Easter 5 Year B 2015 Sermon. Abide by Mary James Texts: Acts 4: and John 15: 1-8

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1 Easter 5 Year B 2015 Sermon Abide by Mary James Texts: Acts 4: and John 15: 1-8 I sometimes wonder if we take Jesus for granted in a way that his earliest followers did not. This came to mind for me when I was reading a daily meditation piece written by Father Richard Rohr, one of today s great Christian spiritual writers, called Early Christian Values. I recommend anything and everything he has written, by the way! On Monday last, he offered some thoughts about how closely the earliest followers of Jesus and their immediate spiritual descendants sought to follow the way of Christ. Father Rohr wrote: Much of what Jesus taught seems to have been followed closely during the first several hundred years after his death and resurrection. As long as Jesus' followers were on the bottom and the edge of empire, as long as they shared the rejected and betrayed status of Jesus, they could grasp his teaching more readily. Values like nonparticipation in war, simple living, inclusivity, and love of enemies could be more easily understood when Christians were gathering secretly in the catacombs, when their faith was untouched by empire, rationalization, and compromise. None can deny the profound impact of the life of Jesus on all of us; here we are, so very long after he lived, seeking to live up to his example and to respond to the call he places before us. But I wonder: have we, in our distance from him in time, in social status, and in level of comfort and affluence perhaps lost touch with the depth and urgency and now-ness of the challenges he so lovingly

2 placed before humankind, for all time? Friends, it would seem so, wouldn t it? I think we have to say yes to this implication in Richard Rohr s message from last Monday. Father Rohr invites us to ponder this, so that we may become more wise and discerning in our walk through life as persons of faith. The description in our reading from Acts this morning of the caring and benevolence of the early church is quite moving, isn t it? What powered this great outpouring of sharing and mutual concern? The key is in the center of the passage: we are told that the apostles shared their experience of Jesus resurrection with great power, and that great grace was upon them all. No wonder, then! They had had that direct experience of living, teaching and healing sideby-side with Jesus. They had a deeply personal experience of the tragedy and trauma of his death, and the direct experience of Jesus astonishing presence after his death. How could they not be as passionate, as confident, as bold to share all that they were and all that they had, given their proximity to the unforgettable person of Christ? Have you ever encountered anyone fresh out of a powerful and transformational experience? I think of the several times a group of us from there have attended General Synod, the nearly week long biannual gathering of the national setting of the United Church of Christ. After days of immersion with thousands of committed pastors, delegates, and visitors of faith, worshipping together in magnificent and creatively adorned settings, experiencing powerful preaching, thrilling music, hearing gifted and committed luminaries share their visions for the church, and attending riveting workshops for days with a great diversity of humanity, we come back from this gathering pretty pumped up!! And those of you who have not been

3 there kindly put up with our vast enthusiasm, and the fact that we can t stop talking about how great it was for weeks to months on end. It is true, there is nothing like that first-hand experience; I truly hope we ve been able to give you enough of a sense of that for you to know what an amazing denomination we are privileged to belong to. But, time passes.realities intervene.contingencies arise.and the intensity fades. Maybe this is a little bit the way that we allow ourselves to slip in and out of our mindfulness about living according to the teachings of Jesus. It seems as though he s not standing right here to pump us up and remind us.so.we get a bit lukewarm about it all. Our passage from John can help us a lot here. This passage is actually part of John we know as the Farewell Discourse. It is Jesus speech to his followers to prepare them for his physical absence-- the speech with which, in essence, he seeks to pump up the disciples with as much grace, blessing, inspiration and reassurance as he can muster. He knows they need all this to be the beloved community he calls them to be, and to carry out their ministries in his imminent absence. It is a bang-up speech, a must-read, a hugely deep well of living water for life! In it, Jesus promises his love, and his continuing presence in the form of the Holy Spirit, who will teach them everything they need to know. He gives his peace. He says there is nothing to be afraid of. A key to receiving these magnificent gifts, he urges, is to abide in him as he abided in them. Abide. The message is for all Jesus followers for all time: Abide in Jesus, and you will bear fruit. Abide in him, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish. Abide in him, and all that you need will be given to you---the real stuff you need when the world seems to hate you--- probably not so much stuff like Hey, Lord, let the Red Sox win. (Ok,

4 I said probably not, but maybe I am wrong there.) When we feel that we are many centuries away from Jesus, or many layers of social strata and privilege away from him, when we are so comfortable that we can t feel the urgency of his message (because it is as urgent as it ever was), let us seek to abide in him. Not simply remember him, though this is crucial as well, but to abide in his living, continuing, promised presence. Abiding is very important in John s Gospel. The verb appears forty times in John, and it is a life-giving notion for that struggling and possibly persecuted community. It offers an assurance of God s presence that can be made visible in the community as it seeks to follow the teachings of Jesus. To give a full picture of the meaning of the word as John uses it, we have to include these words, too: live, dwell, last, endure, continue, wait for. These are intimately and actively relational words; as scholar Andrew Brower Latz puts it regarding the notion of abiding in John: (John) characterizes abiding as intimate, enduring, personal, and reciprocal relationships between Jesus and the Spirit, between Jesus and the Father, and between the Father, Son, Spirit, and disciples. Further, Latz says that in using the vine and branches metaphor, the Gospel suggests that when the community of disciples abide together they show something of God s life and that it is possible for believers to mediate to one another, really and materially, the presence of Christ. This means that we can show the face of Christ to one another, and to the world! And so it is, perhaps, that to abide in and with Jesus is the way to experience the living Christ in the now! We need not feel distant from God in Christ, or lukewarm, or far removed. The communities out of which these two remarkable scriptures sprang were

5 struggling, their members pushing against the cultural grain, often in mortal danger, and yet they were powered by a magnificent determination to teach and live and breathe the way of Jesus. They knew to share with one another, to love and care for one another, and they knew that they alone were not enough. May we know as much! He is the vine; you we all of us are the branches; with this organic metaphor we are gifted with the reminder that Jesus abides in us and calls us to abide in him. Jesus has closed the distance, for all time. Abiding in him, we are invited to graft ourselves into his presence, as fresh as always as if we were right there in that upper room with Thomas, walking right along with Cleopas and his friend on the dusty road to Emmaus, and as sure of his promises as those disciples who risked themselves to tell the story we are hearing right now. Now, abide in Christ, the One who came to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and to let the oppressed go free, and for all time, in each moment, bear the good fruit you were made to bring to the world. Amen. Notes: The words/ thoughts attributed to Richard Rohr are found in his online meditation for last Monday, April 27 th, The words of Andrew Brower Latz quoted are found in the Journal of Theological Interpretation 4.1 (2010), in an article entitled A Short Note Toward a Theology of Abiding in John s Gospel, pages

6 The information on the number of occurrences of the verb to abide in John and other definitions of the verb is found on girardianlectionary.net.