The true Vine is Jesus

The true Vine is Jesus, our Savior and Lord,

And God is the vinegrower, faithful and true.

That Vine God is pruning in all good accord;

It bears faithful fruit that is freshening and new.

 

The true vine is Jesus, both faithful and sure,

And we are the branches, now cleansed by his word.

As branches we dwell in the Vine strong and pure,

And by that good nurture our fulness is stirred.

 

Remain and abide in our only true Vine

And we will bear fruit that gives life to the soul.

So Jesus is blessed when by God’s good design

We are true disciples, all fruitful and whole.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, April 2021, after John 15:1-8

MUSIC: Tune FOUNDATION, American folk melody; Funk’s Genuine Church Music, 1832; alt.

 

 

This reading for Easter 5B is often read as partly threat; what does not bear fruit is tossed away and burned. It becomes easy to miss the promise – abide in the vine and you will bear fruit. This hymn response to the scripture tries to emphasize the latter.

 

The stone was rolled away

The stone was rolled away that Easter morn, that day when death was slain, and hope was born.

Three followers had come at dawn’s first light, and what they saw and heard set them to fright.

The stone was rolled away that Easter morn, that day when death was slain, and hope was born.

 

A young man dressed in white sat to one side; he said, “You seek one who was crucified;

But Jesus is not here; he has been raised!” And so the three were frightened and amazed.

The stone was rolled away that Easter morn, that day when death was slain, and hope was born.

 

“He goes ahead of you to Galilee; he’s waiting there for you to come and see.

Tell his disciples all, and Peter too, to follow there and hear his call to you.”

The stone was rolled away that Easter morn, that day when death was slain, and hope was born.

 

This is the calling still, to us today: to follow Jesus on his saving way.

He bids us come so he new life can give; so will we follow Jesus Christ and live?

The stone was rolled away that Easter morn, that day when death was slain, and hope was born.

 

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, April 2021, after Mark 16:1-7

MUSIC: Tune VENITE ADOREMUS, Italian folk melody, Children's Praise, 1871

This one was a struggle from first idea to final form (for now). Only when this tune (mostly associated with a Christmas text in hymnals) somehow popped up randomly in my brain did the text begin to take shape. To me the great value of this particular Easter account is the open-ended quality of its seemingly unfinished narrative; the question is open to us, will we "go to Galilee?" Will we follow where Jesus has gone?