Abide in Me
Sunday, May 14th, 2006
Easter 5B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 15:1-8
Preaching around a national holiday can be both a blessing and a curse. There can be so many factors to take into consideration when one prepares FOR Sunday, to say nothing of being open and sensitive to what it is God might have you say in the particular scripture passage. There is a real issue with whether or not one is even going to incorporate the day being celebrated into the message to be delivered, especially if the holiday in question doesn’t have any directly faith-oriented connections. Mother’s day is, thankfully, not really one of those. We have multiple examples of women – mothers – in scripture who have in one way or another exemplified what it means to be a woman of God so that there is plenty to draw from when we go TO scripture to fill in that picture.
We have the examples of Mary and Elizabeth, whom we read about this past Wednesday evening in our midweek Bible study, and we have Sarah and Rebekah in the Old Testament, Paul speaks of Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, in terms that give a strong idea of how faithful they were.
But what happens when we are faced with a situation where the mother in question is … less than exemplary? What do we do, how do we address the family with the mother who is in prison, or who has abandoned them, or who neglects and abuses her children? How do we respond to that family on mother’s day?
We deal with the same issue when we celebrate father’s day. There are, we would HOPE, more mothers and fathers who would give THEMSELVES for their children than not, more who would feed them the last morsel of food off their plate rather than eat it themselves. More who are still uncomfortable with the instruction given on the airplane as it taxies to the takeoff about placing the breathing mask over their OWN nose and mouth BEFORE placing it on their child’s, even though they understand and agree with the need for that instruction.
But we live in a world that sometimes screams at us that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We live in a world where a mother WILL drown her five children, where a mother WILL sell her daughter to get her next fix, where a mother WILL feed her children oatmeal every meal while she feasts. We live in a world where a mother would choose an abusive husband and ignore the reality that the abusiveness extends beyond her to her children, and so her children’s children are condemned to a life of abuse as well.
In the last week or so I’ve seen several poems come across my desk about motherhood, extolling her virtues, telling of how strong she is, how able she is to handle the many different duties that fall to her. Funny stories that talk about how God actually created Eve first, and then agreed with her to create Adam, and they would keep it ‘their little secret’ and let him believe HE was created first, and is the stronger and smarter of the two. The kicker in THAT particular story is that God looks at Eve and winks at her and says, “It’ll be our little secret, just between us girls.” I’ve read beautiful pieces that speak of the qualities of a woman, the nurturing, comforting, caring, and encouraging aspects of a woman’s character.
And guess what? For each phrase, for each image, for each quality, I’ve found myself nodding and saying, “Yep, that’s Leslie … AND Angela, AND Momma, AND Grandma …” Those women who have had some influence on my life … well, not just SOME, but a LASTING impact on my life have all, at one time or another, embodied to me the fact that they were more than they could ever imagine themselves to be.
Knowing full well it is a terrible, unhealthy habit, we do, nevertheless, try to put our best face on whenever we go out in public, especially at Church, don’t we? Do we so easily forget that that is a practice that is anything BUT Christian? Walter Wink, professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, wrote in an article in the magazine The Christian Century, several years ago, about the passage we have before us this morning. In it, he says the following:
I used to secretly step back whenever I heard a preacher say, “You can’t be a Christian outside of church.” My thought process was something like this: Being a Christian means following Jesus. Being a Christian means accepting him as Lord of your life. That is about as personal a thing as can be, so how can that NOT happen EXCEPT in a highly personal, individual way? We MUST be able to be Christian by ourselves because that’s where it … starts.
And that was where my thinking stopped, for a while.
Becoming a Christian, beginning to take on the life of Christ IS a highly individual thing, it begins in the innermost heart, but it doesn’t stop – it CAN’T stop – it MUSTN’T stop there. The simple truth of it is that Christ calls us by name, but doesn’t call us to go it alone. THAT is what the world would like us to do, to see, to feel, and to practice. Being followers of Christ MEANS living in community, living in service, living in communion with each other. THAT is where we can’t be a Christian on our own, because, just as the first disciples remained together after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and formed a community of faith that began to live out and grow those seeds that Jesus had been planting over the previous three years, so we are to bear with each other the joys and sorrows that we encounter on this broken world. Just as Walter Wink said, the ‘you’ in the passage is PLURAL, not singular. Jesus was speaking to us as a BODY, not as individuals.
Yes, of course, there is individual aspect, an individual responsibility – we DO each stand individually in Christ, but the burden, if you want to call it that, of living out our faith is intended to be a shared one, because we are all called to the same task—that of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed.
Each of those women I named earlier, whether from scripture or my own life, would be the first to admit that they were nowhere near what those poems made them out to be. That they see themselves as much less than what the authors painted them to be. And it is true for each of us: we are much less likely to extend to ourselves the grace that we so easily extend to others: the grace of forgiveness for being flawed.
So we celebrate Mother’s Day. We rejoice in the fact that some of us have mothers who, flaws and all, became, nonetheless, for us models of faith, models of selflessness, models of what it means to live out our faith up close and personal – in the most unrehearsed stage we have – our families.
If we are, on the other hand, one of those who did not have that experience, but whose mother has been someone other than the woman who brought us into the world, then we rejoice and give thanks for THAT woman – that adoptive mother, that school teacher, or Sunday School teacher, or aunt, or neighbor, or grandmother, who stepped in when stepping in was required and molded us into the person we are today.
It is a special and perhaps rare blessing when we can look at both of our parents and see God in them. Just as the Psalmist portrays God gathering God’s children as a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, we can see in our mothers the attributes of God that are not limited to, but are highlighted IN our mothers: the nurturing, the caring, the compassion.
A few years ago, at the awards ceremony in which he received an Emmy for his work in children’s television, Fred Rogers, “Mr. Rogers”, stood up and asked the audience for ten seconds of silence. In those ten seconds, he asked that those listening silently give thanks for the people in their lives who helped them become who they were. I would propose a slightly more directed prayer – to God, for the women in our lives who through presence and in their absence, helped us see who God is, and who we are in God’s eyes.
Let’s pray.
Sunday, May 14th, 2006
Easter 5B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 15:1-8
1”I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 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. 5I 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.
Preaching around a national holiday can be both a blessing and a curse. There can be so many factors to take into consideration when one prepares FOR Sunday, to say nothing of being open and sensitive to what it is God might have you say in the particular scripture passage. There is a real issue with whether or not one is even going to incorporate the day being celebrated into the message to be delivered, especially if the holiday in question doesn’t have any directly faith-oriented connections. Mother’s day is, thankfully, not really one of those. We have multiple examples of women – mothers – in scripture who have in one way or another exemplified what it means to be a woman of God so that there is plenty to draw from when we go TO scripture to fill in that picture.
We have the examples of Mary and Elizabeth, whom we read about this past Wednesday evening in our midweek Bible study, and we have Sarah and Rebekah in the Old Testament, Paul speaks of Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, in terms that give a strong idea of how faithful they were.
But what happens when we are faced with a situation where the mother in question is … less than exemplary? What do we do, how do we address the family with the mother who is in prison, or who has abandoned them, or who neglects and abuses her children? How do we respond to that family on mother’s day?
We deal with the same issue when we celebrate father’s day. There are, we would HOPE, more mothers and fathers who would give THEMSELVES for their children than not, more who would feed them the last morsel of food off their plate rather than eat it themselves. More who are still uncomfortable with the instruction given on the airplane as it taxies to the takeoff about placing the breathing mask over their OWN nose and mouth BEFORE placing it on their child’s, even though they understand and agree with the need for that instruction.
But we live in a world that sometimes screams at us that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We live in a world where a mother WILL drown her five children, where a mother WILL sell her daughter to get her next fix, where a mother WILL feed her children oatmeal every meal while she feasts. We live in a world where a mother would choose an abusive husband and ignore the reality that the abusiveness extends beyond her to her children, and so her children’s children are condemned to a life of abuse as well.
In the last week or so I’ve seen several poems come across my desk about motherhood, extolling her virtues, telling of how strong she is, how able she is to handle the many different duties that fall to her. Funny stories that talk about how God actually created Eve first, and then agreed with her to create Adam, and they would keep it ‘their little secret’ and let him believe HE was created first, and is the stronger and smarter of the two. The kicker in THAT particular story is that God looks at Eve and winks at her and says, “It’ll be our little secret, just between us girls.” I’ve read beautiful pieces that speak of the qualities of a woman, the nurturing, comforting, caring, and encouraging aspects of a woman’s character.
And guess what? For each phrase, for each image, for each quality, I’ve found myself nodding and saying, “Yep, that’s Leslie … AND Angela, AND Momma, AND Grandma …” Those women who have had some influence on my life … well, not just SOME, but a LASTING impact on my life have all, at one time or another, embodied to me the fact that they were more than they could ever imagine themselves to be.
Knowing full well it is a terrible, unhealthy habit, we do, nevertheless, try to put our best face on whenever we go out in public, especially at Church, don’t we? Do we so easily forget that that is a practice that is anything BUT Christian? Walter Wink, professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, wrote in an article in the magazine The Christian Century, several years ago, about the passage we have before us this morning. In it, he says the following:
For me "abide" once meant: Think only of Jesus. Drown out all other voices. Choke down the rebellion. Manhandle the resistance. For me, it all added up to a religion of repression … But we grow with the text. I had somehow mislearned to regard the command to abide as a personal admonishment. I took the "you" as singular. My God and me, and all that. But that "you" is plural, providing a rich image of the body of Christ, of Christ seeking a body in the world. Had I thought of it as plural, I would have understood it as a reference to the church … I once heard the bit about "bearing more fruit" as a demand that I get cracking and strain hard to bear much fruit if I wanted Christ to abide with me. Then I was taught that I was justified by grace and needed no works, so I forgot about the fruits. Now I begin to hear it as a simple promise: trust yourself to the water and let the current take you where you need to go. The water will both bear you up and accomplish God's purposes. This has been a great stress reducer, to the degree that I have lived it. (Christian Century, April 20, 1994)
I used to secretly step back whenever I heard a preacher say, “You can’t be a Christian outside of church.” My thought process was something like this: Being a Christian means following Jesus. Being a Christian means accepting him as Lord of your life. That is about as personal a thing as can be, so how can that NOT happen EXCEPT in a highly personal, individual way? We MUST be able to be Christian by ourselves because that’s where it … starts.
And that was where my thinking stopped, for a while.
Becoming a Christian, beginning to take on the life of Christ IS a highly individual thing, it begins in the innermost heart, but it doesn’t stop – it CAN’T stop – it MUSTN’T stop there. The simple truth of it is that Christ calls us by name, but doesn’t call us to go it alone. THAT is what the world would like us to do, to see, to feel, and to practice. Being followers of Christ MEANS living in community, living in service, living in communion with each other. THAT is where we can’t be a Christian on our own, because, just as the first disciples remained together after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and formed a community of faith that began to live out and grow those seeds that Jesus had been planting over the previous three years, so we are to bear with each other the joys and sorrows that we encounter on this broken world. Just as Walter Wink said, the ‘you’ in the passage is PLURAL, not singular. Jesus was speaking to us as a BODY, not as individuals.
Yes, of course, there is individual aspect, an individual responsibility – we DO each stand individually in Christ, but the burden, if you want to call it that, of living out our faith is intended to be a shared one, because we are all called to the same task—that of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed.
Each of those women I named earlier, whether from scripture or my own life, would be the first to admit that they were nowhere near what those poems made them out to be. That they see themselves as much less than what the authors painted them to be. And it is true for each of us: we are much less likely to extend to ourselves the grace that we so easily extend to others: the grace of forgiveness for being flawed.
So we celebrate Mother’s Day. We rejoice in the fact that some of us have mothers who, flaws and all, became, nonetheless, for us models of faith, models of selflessness, models of what it means to live out our faith up close and personal – in the most unrehearsed stage we have – our families.
If we are, on the other hand, one of those who did not have that experience, but whose mother has been someone other than the woman who brought us into the world, then we rejoice and give thanks for THAT woman – that adoptive mother, that school teacher, or Sunday School teacher, or aunt, or neighbor, or grandmother, who stepped in when stepping in was required and molded us into the person we are today.
It is a special and perhaps rare blessing when we can look at both of our parents and see God in them. Just as the Psalmist portrays God gathering God’s children as a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings, we can see in our mothers the attributes of God that are not limited to, but are highlighted IN our mothers: the nurturing, the caring, the compassion.
A few years ago, at the awards ceremony in which he received an Emmy for his work in children’s television, Fred Rogers, “Mr. Rogers”, stood up and asked the audience for ten seconds of silence. In those ten seconds, he asked that those listening silently give thanks for the people in their lives who helped them become who they were. I would propose a slightly more directed prayer – to God, for the women in our lives who through presence and in their absence, helped us see who God is, and who we are in God’s eyes.
Let’s pray.
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