Friday, July 26, 2024

April 28, 2024 - 5EasterB - Simple AND Hard

5EasterB
John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

ABIDING

Is the theme of the day

 

We heard it in the First letter of John 

As well as in the Gospel 

ABIDE…ABIDING

What does this mean?

 

Chapter 15

We are nearing the end of John’s Gospel

This is the farewell discourse

Jesus is saying goodbye

He is preparing the disciples

offering comfort

AND we hear abide
The vine and the branches abide 

 

And in the 1st Letter of John

We are hearing

A distillation

A kind of mission statement for Christian living

Abide

 

YOU, ME, ABIDE, ABIDING, LOVE, NEIGHBOR

 

About 10-15 years ago 

hype about Mission Statements

Everyone was writing or rewriting mission statements

My old parish spent a whole month crafting a Mission Statement!

Somehow I was on that committee!

 

What I remember 

a study of mission statements.

Turned out that the most successful corporate mission statements 

were all under 8 words

And one of the most successful 

Was from Disney:

Can you guess?

3 words

MAKE. PEOPLE. HAPPY.

 

Sounds simple

But in fact 

Its tons of work

Takes years

Takes the whole darn organization to live into those words:

Make People Happy

 

Its simple…but HARD

 

That’s what is behind this language in the first letter of John

It a kind of mission statement

 

In verse 1 

We love because God loved us first

God loved us into being

So any time we actually do love our brother/sister

Its God’s doing!

The whole abiding thing is working

 

Its not an automatic

If A then B follows 

Not a cause and effect… kind of thing 

Its dynamic…organic…not a straight line

More circular

It’s a happening

 

God’s love

Finds its PERFECTION

Or its COMPELTION

In how we love one another

 

And this has something to do with ABIDING

 

I don’t know much about Vineyards

And vinedressers

And pruning for fruitfulness

 

But I do know that what Jesus is talking about 

In the Gospel

Is a promise 

He is promising his LIFE to his disciples 

And from them to us

 

I think if there had been such a thing as heart surgery

In the first century

Jesus might have used that image 

instead of the whole vine and branches business

 

How many of you…
Stents, heart valves, Cath Lab, Heart attack???

I thought so;)

 

… over the past couple of weeks 3 people in my sphere of relationships

Have experienced cardiac events

 

I bet we are all more familiar with Stents and heart surgery 
than we are with vines, vineyards and pruning;). 

 

Being attached to the vine speaks to sharing nutrients…sharing life

But think about those clogged up arteries 

Blood is being constricted, cut off 

Blood = Life…life blood… 

And the surgeon borrows another artery
from a place in the body where it can be spared

And hooks it up to bypass the clog

Like a perimeter highway around a big city

 

And the heart and the rest of the body

Re-establish their abiding rhythm

 

What is the beating heart all by itself?

It is perfected

When it reaches our eyes…so we can see

And feet…so we can walk

And hands so we can touch

And muscles so we can embrace

 

God’s love (the heart of the matter…the vine)

is perfected when it gives life to the body (the branches)

when that body…

when our bodies…

see, walk, touch, embrace
the world lovingly
lovingly…because it is God’s life blood we are talking about

 

We have a lot of memories stuffed up here

And I have been noticing

That there has been a kind or natural cataloguing going on

The weightier ones seem to get more accessible

And the lighter ones recede until I just can’t recall them at all.

So that when I say

“I just can’t remember anything anymore”

That’s not quite true

Some things…maybe only a few… are becoming very vivid

 

Mid 70’s Dad story

 

Looking back now

I can say with some certainty

that this was my parents’ Mission Statement
8 words:

“HERE, home, is a safe/loving/forgiving place”

 

IT’s simple…but hard.

 

Maybe part of why this memory is so vivid

Is because I later connected it to my parents faith 

and then to mine

 

After hearing all this Love/God/Abiding business

Over and over again

I began to trust that at the heart of it all

These were mission statements

I wanted to attach myself to

 

 

Coming here

Praying these particular prayers

Proclaiming these particular lessons

Singing these particular hymns

Standing together 

Forming a body

as we do these things

 

IT quite literally FEELS

like a mission statement

One that is both simple and hard

 

God is Love

Abide in that love

Perfecting it…in loving others

 

Simple and hard

 

The YOU

in our Gospel reading is plural

We don’t fly solo

We are supported be each other

…and that mysterious body we call the People of God

 

5 days ago

I got home from Dad’s 

That the tables have turned

Its my mission now

…to be a safe, loving, undemanding presence to him as he slips away

Little by little.

 

It actually felt like he was ABIDING in me.

 

 

One way to bring this

Beyond lofty abstraction

Is to ask a few simple questions

Ask ourselves individually and also ask ourselves as a community:

Who will I/We invite into that abiding place…

Who will I/We invite into that best part of myself…that best part of us

That part

That flows with the life of God

The part that rests in the communion of the Holy Spirit

The part nourished by love of neighbor (…by you)

 

Who will I/we offer safety, and forgiveness, and compassion to

in actions that are the fruit of all that love?

 

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