Trinity Parish

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May 21, 2006

Anne Jensen - May 21, 2006

Rev. Anne Jensen - Trinity Parish
Easter 6B John 15:9-17, 1 John 4:7-12

One of the ways we sanctify time is to connect with the seasons of the year through prayer. The next 3 days, the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, which is Thursday are rogation days. Rogation comes from the Latin rogare to ask. In this case it refers to the intercessions for the harvest, originally for preservation of the crop from mildew. Thursday is Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter. Jesus ascends is to heaven, marking the end of the post-Resurrection appearances and the exaltation of Christ to heavenly life. The significance of this is that his human nature is taken into heaven. The Episcopalians and the Lutherans are jointly sponsoring an Ascension Day Evensong at Stanford Chapel at 7 PM on Thursday.

There is an old prayer that includes the words, “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning: grant us to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them."

The words we heard from John’s gospel and the first letter of John are words that should be emblazoned on our very souls, so essential are they to Christian faith and life. "Love one another as I have loved you." Truly they are words to live by.

Now, I’ll complain about the people who put the lectionary together: What were they thinking to give us so much rich material all at once, and then leave out the main metaphor of the vine?

Back to the gospel: We need a little background to help us grasp what Jesus is saying. Just before our reading for today Jesus say to the disciples: “I am the true vine, and my father is the vine grower. He continues, “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. 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…My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Our reading for today begins here: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

The image of the vine makes it much easier for us to understand what Jesus was saying to his disciples and by extension to the Christian Community of John’s time, around 90 AD and to us, even today. There is a flow from Jesus to us, just as life flows through the vine to the fruit; without that source of life the fruits will wither along with the branches. Today’s reading is an exposition on what it is to be the branches of the vine. Abiding in Jesus and his love leads to the fulfillment of Christ’s joy, which in turn becomes our joy and leads us to obeying the commandments and the continuation of Jesus’ work. All this points to the conclusion: Love one another. The reading from John’s epistle is an elaboration on the importance of loving one another.

Many words shimmer in this passage, words reaching out to grasp our hearts and minds, words that call us to prayer: “Abide in my love.” “I have called you friends.” “…that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” “I chose you.” “Go and bear fruit.”

I am struck by the intimacy and passion of these words. If another human being said these words to us, how would we react? Would we be embarrassed…or disbelieving…or overwhelmed that so much love was coming our way?

At the very heart of this passage is God’s love. We can love; we are able to love because God loved us first. And when the people of Israel couldn’t understand this, God sent Jesus to make it apparent… “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This self-giving love is at the heart of our faith; it is the foundation of the Resurrection and our redemption. It is cause for awe and the source of our celebration.

Jesus made the disciples into a society of friends. This is what Jesus invites us into. This commandment took on reality for me when I was preparing to leave Minnesota to go to seminary. I had a circle of friends I cared for deeply, intimate and loving friends. I had to leave, and leave-taking is hard for me; I expect it is for most people. I was driving home one day, thinking about how I going to say good-by. Suddenly I thought, “I can’t be here to love you; love one another for me.” I was startled when I realized my thoughts echoed Jesus’ words. I knew in a whole new way what Jesus was saying. Perhaps those words had unconsciously taken root in my soul.

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Love comes through the trunk and into the branches; we are loved into a condition in which we become stems to reach other branches; more leaves, then blossoms and ultimately fruit.

There’s a connection between bearing fruit and loving our brothers and sisters. The fruit we bear will be signs of our love for others. This is not a lady bountiful approach to charity so much as it is recognizing our connectedness to the other branches on the vine. We need each other.

Yesterday I was listening to the interviews of the candidates for presiding bishop. One of the candidates is the Bishop of Louisiana. He told of his being only a mile from the highway on which people, including his family, were being bussed out of New Orleans. He could hear the traffic and the helicopters overhead. He was powerless and bereft. He called a friend to come pray with him and he got through the night. A few days later he heard the words from a government official, “Those people down there have to realize…” One of the black pastors turned to him and said, “You ever been one of “Those people” before? He shook his head and said, “No.” The pastor said, “Welcome to the club.” The bishop continued, “Then the calls started coming in from the brothers and sisters in faith, saying, “What do you need?” He experienced conversion. He said his had not been a prophetic ministry; he has repented of that. He sees with new eyes what it is to love as Christ loves us; it is to be in the world for the sake of the least of our sisters and brothers.

It is God’s good pleasure that we abide in love so that we can produce fruit and Jesus says that in doing so our joy will be complete.

So why do we live selfish and distracted lives? Richard Foster points out what we all know from our own lives. “We dash here and there desperately trying to fulfill the many obligations that press in upon us. We jerk back and forth between business commitments and family responsibilities. When we are busy responding to the needs of a child or spouse, we feel guilty about neglecting the demands of work. When we respond to the pressures of work, we feel we are failing our family.”

We become like bruised or broken branches. We are not fully connected to the source of life. God must be at the center of our lives. If we replace God at the center, substituting things like success, family, money or any thing else, we cut ourselves off from life itself.

Being connected to the source is abiding, a continuous condition rather than the filling station mode of getting a quick fill up and moving out until we’re running on fumes again. Abiding provides for a mutual indwelling. This mutual indwelling is found in scripture—it is both a source for nourishment and a resting place. Abiding is living constantly in the presence of God. Such living is constant prayer. Trust in his love and keep the commandments to love and enjoy his presence. Every Sunday we celebrate the Eucharist. In communion we give ourselves to the Lord and Jesus gives himself for us in the bread and the wine. This is the very essence of abiding…mutual indwelling, that he may dwell in us and we in him.

Nurtured and fed, we are appointed to go and bear fruit. Go out and love your neighbor, beginning with your family, our church family, our places of work and ultimately the world. Love is not always easy. It takes time. It takes commitment and energy, and often producing fruit requires money. We are called to be among people as a witness to God’s love for all people, reaching out to those who would be astounded that Jesus would know their name or care: the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised, the outsiders, the lonely and the desperate.

Love one another as Christ loves us.