Jesus Befriends His Disciples

(Gospel of John 15:1 - 16:33)
"I, said Jesus," am the genuine grapevine, and my Father is the tender of the vineyard.  He cuts off every branch of me that fails to bear fruit and prunes every branch that does bear fruit so that it will produce more.  You have already been "pruned" by the message I have given you.  Remain in me and I in you, for a branch cannot produce fruit unless it remains on the vine: you cannot be fruitful unless you remain with me.  I am the vine; you, its branches.  Those that remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit, but separated from me you can accomplish nothing.  Whoever does not remain in me will be like a branch discarded to dry up.  Such branches are gathered and cast into the fire to be burned.  If you remain in me and my message remains with you, then ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.  My Father achieves glory through this: that you bear fruit by being my disciples.  As my Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Remain in that love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in that love, just as I have remained in my Father's love by obeying his commandments.  I have told you these things so that my joy may remain in you and be complete.

"This is my commandment to you: love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.  If you do what I command you, then you are my friends.  I no longer call you servants, for a servant knows not his master's business.  But I call you friends, because I have taught you everything I have learned from the Father.  You did not choose me, rather I chose you.  I have assigned you to go and bear fruit, enduring fruit, so that the Father may grant you whatever you might ask of him in my name.  This is my command: love one another.

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.  The world would love you as its own, if you belonged the world.  But you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen to take you out of the world, and that is why the world hates you.

"Remember what I have said to you, 'The servant cannot be greater than the master.'  If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you.  If they follow my teachings, they will follow yours.  They will treat you such because of my name’s sale, for they will not acknowledge the one who sent me.  They would not be at fault if I had not come and spoken to them, but now they have no excuse for their sin.  Whoever hates me hates the Father as well.  They would not be at fault if I had not performed the miracles that no else could do, but they have witnessed them and still hate both me and my Father.  -- But this is to fulfill what is written in the Scripture, 'They hated me without cause.'

"When the Counselor whom I will send to you from the Father, a spirit of truth from the Father, arrives, he will teach you of me.  You are also to teach of me, because you have been with me from the start.

"I have told you these things so that you won't falter, for you will be expelled from the synagogues, and the time will come that those kill you will think they are performing a service to God.  They will do this because they have not known me or the Father.  I have told you this, for when they do these things, you will remember I had warned you about them.  I didn't tell you before, because I was still with you.

"But now that I am about to return to the one who sent me, none of you ask me where I am going.  Instead you grieve over what I have told you.  Nevertheless, it is best for you that I leave, for if I do not do so the Counselor cannot come to you.  But, if I go, I can send him to you.  And when he arrives, he will remonstrate the world in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment -- about sin, because the people do not believe in me, about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will not see me again, about judgment, because the ruler of this world has already been condemned.  There are still many more things I want to tell you, but they are too much for you to bear just now.  When the spirit of truth arrives, he will enlighten you as to the truth in all matters, for he will not speak on his own behalf, but will relate what he has been taught.  He will reveal to you future events.  He will bring glory to me because what he will make known to you comes from me.  All that belongs to the Father is also mine.  That is why I have said that whatever he will disclose to you he has received from me."

"After a little while you will no longer see me and then, after a little while, you will see me again." 

At that some of the disciples questioned each other, "What does he mean by this statement and by his saying he is going to the Father?  And what does he mean by 'a little while.'  We don't understand what he's talking about."

Jesus, anticipating what they were going to ask him, told them, "Are you wondering what I meant when I said 'After a little while you will no longer see me and then, after a little while, you will see me again.'  To tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what will happen to me, while the world rejoices.  You will endure great sorrow, but that pain will turn to joy.  A woman endures much pain during childbirth while she is in labor, but after the child is born that agony is forgotten in the joy of bringing new life into the world.  You will have sorrow now, but I will see you again and when I do, you will know joy -- a joy no one can take away from you.  At that time you will have no need to ask me for anything, for, I tell you truly, you will be able to appeal to the Father directly and he will grant any request made in my name.  Until now you have asked for nothing in my name.  Ask and you will receive!  Then your joy will be complete.

"Thus far I have spoken in analogies, but soon the time will come when I will leave off speaking figuratively and tell you of the Father directly, in plain language.  At that time you will ask in my name.  I'm not saying that I need ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father loves you dearly, because you love me and believe that I have come from him.  Yes, I have indeed come into the world from the Father and will leave the world to return to the Father."

His disciples then declared, "Now you are speaking literally and not figuratively.  Now we understand that you know all things.  No one needs to ask you any questions.  This convinces us that you do come from God."

"So you believe now?” Jesus responded.  "But the time is coming, in fact, it is already here, when you will be dispersed, each one going his own way, and I will be left alone.  But I will not really be alone, for the Father is with me. I have told you all this so that through me you may face serenely the trials and tribulations the world will inflict upon you and take heart -- for I have triumphed over the world!"

Notes
1.  The analogy of pruning the grapevine is lost in translation.  The Greek verb kathairei means to prune, while kathairo means to cleanse.  They are conflated.  Thus, the vine is pruned and the disciples are cleansed.  Since Jesus was presumably speaking to his disciples in Aramaic, rather than in Greek, one wonders whether the analogy, the play on words, would have been employed by him.

2.  Such long passages of dialogue make the reader wonder how they could be verbatim, the gospels being written decades after the events.  Did the disciples keep journals and diaries?  Did they whip out their wax tablets and styluses every time Jesus spoke, recording his words for posterity in 1st Century shorthand?  Or did the gospel writers put into Jesus' mouth the words they wanted him to have said, ascribing to him statements that would conform to the Christian doctrines of the time?  (That the gospels disagree with each other in factual matters, that they are often incompatible and contradictory militates against the contention that they could have been authored under divine guidance, or inspired by a single spiritual source.)

3.  Jesus reiterates his love for his disciples, but it is not an unconditional love by any means.  He will only love them if they do everything he orders them to do.  And he has never really confided in them, only imparting cryptic and ambiguous pronouncements.  He says he is their friend because he has conveyed to them a message from the Father.  Didn’t he impart the same message to the masses he preached to at the Temple?

4.  Jesus, knowing everything, did not, according to this account, teach his disciples much of anything, except to indoctrinate them in a belief in his divinity.  It is remarkable that he resisted what one would think would be a temptation to enlighten his disciples on simple matters that we today all know and he, if he were divine, must have known, such as the fact that the earth is round or that microorganisms cause disease or a thousand other things of which the ancients were ignorant.  Jesus displays no possession of such knowledge.  And his incurious disciples, even accepting that he is from God, question him little, even of religious matters such as: where is Heaven, what happens to a man when he dies, what is the punishment for sin, the rewards for being a pious man, and so forth.

5.  Jesus declares he will henceforth regard his disciples as friends, equals.  He suggests that their former relationship was that of master and servant (or slave) when, quite obviously, it would have been that of teacher and student -- hopefully a distinction there!   He orders that they love each other as he has loved them, but this seems inapt.  The affection and respect that colleagues may have for one another is different and should be different than that accorded to them by their teacher and master.  "Greater love has no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends." is a much quoted passage and a noble sentiment, but how applicable is it?  Overlooking the possibility of equality between a man and a god, one questions whether Jesus has, in fact, been a friend to his followers.   He consistently used them to serve his own ends, rarely considering their own interests, confiding in them, or soliciting their opinions.  And he brought Judas Iscariot, a crook, into their midst and blithely and unconcernedly allowed him to steal their money.  Some friend.  And, it should be pointed out, Jesus is not dying for his friends, but for some far greater purpose.

6.  Jesus claims that, in fulfillment of prophecy, he is hated without reason.  How could he possibly say that?  He shows up and challenges the religious establishment.  He more or less tells everybody who doesn’t believe in him that they are not only fools and idiots, but rejectors of God.  He makes the most extravagant and outrageous claim any man can make, that he is the Son of God, thereby setting himself above every man, as well as the priests, who are the ordained intermediaries between God and man.  He demands that people believe in him, and, if they don’t, they must hate God and are to be damned.  Did he really expect not to arouse any antagonism?

7.  Jesus does not spell out the future work of his disciples, but one assumes it is to evangelize, to spread his message and the belief that he is the Son of God.  He promises that to that end they will be endowed with the power to perform miracles.  We don’t know how that worked out, but there is scant reportage of miracles attributed to his disciples.  The Counselor will also impart to them knowledge of the future.  How they may have used that knowledge is unrecorded.

8.  The obtuse disciples never grasp the meaning of Jesus' allegories, analogies, and parables and complain about his not speaking directly and plainly.  Although he says nothing differently, they suddenly think he is now being literal when he says he has come from the Father and will return to him, exactly what he has been saying all along.  Even so Jesus still seems to want to tantalize his disciples and string them along with unexplained statements rather than being forthcoming.  But at the end of this passage the author has the disciples, for some reason, finally “getting it” and coming to believe Jesus.  If they didn’t believe before, why were they following someone who could otherwise only be an egregious charlatan?