This week in our daily readings, we are going to be looking at John 15: 10-17.  Today we are going to look at the world behind the text.  What is happening in the greater world and scripture?  

This teaching today comes after John 14 which is Jesus’ great teaching on the Holy Spirit.  John 14 is a passage that you will recognize, it’s one that is read at many funerals.  But it primarily deals with the coming gift of the Holy Spirit.  Chapter 15 deals with this concept of the vine and the branches. Jesus is the vine through which all of our life flows.  Chapter 16 deals with the work of the Spirit.  

So, as we talked about yesterday with Laity Sunday this part of John is pointing us to the importance and the power of the Holy Spirit within the life of the believer and in the life of the church.  It is the spirit that makes everything possible and that gives us our lives.  It is the spirit that allows lay folks to be faithful, that allows preachers to preach, that allows the church to be the church.  

We’ll talk more about this in the coming days, but this passage exists right in the middle of Jesus’ teaching about how we live, how we serve, who we are – He is the vine, we are the branches.  He is our life and that life is given to us by the Holy Spirit.  

Tomorrow we’ll look at what is actually happening in the passage. 

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