The True Vine

According to John 14:31, Christ said to the apostles at this point in the Passover evening, “Arise, let us go hence.”  This suggests that at this point they left the upper room where He had washed their feet and instituted the Sacrament, and they went out of the house.  We know that they ended up in the Garden of Gethsemane before the night was over, and from verses 30 and 36 of Matthew 26 we know that they went first to the Mount of Olives and then eventually to the garden.  John 18:1 indicates that it was at this point they entered the garden of Gethsemane, and so my guess is that all of John 15-17 happened either on the way to or at the Mount of Olives.  Assuming that they were at the Mount of Olives for John 15, then Christ must have been using the scenery to teach the apostles about being “the true vine.”  They would have been in the midst of olive trees with fruit and branches all around as He told them, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John 15:5).  By telling them that He was the vine, He was essentially telling them that He was the source of life for everything in the vineyard.  The message then is all the more powerful considering that here He would then “pour out his soul unto death” in this real vineyard in order to offer spiritual life to the whole world (Mosiah 14:12).  So as we consider our own responsibilities as “branches,” we must remember that Christ’s blood gave life to the vineyard and without it we would be powerless.  As He told them that night so the testimony reminds to us today: “For without me, ye can do nothing.”