Trinity 8 – Crops in Danger

Crops in Danger

by Gianluca

 

For many of us, the holiday season brings exciting new experiences. We visit new places and try new activities. These pleasant changes, however, can make us more alert. Is the place we’re visiting secure? Can the children play unsupervised, or should we always keep an eye on them? When we stop during a trip, we ask ourselves, 'Is it safe to leave the car here with all our belongings inside?' In unfamiliar situations, there’s a lot to be cautious about. And I think that’s both natural and healthy. A sense of alertness helps us prepare for danger and avoid unnecessary risks.

But here’s what we often forget: most injuries and accidents happen not far from home, but in familiar settings. And when harm comes to us, it’s more often from people we know than from total strangers. We tend to exaggerate the danger of rare threats, while overlooking the risks that are most real and most present. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus draws our attention to this exact point. He warns that false prophets will come to us like wolves in sheep’s clothing, meaning they appear to be part of the flock. It means that the danger comes from within. The threat can be among us, without us even realising it. And as we’ll see, the threat comes from deeper within than we might expect - even from within ourselves. But more on that later.

Before we look at how Jesus helps us recognise these false prophets, it’s worth taking a step back. Because this wasn’t a new problem. False prophecy had been around for a long time - even in the days of Moses. Throughout history, people have tried to pass off their own ideas as divine truth. In the Old Testament, these self-proclaimed prophets are described in different ways: lying prophets, foolish prophets, false prophets, and soothsayers. Jesus could have chosen any of these terms. But what’s interesting is this: the specific term “false prophet” only appears in the book of Jeremiah. That Jesus used this exact phrase may suggest He had Jeremiah’s situation in mind. I hope you can remember this, for I’ll return to that idea later.

So what does Jesus say about recognising these wolves in sheep’s clothing? What should we look for?

Jesus says, “You will recognise them by their fruits.”

Now, if you’re familiar with this parable, you might not notice anymore how surprising that statement is. Think about it. What’s the most obvious way to spot a wolf pretending to be a sheep? You look at what it eats. Sheep eat plants. Wolves eat meat – and they particularly love sheep’s meat. If you ever see a “sheep” devouring another sheep, you know for sure: that’s no sheep - it’s a wolf in disguise. So, it would make sense for Jesus to say, “Watch what they consume.” But he doesn’t. Why? I suspect because Jesus is giving us clues to detect the wolves before they start feeding on the flock, before it’s too late. But notice how Jesus changes the parable and shifts the focus. Instead of talking about what the wolves devour, he speaks about what they produce. This unexpected turn shows us the brilliance of Jesus’ teaching. With thoughtful images and surprising twists, He keeps us alert and invites us to think more deeply.

Jesus’ clue contains a second surprise. When considering what false prophets produce, the expected answer would be the instruction to examine their teachings. If false, you will have unmasked the wolf. Jesus, however, directs our attention to something else, namely, their fruits. Why? I think because there is no need for Jesus to state the obvious. In addition, when we pay too much attention to a person’s preaching, we might be charmed or fooled by their wit. Instead, Jesus points us to a more reliable method by revealing deeper truths about false teachers and their doctrines.

With the statement “you will know them by their fruits,” Jesus provided a profound clue for recognising false prophets. It is, however, not an easy one, because the concept of a person’s fruit is broad. The image was often used by Jesus and by several Old Testament prophets, including Jeremiah. These references help us understand what He was getting at.

A person’s fruit encompasses both the person’s character, their deeds, teachings and the effects thereof. If a person has good fruit, it means that God’s work in that person was successful. When considering character development, the fruits of the Spirit come to mind: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. A person who lacks these traits has not been transformed by the Holy Spirit and is therefore not a messenger from God. The same is true for a person’s deeds. A person with good fruits is diligent, acts honourably and godly, with humility, honesty, justice, compassion and self-sacrifice. Finally, if a person claims to proclaim an inspired message, the lives of those who receive, believe and follow these messages should be transformed and sanctified. If they come to some knowledge of the gospel, but continue to live unsanctified lives, the fruits of the message are not good.

Jesus further clarified his point by asking the obvious question: "Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" The answer is, of course, no. Don’t expect a plant producing thorns to start producing grapes at some point in time. Patience is futile; you will not harvest fruit from thorny plants because it’s simply not their nature to make them.

Plants generally grow thorns to protect themselves, defending them from harm or being eaten. The contrast Jesus paints is clear: fruitful plants exist to give, to feed and nourish others. But thorny plants only have their self-interest in view. With their thorns, they hurt others. That’s the core difference. At heart, false prophets are self-interested. God’s people, by contrast, are self-giving.

There may be an even deeper reason Jesus chose this imagery. Thorns remind us of the Fall. In Genesis chapter 3, after sin entered the world, God said the ground would bring forth thorns and thistles. The presence of thorns is a sign that sin has taken hold. The Holy Spirit produces good fruit; sin produces thorns.

Jesus continues His teaching: "Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a diseased tree cannot bear good fruit." Did you notice the shift in the imagery? First, Jesus contrasted sheep and wolves, then fruits and thorns, but now healthy and sick trees, with good and bad fruit. And here’s a key insight: Jesus suggests there are different kinds of false prophets. The first kind is obvious. They may look like sheep on the outside, but up close, they are full of thorns, driven by selfishness, pride, and greed: they are wolves. But there is another kind of false prophet, which is harder to spot, because it belongs to the same species, so to speak, as the believers. They are only different from us because of the presence of a disease.

Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with plant diseases, but since Jesus used this image, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore. I started my study with the diseases affecting grapevines, but along the way, I realised it would have been more fitting to use fig trees as an example, because Jesus spoke about sick and healthy trees. Then I found out that they suffer from similar kinds of diseases. So I’ve decided to stick to the grapevines.

The most common problems in grapevines are caused by fungi. They can affect the leaves, causing their discolouration and rendering sunlight ineffective by blocking photosynthesis. This prevents the grapes from ripening properly. Some fungi attack early, before the grapes have even developed, while others only spoil the nearly ripe fruit; they strike at the last moment. Besides fungi, there are also pests, such as insects or worms, that attack the fruit, leaves or roots, weakening the entire plant. In every case, the result is the same: the fruit is ruined. In medical terms, we can refer to these as infectious diseases. And here’s the crucial point: they’re transmissible. They don’t just affect one vine - these diseases spread and threaten the whole vineyard.

I don’t know about you, but this is the first moment in Jesus’ parable that I started to worry about the threat of false prophets. I recognised the danger when Jesus spoke about the wolf-like character or thorny nature of some people, but saw it as a manageable risk. That’s because I think one needs to be quite vulnerable or inexperienced to be fooled by the typical wolf in sheep’s clothing. Now, that’s not to say we’re immune. Some of these predators are incredibly clever. And if life hits us hard, if we suffer loss, grief, or trauma, we could become vulnerable in ways we didn’t expect. But under normal circumstances, I don’t see them as very threatening to most mature Christians.

But this other kind of false prophet concerns me, because they are truly of our kind. They are fellow Christians who are expected to produce good fruit. But inside, there’s something else going on; whether they know it or not, they are infected by a disease that spoils their fruit. They are infected by teachings or passions that counteract the work of the Holy Spirit. Like those plant diseases, they are corrupted subtly, without being killed. And worse, their condition is contagious. It can spread to those who are healthy.

Let’s return for a moment to the diseases that affect grapevines. Does every contact with a diseased plant lead to infection? Thankfully, no. Fungi need a particular type of environment to thrive. They require heat, moisture and poor air circulation. Only then can they take root and spread. But a healthy grapevine, exposed to the sun, growing with enough open space, with a good breeze, and careful pruning has nothing to fear. The fungus won’t stand a chance.

And here, I think, the spiritual parallels are striking. When a person is not ‘warm’ or passionate about faith, but cold and absorbed with other matters, false religious teaching is probably not going to catch someone’s attention. Only if there is a genuine interest in learning more does false teaching that sounds just right and promises more have an appeal. Being passionate in our faith is good, of course, but we need to be careful that we’re not continually running after something new and spectacular. We need to be warm but not overheated.

Then, take the problem of poor air circulation. Spiritually, this can happen when we isolate ourselves inside a narrow circle - within a closed group of like-minded people who don’t welcome outside voices or fresh insight. It’s an environment where questions aren’t encouraged, where nothing more happens than recirculating the air that everybody has already inhaled, where trust in anyone outside has disappeared, and only people from within have authority. That’s the kind of setting where spiritual diseases flourish.

So what does a good vine grower, or vinedresser, do to protect the vineyard? This is a fascinating topic in its own right. It would make a fantastic theme for a spiritual retreat: How to tend a vineyard and discover the parallels with care for the soul. But just to mention a few essential practices: first, good positioning. Vines require direct sunlight without being shaded by other plants. Their orientation towards the sun is therefore crucial. Second, their spacing: they need room to breathe. Without space between them, the air can’t flow, and moisture builds up, creating the perfect environment for disease. Third, regular pruning. This means cutting away branches that don’t bear fruit, or that have already borne fruit, because in grapevines, they won’t do so again. It also means removing entangled shoots that drain the plant’s energy and hinder the flow of air. Pruning isn’t punishment, it’s care. It helps the plant focus its strength and avoid unnecessary contact with others that might spread infection.

In Jesus’ day, everyone knew that keeping a vineyard healthy required effort and constant, intentional care. The good news is this: with the proper attention, most diseases can be prevented.

But what if a vine becomes completely infected? What if pruning is no longer enough? Jesus gives us the hard truth: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And that’s precisely what vinedressers did in those days. When a plant was too diseased to recover, it was removed and burned to stop the disease from spreading. With those words, Jesus brings the parable to its end. We began with wolves: predators who want to consume us. We end with disease: something that creeps into healthy plants, consumes our best energy and spoils our fruit, even though we are the right kind of grapevine in the Master’s vineyard.

At the beginning of this sermon, I asked whether Jesus might have had the prophet Jeremiah in mind when He used the term false prophet. Now, I think we’re in a better position to explore that question.

In the time of Jeremiah, the people of Judah stood at a crossroads. They faced threats from two rival powers: Egypt and Babylon. Their future depended on which ally they chose. God gave Jeremiah a clear message: surrender to the Babylonians. That was the path of life. But other voices rose, false prophets who claimed the opposite. They insisted that God would protect His people and His temple, and that Babylon would never prevail. These weren’t outsiders. These false prophets came from within the community. They were respected leaders, even high-ranking priests, as we read in Jeremiah 20. They hadn’t rejected the truths of the past. They spoke of God’s nearness and protection. What they said sounded like a call to keep faith in God. Jeremiah, in contrast, proclaimed they the Babylonians would conquer their territory. That may have sounded like a message that God is not keeping His promises, to a superficial hearer at least.

The problem of the false prophets was that they failed to recognise the spiritual condition of the people. They could not see that deep sickness had taken root and was spoiling the fruit. In that state, God could no longer offer His protection. I would like to remind you of the Old Testament lesson for today, where we read: “They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” (Jeremiah 23:17) This teaching had consequences on the wellbeing of the people. To illustrate this, God gave Jeremiah a vision, which we read about in the following chapter:

“The Lord showed me this vision: behold, two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord. One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs - so bad they could not be eaten.” (Jeremiah 24:1–2) Then God explained: the people who would go into exile with the Babylonians would become the good figs. But those who stayed behind, those who trusted in Egypt and followed the advice of the false prophets, would become the bad figs. Indeed, history has taught us that the faith of many of those exiled people underwent an enormous development and flourished.

Ideas have consequences. The false teachers were thought to proclaim the true faith in God and in His protection, but they failed to point to the consequences of disobedience. Likewise, Jesus concluded His parable with the warning: ‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

The use of the term ‘false prophets’, the spoiled fruits, the call for obedience, aren’t the parallels between Jeremiah and Jesus’ parable striking? And there are many more. To deepen our understanding of Jesus’ warning about false prophets, studying the book of Jeremiah is incredibly helpful.

But now, having reflected on all of this, we must ask ourselves: How are we doing? Is something spoiling our fruit? Are ideas, habits or desires redirecting our energy, leaving little left for our growth in the image of God or for doing His work?

If you attend our services regularly, you’ll know that many of the Scripture readings during the Trinity season focus on the passions, the inner drives we must bring under God’s rule. Today, on the eighth Sunday after Trinity, the spotlight falls on the deadly sin of greed. This is fitting because greed is often a driving force in the false prophets.

But it doesn’t only affect them. It can affect any of us. And it can take many forms. Greed corrupts the good desires God has placed in us. For example, the desire to be recognised for our work or talents, when distorted, becomes a hunger for adoration, status and authority. The longing to make a positive difference can morph into a thirst for control or power. We need to identify these issues before they spoil God’s work in our lives. And here, Jesus’ teaching is invaluable. He reveals that sins like greed act like a disease in a plant, slowly sapping our strength, spoiling our fruit and are even a threat to our spiritual environment.

To remain healthy, grapevines need plenty of sunshine, just as we need the continual illumination of God’s Word. Not only by letting it be preached to us, as if we receive the sunshine by reflection, but also by immersing ourselves in it, like sunbathing.

Grapevines require space and an open environment, where the wind can circulate freely and do its work. I realise that the concept of ‘fresh wind’ is used for all kinds of new ideas and doctrines. That’s explicitly not what I’m talking about. The wind is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, who helps us to see Jesus, understand the gospel and guides our consciences. We must take care to grant each other space and room to grow, while remaining sensitive to each other’s needs. Sometimes, we need faith, prayer, and patience to let the Holy Spirit do His work, rather than hurrying to correct our brothers and sisters ourselves.

As the branches must remain firmly connected to the root of the vine so that the life-giving sap can flow, we must likewise remain connected to Christ, through our faith in Him, through prayer, through our partaking of Holy Communion and by being a member of His Body on earth, which is the Church.

And then there’s the need for regular pruning: the loving, careful cutting away of what no longer bears fruit. Growth requires continual change. Habits that were helpful in the past need to be developed in response to new challenges. Assumptions that worked may need further maturation. Ideas that were helpful first but begin to compete with what is more critical need to be archived. Distractions, speculations, and lesser priorities that interfere with walking with God, serving others, and acting honourably are a hindrance. Jesus’ lesson about the evils of false prophets, incidentally, reveals what matters most: that we thrive - that we bear fruit - that we do so abundantly, for the glory of God.

And here’s the best news of all: that Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” We are not alone. Through Christ, by His grace, we have become members of His household. God’s life-giving Spirit flows in us. And it is the Father Himself who tends us, to help us bear more fruit. So, why would you allow something to spoil your fruit? Why let something stand between you and Him, so that the sap doesn’t flow to you, or the sunlight doesn’t shine on you, or the fresh air doesn’t reach you? Remember to keep your eyes open for the dangers within, because these are most likely to cause harm. Why let greed take hold of you, fearing you will not get enough if you don’t pursue it with all your energy, while it is the Father Himself who will take care that you receive what you need and will bear fruit?

We are in good hands. Trust Him. Repent of your sin and obey Him. He will keep us healthy. If he has His way, we will produce abundantly.

Amen.