Abiding in Jesus’s love

This sermon was first shared for St Denys Evington zoom service on 9th May 2021. An audio recording is available here:

I know we have some cross-stitchers in our congregation, and our gospel passage this morning reminds me of the process of creating a needlework image, be that cross-stitch or tapestry. In both, you have lots of different threads that, as they are combined together, form a whole image. In tapestry weaving, the design is created as the threads are woven together. In cross-stitch, you can remove some of the threads and there will likely still be a coherent picture, but to give it its full colour, expression and meaning, you need all the threads.

The beginning of John 15 reminds me of a cross-stitch. Last week, we read the first part of the passage, and there are some threads woven together – the vine, ‘abiding’, ‘fruitfulness’. Our passage today adds additional threads, additional meaning, clarity and colour to this powerful image of a vine.

In the previous verses, Jesus says “abide in me”. In the following verses we learn that this means abiding in Jesus’s love, the love that He loves us with is paralleled with the love with which the Father loves Him. This love isn’t a vague, warm, fluffy feeling or emotion. It is the foundation of our relationship with Jesus.

Abiding in Jesus means abiding in His love.

By abiding in Jesus’ love we experience the love that Jesus receives from His Father.

Jesus shares with us what He receives from His Father, and Jesus parallels His relationship with His Father with our relationship with Him. And “just as” Jesus kept His Father’s commandments and so abided in His love, so must we keep Jesus’ commandments to abide in Jesus’ love – we are called to “obedient abiding”.

So what does this obedient abiding in Jesus’ love look like, and what consequences does it have, both for us and for the world around us?

There are differences between the love that Jesus and His Father share and our relationship with Jesus, but the love that we experience in our relationship with Jesus is borne out of the love of the Father and the Son for both the disciples and the world. This means that, just as the love of the Son cannot be separated from His obedience to the Father, our enjoyment of God’s love cannot ever be separated from our obedience to Jesus.

When we read this passage on its own, we might wonder what commandments Jesus is talking about, and then we come to v12, which in our English translations suggests that there is only one commandment we need to keep – “to love one another”. But the literal translation of the Greek reads “These things I command you, so that you love one another” – so the command to love one another is summary of all that Jesus taught. When we read a passage, it can be easy to forget that the passage comes from bigger blocks of teaching which were taught at the same time, and that all of those blocks hold together. The love we are called to abide in is what all the commands of Jesus point to, over every area of our lives, communal, personal, social, relational, practical, and emotional, and so on. We may well find that we stray from His commands, for keeping all of Jesus’s commands is a big ask, and I think this is where the first part of the passage comes in – we seek the Father’s pruning. Pruning serves two purposes, one to remove the dead branches, but it also makea the branches that are seeking to abide in the vine to be more fruitful.

It feels like a big ask, a big command. So why bother? What impact would that have on us and those around us?

In verse 11 Jesus says “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete”.

Before we go any further, I want to be clear, “joy” is not the same as happiness, it is not an emotion that comes and goes as our situations and circumstances change. We can have the joy that Jesus’ talks about here, and still experience grief and anger, sadness and frustration. Those things are part of life, and part of the complexity of human emotions, which God created.  At various times in the gospel stories, we find that Jesus wept, Jesus was angry, Jesus was sad, Jesus was frustrated. Depression and mental health difficulties are also a common part of life for many people, faith or no faith. In the Bible “joy” appears both in the Old Testament, the other gospels and other parts of the New Testament. On every occasion, it’s to do with fullness or ‘being complete’, and with the ultimate deliverance or salvation of God’s people. In John’s gospel, there is a vision that the things promised ‘in the age to come’, that completeness, fullness, ultimate salvation and deliverance, are granted to Jesus’s disciples here and now as we “abide in Christ’s love”. And this hope isn’t just for us alone. It is for the world around us – for Creation, for those who don’t yet know Jesus and the society around us. Jesus chose us. He chose you, each of you, with a purpose to bear fruit in the world, fruit that lasts. This fruit is all-encompassing. Yes, it is the fruit of the Spirit that Paul talks about in Galatians. It’s also responding to injustice through Loving Service with the World, and it is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, the invitation to abiding in Christ’s love, the invitation to friendship with Jesus, the invitation to have this joy complete in them, as Peter shared in our Acts passage. The invitation is all of these things, and is for all.

It’s important to notice that Jesus links not only ‘the abiding in His love’ but also this joy, with obedience to His commands. When we abide in Christ’s love, obeying His commands, then His joy is in us, and our joy may be complete. Obedience to Christ is not grim or forbidding, despite our understanding of ‘obedience’ in this world. Jesus is a good Lord, He calls us His friends, He let’s us know what He is doing. He let’s us in on His secrets, if you like. This obedience, whole-hearted obedience, brings freedom as we follow Christ. Our obedience makes space for the joy of Christ’s constant, abiding love to be present in our hearts, and it is this that is attractive to others – as they see the joy of Christ’s constant abiding presence in our hearts, and it’s outcome, people will want to know where that comes from – so let’s not hide it!

This week Thy Kingdom Come 2021 begins. I really want to encourage you to take the opportunities to abide all the more in the vine, Jesus, through the 24-7 prayer chain, through the prayer trail and through the other opportunities we will be sharing with you later in the week.

A final thought. Over the next few months, we will be preparing to return properly to our building, having had well over 12 months away from it due to the pandemic. I want to encourage you, particularly over the 3 months that Anthony is on sabbatical, to go deeper in your relationship with Christ. Explore what obedience to Christ looks like in every area of your life, and discover afresh the joy of the abiding presence of Christ’s love as you abide in Him. Out of that will overflow the joy and the fruit of the vine. A vine doesn’t need to strive to produce fruit. It’s what a vine naturally does when it’s branches remain in it, and when the vinedresser prunes it. We are called, not to strive to produce fruit, but to seek to abide in the vine, and when we do that, the fruit will follow.

 

Amen.