To Abide in Christ
The Catalan artist Joan Miro once said, “I work like a gardener…leaves must be cut so the fruit can grow. At the right moment, I must prune.” According to Jesus, God also works like a gardener – pruning so that we might bear good fruit, and much fruit. Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit… Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” [i]
This is the last of the “I am” sayings of Jesus in John. Each time is meant to recall that moment Moses stood on Holy Ground in front of a bush that burned with the power of the Spirit, and when he asks the voice from the bush for its name, the answer is, “I am who I am.” The issue now is bearing fruit. Those of us who follow Jesus will, he says elsewhere in John, “also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” [ii] All because the Master Gardener will do some pruning amongst us so that we might bear more and more fruit of the kingdom of God’s Shalom, God’s Peaceable Kingdom, where everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, and if you try to horde the fruits of God’s Shalom, it rots. It goes bad. Thus, the importance that we, as individuals, but even more so as a community of God’s Love and Shalom, must abide in Christ.
The word ‘abide’, meno in Greek, can mean: abide, or rest, but also to continue, to remain, to dwell in the Lord as the Lord comes to dwell within and among us. Abide is used 40 times in John’s gospel, of which the current chapter 15 accounts for eleven of these uses! It can also mean to endure courageously even when the going gets tough. Under the iron rod of Rome and with the coming demise of the Temple, things got very tough for those early followers of Christ. A major branch had been removed by Rome. The center of worship life for Jews and Christians was and is no longer. The pruning this time had been most severe. What is everyone to do now?
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles offers vignettes of what it means to persevere and bear fruit. Here we find Philip, that disciple who had recently asked Jesus how we might find “the way” to the Father, now instructed by an Angel of the Lord to head south to the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza. There he comes across an Ethiopian Eunuch, an official in charge of the treasury for the Candace, Queen of the Kushites in what is now Sudan or southern Egypt. He was heading home to Africa by way of Gaza, and passing the time in his chariot reading the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53 about the Suffering Servant: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.” The Spirit urges Philip to join him and Philip asks if he understands what he is reading. [iii]
The eunuch replies, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Scholars are not sure if the prophet spoke of himself, or a messiah, or the community of God’s people, Israel. Beginning with Isaiah, Philip proclaims to him the good news about Jesus and the community of God’s Love and Shalom. Then as they come upon “some water,” the Eunuch asks Philip to baptize him. That is, to be incorporated into the community of God’s people of Love and Shalom. Philip, without hesitation, baptizes the eunuch. When they come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatches Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. Philip found himself at Azotus, some 30 miles up the road. As he was passing through the region, Philip continued to proclaim the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea, the provincial capital of Rome. He takes the good news into the heart of the oppressor empire.
Philip was a productive branch of the vine, and judging from his work after baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch, he continues gather the community of Christ’s Love. We might note, he accepts without hesitation a foreigner, an alien traveling through the land, a black man, a sexually ambiguous man, an officer for a woman, the Queen of the foreign nation of Kush, and perhaps a proselyte preparing to become a Jew, studying the prophetic poetry of Isaiah. It’s possible Philip was thinking of the 56th chapter of Isaiah where it is written: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
That is, despite being black, a foreigner, a eunuch, and one
who works for a woman, it turns out it is not what you are but what you do that
counts for being accepted into the covenant of the God of Israel. As Paul would
put it in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male
nor female; all are One in Christ Jesus!” [iv]Jesus
practices a ministry of Reconciliation – bringing people together rather than
causing division. It is one of the Sins of his Body, the Church, that long
after Resurrection and Pentecost we became a cause for division through so many
tragic episodes like the Crusades, the treatment of women, anti-Semitism, and
the enmity between denominations not allowing those from other traditions to
share in Holy Communion – the Sacrament that is meant to unite us. In another
of the “I am” sayings, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down
from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I
will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” [v]
Not just for the life of his Body, the Church, but for the life of the world.
Let us all consider what extraordinary courage it took to abide, to remain in the Jesus Movement, for someone like Philip. And how extraordinary it was for him to reach out to a foreigner, a person of color, a eunuch, an official in a foreign Queen’s empire. May we see that it took over 500 years from Isaiah chapter 56 to that moment when Philip made the vision of the prophet-poet real by taking the Ethiopian down to the waters of baptism and saying, “Yes, you are one of us. You always have been. Join us in spreading the Good News!” Think of the pruning of our tradition it has taken from Isaiah to Jesus to Philip to today to accept foreigners, people of color, women, and LGBTQ people into full membership in the Body of Christ, so that we can truly be the community of love and peace God imagines and dreams we can be. Amen. It is truth. It is so.
[i] John
15:1-8
[ii]
John 14:12
[iii] Acts
8:26-40
[iv]
Galatians 3:8
[v]
John 6:51
[vi]
John 15: 10-11
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