Held in God's Love

 

1 John 4:7-21 & John 15:1-11 

“Abide in me as I abide in you.” Jesus says. And at first, what I hear is, “the dude abides.” In the Big Lebowski, Jeff, “the dude” Lebowski, ‘a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler,’ played by Jeff Bridges, abides. He says so himself 160 time in the movie. What he means is, ‘the dude lives in his unperturbable state of dudeness.’ He simply is. He abides.
 
At my own baptism, when I was 13, this passage was read to me. My job, I was told, was to abide in Christ. I heard it as to hang on tightly to Jesus and work hard to not let go.  But there is no striving in abiding; nobody says, “I was abiding so hard.”  It’s a relaxing into, dwelling alongside, hanging out and lingering kind of word. So abiding in Christ is not about hanging on tightly and mustering doubtless faith, conjuring spiritual feelings, or displaying religious or moral tenacity. It’s kind of the opposite. It’s just being. Like the dude.  
 
I went on a retreat this week at a Catholic retreat center I had not been to before. They sent a welcome video orienting me to my hermitage and one of the things they said was how people often ask what they should do. You’re not there to do anything – you are just there to be. If you’re tired, sleep. If you’re hungry, eat. If you want to walk, walk. If you want to sit in the chair and rock and watch nature out the window, do that. You aren’t here to accomplish anything, they told me, you’re here to abide in the love of God.  

But the video went on to say something interesting. Once we finally settle into accepting we don’t need to do anything, we turn that doing energy onto God. I’ll just be, God, but you need to do something for me. Give me an answer, some insight, a mystical experience, a message.  But that’s not what this time is for either, they said. You are here just to be with God, who is being with you.
 
Abide. Linger. Be. Be connected. Be alive. Be here with God because God is here with you. 
 
In scripture, this word “abide” is actually not used for humans nearly as often as it is used for God.  God abides.  This is God’s word first: God loiters with us. God hangs out with us in and through it all.  We abide in Christ because God abides with us. 
 
And in this abiding relationship, there is something fierce and lovely about the message that anything dead will be taken off and burned, that we will be pruned, and that the pruning will be done by the vinegrower, and not the branches themselves.  It’s both a threat and a promise: God will take care of what needs to be released and let go, in us, between us. God will do the pruning that makes us healthier, more whole and filled with life. Sometimes it will feel like death to let go of what we thought we needed but was really holding us back from flourishing. 
 
 There is a particular concept in Christian practice that the mystics talk a lot about: holy indifference.  Whatever happens to me, I am ok. Because in life or in death, I belong to God. The most terrible thing will not destroy me. The most wonderful thing will not save me. I am held in God’s love. I abide. I can take in joy, and go through suffering, and they are both real and impact me, of course, but they do not define me, they do not sway me from my grounding in love. 

 
When session (our church board) works together to discern where God is leading the church, we seek this place of holy indifference before we begin.  Can we let go of our agendas and trust that God will reveal, through the process and each other, what is best for our congregation? I may think I know what is best, but I have biases and desires that I may not even be aware of, and so does everyone else.  So we seek to reach holy indifference, to face the question in front of us with humility and trust that God may have something better for us than what any one of us had in mind. Because ultimately we really do desire “God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.” And God may prune us, or even fertilize us (!) —things may go differently than we had planned. But we are learning that if we can surrender into trust that we are held in God no matter what, it makes us brave to risk, and speak up, and reach out, and let in.  Holy indifference is this deep trust, illustrated by this little sentence tucked into the middle of our passage today, “…as he is, so we are in the world.”  As Christ is—inextricably connected to God and everyone else, held in love—so are we.  We can trust that. We can abide in that state of - if not unperturbable dudeness - then holy indifference.
 
But abiding is not a solo gig.  If these passages say anything to us today, it is that it is impossible to abide in Christ alone.  “God is love,” our scripture says, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Abiding in God means love. Loving, being loved, love.  And that requires other people.
There is no individual discipleship, no personal, isolated relationship with God. I do not experience Christ somehow apart from my life lived alongside, with and for others, because Christ IS God-with-us. That’s not to say that solitude isn’t essential, or that we can’t get away, like I did on retreat, to hang out with God.  But any connection I had to God there is inextricably woven into the connections I have with other people here. I am not me without them. I brought the joy and pain of those I love, and the sorrow of our nation and world, with me. And I returned from alone to together, to with and for, to alongside and in it – with my family, friends, and community, to the whole world of which I am a part. 
 
It is in and alongside each other that we find Christ. St. Theresa of Avila said, “Every face is an icon of Christ discovered by a prayerful person.”  When we abide in Christ, we will find ourselves living in love, loving others, receiving others, lingering in the joy and the pain with others, standing by others and finding others doing that for us as well.  God’s love is embodied in us, between us; God uses our voices, and our arms and our eyes and our hearts to love. 
 
And despite what we most often believe and how we most often relate, there is no fear in love. None at all. Perfect love casts out fear.  Love is the energy of life – love fuels life, deepens life, builds life, grows life.  But fear is the energy of death, fear pushes us to shut others down, close them out.  Love connects and strengthens us; fear breaks down relationships and dismantles trust.  In love we open up and grow outward, but in fear we shrink down and shrivel up, isolated, falsely “protected” from hurt, insulated in self-absorption or blame.  Love is a blazing fire that lights up the world. But where fear is stoked, it sucks up all the oxygen and stifles love.
 
The opposite of love is not really hate.  We don’t really hate one another, at least not most of the time. We fear one another. We fear what the other can take from us, require of us, do to us, stop us from doing. “Hating” is letting fear decide how we see each other. 
But there is no fear in love.  Perfect love casts out fear; love is stronger than fear.  It is through love that God’s Spirit does the work in us of healing and freeing, beginning and redeeming, mending and forgiving.  
 
How do we feel God’s love? In the love of others. 

How do we feel God’s love? When we love each other.  

It’s not an abstract, spiritual and distant thing.  It is a concrete, real, tangible thing. If you want to see God’s love, then love somebody.  Say something, do something, for somebody else. See them. Hear them. Join them.  Love someone. Do it and you will find yourself held by it.  Live like it’s true and its truth will live in you.  
 
But lest we think we need to make ourselves into loving people, producers of love – we go back to the abiding, the holy indifference of trust, the being loved already and completely by God. Christ is the vine. We are the branches. It’s not even our love, after all. We’re recipients and conduits – we are just sharing it, breathing it and passing it around; we are just abiding in the love of God that sustains us all. 
 
So beloved ones, abide. Linger here. Be. Be connected. Be alive. 
God is hanging out here with us.  Our job is to hang out here with God.  And that looks like love. 
 
Amen.
 

Remaining there always

John 20:19-23

John 15:1, 9-17

“I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in my love.” This passage from John 15 has always been meaningful to me because it was read to me at my baptism.  I stood in a white robe, in a fiberglass pool built into the front of the sanctuary, waist deep in warm water - a short, nervous 13 year old - and said into the mic that I loved Jesus and wanted to be baptized.   And my mother stood in the congregation, holding open the bible and read to me these verses as a charge: “Your life comes from Jesus, hang onto Jesus, abide in him and his joy will be in you.”  I can still hear her voice saying those words.  Hang onto Jesus.

I recently heard a table full of Lutheran pastors debating whether faith was more monkey or cat, which is to say, do we cling to God, like a baby monkey, while God moves and leads, trying hard not to fall off, or do we get carried like a limp kitten in his mother’s mouth, trusting we wont get dropped? Who does the hanging on? was the debate. What is our role in our faith with God? 

And if you think this kind of discussion can’t get heated, think again.

But the word abide is not a desperate clinging, being carried along, afraid to fall off, and it’s not a passive ride either, trusting God not to drop you but not really participating in where you are going.

In fact, abiding isn’t really about hanging on at all, or being hung onto, for that matter.  Abiding is an active trust; it’s relaxing your grip, opening up, dwelling, hanging out, staying there, not fleeing and not flexing, but moving along nonetheless.  It’s a with-and-alongside, and within-and- around kind of thing, like being buoyed in a river while you swim, or surrounded by sunlight as you walk.  It’s less baby monkey or kitten and more child playing in the yard with Mommy in a time-suspended kind of where can I go from your Spirit, where can I flee from your presence? way of being.  She’s right there, she’s not going away, she is delighting in you and you are safe with her.  Abide there. Remain. Receive, participate. Be. In my love; surrounding you like a force field.  
You are pulled into the inner dynamic of God, which is love.  Abiding in Jesus’ love is letting the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you. It is trusting that your life comes from the Source of Life.

Tonight we celebrate Pentecost – the birth of the church, the moment the Spirit came down.  The Acts Pentecost passage with the tongues of fire and the other languages, is one telling of how it all got going, and it’s the one that gets all the press. But the Great Commission in Matthew is another, and our text tonight from John is yet another way of telling how the church began and the Spirit came and drew the disciples and all who followed Jesus into deep friendship and shared mission with the Creator, in the love between the Father and the Son.

In our passage tonight, like shivers down the spine, the breath of the breath of life, breathes on them.  Receive the Spirit, take in the life of the lifegiver. Let it stir you alive as it did the earth creature, Adamah, as it did the waters it hovered over when there was nothing but emptiness, moving the nascent world into vibrant, joyful being.  And then, he says, Receive my peace.  Peace is what I give you. Take in my peace, dwell in my peace.  Be filled with peace.

And then that amazing charge  - not “preach the gospel” or “go to all the world” or “make disciples” or any of the rest of how it is said in the other places. No, here he says it this way – if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

You are now in this with me - this peace, this abiding in love and inviting others to abide there too, this trusting God for life kind of living. You are drawn into the very relationship of God – the force that binds God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit, the inner substance of the Holy.  And in this love you have power - if you want to hang onto the things that divide and destroy, hold them and they will be held.  But if you let them go, release them, they are gone. 

This is your calling in the world.  To live from this love. To be grudge-releasers and mercy-sharers and trusters of love and dwellers in peace and spreaders of forgiveness and hope.  To live in the same connection to God and each other as I do. To let God’s life flow through you: Love each other.  Abide in my love.

Several years ago, I heard Dr. Fred Luskin speak, a world expert on forgiveness.  He said he was frustrated some time ago because most faith traditions speak extensively about the need to forgive and how good it is to do, but they don’t tell us how to forgive. They don’t often help us to do it. They just tell us to do it. And people get so stuck in unforgiveness. So very stuck.  So he has dedicated 25 years of research and work to teaching people how to forgive, and to measuring scientifically the effect it has on people’s bodies and minds and relationships.  And do you know what his team has found is at the very root of all forgiveness?

Abiding in God’s love. 

Of course, they wouldn’t say it quite that way in the laboratory. Instead they would talk about finding that place of peace within, about living from that place; but the way you get there?  Love.  He walked us through an example.  Think of someone you adore, he said. Get a good picture of them in your head.  Remember what it feels like to be so loved by them, so known and valued. How they delight in you!  Let your heart even get warm right now as you think of this person. Hold that feeling within you.  Now open your eyes, he said. Five minutes of this every day is more effective than psychotherapy in helping people to forgive. 

Love unclenches our heart, it drives out fear, and frees us – ever so much more - to forgive and to live even more out of the love that holds us, because all forgiveness, all love and mercy and with-each-other-ness come from God’s own love, God’s own being.

Abiding in God’s love not an abstract, spiritual and distant thing.  It is a concrete, real, tangible thing; it is loving each other and letting ourselves be loved; it looks like forgiveness, and it tastes like peace.  

Tonight we are baptizing little Eleanor.  And she is not going to remember this night, but I am her godmother and I will tell her about it.  And I love that the message she will get to hear is this:

You are already claimed by love – Eleanor, you belong to love. That is your home. It’s what gets to tell you who you are; it’s what gets to show you what others really look like and teach you what this world around you is really for. Love does. 

And it’s your job, as you grow, to remain there. To let yourself be loved. To let love guide you as you live with other people and meet them and fight with them and forgive them and fall for them and feel your way through all the complicated and messy things it is to be human alongside them. You get to stay in love’s forcefield through all of it.  A walking abider in love; that is what you are.

And what you forgive will be forgiven – you have power, my dear!

And you will forget sometimes.

 It’s going to be tempting sometimes to cling to hurt and anger, to shut out others and punish other’s wrongs, and to take into yourself all the judgment and failure and No of the world and others and yourself when you’re afraid or angry or jealous or afraid, and to believe that No, as though it is true, as though it gets to tell you who you are or what is real.  And you might even believe this No so much that you go out looking for what you already have, trying to be what you already are.

But God has said Yes to you, Eleanor, I will tell her.  We all saw it, I felt it drip off my fingers and soak your soft little head, and that Yes will never, ever end. Your life is now hidden with God in Christ.  And you get to remain in that Yes, abide in it, swim in it, let it fill you up and spill out onto others.

 You get to be a messenger of God’s Yes in the world. You are part of love – already and always a part of love. Love is what gets to tell you what is true and trustworthy and right. Only love! Not being right or being strong or being good or being fearless. Love.

And on this Pentecost weekend, it’s such a blessing to remember alongside Eleanor that this is what it is to be the Church – the people who belong to love – who live that alongside others, who bear this great and astonishing power to be about forgiveness in the world, about release and freedom, to let people be defined not by rules or anger or fear or judgment, but by love. 

Hey church, what if that is what is required of all of us, with these kids we baptize? 
To live around them and alongside them as though we really believe we are loved by God? To live our lives, every day, as though we really trust that our life comes from the Source of Life, as God really is with us everything, and the peace Jesus speaks of really is ours? 

To not be afraid to be honest about the times we forget it, to seek forgiveness from each other, and from God together, from the things that hold us captive –to actively confess and say, please, help me be free again? 

To walk around this life with a hidden awareness of God’s utter delight in us, and the inability to walk by another person without seeing them the exact same way? 

It is our calling to live in that much peace, that much freedom, and trust, and abiding in the love of God that claims us, that we just keep forgiving, keep pushing past the barriers we’ve erected and the fears that capture us, and keep on saying no to no, for ourselves, and others, and the world, believing instead, that we are part of God’s Yes.

Trusting that love is what claims us, so we are free not to retain our sins or the sins of others, free not to live guarded by calcified pain, but instead to face and feel pain and even let that pain carve room within us for joy, let it open up new spaces in us to be filled up with love.

We are the Body of Christ, the ones who abide, as Jesus abides, that is, in Jesus Christ we actively live in God’s Yes for the world, actively remain in the love of God. That is who we are.  And the world needs us to be to be this.

You did not choose me, but I chose you, Jesus says, to us, to the Church, to Eleanor. I chose you to remain open and ready to meet God, who is with and for us all, and to love as you are loved. 

So, let’s bring up Eleanor and pour this truth over her and welcome her into it, and say to her on behalf of all those who will get to live out this promise in her life day by day: Eleanor, your life comes from Jesus. That means you belong to love. Abide in this reality, little one. May you be filled with joy and peace in trusting.  And throughout your life, as you continue to find your voice and discover your place in this world, may you let the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you.

Amen.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. 

I do not give to you as the world gives. 

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."  
(John 14:27)

Hanging out where God is

 John 15:1-11

1 John 4:7-21

“I am the vine and you are the branches.” This passage from John 15 was read to me at my baptism.  I stood in a white robe, waist deep in water, in a pool at the front of the church building - a short, nervous 13 year old - and said into the mic that I loved Jesus and wanted to be baptized.   And my mother stood in the congregation, holding open the bible and read to me these verses as a charge. “Your life comes from Jesus, hang onto Jesus, abide in him and his joy will be in you.”  I can still hear her voice saying those words. Hang onto Jesus.

That's a wonderful charge, and in the moment, standing there at my baptism, I was feeling that abiding like nobody's business.  I was hanging on to Jesus, and everyone could see that.  But when that moment fades, and real life creeps in, the question becomes, How do I do this? This intimidating thing of “hanging onto the vine”? How do I abide in Christ?  Is it about what I do? What I think, or believe, about God? Is it about how I feel? Is that it, do I need to “feel” God or “feel close to God” in order to know that I am truly abiding in Christ?  I wanted this; I want this.  This joy that is promised, God’s life in me. That closeness with God.  But what am I supposed to do to get it, or keep it?  Or keep from losing it?

Hang on tight and don’t let go, I suppose. 

But this pesky word, “Abide” kind of mucks things up. It’s not really a “give it all your effort,” “do your best” kind of word. “I was abiding so hard.” It is clearly NOT striving.  And abiding is definitely not hanging on really tightly.

It is more the opposite. It is relaxing your grip, opening up, dwelling, hanging out.  It is more like letting the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you.  Abide.  It is John’s whole theme – trusting, letting your life come from the Life.

We abide because God abides. God abides.  All through scripture, this word is mostly God’s word. God remains. God hangs out in and through it all.  Underneath everything and binding it all together is this Word; God’s creative energy that spoke the whole world into being now speaks through love. We find ourselves in God, who abides, because God is love. We can because God is.

So how do we abide, then? How do we live in God’s love?  Not by ourselves, that’s for certain. If these passages say anything to us today, it is that it is impossible to abide in Christ alone.  If the fruit of this abiding is love, it means that when we abide in Christ, we will find ourselves living in love, loving others, receiving others, remaining with others, standing by others and finding others doing that for us as well.  There is no individual discipleship, no personal, isolated relationship with God.  Abiding in God means love. Loving, being loved, love.  And that requires other people. God’s love is embodied in us, between us; it uses our voices, and our arms and our eyes.

We’ve been talking about encounters with the Risen One. We’ve been sharing stories of resurrection.  Mary, Thomas, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our own lives when we see life come out of death, hope emerge from despair, the places of God’s presence.  But where do we most often meet the Risen One? When we love, when we are loved.  We meet Jesus in the places we are with and for one another in love.

And despite what we most often believe and how we most often relate, there is no fear in love. None at all. Perfect love casts out fear.  If love is our salvation, fear is our damnation.  Love is the currency, the energy, of life – love fuels life, deepens life, builds life, grows life.  But fear is the currency and energy of death, fear motivates and propels us to shut others down, close them out, fear breaks down relationships and dismantles trust, in fear we keep ourselves isolated, falsely “protected” from hurt, insulated in unforgiveness.  Where fear is stoked, it sucks up all the oxygen and stifles love.

The opposite of love is not really hate.  We don’t really hate one another, at least not most of the time. We fear one another. We fear what the other can take from us, require of us, do to us, stop us from doing. We fear each other.

But there is no fear in love.  Perfect love casts out fear, so love is stronger than fear.  Love forgives and mends and sets us free.  

I attended the Westminster Town Hall Forum and couple of weeks ago, to listen to a psychologist speak, a world expert on forgiveness.  He said he was frustrated some time ago because faith traditions always speak about the need to forgive and how good it is to do, but they don’t tell us HOW to forgive. They don’t often help us to do it. They just tell is TO do it. And people get so stuck in unforgiveness. So very stuck.  So he has dedicated 20 years of research and work to teaching people how to forgive, to measuring scientifically the effect it has on people’s bodies and minds and relationships.  And do you know what his team has found is at the very root of all forgiveness?

Abiding in God’s love. 

Of course, they wouldn’t say it quite that way in the laboratory. Instead they would talk about finding that place of peace within, about living from that place; but the way you get there?  Love.  He walked us through an example.  Think of someone you adore, he said. Get a good picture of them in your head.  Remember what it feels like to be so loved by them, so known and valued. How they delight in you.  Let your heart even get warm right now as you think of this person. Hold that feeling within you.  Now open your eyes, he said. Five minutes of this every day is more effective than psychotherapy in helping people to forgive. 

Abiding in love unclenches our heart, drives out fear, and frees us – ever so much more - to forgive and to live out of love, because all forgiveness, all love and mercy and with-each-other-ness come from God’s own love.

“No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another God lives in us and God’s love is completed in us.”

How do we see God’s love? In the love of others.

How do we see God’s love? When we love others. 

It’s not an abstract, spiritual and distant thing.  It is a concrete, real, tangible thing.

Holding my son in the dark when he has a nightmare, helping him to change the story and reminding him of his own strength...in my words and my arms, he feels God’s love.  And so do I, in the aching pain of loving him. God’s love is completed in us.

The two word email from my sister in my moment of frustration, the email that says nothing, really, but means everything- she sees me and laughs with me and I am not alone. When she sees me, Jesus sees me, and in one bright moment I feel God’s love.

The instant when my arrogance crumbles, and I can apologize for being wrong, because as important as it is to me to be right – and that is often far too important to me –this person in front of me whom I love is actually truly more important to me than myself. And by dropping my guard I realize that underneath of this fight is the desire to be close, to be heard, to be known, together we feel God’s love in our own broken and faltering love.

The friend whose terrible suffering was secret, distant, and who only now is opening up to tell me what she has been through, and I feel crushed for her, so sad, completely helpless to fix any of it and at a loss for the right words, but I can listen, and I can bear it with her.  And we are for each other the presence of God. 

When we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is completed in us.

Have you seen the Risen One? He is right here, meeting us in the love between you and me, in the space here that exists between us, and the Spirit that connects us, sharing the hope and joy and pain and life that we share.

So Abide in this love.  Relax into this love.  Remain in this love.

And when you can’t, when you are dry and alone, parched and empty, when you wonder, Where is God?,  it’s not up to you to go and find God. It’s not up to you to hang on really tightly and muster up some kind of doubtless faith or spiritual certainty or religious or moral tenacity. 

If you want to see God’s love, then love somebody.  Say something, do something, for somebody else. See them. Hear them. Join them.  It’s a concrete action and real window, that opens your eyes and heart. Love someone. Do it and you will find yourself held by it.  Live like it’s true and its truth will live in you. 

Because it is not really about what we do -  it’s not even our love, after all. We’re just sharing it, swimming in it, breathing it and passing it around; we are just abiding in the love that sustains us, the love that is life, the life of the world. 

So don’t be afraid. Jesus is here. Open your hands, relax your grip, and let the life of God that is in you, that claims you, live through you. 

Amen.