm – as an energetic mandarin tree should.
I wonder whether that works with churches. But churches are not really like inanimate fruit trees, are they? Although Jesus did think his bunch of disciples was like the branches of a grape vine – that is similar isn’t it?
And he talked about cutting back the vine. Although he said there were two different kinds of cutting. The branches that produced no fruit were removed by his Father and burnt in the fire. The ones that did bear fruit were pruned so they could produce more.
A bit radical. No fruit and you get chopped off and thrown into the fire (or the green bin). I wonder if people disappear from church because they have been chopped off?
But what about the branches that bear fruit? Why prune them back? So they can produce more fruit. Lots of other things grow on our lives as well as fruit. Often pleasant green pretty stuff. But not stuff that helps grow fruit.
The opposite actually. The pretty green things take up the life that could be flowing to the fruit. Ah, what a choice, pretty green things or fruit. But the pruner is the Father according to Jesus. That is good news – we know he will get it right. How does he do it? By means of the words of Jesus.
Staying stuck in the vine who is Jesus, and paying attention to what he says is the way both to produce fruit and to get pruned. And getting pruned seems the only way to be a branch. Because fruiting is the only job a branch has. How wonderful to be a branch.
A church full of mandarins. I wonder... Where is the queue for pruning?
Dale