Abide…

Acts 8:26-40          Ps 22:26-32            1 John 4:7-21        John 15:1-8

I write my sermons on a Saturday, but I got to yesterday and still had nothing to say.  No message, no illustrations, just the familiar creeping panic of a preacher with blank page syndrome.  I had done all the things and had produced zero fruit, ironically.  I knew there are 43 references to the word Abide in the bible – and 14 of them appear in this morning’s readings alone. I did commentary searches and sermon searches on the word abide, but still I had nothing. And then I returned to the passage and realised how much I needed to hear these words.  And how very simple they are.

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I am the true vine and my Father is the vine-grower.  He removes every branch that bears no fruit.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit… I am the vine.  You are the branches. Abide in me.’

How much I had missed the point?  I was scrabbling around, desperately trying to produce fruit; muster up something that might nourish you.  But we don’t do the producing.  We don’t do the pruning.  We don’t even do the growing.  It just happens in us, and through us, by the nurture of the vine and the attention of the vine-grower.  All the fruit; the growing, harvesting, and pruning, is God’s business.  Pure grace.

And our job is to remain in the vine.  Stay put.

Abide in me as I abide in you.

And God will work around us and with us, pruning that which bears no fruit, making sure the conditions are right and all we have to do is just hang out. That sounds easy.

Does it?!

It doesn’t sound easy to me. I want to do things. I want to create and produce fruit, left, right, and centre. I want to have things to show for my work. I’m not an abider, I am a do-er!

I love what Nadia Bolz-Weber says, in relation to this.  She writes:

What I wish Jesus said is: “I am whatever you want me to be.  And you can be whatever you want to be: vine, pruner, branch, soil…..”  What Jesus actually said is: “I am the vine.  My Father is the vine grower.  You are the branches.”  Dang.  The casting has already been finalized.  Vines, and branches off of vines, are all tangled and messy and it’s just too hard to know what is what …Not only are we dependent on Jesus, but our lives are uncomfortably tangled up together.  The Christian life is a vine-y, branch-y, jumbled mess of us and Jesus and others. 

So true! We really are entwined with one another and our community and the diocese and the worldwide church and the rest of the world. All part of one big picture of the Jesus movement.  

And in this passage Jesus is crystal clear about that – we are not in this alone. There is nothing unique about the followers of Jesus – we are mixed into one big vine. Isn’t it a good job that God is the one doing the pruning, tending, caring and fruit production?! We simply must remain and stay put.  We just need to abide.

This passage takes us back to Maundy Thursday. This is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse where he is giving his last human words to his followers. They don’t know exactly what is to follow – despite having been told – but Jesus wants to be very clear. Remain with me, abide with me, and everything else will be ok. God has got this. You just need to keep following, stay close. Don’t wander off.

And if the disciples had done that, if they had remained close, part of this holy vine, it would have taken them to the cross, through the cross, into the tomb, down to the depths of hell to destroy death and out the other side into resurrection dawn. That’s what abiding looks like.

Abide in me, and you will experience all of life, the destruction of death and darkness and the dawn of the new world. It’s like Jesus is warning, urging, instructing his disciples of this now, because following him is about to step up a few notches. Life is about to get even more hairy, even more costly, even more all-consuming, and he wants them to stay close. Stay close to me, he says, all of you – and that means staying close to one another. Even if it is as messy and twisty and turny as a vine. That’s ok – my father is the vine-grower. You just stay put and God will sort the fruit production out.

The image of the vine sorts out the order of importance.

Jesus is the vine – the source of life.

God is the holy gardener, in charge, making sure there is light and shade, food and water, pruning the bits that are firewood.

We are dependent on the gardener’s mercy. We are not the vine. We are not the grower. We are not the one who prunes. We are the branches. We just abide. And only by abiding is there any chance that fruit will be produced.

These are Jesus’ final words to his followers. It’s like he could see what was to come – how tempted his Church would always be to do things its own way, rather than to do the messy work of life and worship together. But Jesus is saying that’s not an option.  The only thing you need to do, he is saying, is abide. Stay close to me in the same way that I stay close to you, he says. That is everything. Everything else flows from there.

In staying close to the vine – in abiding with Christ – fruit will be produced in and through us. God will make sure of that. In staying close to Christ, will we see fruit bud and blossom that provides food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, rest for the weary, hope for the hopeless. If we abide in Christ we will see fruit heal the sick, set the prisoners free, and bring peace to this hurting world.

Staying put, abiding, is hard for the ones who love to do.

Abiding with those who we find hard to love is difficult.

Abiding in Christ and acknowledging this is not about us, but all about him, is a challenge to our independence.

But when we abide in Christ and he abides in us we will see so much fruit and God will be glorified. May God give us the grace to lay our own stuff aside and simply abide in Christ. Amen.