Acts 10:44-48 – Holy Spirit falls on unbaptized Gentiles. So they baptize them.
Psalm 98 – Shout with joy to the LORD.
1 John 5:1-6 – The love of God is obeying God’s commandments.
John 15:9-17 – This is my commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. I have said these things that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. You did not choose me; I chose you, and appointed you to bear fruit.
This section of John is from what is known as The Farewell Discourse.
Don’t Hit The Wall
As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Abide in my love.” Abide is an important word in John’s gospel. Abide (meno) appears around seventy times. Many of those are in John 15. It means to dwell, remain, last or reside. Jesus abides in God, and his disciples are to abide or dwell in him. Jesus’ words are to abide in his followers. Jesus abides in God’s love, and his followers are to abide in his love. For more on this see http://girardianlectionary.net/res/abide_john.htm
How do we abide in Jesus’ love? By keeping his commandments. “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love.” But what are Christ’s commandments? Are they not to love one another? “This is my commandment, that you love one another.”
To love one another is what Barbara Berry-Bailey calls The Prime Directive. If you summarize the Ten Commandments in a word, it’s “Love God; love neighbor.” Love is the prime directive. Jesus gets the heart of the law and hones in on it with laser focus. “By this shall all people know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“I have appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last” (abide).
Fruit appears:
16 times in Matthew
8 times in Mark
15 times in Luke
7 times in John
Only seven times in John. Less than Mark. Five of those seven are in John 15.
Jesus is the vine. God is the vine grower. We are the branches, expected to bear fruit. We cannot do so unless we abide in the vine. God removes branches that don’t bear fruit. God prunes those that do. God is glorified when we become disciples and bear fruit. What this fruit is, is never spelled out.
St. Augustine seems to insinuate that fruits are good works. In his very Lutheran discussion of John 15 in Tractates, he points out that the branches (disciples) cannot bear fruit (good works) apart from the vine. He reminds us that even our good works come from God. And if the branch tries to bear fruit apart from the vine it will wither. Likewise perhaps doing good works apart from a life-giving relationship with God will be fruitless. Focus in abiding in Christ, first and the branch will eventually bear fruit. This is justification talk.
Write the sermon now if you are in our synod. Friday and Saturday are Synod Assembly. It will be fun and engaging – so much so, you won’t feel like writing a sermon afterwards.
There are an infinite number of places one can go with a sermon on John 15, even if you preached on it last Sunday (rather than the Acts 8, Ethiopian Court Official that I proposed).
One possibility: It’s Mother’s Day. Very few arriving will be aware that it’s Easter 6B. 90% will know it’s Mother’s Day. Some women aren’t mothers, but everyone was born of a mother. Talking about the command to love in light of the kind of unconditional love most mothers have for their children is a great jumping off point. What does it mean to abide in God’s love?
Another possibility: It seems to me that in every parish I served a number of do-gooders who worked their fingers to the bone doing good, and at some point they flamed out. They weren’t connected to the vine. Worship and prayer were secondary to helping people. I’m all for helping people, but without the spiritual food and drink, you eventually run out of gas. Our spiritual lives are the food we need for a life of ministry, a life of walking the way of the cross. These folks would dive in head first, then eventually become bitter when predictably, the rest of the congregation didn’t follow them into the deep end. They’d take on too much and eventually wither, like the seed that fell in rocky soil and then was withered by the sun because it had no depth of root. They’d get crispy, and angry. They meant well.
So once or twice a year I felt it important to preach a sermon on God as the source of all good works, and our efforts at justice, mercy and compassion as being rooted in our own connection to Christ the vine, to our spiritual growth: prayer, worship, silence. This might be a good time for such a sermon especially if groups are considering new initiatives for the fall or preparing for mission trips or servant projects.
You could title it, “Don’t Hit the Wall.” The lessons for life apply across the board. Remind people that God is the source of all good works. Don’t set out on a ministry journey and forget to take Christ along with you. For, “apart from me, you can do nothing.”
May 7, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Interesting. Lot of church work is accomplished by do gooders. It becomes the churches job to balance that and offer other avenues of meditation and prayer to alleviate an imbalance. What I find is do gooders care passionately so we are going to punish those who care instead of balancing them and then finding ways to invite and motivate those who shove work on to those who care? It is a common problem in churches and education and business, Success or failure on that caring person’s fault is no reflection of their inner spirituality. Many of the apostles failed miserably by worldly standards. The criteria is not success but trust and obey. What if Christ asked them to do that for His purposes? What if the healing comes and a change in direction happens because good fruit was obviously destroyed? Did that not happen over and over again in the Acts? You have those inside and outside that once a mission or ministry is started (the hard work) and looks to be successful swoop in to dominate and take over for selfish reasons that have nothing to do with the ministry. It is rampant in churches. It is often sophisticated and subtle in a church. Often to get justice or to right something one needs to get righteously angry to change or to stop a behavior that should have been stopped long ago. I would be concerned why councils and churches destroy caring people and then cast them aside when thye refuse to be exploited any longer. I can guarantee you they were not the only one done that way–most people just leave. Many things outsiders say are true about churches. Fortunately a large part of a congregation does not do those things –where they fail is they stand by in silence and let it happen. We know our churches are in trouble in many ways and we are in a period of transition. We know their is a huge problem in most denominations with bullies. God works despite all this. But God also watches over those so treated and takes care of them–that we know from earlier faith stories and in and out of the bible. Basically you are asking the rape victim to bend over more for the rapist and oppression and prejudice is a form of rape in the emotional sense. Since we are Lutheran–that is exactly what happened to Luther and look what God did with him and He gave him Katie. If he did not have her he would have never accomplished all he did. She gave him spiritual food and love when no one else would. I am sure she assured him he was doing what God asked despite his many woes. What do I know other than in the end Love and God always win.