5th Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2009
John 15:1-8; I John 4:7-21
(Sermons to myself)
May 10th. Mother’s Day. Here in Michigan, Orioles and Hummingbirds return this weekend as the new sprung flowers lend nectar in a welcome feast. The garden begins to offer a verdant playground for nesting and hatching young ones. Fawns and goslings on the move stay close to their source of life. Mothers and Gardeners, the Creator God and Divine Vinegrower, are one in being life givers in this season. In the midst of all the visible reminders of our mothering, life-giving, gardening God, we have today’s lectionary passages to help us remember the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
I’ve come to realize that the disciple John, who is credited as the author of today’s gospel and epistle lessons, was one of the first Christian mystics. If indeed the author is the same John who was a fisherman, attuned to the seasons and knowing God in the common things of life through hard work on land and sea; if this is the same disciple who along with his brother James was called “son of thunder” for some reason that might have to do with being loud, forceful and imposing; if this is the same disciple who again with his brother asked for places of honor and prestige along side Jesus when his Kingdom comes, then for all his humanness we may have someone who knows about our own human inclinations today. And yet, this may be the same disciple who leaned close to Jesus, listening for the heartbeat of God, who was drawn into the deeper ways of residing in the love of God because of Jesus. If this is the author of our readings for the day, we also know that he probably outlived is fellow followers. He lived in exile. He saw his brothers martyred. He saw the persecution and the divisive struggles of the fledgling church. In waiting for Jesus’ return he began to contemplate the meaning of this God event in the person of Jesus, and what the struggling straggling followers were to do about it. The “son of thunder” went mystic.
The gospel passage from John 15 is set in the long discourse of Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed. They are part of the important last words to the disciples. In listening to the Word, Lectio, for the day, one could focus on fruit, its production, pruning, gardening or a sense of judgment in lack of fruit production. All of that may have its value. For this hearer today, John 15, in combination with the epistle lesson, clearly draws my attention and my heart, to these words: “abide” (used 13x in the 2 passages), “love” (used 27x in I John 4:7-21).
I imagine John the mystic, in solitude, in quiet contemplation, having come to place in relationship to God through Jesus wherein his life in union with God is all about God’s love. And God’s love is made evident in people as they live love; live God. This is God-life, to abide in God, to abide in love. The greek, menein, translated “abide” means to “remain”. Life is dependant upon remaining connected to the vine, or Jesus, the true or the “real” vine, the genuine article, from God. God, the gardening vinegrower tends the vine upon which the branches are dependant in order to produce life, fruit, vitality. That only happens when the branches abide in, remain connected to, the real vine.
How often is it that I tend to think I know best and proceed to do my own thing, my own way with hopes that God blesses what I do, regardless of whether or not that “thing” is rooted in God. I want to be the vine. Or at times, I want to be the Vinegrower. My ego, my thoughts, my activity, good and grand as they may be, go their own way, become disconnected from its life source. I attempt to live alongside of God, but not IN God. We like to be “close” to God, feel “close” to Jesus, but this passage clearly says we must abide in, remain in, the life-giving genuine source of God we experience in Christ. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Union with God, this mystic abiding, residing, remaining in the one in whom we live and move and have our being is not simply a nice thought. It is the essence of life. Whatever we hope to be or produce in this life is dependant upon residing in the One from whom life comes. That’s it. There is no coming and going, plugging into God only when it fits the schedule or is convenient, unplugging after morning worship or devotions. Abiding, remaining, is staying with God even as God remains always, abiding with us.
And “abiding” comes down to love. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (I John 4:16) This mystic sweet communion, being one with God as in Jesus’ prayer (John 17:21), is rooted in love, God’s love. We love because God first loved us. This is the steadfast loving (hesed) God sung in the Psalms and proclaimed by the prophets toward God’s beloved wandering, complaining, disobedient, unfaithful, sons and daughters of Israel. That steadfast love of God in the greek became translated as agape, self giving love. For the mystic John, this agape, this love that is of one willing to lay down their life in behalf of another, is God love, God life, essential to being in God and abiding in God’s life.
Abiding in God is abiding in love. Residing in love. God is love. Its all about love; living in it, loving God.
How do I love God? How do I fully and completely live in God? How does this residing, abiding, remaining in love, in God, operate? I believe this residence is not simply in one’s thinking, in one’s head. It is more than thought, it is more than Godly, or loving acts or activity. It is more than some formula or form. Residing is a consciousness, in which body, mind, spirit, all things and all times are infused with the holy, with love, with life, with the presence and essence of God.
Is it possible to have such mindfulness, an openness to wonder and awe, at all times? To be awake to God’s abiding presence and love at the break of day, in the midst of chores, in weariness, in gratitude, in every moment, in every encounter, in every person – lovely and unlovely alike? If such a consciousness were possible, it would be the true reign of God, the realm of God, God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. If I could so abide in God, in love, made evident in the way I love others, how I love the world, the cosmos, as God does, all and everything…what would I be like? What would my experience in this life be like? How might everything around me be transformed? Oh to be so awake to God.
Beloved, let us love one another…for love is of God, God is love, and those who love abide in God and God abides in them. We know this when we love each other. We know God, love, especially when love is real; real hard, or real painful, or real overwhelming in its grace and forgiveness. That is the beginning of abiding in the love of God. If nothing else, love. It is the essence of life in God, of remaining, abiding, of life.
Oh God of love,
Oh God who will not let me go,
as you abide with me and in me,
may your Spirit of wisdom and grace,
your Spirit of love and life,
help me abide steadfastly in you,
you, the source of life.
You, Abiding Love.
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