May 2, 2021
/The Fifth Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
1 John 4:7-21 | Ps. 22:24-30 | John 15:1-8
The heart of our passage today is the ultimate necessity of Jesus Christ for us. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” Strong words from the Lord today. And hard words, in many ways. For us to live, for us to bear the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of resurrection, requires we receive our life from Jesus. He lays it out for us: if we don’t have him, we have nothing. We’re just dried branches for the kindling.
To abide in Jesus is just to act towards the Lord as he acts towards us. Jesus abides in us and we are to abide in him in the same way! Jesus, resurrected and ascended, is present to each and every one of us. Not in a general way, but in a specific, personal way. Jesus Christ is present to us right now. He is in the midst of us, closer to us that we are to our own breath. There is never a time, never a moment when we who have been baptized into the body of Christ are apart from Jesus. He’s there in our good moments and our bad moments. He’s there when we’re at church and he’s there when we’re at home. He’s with us in our moments of sorrow and with us in our moments of joy. That’s Jesus abiding in us. He abides in us by being with us. By sharing his life with us in every moment. So, for us to abide in him, we return the favor. Just as Jesus is present to us, we must be present to him. In our moments of sorrow and joy, in church and at home, at our best and at our worst we must turn our attention to Jesus just as he always has his attention turned to us, we must share our life with him.
Think of it like a turning to look at a friend. You can do a lot with a friend side-by-side, with them in the same room as you. But looking at each other squarely in the face, turning your body and your eyes and your focus to each other changes things. There’s a level of attention and intention that arises when we look at each other in the face. It’s a posture of sharing. That’s what it means for Jesus to abide in us and we in him: we turn spiritually to face Jesus as he is turned to face us. We turn to each other to share our lives with one another.
This is what the Christian life is all about. Everything we do – prayer, Scripture, sacraments, fellowship, worship – all of it is about correcting our spiritual posture, turning from all the other things we pay attention to, all the other things we abide in, towards Jesus. Because without turning to Jesus we simply will not live. We shrivel up and die, like branches pruned from the vine.
Jesus calls us to abide in him because in him is life. Not just eternal life, life in heaven, but life that be lived right now, today! Life that is possible only when we know the forgiveness of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, the incredible, overwhelming, world-creating love of God. That is the life which Jesus the vine offers to us, to the branches. We don’t receive this by thinking about Jesus or talking about Jesus, but only by abiding in him, by sharing with him, by knowing him personally as he knows each of us personally. The branch doesn’t think about the vine, or talk about the vine, the branch simply receives what the vine has to offer. So too with us: it’s not that thinking and talking about Jesus are unimportant! They’ve very important. But they’re only important insofar as they help us know Jesus more personally, to receive from him all that he has to offer.
Our faith isn’t about our buildings, our music, our liturgies. It’s not even about the good works we do, or the theologies we write. Our faith, at its core, is about the truth that Jesus Christ has come to give us life. He abides in us and invites us to abide in him so that we might live. If you have not turned to Jesus, if you have thought about him, spoken about him, but not abided with him and in him, start today. As we receive communion Jesus gives himself to us physically in the bread and wine of Eucharist to abide in us. As we receive him, let us turn our hearts to him, and as we go out into this next week and the weeks ahead, let’s keep our hearts turned to him. Share your life with him in prayer, let him share his life with you in Scripture. Receive from the heavenly vine all that he has to give us – you won’t regret it. Amen.