Lord Jesus Christ, You say to us that we are to remain connected to you, as a branch clings to the vine. Fill us with the ever-flowing life that comes through Your Spirit, that we may bear fruit as a branch bears the fruit of the vine. In Your holy name we pray. Amen.
The word translated "abide" in our readings from John & I John today is used in 34 separate passages in the four gospels. Of those 34, 23 of them are found in the Gospel of John. "Abiding" is a big deal for John. The first question the disciples asked Jesus, even before He called them to follow Him, was "where are You [abiding]?" When people followed Jesus because He had the power to feed thousands from just a few loaves of bread, Jesus asked those people to seek the Bread of Life, the bread that endures, the bread that abides for eternal life – the bread that only Jesus could offer. When the Temple officials came to ask Jesus who He was, Jesus said that those who would abide in His word were His disciples, and that as the Son of God Jesus has a permanent abiding place in the household of God. Finally, Jesus said in John 12: "I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me should not abide in the darkness."
But what does it mean to abide? I'll be honest: the last few times I've used the word have been at funerals – when we sang the hymn "Abide With Me." "Abide" is not a word that is commonly used, maybe because it is a complex, nuanced word in a world that doesn't appreciate complexity or nuance. So, to get a sense of what Jesus is asking when He says, "Abide in Me as I abide in you," let's look at the ways "abide" gets used in the fourth Gospel.
First of all, to abide is to have a home or a shelter. This is the question Jesus' first disciples asked Him – "Rabbi, where are you abiding?" Now there could be a lot of reasons why those disciples asked Jesus where He was staying. They might have been wondering who was providing a home for this traveling teacher. They might have wondered if He was hanging out with the 'right' kind of people. They might have been hoping to invite Jesus to their own homes or wherever they themselves were staying. Or they might have been simply making sure that Jesus had a place to stay; a roof over His head and safety for the night. Whether they were checking Jesus out or whether they were concerned for His safety, these first disciples wanted to be sure that Jesus had a place of shelter, a place to abide while He taught, a place He could call His own.
But shelter isn't the only thing Jesus needed. To abide is to rest – to stay until you're prepared to go out again. Shelter and rest are two very different things. A shelter keeps the rain off your head while you endure the storm – a place of rest provides towels to dry your hair, a warm room to drive away the chill, and a place of sanctuary until the storm has passed. Jesus abides in many places in John, with friends and disciples, resting until He is prepared to go out into the world again. In John 2 Jesus abides with His mother, brothers and disciples near Capernaum for a few days. In John 10, Jesus abides for a few days near the place where He was baptized. While he is resting, He receives word that His friend Lazarus has died. Before raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus abides across the Jordan for two more days. A place to abide is a place to find sanctuary, to recharge and renew yourself, to take on supplies for the journey ahead of you. Jesus knew how important it was to find time for rest and renewal – and so He found places to abide when He knew he needed rest.
As we abide in places, finding rest and renewal, we also give life to the places where we abide. To abide is to dwell – places are filled with the life that abides within them. A hotel room is not a place where a person abides, because a hotel room shows no sign of being changed by the life it holds (unless you're a member of Led Zeppelin, but let's not go there…). A home, however, is changed by the person abiding in it – a home becomes filled with the life within itself. In John 14, Jesus tells His disciples how His Father abides within Him, doing works through Jesus, changing Jesus' life simply by the relationship Jesus and His Father share. Jesus also promises the disciples that the Spirit who will soon come to them will abide in them, filling them with the kind of life that only the Spirit can bring.
And it's a good thing that we are filled with that life, because to abide is to endure – to stay even when there are forces urging you to look for something better. When the people came to Jesus for bread, thinking that all He had to offer was one meal, Jesus invited them to seek bread that would abide, that would endure, a bread that would fills them and gives them life far more deeply than bread could fill the stomach. The crowds once asked Jesus if He was the Messiah, because they had heard that "the Messiah abides forever," and Jesus invited them to walk out of the darkness and abide in His light.
When the word "abide" gets used, all of these things go with it, and so we don't hear the word much because it's too hard to pin down, too hard to isolate and define absolutely. "Abide" is a living word, if you will. So how do we understand what Jesus means when He says, "Abide in Me as I abide in you?" When you've got so many different ways to understand the word, which one do you choose when it's your God who's saying it to you? The simple answer is, you take all of them, and even more besides.
When Jesus asks us to abide in Him, He is definitely asking us to seek our shelter in Him. Jesus is asking us to consider no place our home unless He is there with us. Jesus is also asking us to consider every place where He may be found our home – even if the 'right' people are not present and all the 'wrong' people are. Jesus is also asking us to invite Him into our own places of shelter – to take Him with us wherever we may go.
When Jesus asks us to abide in Him, He is asking us to find our rest in Him. Augustine, who some consider to be the first great theologian and poet of the church, once said that "our hearts are restless until we find our rest in You, Lord." Jesus is asking us to make time for Him to refresh and renew our souls – to see how Sabbath was indeed created for us as a gift from God. Jesus is asking us to continue to be filled and fed by His Word, by His Spirit, by His Father's love for creation. Jesus is asking us to remember that we need rest and renewal as much as we need the work that rest and renewal makes possible.
When Jesus asks us to abide in Him, He is asking us to allow Him to dwell within us. Eugene Peterson translated John 1.14: "The Word became a man, and moved into the neighborhood." Jesus wants to move into your neighborhood. Jesus is asking you to make the house of your life His home, and not some perfect McMansion where the woodwork is unscratched and there are no stains on the carpet. Jesus is asking you to allow your lived-in, scuffed, broken-in life to be a place filled with His presence. Jesus wants to be there when we're vacuuming the floors, when we're washing the dishes, when we're paying the bills. Jesus wants to be there when the air conditioning breaks and when we leave windows open and let the rain fly all over the bathroom. Jesus wants to be part of everything that makes the house of your life a home.
When Jesus asks us to abide in Him, He is asking us to endure, to cling to Him when it seems like someone's got a better offer. Jesus is asking us to not be fooled by a life that is a mile wide and an inch deep. Jesus is asking us to look to Him for life – and to trust that the life He offers is the only real life there is. In a world that lives shrouded in darkness, where we often choose the darkness of our sin instead of the light of God's grace, Jesus asks us to trust that the light He offers will heal us and keep us, and that clinging to the light He offers is the only real way out of the darkness.
But how do we know that we abide in Jesus and He abides in us? Simple – we love. John's letter today links abiding in love and abiding in God, and so to abide in Jesus we abide in love. You've heard the song this morning: "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God." But John continues: "God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us."
God abides where Jesus' name is confessed, and Jesus' name is confessed where God's people abide in love. Gail O'Day says:
To live as the branches of the vine is to belong to an organized unity shaped by the love of Jesus. For the Fourth Gospel, there is only one measure of one's place in the faith community -- to love as Jesus has loved -- and all, great and small, ordained and lay, young and old, male and female are equally accountable to that one standard. [1]
So, here we are: a community gathered and shaped by the great love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Here is our loving abode: the place where we find shelter, the place where we find rest and renewal, the place where we are filled with the life of God, the place where we learn to endure when forces tempt us to abide elsewhere. Here is where we find Jesus – here is where we find love – here is where we abide.
All of this comes out of one verse from John: "Abide in Me as I abide in you." But the power to abide doesn't come from us – the power to abide comes from Jesus Himself, and it is His gracious offer that makes all of this possible. Even "Abide With Me," that great song I mentioned earlier, is ours only because Jesus offers it to us. "I am the vine," Jesus says, "you are the branches." Life flows from the vine to the branches, and they in turn produce the fruit of the vine. If we are the branches, and Jesus is the vine, then the life that flows to us from Jesus is absolute love and unconditional grace, and the fruit we bear are all those things we do that show that we truly abide in Jesus and He abides in us. Here in this place, in this church gathered in the name of Jesus, we are the branches reaching out into the world around us, bearing fruit so that our neighbors might "taste and see that the Lord is good." Amen.
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