Abide In Love

Scriptures:     Acts 8:26-40                           Psalm 22:25-31

I John 4:7-21                          John 15:1-8

In 1624 the poet John Donne wrote these famous words:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less

As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Some 340 years later, in 1964, Paul Simon wrote the words to his song “I Am A Rock” which contain the polar opposite sentiment, and here’s one verse:  “I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate.  I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain, it’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.  I am a rock, I am an island.”  The song ends with the words, “And a rock feels no pain.  And an island never cries.”

I surely wouldn’t want to put Paul Simon on the same level as John Donne.  But it may be interesting to consider whose vision we find more inviting – Donne’s vision of a humanity so intertwined that we are diminished even by the death of someone on the other side of the world we’ve never met, or Paul Simon’s vision of a life walled off from all connection to others, and the pain those connections may bring.  Maybe it depends on how what kind of day we’re having. Even the most extroverted among us may feel a need to shut out the world from time to time.  Or likely we’re not entirely comfortable with either vision….perhaps we feel comfortable within a small network of close connections – family, close friends….and beyond that close circle, our sense of connection to others may vary with passing moods and passing days.

Last week, we read Jesus’ description of himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.  In that image, we, as the church, are Jesus’ flock, all together in one place, spiritually if not geographically, and Jesus is the one who provides for us, protects us, goes out to find us when we get off course.  Jesus is the good shepherd who knows each of us by name, but also the one who cares for us in community, as part of the flock – and the other members of the flock are part of the care provided by the Good Shepherd.

In this week’s reading, Jesus gives us an even more intimate image, that of himself as a grapevine, and we his followers – the church – as the branches.  In that image, we are not only together, but actually physically connected, with the same vine bringing the same nutrients to each branch, even to each twig.  And if a branch is separated from the vine, it shrivels up and dies, just as a grape that is separated long enough from the vine will shrivel into a raisin.

There’s that word, over and over – abide.   “Abide in me as I abide in  you…..those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit….”  That word abide has somewhat gone out of use – I chose the hymn “Abide With Me” to give us some sense of how it was used – but if you look up different translations of this passage – the Bible Gateway website will give you dozens of options – the Greek word for abide, μείνατε, is translated with words such as “remain”, as in “remain in me”, or as “live in me”, or “stay united with me” or “grow in me”. 

Jesus does warn us that abiding in him, being one of the branches on his vine, isn’t going to be painless.  If we are branches that bear fruit, we are pruned or trimmed so that we bear more fruit.  And if we don’t bear fruit, we get cut off entirely.  Both ways we feel the knife.

If we’re bearing fruit, what does it feel like to be trimmed so that we bear more fruit.  At any stage of our walk with Jesus, we may be doing things that are fruitful, enriching to us and lifegiving to others.  But as we mature, we may leave some things behind in order to take on new roles and ministries that are even more enriching to ourselves and lifegiving to others – and also so that other people can take on our former activities and experience the goodness we once experienced.  For me personally, this would look like coming from my former congregation, Old First Reformed, where I was a member of their choir, to come here to Emanuel.  Joining the choir at Old First was literally the first thing I did when I started attending; I was up in the choir loft the second Sunday I was there, and nearly every Sunday thereafter for almost 20 years.  Over the years, with changing choir directors, I greatly enjoyed learning an expanding range of music, new harmonies, new time signatures and rhythms and tempos.  I loved how our choir sounded when we were really in tune with one another, really listening to one another, how our vocal parts interacted with one another.  We even sang at other churches now and then, and for a few years I sang, along with one or two Old Firsters, once a year in the Novena choir at St Anne’s Roman Catholic church down on Lehigh Avenue.  In coming here, I left that behind, cold turkey – but honestly, I don’t miss it, and I don’t look back.  Singing in the choir was deeply meaningful to me as I hope the choir’s music was lifegiving in some way to the congregation – for a time.  For me, that time passed a little over ten years ago.   Other people, including some newer members, are doing a magnificent job singing in the choir at Old First, and God has given me new work to do here at Emanuel. 

The other part of Jesus’ message is chilling – that if we don’t bear fruit, we’ll be cut off.   It sounds cruel, but a branch that bears no fruit is draining nutrients from branches that could otherwise bear more fruit.  For the health of the plant as a whole, unhealthy branches are removed.  I think we’ve all seen the truth of this statement not only in churches but in other volunteer organizations that at one time served a vital need but at some point got stuck in place while the world passed them by, and are now meeting for the sake of meeting and existing for the sake of existing, and not to serve any current need.    Such organizations exist in every community, draining resources of time and money from a small, committed core of longtime members without offering them or the wider community much in exchange – time and energy that could be put to better use.  In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam noted how numerous fraternal organizations – Elks and Moose and such – along with community groups such as the Jaycees, at least from his perspective, seemed to be dying on the vine.  Along those lines I have to say that I’ve been encouraged, not only that we continue to take in new members as we did last Sunday, but also by initiatives such as the homeless outreach that Sean and Carol are leading – supported by donations from other church members - the backpacks and the collection of supplies for the women’s shelter that Penny is doing, the work at the cupboard that Allan has been doing for years and with which Margie has more recently been helping out, and other member-led initiatives that are connecting us to our neighbors.   They represent a significant investment of time and effort, but they just may be God’s way of telling us that He still has work – holy work, Kingdom work - for us to do.

Ultimately, beyond specific activities, the bottom line is love.  If we abide in Christ, love is our default setting.  Love is the lens through which view everything around us. The writer of John’s gospel expands on what it means to abide in Christ in our reading from the first letter of John, fourth chapter:  “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit…. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”   Our abiding in love for others is the testimony to our abiding in Christ; our lack of love for others likewise testifies to how far we are from abiding in Christ. 

In our reading from Acts, Philip gives us a glimpse of what it looks like to abide in love.   Led by an angel of the Lord, Philip followed the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, a wilderness road.  He saw an Ethiopian eunuch, treasurer to the Ethiopian queen, returning home from worshipping in Jerusalem.  Even though he worshipped, he wasn’t considered fully a member of the community of faith, both because he was a foreigner and because he was a eunuch, one who’s reproductive capacity had been destroyed.  From his connection to the queen he was powerful, and yet he was powerless to produce an heir or continue his family lineage.  The eunuch was reading the passage from Isaiah about God’s suffering servant, whose life had been cut off from the earth, leaving no descendants.  The eunuch saw a parallel between this passage and his own life.  Philip ran up to his chariot and led him to faith in Christ.  When they passed a body of water, the eunuch asked to be baptized, and Philip granted the request.  Philip owed the man nothing, and in fact from a worldly perspective had every reason to let this outsider pass by.  But because Philip abided in Christ’s love, that love led him to reach out to this foreigner.  Clearly, this wasn’t a love that was possessive or controlling in any way – after the baptism, Philip and the eunuch went their separate ways.  But in that moment of connection, the love of God abiding in Philip changed the course of the eunuch’s life.

“I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”  In our world we have to work to stay connected –  with social media, we can be in connection with someone across the globe while being disconnected from someone across the dinner table, physically present but emotionally absent in one place while mentally and emotionally present in a place a thousand miles away.  May our connection to Christ, the true vine, give us the strength and resources to be truly present for our loved ones, for our fellow church members, and for those neighbors near and far whom he has called us to serve. Amen.