Abiding

[I was not particularly happy with this, but some others found it helpful.]

May 13, 2012

John 15:9-17

John McNeill

Liturgical caledar Sunday is the “Festival of the Christian Home” coincides with Mother’s Day.  I can’t say that I know the thinking behind this. In some ways it broadens out the theme for reflection.

Both of these themes as observances put us in mind of a sort of romantic or idealized notion of the home as a place of refuge from a troubled world. A place infused with a motherly, nurturing, grace-filled spirit. Protected place of peace.  A place of innocence and safety.

Whether or not such a place has actually existed in our experience – in the homes we are creating in our lives today or the homes we have experienced in our lives, I think there is something noble about honoring the idea or the aspiration of havens of nurturing grace. Households of love and forgiveness, households of safety. Nests in which the weak are sheltered and encouraged.

The world can be a rough place. We can be bruised and discouraged and threatened. Why shouldn’t we desire a home in which we find a motherly love that beckons us with love, guidance, and room to grow?

And mindful of that sensibility, let us return to our reading from John’s Gospel.  Jesus and the disciples are in just such an intimate frame as we find them this morning. Jesus is creating in his presence a place of love, guidance, and room to grow for the disciples who surround him.

·         This passage is in what is known as the Farewell discourse – several chapters in John’s Gospel in which Jesus talks with his disciples to prepare them for his departure, for his death.

·         Takes place in the Upper Room on the evening before his crucifixion as they have gathered for the Last Supper.

o   They know something is up. The tone has changed.

o   Jesus tries to prepare them

o   Emotionally intense time: have figured out that Jesus is about to leave them. They are coming to what they must think of as the end.

o   Goes on for several chapters of very closely structured verses of instruction.

·         A few words about how things work in John’s gospel:

·         Circles of concepts

o   Not logical

o   Kaleidoscope of the concepts in  images and associations

·         This passage follows directly on from last week’s lesson

o   Jesus talking to the disciples about the vine

⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, you are the branches.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 

In our passage this morning, Jesus addresses his departure by connecting:

1.       Abiding & Love

2.       Joy & Commandment

3.       Friend & Fruit

                Return to abiding & love.

1.       Begin with abiding and love.

                The disciples are concerned about Jesus leaving them and so Jesus addresses the question.  How can we remain together?

                Loving & Abiding is not a common word in most of our vocabularies, but it is a central concept in John’s Gospel.  Jesus says “Abide in me.” What does that mean?

                Stay in me and I will stay in you. (Connectedness of the branch. Love is the power that connects.) Restful and peaceful.

                Abiding and love is the first connection.

2.       What will that lead to?

                In the face of separation, Jesus wants to make sure that his followers will have not only connectedness, but also joy.  That leads to a commandment. Joy and his commandment goes together for Jesus.  That might be surprising and we might see this as somewhat unexpected.

                Now, thinking back to that nurturing, grace-filled home that we talked about earlier, do we understand that to come about by more rules? Is it a product of stricter and stricter rules?

                Of course, there are people who believe that what is needed are more and more rules. We read about them in the Bible. In Jesus’ day they were known as the Pharisees.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that there is no place for rules, laws, or commandments. But the kind of nurturing, grace-filled atmosphere we were thinking about earlier is not created by more and more rules.

What ever rules or understandings or agreements people live together by need something behind them or beyond them that is even more important. And so Jesus offers a commandment that gets behind the rules one might propose: Jesus says “Love one another.”

Jesus is not saying feel a certain way, but rather as he goes on to explicate it he says,

15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

Now, Jesus is referencing his approaching death, and he is telling his disciples that the quality of their love for each other is to be of the same quality of his love for them: love one another as I have loved you.

But: let’s not be distracted by this very particular and dramatic sort of laying down one’s life. None of us, or certainly not very many of us – I hope – are going to be in a situation in which we will have to die so that others will live.

Instead let’s think of the ordinary situations in which one is given the opportunity to set aside one’s own preferences on behalf of someone else. The more ordinary situation or example of people loving one another is that they regularly give up their preferences for one another so that everyone has a turn for their preferences.

There are clearly at least two ways to go wrong on this: If we think of two persons, let’s call them Sally and Sam. If Sally is always giving up her preference for Sam’s preference, is that loving Sam? No, because Sam is bit by bit becoming less able to love. Less able to give up his preference and so is a less nurturing and grace-filled presence. He is less and less able to create with Sally an arena of love. That is not good for him, let alone Sally.

This commandment is really about how we create more of an atmosphere of love. We do that by being ready to give up our life – that is our preferences to live and be cooperative with others.

No detailed set of order is going to bring this about. What is required is a sensitivity, an open heart, open eyes and an awareness of those around us that seeks to create that nurturing, peaceful atmosphere we talked about before.

Jesus is saying: Be my people, live in my house, live the way I live. Dwell in me, it is required to live that way if you are going to live in a way that you will abide/remain in me.

                What is Jesus’ joy? Jesus says that he wants his joy to be in us.

                Jesus’ commandment is really about how to find joy. Oneness, connectedness, peace, with him. It’s about finding joy TOGETHER, which is the only real  joy there is. If you’re joyful and everyone else around you is sad, there’s a problem. You’re disconnected from the people around you.

                So joy is only possible if we set aside all those things that would divide us, make us anxious. That would disconnect us from one another and from Christ.

                Christ is inviting his follower to open themselves up so that he can dwell in us and we can dwell in him. Becoming freed from allowing our preferences and prejudices come between us and our companions and the joy Christ is offering.

Do we feel at peace in this world? Can we enter in? Jesus is inviting us to something we can create together as we follow the commandment to Love one another.

3.       We have seen Jesus connecting loving and abiding, and connecting his commandment to love one another and joy. Now Jesus invites us to be friends and bear fruit.

Jesus distinguishes between those he calls servants and friends. Servants do not understand what is going on. Friends do. It may be that now that Jesus has laid out over several chapters how things are, they are now in a position not to simply follow orders, but to join in creatively with the project into which Jesus is leading them.

Jesus is leaving  them, but the project is not over. The vine is not dead; it still connects the branches to life and it still pulses with the love sent through those branches to produce fruit – an abundance of God presence, peace presence, joy presence, grace presence spreading farther and farther.

As we said last week that fruit is the reality of is that we actually become the people God has created us to be and do the things that God is calling us to do.

Fruit is how we are and what we do.

How we are: what qualities of spirit and character do we grow among ourselves. Are we taking on the qualities that St. Paul tells us are the fruits of the spirit?

They are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

These fruits of the Spirit lead to what we do: pray, learn, serve others, promote justice and fairness, strengthen the weak, encourage the disheartened, reach out to the lonely.

And even in our differences, we remain connected to each other because we are connected to Christ. As long as we are connected to Christ we are connected to Christ for Christ is the vine and we are the branches.

 If we stay connected we will produce fruit. If we don’t, we are useless for the purposes of God’s vineyard, God’s kingdom, God’s way of life that is taking shape in the world.

These are the qualities that make for a home in this world: a nurturing, grace-filled, protected place that is a testimony to God’s creative goodness and blessing.

We nurture that place in our homes, our neighborhoods and right here as we worship and pray. As we learn and reach out in intentional living and service. Connected to God. Connected to each other, and connected to the world as extensions of the vine of Christ’s love. The branches of vines have an amazing way of getting places one would never expect.

Jesus moves from love and abiding to joy and commandment to friends and fruit, which arrives back to the theme of last week’s passage: that we are connected. We are branches that are connected by the vine that is Christ so that we may bear fruit. That we might be the fruit of God’s love and grace and be the expanding reality of God’s presence in the world.