I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, March 18, 2012 as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John. The text is John 15:1-9; read it here.
If last week’s text was about Jesus leaving,
this week’s text is about Jesus staying.
This week I was working in St. Lydia’s little cubicle over in the Brooklyn Creative League where we have our offices, and Rachel, who was writing the weekly update, looked up from reading the text for this week and said, “Did you know that the word ‘abide’ occurs eleven times in this passage?”
And I said, “why yes I did,” because the day before, I was reading a commentator who wrote, and I quote, “The work of the vineyard...is abiding...The word ‘abide’ is repeated eleven times.”
Okay, so leaving, staying.
In a little while, you will no longer see me.
Abide in me as I abide in you.
But the sort of incredible thing about this word, “abide,”
is that it has the same root as the word we encountered last week
for “dwelling places.”
As in, “In my father’s house, there are many dwelling places.”
“In my father’s house, there are many abiding places.”
“Abide in me as I abide in you.”
The text also gives us this image of the vine.
Jesus is the vine,
we are the branches.
And God -- God is the vine grower.
I spent Saturday in Allentown Pennsylvania with a bunch of Lutheran bishops from this region talking about fruit, and vines, and pruning. And the ways in which an institution’s organizational systems (in this case, the Church), can sometimes begin to impede that institution from bearing fruit.
It’s hard to talk about pruning.
Even though we all know that pruning is necessary for the health of the plant,
it feels somehow violent to take out our shears and lop off a branch or two.
Even the branches that are bearing fruit,
Jesus tells us,
are pruned to bear more fruit.
We come out of this whole Christianity thing
as changed people:
altered people.
Fundamentally different from who we were before.
St. Lydia’s is currently embarking on a process to create our own organizational system --
a governance system that will allow us to make decisions together as a church.
And we’ve talked about how to create a system that will help us bear fruit.
That will help keep us focused,
not on our bank account balance,
or on maintaining a building,
or creating lots and lots of programs at the church,
but on our purpose.
The reason we exist as a community.
And I think this text provides us with a sort of compass as we go forward.
If we, as a community, are not bearing fruit,
then we’ll know that something needs to be pruned.
And when we are bearing fruit,
we can tell that we’re properly aligned:
That our community and the work that we do together
is a branch that’s growing from a vine
that is coursing with life.
My mentor Doanld,
who many of you met a few weeks ago,
goes around and visits a lot of congregations.
All kinds of congregations worshipping all sorts of ways.
And when Donald visits,
he doesn’t look for a particular type of worship
or a particular style of preaching.
He asks one question:
“What’s alive here?”
“What’s alive here?”
What’s alive?
In this community that we’re building together?
What’s alive for you?
In your life inside and outside these doors?
What’s alive?
In your daily life,
in your work, as you live out your vocation?
What’s alive?
And what feels dead, disconnected, withered on the vine?
What needs to be pruned so that you,
so that we,
can bear more fruit?
I think we all know, instinctively, what makes us feel alive.
But the withered branches -- sometimes they’re harder to detect.
Sometimes we even protect them:
You can’t have everything,
we might tell ourselves.
Or,
Nothing’s perfect.
Here’s the good news of this gospel:
We can all be alive.
Because, just as Jesus is leaving,
he’s staying, at the same time.
After all, the word “abide” occurs eleven times in this passage!
The whole Gospel,
he’s been trying to figure out ways to tell us about it --
to explain to us what it means.
That he can leave and be with us at the same time.
That he is life,
and that,
in this crazy, upside-down way,
we can take that life in,
right into our bodies so that he abides in us,
and somehow, in the backwards logic of the gospel,
we abide in him.
It’s the water that he offers the Samaritan woman.
“I am the living water. If you drink this water you will never be thirsty.”
It’s the bread that he feeds the crowd on the hillside.
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger.”
It’s the true vine.
And we are the branches,
wound and tangled around a vine
that offers nourishment and sustenance.
Without it we would wither and die.
And it’s all held together by love.
As God has loved me,
So I have loved you.
Abide in my love.
Live in my love.
What does is look like
to climb inside love
and live there?
What does it look like
when love climbs inside you
and lives there?
The water, the bread, the vine.
A God who prunes away what is dead
so that what is alive might bloom.
What does it look like?
Comments