Loving God, you call us into a deeper relationship with you, inviting us to be nurtured and strengthened by your Holy Spirit. As we gather together today, keep us rooted and grounded in Christ, that we might continue to grow in your love; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It seems to me that every single person goes through times in their lives when they are in need of some extra strength. There are always things that happen that we simply can’t handle on our own. There are always times when our wells run dry, and we need a source for renewed energy and strength and spirit. Today, such a source is presented to us in the gospel of John.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a living branch attached to a very large vine. While such a large vine might sound scary at first, the vine actually represents Jesus, who loves you, who nurtures you, and who gives you life. Imagine, as you dig down deep, searching for renewed strength and life, that you are able to draw into yourself nutrients from the vine, and the Holy Spirit, and strength, and love. This is an image that only starts to imagine what it means to abide in Christ.

To abide in Christ is to be rooted in Christ, just like being rooted in the vine. To abide in Christ is to be knit together to him by the Spirit that he gives to us. To abide in Christ is to have his Spirit firmly established in my soul and always exerting his power in me. No matter what image we use to describe it, abiding entails an extremely close connection where God’s will becomes our will, and our hearts and minds rest in Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit and with the love of God.

Truthfully, we all need this connection, whether in good times or in bad. During those times when we are feeling strong and healthy, our job as followers of Jesus is to bear lots and lots of fruit. This means that we are allowing God to work through us and to minister to others through us. This means that we are sharing the love of God in all that we do and say. This means that things like peace and patience and self-control are growing in our lives, along with joy and generosity and faithfulness (Gal. 5:22-23).

As followers of Jesus, this is our purpose – to do what the gospel of John simply describes as “bearing fruit.” This is also, by the way, what loving and faithful mothers do as they pass on the faith and the love of God to their children. Yet, none of us can do this without being rooted in the vine – drawing our strength and our health and our spirit from Jesus.

As I mentioned earlier, bearing fruit is what we do when we are strong and healthy. And then there are those times when maybe we are getting pruned, or cleansed, and we are not able to bear fruit for a while. At those times, our strength and our health and our spirit need to continue to come from Jesus, as we recover and grow and become strong enough to bear fruit once again. As before, this is abiding in Christ.

One more thing that we could add to our thoughts about abiding comes from our reading today from 1 John. This reading mentions three things that can be observed as evidence of abiding in God and in Christ. The first is the Holy Spirit, who produces some of the fruit that we already mentioned (1 Jn. 4:13). The second is confessing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God – this is given as evidence of abiding in God (1 Jn. 4:15). The third thing is this: abiding in love (1 Jn. 4:16). In other words, those who live in love for God and for their brothers and sisters in Christ obviously abide in God.

Those of you who have spent some time reading the Bible may have noticed that both the gospel of John and the letters of John talk an awful lot about love. In fact, it is said that, as the apostle John got older, he got to the point where he would say the same thing over and over again: “Little children, love one another.” Perhaps those of you who are parents can understand why!

How many of you grew up with brothers and sisters? How many of you fought with your brothers or sisters? How many of you still fight with your brothers and sisters? I’m sure that many a gray hair has been produced in parents whose children simply cannot get along.

Well, apparently the same thing was happening in the family of God. The people that John wrote to were fighting with one another. They were fighting over something called “Gnosticism,” which taught that correct knowledge was the only thing necessary for salvation. Gnosticism also taught that all flesh was bad, and therefore Jesus could not possibly have been “God in the flesh” or fully human.

Based on these beliefs, people in the early church were teaching a number of different things. Some taught that as long as you had the correct knowledge and wisdom from Jesus, it didn’t matter how you lived or how you treated other people or what you did to your body. Some taught that you had to deny all of your physical appetites because only your soul mattered, and would be released in the end.

And so, John looks at the early church and he sees people who claim to believe in Jesus but do nothing to help others. He sees people who are only concerned about their own “correct knowledge” and who treat others in the church with contempt. He sees people who are simply doing whatever they want during their life in this world, convinced that their souls will be released and find salvation in the end. And so John emphasizes over and over again, “Love one another as Christ has first loved you.”

We see it once again in today’s second reading:

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. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also (1 Jn. 4:20-21).

For those who believe in Jesus, these two things always go together: love for God and love for one another.

To some extent, love for God is the easy part, once we realize what great love God has shown for us in sending his Son, Jesus. It is easy to love somebody whose love for us is so amazing. However, when we’re talking about our brothers and sisters in our own families or in the family of God, it’s not always so easy. Sometimes they do things that annoy us. Sometimes they hurt us. Sometimes they get more than us. Sometimes they just won’t leave us alone.

Love can be far more difficult when confession and forgiveness are constantly needed. Ah... but don’t we constantly do things where we need to confess to God and seek God’s forgiveness? And yet God continues to forgive us and love us. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn. 4:11).

This, too, though, we do not manage on our own. We come back to abiding in Christ, being rooted in the vine, drawing our strength and our love and our spirit from Jesus. We may not be able to do it, but God can, working through us. May we continue to grow in strength, love and the Holy Spirit, as we are rooted and grounded in Christ. Amen.

Easter 5(B)     John 15:1-8
May 10, 2009     1 John 4:7-21
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2009 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved