The readings are (to read them, go HERE):
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:25-31
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Collect of the Day:
Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
Grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.
We just got word on Thursday that we can be back in church as of 10 May. It will be a blessed thing to be able to worship together again, in our church buildings. Yes, we will still have to wear masks, and socially distance, and abide by the guidelines we had before, but we will still be there, together. I will put out a schedule this coming week.
I just talked about abiding by Covid-19 guidelines. It means to follow them, to act in accordance with the guidelines we have been given for living safely in the midst of this pandemic. The readings this week use the word “abide” several times, but it means something much deeper than just following rules. It means to let something dwell in you so deeply, to become so much a part of you, that it changes who you are.
But in these readings, it is not some thing that dwells within us — it is God, in the person of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel reading, we hear Jesus speaking to his disciples. This is soon before he is going to die on the cross, and he is giving them instructions and reassurance. And so he says to them, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” He uses the analogy of a branch and a vine. The branch cannot live and bear fruit unless it is attached to the vine, unless it is rooted in a plant that gives it life and nourishment. So, too, Jesus is telling the disciples, and us — we cannot live, not really and truly live, unless we are rooted in him, unless the source of all our life and energy comes from him.
This is different than just following rules. It can be easy to think that being a Christian is just about following rules — do this, don’t do that, kind of like following the Covid guidelines. It can be easy to think that being a Christian is just about being “good.” But as Jesus once told his disciples, only God is good. Instead, being a Christian is about letting yourself be changed at such a deep and fundamental level that the ways of God come through you almost automatically. It becomes who you are. That is what it means to have Jesus Christ abide in you and you abide in him. You are tied to him, as a branch is tied to a vine. I think of various vines growing at the Rectory — ivy or grapes, for example. The branches and tendrils can be going everywhere, but all of them eventually can be traced back to one central plant, rooted in the ground.
Well, so how do we get to the point of Jesus abiding in us, and us in him? First of all, you have to want it, at some level of your being. It has to be important to you. Because you do have to make some choices to get there, choices that are probably easier not to make, because it’s easier to just keep going through life as we have been, letting life happen to us. You have to want it. Jesus says this to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.”
So in other words, if Jesus is going to abide in us, and we in him, we have to be pruned. Things have to be cut away. At the Rectory we have a grapevine, something we rescued from the middle of the old greenhouse, and planted it against a south-facing wall. Gradually we have trained it up against the wall. But we have to keep pruning it, cutting it back, for its own health and so that it produces better grapes.
For us human beings, life provides lots of pruning. Our desires and wishes often are not fulfilled in the way we would like. Sickness and tragedy and sorrow strike in various ways. Perhaps our businesses or jobs don’t go as we would hope. Pandemics strike, and we have to adjust in so many ways.
God can prune us through all these events. It does not mean that the events are from God — that God is punishing us, or sending us sickness or disappointment or financial ruin in order to teach us a lesson. But still there might be lessons there for us to learn. There are many lessons that Covid-19 could be bringing to each of us individually and to the whole human race, but that’s another sermon — or a book.
Yes, we might be pruned through all the events life throws at us, because often we don’t pay attention to how life might need to change until something hard happens to us. But the pruning that comes from God is to lead us to learn to rely on God in whatever way we most need to do. The pruning that comes from God is to lead us into more love: to love God, and to love our neighbour as ourselves — to use the words of what is called the Great Commandment.
We hear it in the First Letter of John, where again we hear that word “abide.” “God is love,” John writes, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In this passage, John writes several times about God abiding in us and us in God, and all of it is rooted in God’s love. “Beloved,” John writes, “let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
That is how we are pruned: to turn aside from everything that is not of love. It is not like obeying rules; it is simply (except it is not so simple to do) — it is simply to cast aside everything we might do, every thought we might have, that is not rooted in love. And this is like being pruned, because it is hard to do. Again John says, “those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
But the results are amazing. To let God’s love be rooted and grounded in us, to let God’s love abide in us, is to be transformed. That’s when it becomes automatic to live in the way that God would have us live. God’s love came to us in Jesus Christ — as John says, God “sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And if we accept it, that rids us of all that gets in the way of God’s love abiding in us.
Our first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, gives us an example of God’s love abiding in someone. It is the story of Philip, and the amazing things he does by the guidance of the Spirit. He teaches the Ethiopian in the meaning of the Scriptures about Jesus, he baptises him, and then he is carried off by the Spirit to preach the word of God in another place.
We may think such would never happen anymore. But it does. The Spirit of God can do amazing things through those who abide in God and who let God abide in them.
This is what we can do as the church of God. Let us return to church as a people who abide in Christ and who let Christ abide in us, and discover what the Spirit might do through us.