St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin
Fifth Sunday of Easter – April 29, 2018
V. Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: 1 John 4:7-21/John 15:1-8]
“I 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. . . . If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.””
At the turn of the last century the South African clergyman and spiritual writer Andrew Murray observed, “During the life of Jesus on earth, the word He chiefly used when speaking of the relations of the disciples to Himself was: ‘Follow me.’ When about to leave for heaven, He gave them a new word, in which their more intimate and spiritual union with Himself in glory should be expressed. That chosen word was ‘Abide in me.’ It is to be feared that there are many earnest followers of Jesus from whom the meaning of this word, with the blessed experience it promises, is very much hidden. While trusting in their Savior for pardon and for help, and seeking to some extent to obey Him, they have hardly realised to what closeness of union, to what intimacy of fellowship, to what wondrous oneness of life and interest, He invited them when He said, ‘Abide in me.’ This is not only an unspeakable loss to themselves, but the Church and the world suffers in what they lose.” [Daily Thoughts on Holiness] Ever since I came across Murray’s words I have thought about what he said, especially about the possibilities Christ-followers, the Church, and the world lose because we have not actualized the gift Christ offers to us. As I see the state of the churches I think that, like so many other things, we’ve not learned the lesson God wants us to learn and so our lives are so much less than what they could be or were meant to be.
The text of John chapter fifteen is a lesson in what it means to abide in God and God’s love through Christ. The reading today uses an organic metaphor to introduce us to abiding in Jesus. So in verses one to the beginning of verse five Jesus sets the stage with the vine (Jesus), the vine-dresser (God the Father) and the branches (us). In the second part of verse five through verse eight we learn the results of abiding – bearing fruit and giving glory to the Father – or not abiding in love. Now we’re brought to what this abiding really means. We move from need, to fruit, and in these eight verses, we come to understand love and the ultimate show of abiding – loving one another, living out the commandment to love as Jesus has, so Jesus’ joy may be in us and our joy may be complete.
What John does in this text is to reflect on the oneness, the unity, between the Father and Jesus. At the core is the use of the verb menein, to remain or abide. To abide means to dwell, to remain in a place. In the Hebrew scripture this word is used of God’s promise and counsel – it abides, that is, it isn’t transitory or changing. The New Testament builds on this concept of God’s immutability and John particularly stresses the new level of immanence – the word, by the way, is formed from the Latin equivalent of menein and its root is the word for dwelling or house (manse, mansion) – so there is also a new level of intimacy brought by Christ to the believer.
Jesus is saying, “live in me,” “dwell in me,” “be at home in me.” This is a powerful invitation to relationship, one that Julian of Norwich mirrors in the following passage from her Showings of Divine Love. “Also in this he showed me a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was generally answered thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding, “It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.” And so all things have their being by the love of God.” [Showing of Love Julian Bolton Holloway, translator, p. 8-9] Here we see the ‘oneing’ that Julian celebrates throughout her touching, wonderfully profound and fruitful book.
As she contemplates this wonder of all creation she comes to understand something else, there are three proprieties to it. “In this little thing I saw three properties: The first is that God made it; The second that God loves it; The third that God keeps it. But what is this to me, truly, the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, I cannot tell. For, till I am substantially oned to him I may never have full rest, nor true bliss; that is to say until I be so fastened to him, that there be right nought that is made between my God and me.” [p. 9] The remarkable thing is that these are the properties of creation – not external to it – so all that is is because of God. We are to abide in God because it is that abiding which gives us life and, as Julian says, we will never know full rest nor true bliss until there is NOTHING between our God and ourselves. Note, too, that the Maker, Lover, and Keeper corresponds to the economic concept of the Trinity, so all of creation reflects the life of the One God in Three persons who makes, loves, and sustains the world and all that is in it.
Jesus says, “Abide 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.” The follower of Jesus is thus to become an “abider,” a resident, if you will, who sets-up housekeeping in God’s love shown forth in Jesus’ life and teaching. So, a disciple abiding in love does something as Jesus does something to show his abiding in the Father. Jesus lives his life in conformity to the will of the Father in unselfish, loving service and this love is what witnesses to the Father. He bears fruit – the fruit of LOVE. Love, then, is the action; love that is self-giving, other-focused and which builds-up and reconciles. Jesus lives this love and the Father is glorified in that living. The harvest is rich.
As Murray pointed out, many Christians get stuck at the point of “belief,” They give an assent to what they see as Jesus’ teaching, but don’t move to that next level, which someone called “beloving.” This is the point being made in the Epistle lesson, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them...We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Believing leads to beloving and beloving leads to behaving. If we have taken up residence in God’s love it’s simply going to show in our actions and in our attitudes. We can’t love God and act in a hateful manner at the same time – they are simply mutual inconsistent.
I know it’s easy to say we should do this and that the hard part is the “how.” To my mind we come to abide in Christ and keep his commandment of love by doing three things: by study, by prayer, and by service. We learn to abide by dwelling, remaining, in the teaching Jesus and his followers have left us – study. The “oneing” Julian talks about is the abiding of the gospel text and the goal of prayer. In prayer, she says, “our will should be turned, rejoicing, into the will of our Lord.” As she says, “the fruit and the end of our prayer is to be one and love our Lord in all things.”
Third, we come to abide in Christ’s love through service. It is only natural that once we’ve studied and prayed that we do something – study and prayer give rise to action. Service can take on many forms, including our attendance in worship (“divine service”), seeing to the needs of the poor and less fortunate, and ministering to others’ spiritual needs. If we want to keep the fabric of our lives together growing and flourishing then all of us have to help – and not look for “ways out” when someone is calling us to ask us to do something. The list of potential means of service is endless, what’s important is for us to remember that all of our life is to reflect God’s glory. Our chief service is to live as a child of God, as part of the people of God. Whenever we act as a child of God we’re showing forth service.
Our coming to abide reflects what Julian saw as the making, loving and keeping of the world by God. We come to abide by study – making, by prayer – loving, and by service – keeping. If we do these things we will, over time, come to experience the wonder of what it means to dwell in God and to be “oned” with God. To know, as Julian said, “to be so fastened to him that there is nought/nothing between my God and me.” Being oned with God is coming to the fullness of awareness that God indeed dwells within us and we in God.
Today we conclude with a little prayer of Julian’s. Pray with me, please: “God, of Thy goodness, give me Thyself, for only in Thee have I all. Amen.”