One of my treasured books as a child was a collection of Aesop’s fables. The book long ago disappeared along with other childhood items, but in it I first learned the story of the fox and sour grapes. The gist of the story, if you’re not familiar with it, is that the fox desires a bunch of grapes he sees but cannot reach. He decides the grapes were probably sour anyway and so not worth the effort to get them.
Though I’ve known the fable most of my life, I always thought “sour grapes” meant grapes that had gone bad, sort of the equivalent of rotten. Maybe you’ve always known what it meant, but this is news to me.
I could have figured it out if I had just thought about it. After all, most fruits get sweeter as they ripen. Sour grapes, therefore, are just grapes that have not ripened enough yet.
In John 15:1-8 Jesus goes into depth with a powerful metaphor around grapevines, something his listeners would have known quite a bit about.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything. (John 15:5, CEB)
Preachers love to build on that, and I am no exception. It never struck me until now, though of the implications of sour grapes in this context.
Jesus makes clear the need to recognize our dependence on him, the need for pruning, etc. His listeners would have also recognized that grapes don’t just grow on a vine. They ripen on a vine.
Likewise, we need to do more than simply connect with Jesus. It’s almost a cliche the number of people who come in the front door of the church (that is, “get saved”) followed by the number who go out the back door. If we are to thrive, we must deepen our discipleship. We must ripen.
Jesus explained this through the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:1-23. He talked about different soils that yielded different results from the same seed. The gospel is offered freely to all. Whether you benefit from it depends on how you receive it.
Along the same lines, Paul urged the Corinthians to mature in their faith. The birth of a child is cause for celebration, but if that child, for whatever reason, never grows up it just saddens us.
Let us seek to cultivate a deeper understanding of and relationship with the true vine so that we may ripen.