Comforted by the Spirit of Truth

 May 27, 2012

John 14:15-19; 14:25-27; 15:26-27; 16:12-13Pentecost Sunday

Elizabeth M. Deibert

God of power, may the boldness of your Spirit transform us, may the gentleness of your Spirit lead us, may the gifts of your Spirit be our goal and our strength, now and always. Amen.

Now the most commonly read text on Pentecost by those of us who celebrate the day is likely the narrative of the day from Acts 2, the story I told the children, a story of wind and fire and tongues.   This year, I thought we would take the verses from Jesus’ farewell discourse in John which refer to the Comforter, the Advocate, the Spirit, the Paraclete.   Those who were here last week may recall that we read from the opening 2 Corinthians, a passage about paraklesis, about receiving comfort from God and sharing it with others.   In some ways, this text explains how we are empowered to share comfort, peace, love, truth with others, through the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in us.  

Last year I missed Pentecost at Peace, as I was at a Credo Conference in upstate New York.   Pentecost is one of my favorite days in the church, because I’m a fan of the Spirit.   I love the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry.   I appreciate the sovereign protection of God, but I feel closest to the Holy Spirit.   I feel nudges from the Spirit, little reminders throughout the day.  Do you ever get those nudges from the Holy Spirit that you should call someone or do you suddenly remember something that you almost forgot or do you get that push from the Spirit to apologize, to admit you were wrong, to be quiet before you say something you will regret.   I experience the Spirit helping me write sermons.   If you don’t know it already, it is a miracle that I stand here in front of you most weeks.   It is a true sign of the power of the Spirit that I have something to proclaim each week.   At least three or four times each week, I talk to the Spirit about my need for inspiration.   The word, inspire has its roots in the Latin word for “breathe into”   I am totally dependent on spiritual CPR every week.  I can still sing, as we did last week, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” but in some ways, the mysterious Holy Spirit is my best friend. 

 As a woman I feel like the Spirit is where my gender connects best with the Godhead.   The Spirit is thought by many to be the feminine aspect of God’s personality.  The Old Testament Hebrew word for Spirit is “ruah” a feminine noun.  The New Testament Greek word for Spirit is “pneuma” a neuter noun.  The word for truth, as in Spirit of truth, used three times in our text, is a feminine noun.  So while we know God is beyond gender identifications and we would never want to anthropomorphize God by turning God into the image of us, instead of the other way around, I find it very helpful to think of the Spirit as feminine.   It provides some balance to the Trinity.  So when we read our text, you will note that I am shifting to feminine pronouns.   I do not do this lightly or without the support of diverse scholars – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox -- who believe that this is justified.  

John 14:15-19; 14:25-27; 15:26-27; 16:12-13  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees her nor knows her.   You know her, because she abides withyou, and she will be in you. 18 "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 

25 "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, she will testify on my behalf. 27 You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

  "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth; for she will not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears, and she will declare to you the things that are to come.   (New Revised Standard Version -- adapted)

A 14th Century fresco in a small Catholic Church southeast of Munich, Germany depicts a female Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity.   (image on screen) The three are con-joined at the bottom and are in a single robe.   The Spirit is flanked by Father and Son.    There’s an ancient debate between east and west, a conflict about the language of the Nicene Creed between the Orthodox and Catholic (long before the Protestant Reformation) about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son.    These verses seem to support that Eastern view of the Spirit coming from Father, yet it is Jesus who promises it.   I am grateful for Biblical and theological and church historians, who work on these matters.   I am equally grateful that it is not my job to do that.   I am content to receive the ancient and modern creeds as the communal and generational wisdom to guide my faith as I serve in leadership of Peace Church.   I tend to agree with St. Augustine who said, “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity (LOVE).”   I also find creative writing like that of The Shack, by William P. Young, to be helpful in stirring my imaginations about the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promises the disciples that the Spirit will come, will remain with us and even in us forever, and will teach us what we need to know, will remind us of all Christ has done.   He says that the Spirit will be dependable and full of truth.   You see, that Greek word for truth also has the connotation of uprightness and trustworthiness.     

The Spirit is your advocate, your counselor.   The Spirit especially advocates for the weak and the powerless.   Jesus said at the beginning of his ministry, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to the captives/the oppressed.”   The Spirit fills you so you can be fruitful in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.     The Spirit will nudge you when you are getting away from those, and you can by grow in them by listening carefully to the Spirit.

By the Spirit God created the earth.  By the Spirit God raised up leaders and prophets in Israel.   By the Spirit Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb.   By the descending dove of the Spirit Jesus was baptized and empowered.   By the Spirit the risen Christ is present with the church.  

The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life, the Renewer of Life, and the One who transforms us into disciples of Christ.    On Pentecost, the Spirit overwhelmed the people.   I’m not sure it sounds comforting to have tongues of fire on your head and a strong wind blowing inside the room.   But for the early Christians, this was a transformative moment, one that clearly demonstrated that what Jesus had promised (the coming of the Spirit) was now true.   Christ was ascended, but they were no longer alone and no longer afraid.   They began to experience in their fellowship a new quality of life.   The Spirit can move us to respond in faith to the Gospel.   Some of you are probably experiencing a nudge from the Spirit to do something faithful today.   Don’t ignore that nudge.   Learn to pay attention to those nudges, those gentle suggestions from the Holy Spirit.   

In the small chapel at Aldersgate in London, there is a plaque on the wall that reads: "On this spot on May 24, 1738, John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed."
One day Leslie Weatherhead a well-known London preacher went there and while he was reflecting on Wesley's "warmed heart" and praying in one of back pews suddenly the chapel door opened and an old man with a cane proceeded to walk down the aisle. When this man came to the plaque, not seeing the young preacher in the back pew, he read out loud the words: "On this spot on May 24, 1738, John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed." The old man dropped to his knees and exclaimed, "Do it again, Lord! Do it again for me!"

Time and time again the followers of Jesus have testified to a similar experience and such transformations began on that Day of Pentecost following Jesus' resurrection when his first disciples were moved by the Holy Spirit's flame.   The Holy Spirit is dependable and worthy of your trust.   So rely on the Spirit to assist you in times of temptation and weakness and fear and confusion.    Practice listening for messages from the Holy Spirit.

Anne Lamott in her best-selling book, Traveling Mercies tells of her fear at the appearance of the slightest mole on her body.  This was because her father had died of a malignant melanoma.  Lamott did not grow up Christian but she started attending, almost by accident (by Holy Spirit) a lively little Presbyterian Church with a small African-American congregation and first began to feel the love of God there.   With funny wit, Lamott confesses that she finally came to her senses about this uncontrollable fear about melanoma and about life in general.   She said to herself one day, “Yes, I do believe in God.”   And she wrote on a scrap of paper these words: "Hey God, I am a little anxious. Help me remember that you are with me. I am going to take my sticky fingers off the control panel until I hear from you." Then she put the note in a drawer of the table next to her bed and surrendered her future to God no matter what.   Jesus sought to assure his disciples that they did not have to have their "sticky fingers" on the control panel of their lives.    Peace I leave with you.   My peace I give to you.   I am sending another to be your Advocate, your Counselor, your Comforter.   This One is always offering peace.  Think of this Spirit wrapping you up securely, tucking you in bed, that kind of comforter.   Think of the Spirit eating dinner with you when you feel alone.  Think of this Spirit filling you with the truth, power, and goodness of Christ so you can be a comforter and truth-bearer for others, an Advocate of the powerless, a counselor to those who need a friend. 

The Spirit is a strangely peaceable powerful presence.   Think of the soothing nature of watching a candle or campfire burn.   Think of the power of the wind to effect change, to move things that are usually stationary.   Trust in the Spirit to breathe life into all the withering, dry places of your life.   Finally, live by the Spirit – boldly free to be a disciple of Christ, not counting the cost.   Make this day a day of new commitment to be spirit-ual, spirit-filled.  Cultivate your ability to listen for the Spirit in nature, in scripture, in prayer, and in those spiritual nudges which are constant.   Even now the Spirit is blowing away all your doubt and fear.   The Spirit is burning away all your complacency, leaving your heart warm and clean.  The ultimate Truth of Life, this trustworthy Spirit of God, is your Comforter, filling you with love and with power and with the grace to live as Christ’s follower.

Let us pray:  Praise and glory to you, creator Spirit of God;

You are truth.   You come like the wind of heaven, unseen, unbidden.

Like the dawn you illumine the world around us;

you grant us a new beginning every day.

You warm and comfort us.

You give us courage and fire and strength beyond our everyday resources.

Be with us, Holy Spirit, in all we say or think,

in all we do, this and every day. Amen.

Called to Caregiving

2 Corinthians 1:3-11
7th Sunday of Easter
Stephen Minsters' CommissioningElizabeth M. Deibert
20 May 2012

Can you remember the first time you scraped your knee?    Did someone provide comfort?   If you had never scraped your knee ever, would grimace when you see a kid (or worse, an adult) trip and skin their knee.   The sight of it triggers your memory of the feeling, and the memory of the feeling makes you empathetic, especially if you yourself were comforted when it happened to you.

Can you remember a time when you were not chosen, left out, excluded.   I was the youngest in my family and remembering feeling left out from all the exciting things that I imagined happened in the house, after I had to go to bed.   Maybe you were the last one picked when teams were chosen.  Maybe you were the kid who didn’t get the invitation to the party everyone was talking about.   If you were left to tough it out on these difficult occasions, then you might have missed the opportunity to develop empathy for others.   Most parents these days want to protect their children from negative experiences, but you see, it is not the negative experience itself that is so bad, but the experience without any comfort.

I can recall the very place on the front steps where I was standing at age ten when my mother told me that a little three year old girl, a friend of our family, was killed in a car accident.   A sleepy driver crossed over into the lane where her father was driving and in the days before car seats for toddlers, this life was finished for cute little Carmen.   I had no idea at age ten what it was like to be the parent of a child who died in a car crash, nor to be the driver of the car that veered into the other lane, causing the death of a little girl.   But I remember hearing my mom reflect on that death from two perspectives.   She had lost her father in a car accident when she was 15.

Empathy is a natural response of our human race because we are created in the image of God, who empathized with us to the ultimate degree by being one of us.    

In the opening of his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is defending his apostolic authority by speaking about the value of suffering, as it allows us to be comforted by God and then to be comforters of others who suffer.   Paul uses the Greek word parakaleio in its noun and verb forms ten times in this passage we are about to read.   The New Revised Standard Version translates the words as console and consolation, and but I don’t think that is a very effective translation of a word that means to comfort, encourage, strengthen, so you will see that I have changed the word in our reading from the screen.   Another word I changed is the word, “afflicted”  It means squeezed or put in a narrow place.   So I’m using the contemporary word, “stress”  because I never hear anyone talk of being afflicted, but everybody these days is stressed to the max or so it seems.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our stress, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any stress with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. 6 If we are being afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are being comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. 8 We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, 11 as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.  (NRSV)

And you’ll see here that someone translated afflicted/stress as trouble.   And mercy is changed to compassion here.  

Many people want to approach suffering with the question “why?”   One answer to that question is that we suffer so we know how to comfort others.   It builds empathy.   That is, when our suffering is coupled with the comforting presence of God and others.   Paul gives another reason for suffering.   He says he was utterly, unbearably crushed, despairing of life, thinking that he would die – so that he would rely not on himself but on God who raises the dead.  He says, if I am being troubled/stressed, it is for your comfort and salvation/healing/wholeness.   If I am being comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience WHEN you patiently endure – suffering like others do.

An infant needs to learn that suffering/crying leads to being comforted.  Likewise, in the church, Christians need to learn that when we are in trouble, people will be there for us.   Richard and I experienced this kind of support this week when we were under the strain of thinking that our daughter Emily in Korea had meningitis.   But in our anxiety while waiting to hear from tests, we received the comfort of many who suffered with us, who reached out in compassionate care-giving.  People who were able to translate their experience of worry over a sick loved one to our situation.   

Thank you for suffering with us and rejoicing with us in the news that Emily is okay, despite having had a sudden seizure in the night.  Thank God for sister Catherine being there with her to help her.   Never have I been more grateful for Facebook because thru it we were able to communicate with Catherine in the hospital with Emily and through it, we were able to receive countless consolations and promises of prayer, from England, from Switzerland, from multiple states in the USA, and a phone call from Rob Tuite, who has had his share of suffering in the last year and because of it has a deeper inclination to comfort others.   So like Paul, we can “give thanks …for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”

Today we commission our first class of Stephen Ministers at Peace.   Stephen Ministry was developed by a Lutheran pastor in the 1970’s because he knew he did not have enough time to provide the kind of care he knew suffering people needed.    Pastors are there in the moment of crisis, but often the suffering lingers while the pastor has moved to the next crisis in the congregation.   Those who grieve often don’t hit the bottom until months after a death.   Those who experience an unwelcomed divorce know that it can take months or years to heal, to adjust.   Those who lose a job or a home or move away from close friends or become empty-nesters can undergo a season of depression.   Stephen Ministers are the “after people.”  They are the professional comforters.   In Biblical times there were professional mourners who would come to weep with you at the time of a death.   Stephen Ministers are skilled, caring listeners who come to help you sort through trouble.  Stephen Ministers can help you to experience the comfort of Christ by being with you in your difficult days.   Men are assigned to men and women to women, always confidentially and only when you agree that having a Stephen Minister would be helpful. 

All of us are called to the ministry of caregiving, but the people who will be commissioned today have spent many hours in training, and have committed to serve in an intentional process of Christian caregiving for the Peace congregation & Friends of Peace.   This means they will participate in supervision and training twice/month and will be prepared to meet with a care receiver on a weekly basis.   Three of our ordained Presbyterian ministers with years of pastoral experience will be working with the Stephen Ministers and me.   We encourage you to seek out Stephen Ministry when you are going through any kind of trouble.  Just tell me or one of the Stephen MInisters that you’d like to consider this kind of support.

Two weeks ago, we read from John 15 that we should abide in the vine and love one another, that our joy may be complete.   Last week we read from the 1 Letter of John, chapter 4, that since God loves us so much, we should love one another and if we do, God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us.   Now we are hearing that love involves suffering.   Because we cannot comfort people if we have not suffered and experienced the comfort that has its origin in God’s love.  

Our ability to empathize is cultivated by our experience of being comforted when we have suffered.   Remember how it feels to scrape your knee?  Remember how it feels to be excluded?   Remember how it feels to lose someone you love?   Assuming you got the comfort you needed to heal, you will have the resources to be a comforter of others.   This is a huge part of what it means to be human – to be like Christ who suffered with us, for us, in order to be a comfort to us.   And he promised us the Spirit, the paraklete, who is the great Comforter, who groans with us with sighs too deep for words.

We simply cannot learn Christian compassion without pain.   No, we are troubled, stressed for the comfort and salvation of others.   And we are comforted to be a comfort to those who endure suffering with patience.   It is the grandest circle of life, drawing us closer to death, so that we rely completely on the one who rescues us from death.   In God we hope and to God we give thanks in all circumstances.   No one understands this better than this guy, Nick, born with no arms and legs.   (View 4 minute video by Nick, a man of great faith)

(Note:  Go to www.youtube.com and search for Nick Vujicic or copy this link into your browser   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5mbldTkruM

Secured in Love

1 John 4:7-21

6^th Sunday of Easter
Mother's Day

Elizabeth M. Deibert
13 May 2012

Last week we the branches, were challenged to be fruitful, by abiding in the vine, Christ.   What does being fruitful look like?   Loving as Christ loves.   Today’s lessonfrom the 1^st Letter from the Johannine community continues this theme of Christ’s love.   Written about a decade after the Gospel of John, probably around the year 100, it calls us to demonstrate authentic faithfulness to Christ through love.  God is defined as love, and that the two cannot be separated.   You cannot have God without love, or love without God.   Jesus Christ shows us what it means to be completely secured in love.  By His Spirit living in us, we too are secured by love and empowered to love.

Some preachers today will focus on the sacrificial love of mothers and how grateful we should be to them and inspired by them to love one another.  In those sermons, motherhood will be placed on a pedestal to admire.  And indeed many mothers, including mine, deserve great praise.  Equally many mothers who did their best under difficult circumstances, failed their children miserably in some big moments because they did not have the emotional, mental, or spiritual resources they needed to do the job.   This text reminds us that it is God’s love which inspires us to nurture one another in love.

Prayer

1 John 4:7-21

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

 ¹³ By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹ The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.  (NRSV)

You are here today because somebody loved you and that love inspired you to draw near to the One who loves you best and to worship.   Some of you have had radical, transformative encounters with the living Christ, like the Apostle Paul, but others have come to understand God is love through people who were good expressions of God's love.  Verse 12 says,  12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  By perfected, we don't mean flawless, but completed, reaching its full purpose and goal .

 John is saying: God starts it all. Being loved enables us to love not just by offering an inspiring example, but because love frees us from the things that would otherwise block us from loving, including guilt and fear. This is why, whenever the author speaks of the commandment to love one another, he nearly always brings it back to God first loving us. That love is enabling, the more we let it reach us and set us free.  (William Loader, textweek.com) 

“We never get beyond God's love for us in Christ and how that is lived out in love for one another. We are always drawn back to that central, and centering, claim. We know God's love, first and foremost, in the Son; and we know God's love because we have witnessed it in love for one another. This text may serve as a reminder that we never grow beyond our need to hear again the gospel of God's love in Christ.”   (Brian Peterson, workingpreacher.org)

Much of the anger that erupts within the church under the banner of loving God and defending God's truth often seems to grow instead from love of self and of the power that comes from winning the argument, even at the expense of the church's unity in love. The gospel of God's love for us in the Son sets us free from such loveless and fearful pursuits.  John will not allow the sacrifice of love for the sake of truth (as though they could be separated), and continually brings us back to the only place where we can learn how to love faithfully: the prior love of God for us in the sending of the Son.

“The opposite of love is not hate but fear,” William Sloane Coffin once said, as he preached on this passage.  If God is exclusively understood as the God of power, or demand, or even justice, then we approach God with fear — both in this life and in the life to come. 

But if understood first as the God of love, perfect love, then we approach God with confidence. God's love is perfect and our love is perfected because we trust in God's love. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).   (David Bartlett, workingpreacher.org) 

In every human relationship, even the most loving relationships, there is an element of fear.  We fear abandonment.  We fear rejection.  We fear possessiveness.  We fear intimacy.  We fear failure.  We fear sacrifice.  We fear being known.  Love is threatening because it requires so much of us – both the one who loves and the one who is loved.  “Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”  (Merle Shan)

Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment.   At Faith and Film on Friday night at Peace, we viewed Kings Speech, which is the story of the transformative power of love, more than the power of speech therapy.   What the character Lionel Logue understood about stammerers which proved so helpful to King George th 6th is thta the stammering is rooted in fear more than in the mechanics of speech.  Lionel gave him the love of friendship, and through that was able to do what no expert could do: help him overcome the fear of making his voice heard.    This act of love changed the course of history, as do all acts of true love.

Theologian Paul Tillich said "The first duty of love is to listen."  To Tillich’s duty of love to listen, I would add that the flip-side of listening is asking good questions.  Keep the conversation alive by a deeper engagement of the other – not by mouthing off about yourself.   St. Augustine said, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.   To invite others to share their stories, and then to really listen with attentiveness, asking meaningful questions is an act of love.

It is no small matter that these fifteen verses have 27 references to agape, the Greek word for love.   Agape is love because of what it does, not because of how it feels.   God so “loved” (agape) that He gave His Son. It did not feel good to God to do that, but it was the loving thing to do. Christ so loved (agape) that he gave his life. A mother who loves a sick baby will stay up all night long caring for it, which is not something she wants to do, but is a true act of agape love.

  

The point is that agape love is not simply an impulse generated from feelings. Rather, agape love is an exercise of the will, a deliberate choice. This is why God can command us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44; Exod. 23:1-5). He is not commanding us to “have a good feeling” for our enemies, but to act in a loving way toward them. Agape love is related to obedience and commitment, and not necessarily feeling and emotion. “Loving” someone is to obey God on another’s behalf, seeking his or her long-term blessing and profit.   C. S. Lewis once said, “Christian Love, either towards God or towards [humanity], is an affair of the will.

We will never understand the fullness of love unless we start with God.  And when we start with God we start with the understanding that God is love, not that God loves, but that God is love.  God loves “might stand alongside other statements, such as ‘God creates,’ ‘God rules,’ ‘God judges’; that is to say, it means that love is one of God's activities.  But to say ‘God is love’ implies that all God's activity is loving activity.  If God creates, God creates in love; if God rules, God rules in love; if god judges, God judges in love.  All that God does is the expression of God's nature, which is — to love.  The theological consequences of this principle are far-reaching.”  (CH Dodd)

Mother Teresa, who proved she really knew God by the way she loved the unlovely said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”  She said, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”  She also said, “Love until it hurts. Real love is always painful and hurts: then it is real and pure.” Martin Luther King, Jr., who knew he could not talk about the love of God without being willing to love those who mistreated him said, “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” 

 

"Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love." According to writer Madeleine L’Engle.   Soren Kierkegaard said, “When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world - no matter how imperfect - becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.” 

 Oh, what a world we might have if fear were overtaken by love, if all who claim to love God began to prove it by their fearless love of other people.  It can begin right here, Peace.  It can begin with a commitment on our part to be fearless lovers of the all people, who are not concerned for our own well-being out of a fearful protection of self, but who trust God enough to love bravely, to really love like Jesus loved.   We cannot do it, but God can do it through us.  Because God is love, and when God lives in us, God’s love is perfected in us.   May God’s love reign in our hearts and in our lives everyday in every way as we stand and sing…

Connected and Fruitful

John 15:1-175^th Sunday of Easter

Elizabeth M. Deibert 

6 May 2012

We will spend much of our May worship, the end of the Easter season in the heart of the Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John.   John is the mystical Gospel, quite different in character from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptics.   In the narrative context of John’s Gospel, Jesus has these several conversations with his disciples, as he prepares them for his death and departure.
  

Today’s reading is the last of the seven great “I am” sayings in this Gospel.  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life…I am the light of the world…I am the door to the sheepfold…I am the good shepherd….I am the resurrection and the life…I am the way, the truth, and the life….I am the true vine.. .   These are central images of the Jewish faith, now fulfilled in Jesus.   Because he is the culmination of these hopes, Jesus’ physical departure from us changes nothing:  we can remain/abide in him and he in us, as he is the vine and we are the branches.   We must remain connected to be fruitful, to prove that we are really are his disciples.

Hear for the Spirit speaking to you through the Word of the Lord in John 15:

John 15:1-17

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. ² He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. ³ You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹ I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. ¹² "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶ You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷ I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (NRSV)

If you’ve been around Peace any length of time, you will have noticed that I do not miss any opportunity to preach on something related to gardening and growing.  I love to plant flowers and watch them grow.  I love to plant basil because it grows so quickly from seed that I get from the plants I already have.   I love to plant Coleus because I can propagate it so easily from cuttings.  I love to plant vines like Mandevilla and Jasmine and Bouganvillea and help them climb and curl around trellises and trunks and poles.  I love to prune and cut grass and pull weeds when I am angry.  Whack, whack, cut, cut, pull, pull weeds.   I love to plant churches too, but they are much harder work.  They require lots of water and TLC.   And I’ve noticed those who do not produce fruit, who do not get connected in meaningful ways to others on the vine, naturally wither and fall away.   What churches need is lots of sun and Son.   They need SUN for a good mood – that’s why you moved to Florida, and they need SON for their growth in faith, that is why you came to Peace. 

 Peace is a church where you can get a high Christology theology, while getting a broad ecclesiology.   That’s why anyone seeking Christ is welcome to the table here.  It’s why the doors are always open here.   It’s why the essential questions for joining are trust in Jesus Christ, desire to turn away from sin and to lean into God’s grace, and the intent to get involved.   A Presbyterian minister friend once said to me, “I am a theological conservative and a social liberal.”  I’m with him on that.   I think the church will wilt without a tight connection to Jesus Christ.   And with a tight connection to Jesus Christ, you cannot help but grow into an open church, a church for everyone whom Christ loved – everyone!  

Of course, Christ says in this passage that those who are growing but not producing fruit need to be cut, and those not producing enough fruit need pruning.  Pruning does not feel good or even look good at first, but it is good.   My neighbor thought I had killed the hedge between us, but in time, it was healthier than ever because of my radical pruning.   So it is for us when God prunes us back, removes our deadness, trims off our non-essentials or our overgrowth. It humbles us.  

Christians, and especially Presbyterians, love to grow in knowledge, but if knowledge does not produce fruit, then whack.    As we said in the Confession of 1967, “Wise and virtuous people through the ages have sought the highest good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty.  Yet all human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility.   All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without God’s forgiveness….No one is more subject to the judgment of God than the one who assumes he or she is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.”   Now the Church has been filled with some folks who thought they were superior in morals, in education, in social justice, in Biblical and theological studies, in pastoral sensitivity, and in musical tastes.   And our tradition is getting pruned, perhaps for our arrogance in many of these areas.

All that really matters to God is fruitfulness.  Are you connected to the vine and are you being fruitful?   How will Christ know if we are being faithful disciples?   By our fruit.  Pauls tells the Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Does that describe you?   Does that describe us together?  Unfortunately, witty, sophisticated, well-educated, determined, financially secure, athletic, diligent, good-looking, and quick to judge were not in the list.

You cannot be fruitful without being attached to the vine.   You need the life-blood of Jesus Christ in your veins.    That’s why we need a weekly communion.   The unity of Word and Sacrament is what nourishes our faith.   It feeds us and strengthens us to produce fruit. 

Jesus says to those whose feet he had washed before the Last Supper, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”  Become his disciples!   We thought they already were his disciples.   But no, they have more fruit-bearing to do to truly become his devoted and joy-filled disciples.   

Jesus wants to be in the mutual relatedness of friendship, not mere master and servant, boss and employee, parent and child.   To help us appreciate the kind of loving relationship Jesus is describing, we need to have more words for love. There are three types of love that Aristotle and Aquinas spoke of in Latin:   There’s benevolen’tia, from which we get the word, benevolence.  This is the love of a superior that wills the good of another.   Like a boss who cares for his or her employee, or a parent who is nurturing a child.    There is concu’piscen’tia, the love of desire, in which one hopes to get something from the person loved.   It is motivated by the desire for fulfillment.   Better than both of these is the love called amici’tia.   This is the love Jesus describes in John 15.   “ I do not call you servants…but I have called you friends.”   Christ empowers us to be his friends and gives us the greatest love of all, the sacrificial and mutual love of agape – that the great Greek word for depth of love which is used 9 times in 5 verses in this passage.   This is the love that makes us one, that fills us up and makes us able to be channels of Christ’s love.  

What people see first is the branch, not the vine?   Why do people walk away from church or never bother to come?   Often because we, the branches, are not very fruitful.   People see the branch with all its deadness, or its wilted, rotten fruit.   Who wants to be part of that?   I took photos in my back yard of a lovely yellow Mandevilla to show you the difference between a branch that is still connected to the vine and a branch that has been severed from its source of strength.    After just one afternoon disconnected from the vine, this branch is dying.

You too will wilt if you are not connected to the vine, Jesus Christ?   Are you building into your life the devotions of prayer, Bible study, and regular worship? 

Are you working in your own life to obey Christ’s commands or are you just complaining about other people who don’t view the world as you do?  Are you looking to the church and to your family and friends to get your own needs fulfilled or do you really care what their needs might be?   Are you committing yourself to develop a more peaceful lifestyle that is a blessing to others, as you reach out in friendship and compassion toward all those around you?    You have ample opportunities here to develop the peace of Christ in your life.   We are offering a class on that right now.   We’re offering a class which bridges the chasm between science and religion.   And we have ministry teams, men’s and women’s groups all of whom pray together, so we might grow into more fruitful, faithful disciples.

We all need the spiritual nourishment of a strong connection to the vine.  We need build a strong relationship with Christ for weathering the storms of life, so you will not break off when the high winds blow through.  But wind is not bad.  Trees in greater wind have adaptive growth patterns in greater wind.  They grow shorter; they develop a spiral grain in their trunk; they put their roots a little deeper; and they develop smaller leaves, creating less drag in the wind.   In the stormy times of life, we need to protect ourselves with adaptive change too.  We need to avoid over-extending ourselves; we need to stay rooted and grounded in Christ.   Build a connection to Christ that will endure and make you fruitful in all your relationships.  Abide in the love of Christ, which will feed your soul with spiritual food and strengthen you to love others.    There is no excuse for people calling themselves Christian and not working at keeping the great commandment.   Christ has called you friends.   Act like you know him, for Christ’s sake.   Bear fruit – fruit that will last.

(credit to Gerard Sloyan, Interpretation Commentary on John and to the writers of The Lectionary Commentary, edited by Van Harn, for some of these concepts)