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Abiding Love – Easter 5 – May 2nd, 2021
1 John and the Gospel of John are likely not the same Johns. Sort of like I am not the same Whitney who rocked our radio stations in the 80s. But in the ancient days, a way of honoring someone was to write in their name. So whoever authored 1 John, if it wasn’t the same John, admired John and wrote in his name to honor him. I do this when I sing one of Whitney Houston’s songs or in a manner like her. I am honoring her.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus addresses his disciples explaining he shall be going away and abiding with our Father, but the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, shall help us abide in Jesus. Jesus gives the image of God as a vineyard gardener, Jesus himself as the grapevine, ourselves as the branches… and so, perhaps, the Holy Spirit is the nutrients, the sap, that flow through us all.
Jesus is reassuring us. The branches are separated from the vine – hanging down, apart – but they are still attached to the vine. Still residing, abiding, growing with the vine. He goes, but he stays. He is apart, but he is not.
This leads to interesting insights into our relationships – since relationships are the center of our faith. In this holy vineyard, each branch is choosing to abide with the vine and take in the vine’s offered life. Part of being a branch on the vine, and taking in its good nutrients, is producing good fruit. In other words, part of being a follower of Jesus is taking in the goodness and love of the Spirit, and then turning these into tangible, touchable, goodness and love fruits.
Along the vineyard is the Gardener, our God. God prunes the vine as God goes along. The Hebrew word for prune is also the word for cleanse. So we clean out gardens in the spring for new growth. God cleans out the vineyard for new growth. The branches who have chosen to not abide in goodness and love are removed. The branches who are producing good fruit are made clean, or pruned, to let them produce even more good fruit. The people who choose to live in goodness and love are encouraged and given more insight and opportunity to do more love and goodness. The people who choose to live in toxicity and hate are removed.
I don’t know what that means – removed. Some have said removed as in… not receiving Heaven. But it could mean just removed as in… not forced to associate with the other branches. I mean, I can think of plenty of Christians who I am ashamed I share a vine with. I could use some space until my love is perfected enough to love even those I dislike the most. Or all of this could be John’s way of reassuring and comforting his readers eventually those who hurt them would be punished.
I do know I see in this vine analogy a systems theory. I see a theory of how people act in a group.
A system is a group of relationships and how they interact with one another. Our households are a system. Our church is. Our community is. Our country. Our world. Relationship networks, or systems, like to be static. They resist change – they resist good change, and they resist bad change.
Consider your favorite grocery store. You know just where to get bread. Just where to get sugar. When you go in, you know where you are going. Well, one day you come in and the whole store has a new layout. You have to learn all over again where the bread is; and all over again where to find sugar. You might end up liking the new layout. You might hate it. Either way, when you first entered and saw that change – your mind said OH NO! No – no – no! And you felt a moment of resistance.
We do that in our relationships too. If we’re used to someone being nice and they have a moment of road rage, we’re way surprised. We might chuckle… and still hope they go back to being nice. If we’re used to someone always being cruel and they do something kind, we’re very suspicious. We predicted them to be mean, so surely the good deed must have something mean hiding in it.
The grocery store, the out of character actions, we resist change because a certain amount of predictability we humans need in our lives to get around. Children crave schedules – the predictability – because everything is novel and new to them. We love the novel, but not at the threat of having everything tossed up in the air.
See… the past year and a half. Everything was tossed up in the air and we craved knowing what’s going to happen. When will the virus be over? How is it spread? When can we go back to “normal?” After this long, this IS our normal. Changing to living without masks, without online shopping, without a digital church option will be … change. Not the normal. Weird, huh!
I read in our scripture that we’re called to live in a godly, Holy, Spiritual system. A system that is used to abiding in Jesus, full of life from Jesus, welcoming God to come into our lives to change things for the better, and producing the good love into the world that we’re receiving. This system is robust. It resists new toxic mildews. It is based on love, and accountability. Each branch is independent and unique, but is accountable to the other branches and the vine and the gardener for what they are doing with the gift of life. In our church system, this is us each loving one another and aiding one another thrive. This is us being the welcome fruit in our community. This is us welcoming the changes God brings into our midst and resisting the changes that urge us to forsake God, or Jesus – resisting the calls to hate, violence, or cutting ourselves off from the community.
1 John builds on this abiding imagery. The author’s words are… beautiful. I really cannot add to them. I can only highlight and paraphrase parts of them and invite you to go back and read 1 John again.
Let us love because to know love is to know God.
God is love.
God loves us first, loves us the most, and out of love made us, came to us, claims us, names us, love us.
To see God, love. To feel God, love. To abide and live in God, love.
Perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with punishment. You are being perfected in your love. Out of love, you are forgiven and there is not punishment to fear. There is love. Welcoming, abiding, over-flowing love.
We love because we are already so loved.
We cannot hate a brother or sister and say we love God. We can only see God, and have a relationship with God, through the love and relationships with have with one another. So to love God, you must love one another.
So this is the commandment we live by: Those who love God must love one another.
We are called to abide in a system made of love, that is love, and casts love about our communities. We are made for love. We are cleansed and pruned to love. We are planted for love. When we refuse to hate, and cling to the vine of love-filled life, we make our communities stronger to resist hate too. We resist a change towards exclusion, towards destruction, towards toxicity, towards defiling the very good creation God makes.
Jesus says he is the vine. We are the branches. God the gardener. The Spirit fueling us. The fruit the love we bear for our community, our ecosystem, to eat, live, and thrive too. Loving deeds. Loving words. Loving affirmation. Loving relationships. Loving forgiveness. Loving reconciliation. Loving restoration. Love as a verb, noun, an adjective of our existence.
For God is love.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 