Church -- Vine & Branches

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  … I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:1,2,5) It is incredibly easy for any of us to begin to believe that we, and not Christ, are at the centre of the church's story.  It is a script we follow pretty faithfully throughout the week.  We do our work.  We seek to entertain ourselves.  We seek to earn enough to pay our bills.  We look out for our family.  We do our homework.  We keep up our friendships.  We wonder about who we are and what we should be doing with our lives.  It all gets pretty self-centered after a while. Unless.  Unless we take this vine-and-branches picture of the church seriously and intentionally take time to focus in and wait on God's work, rather than on our own.  Thankfully, God has given a day and a practice to help us: Sabbath.     The heart of this reality is displayed in Jesus' words about the vine and the branches.  He says rather bluntly that apart from him, we can do nothing.  It is only through connection with Christ that the lifegiving sap of his love flows into and through us out to the world around.  So: Christ must remain at the centre: he's the vine that supports us, not the other way around. It's only from that place, of being nurtured and fed by the life-giving sap of Jesus' love, that we are asked or able to do anything.  And what we are asked to do, is simply to be conduits of what we have received.  Love has been given to us and we pass it on.  Joy has been infused into our souls, and we radiate it.  Life is ours in Christ, and from his life in us: we bear fruit.  This is true for us as individuals, but also true for us collectively as the church.  We are all, together, branches on the vine that is Jesus Christ. But the curious thing that we find in the first verse is that fruitfulness also requires pruning.  I believe God's gift, invitation, indeed command to take a Sabbath is part of his work of pruning the fruitful branches.  Sabbath forces us to say no: no to our work, no to appointments on our calendars, no to our technology, and no to the needs and desires that pull us into a flurry of us-at-the-centre activity.   Sabbath puts God at the centre instead, forcing us to trust that he'll keep the world, our work, and our lives spinning even if we take a break for a day.  In that space, we can also listen to him, worship him, and take time to love and be loved by others in our lives too: because for a day, we don't need them to be useful or need to be useful for them.  Our relationships are put back in the right order, including our relationship to Christ where we remember and believe that he is the vine and we the branches, rather than the other way round.   What is God seeking to prune out of your life?  What do you need to say "no" to in order to take a true Sabbath this week?