The Fruits of Love
5-3-15 (Easter 5B)
1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
As we continue to move through John’s letter and Jesus’ teachings from John’s Gospel in his farewell discourse to the disciples, we’re also being led through a real clinic on love - we’ve explored love in a variety of aspects: how God’s love for us has taken shape, how we can come to understand God’s love for us and to internalize it, and what it looks like for us to put that love into practice, to make that love as much a part of our lives as our own hands and feet.
One of John’s favorite words, both in the Gospel readings and in the letter, is “abide.” We hear it a lot in this week’s readings: Jesus tells the disciples to abide in him as he abides in them. John writes that we know that we live in love because God abides in us through the power of the Spirit, and then gives further encouragement several times to abide in God, to let God abide in us, and to be confident that both are possible.
As many times as John uses that word abide, and as much comfort and encouragement as we take from these verses, “abide” is not a word that has been a part of our own vocabulary, except when we talk about how it is used in scripture itself. It’s an older word, a word we don’t really use all that much, ourselves… but it’s a word that is filled with deep meaning, especially as both Jesus and John use it in these respective passages. In fact, it is one of John’s favorite words to use in his writing, both in the Gospel and his letters: he uses the word menō 34 times in his Gospel and 19 times in his letters. It is a strong word, meaning to dwell, to stay, to hold fast, or to use another older word, to cleave to something.
As Jesus tells the disciples to abide in him, he uses the word in the same context as that in which he speaks of vines, branches, and vineyards. Jesus tells the disciples to be rooted in him, to cleave to him in the same way that a branch clings to its vine - and in the same sentence, he tells them that he also abides in them. In fact, without that mutual relationship of rooted-ness, neither vine nor branches can fully bear fruit in the way that they are designed to do. It’s a profound thought, to realize that in at least some small way, Christ depends upon us in the same way that we are to depend upon Christ, but that is how God has chosen to be at work in our world.
But what is even more striking in this passage is that the relationship of abiding is not simply left at that alone - we live in a relationship of cultivation, as well. Many times, we think of the idea of bearing fruit as simply “growth” - our church bears good fruit when our membership rolls get bigger, when our offering plate gets fuller, when our church dinners and fellowship events leave no empty seats. But as any gardener here can tell you, vines and their branches are rarely left to just grow by themselves - Morning Glory is a beautiful flowering vine that grows easily and looks wonderful in your flowerbed as it flows over a rusty wheelbarrow or climbs its way up a trellis, but it quickly crosses the line and becomes a noxious weed when it continues to grow and chokes out your other wildflowers or moves into your garden and starts to crowd out your cucumbers and sweet peas.
God looks for growth, yes… but God also looks for controlled growth, and more importantly, growth that leads us to bearing good fruit. And so that means that, as we abide in the vine that is Christ, as we work to be good, fruit-bearing branches in God’s own vineyard, God is going to set to work with pruning shears, snipping away all the things in us that do not bear fruit so that we can be the healthiest branches that produce the best fruit. The NRSV doesn’t do this passage justice in its translation somewhat as it conveys Jesus’ words here - he tells the disciples that God continues to prune the branches that they may bear more fruit, but then he tells the disciples that they have already been cleansed - but the word Jesus uses here is the same word he uses when he says that the vine-grower prunes branches to let them bear more fruit. In our abiding in Christ as we receive and believe the word, we are already pruned - we’ve already experienced that move toward ever more fruitful growth. And so we find encouragement in seeing how that process is already at work within us.
But what is the fruit that we are being pruned and cultivated to bear? What does that fruit look like? We know from John’s letter that abiding in God means to abide in love, because God is love - we know that by living in love, we live in God, that people know we abide in God by the way we show that love which God has given to us. And we know that, as we continue to abide in God and in God’s love through Christ and in the power of the Spirit, we will slowly but surely become more and more like God - as John writes, “we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.”
What does it mean for us to bear the good fruits that are given to us through this life of love? What does that look like for us not just to say “I love God,” but to truly love one another, to allow God to fully live within us, and to allow ourselves to abide in God, as well? We find ourselves in a time where questions like these are at the forefront of our conversations and our daily living: we live in a world that has lost its sense of what love really is - we think we know what love is, and we strive to embrace and celebrate that ideal in our culture, our entertainment, and our very lifestyles, but all it takes is one look at our world around us to realize that we don’t understand love in the least, let alone the kind of love that Christ calls us to embody. We’re surrounded by broken relationships, by structures and systems that drive us deeper and deeper into fear instead of love. We’re watching communities shattered as time after time, they are faced with the inability to love one another, to trust and respect one another, and to treat one another as human beings worthy of dignity and compassion, and even as the church seeks to be a witness to Christ’s love in the midst of all this chaos, pain, and distrust, the Church itself is hampered in its witness by its own brokenness and divisions.
And yet, in the midst of all these things, in the midst of our own pain, our own broken and corrupted systems, the Spirit still speaks clearly and gives us hope: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. writes, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Until we start viewing all people as human beings with thoughts and emotions, then there will be no peace.” Jesus teaches us that the greatest way our life of real love is shown is a life lived in absolute, true, and loving community with one another. Nearly every time that love is discussed in the scriptures, it is discussed in the context of community - of people intentionally letting go of themselves to live out of love for one another, to lift one another up, and to invite more and more people further into that community of love together. It means seeing the other as just as valuable, if not more valuable than ourselves - it means being willing to step beyond generations and cultural structures of distrust to give water to police officers in riot gear. It means looking past the cross on someone’s neck or the Koran in someone’s hand to see another beloved child of God who faces persecution, and then being willing to put yourselves between them and their persecutors as a human shield while the other prays and worships God. It means being willing to live into the South African philosophy of ubuntu - a word that translates, “Because we are, I am.” May the peace of Christ which passes all understanding wash over us all in this time, and may we live our lives always in the love of God our Father, to whom be all glory. Amen.
1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8
The Fruits of Love
As we continue to move through John’s letter and Jesus’ teachings from John’s Gospel in his farewell discourse to the disciples, we’re also being led through a real clinic on love - we’ve explored love in a variety of aspects: how God’s love for us has taken shape, how we can come to understand God’s love for us and to internalize it, and what it looks like for us to put that love into practice, to make that love as much a part of our lives as our own hands and feet.
One of John’s favorite words, both in the Gospel readings and in the letter, is “abide.” We hear it a lot in this week’s readings: Jesus tells the disciples to abide in him as he abides in them. John writes that we know that we live in love because God abides in us through the power of the Spirit, and then gives further encouragement several times to abide in God, to let God abide in us, and to be confident that both are possible.
As many times as John uses that word abide, and as much comfort and encouragement as we take from these verses, “abide” is not a word that has been a part of our own vocabulary, except when we talk about how it is used in scripture itself. It’s an older word, a word we don’t really use all that much, ourselves… but it’s a word that is filled with deep meaning, especially as both Jesus and John use it in these respective passages. In fact, it is one of John’s favorite words to use in his writing, both in the Gospel and his letters: he uses the word menō 34 times in his Gospel and 19 times in his letters. It is a strong word, meaning to dwell, to stay, to hold fast, or to use another older word, to cleave to something.
As Jesus tells the disciples to abide in him, he uses the word in the same context as that in which he speaks of vines, branches, and vineyards. Jesus tells the disciples to be rooted in him, to cleave to him in the same way that a branch clings to its vine - and in the same sentence, he tells them that he also abides in them. In fact, without that mutual relationship of rooted-ness, neither vine nor branches can fully bear fruit in the way that they are designed to do. It’s a profound thought, to realize that in at least some small way, Christ depends upon us in the same way that we are to depend upon Christ, but that is how God has chosen to be at work in our world.
But what is even more striking in this passage is that the relationship of abiding is not simply left at that alone - we live in a relationship of cultivation, as well. Many times, we think of the idea of bearing fruit as simply “growth” - our church bears good fruit when our membership rolls get bigger, when our offering plate gets fuller, when our church dinners and fellowship events leave no empty seats. But as any gardener here can tell you, vines and their branches are rarely left to just grow by themselves - Morning Glory is a beautiful flowering vine that grows easily and looks wonderful in your flowerbed as it flows over a rusty wheelbarrow or climbs its way up a trellis, but it quickly crosses the line and becomes a noxious weed when it continues to grow and chokes out your other wildflowers or moves into your garden and starts to crowd out your cucumbers and sweet peas.
God looks for growth, yes… but God also looks for controlled growth, and more importantly, growth that leads us to bearing good fruit. And so that means that, as we abide in the vine that is Christ, as we work to be good, fruit-bearing branches in God’s own vineyard, God is going to set to work with pruning shears, snipping away all the things in us that do not bear fruit so that we can be the healthiest branches that produce the best fruit. The NRSV doesn’t do this passage justice in its translation somewhat as it conveys Jesus’ words here - he tells the disciples that God continues to prune the branches that they may bear more fruit, but then he tells the disciples that they have already been cleansed - but the word Jesus uses here is the same word he uses when he says that the vine-grower prunes branches to let them bear more fruit. In our abiding in Christ as we receive and believe the word, we are already pruned - we’ve already experienced that move toward ever more fruitful growth. And so we find encouragement in seeing how that process is already at work within us.
But what is the fruit that we are being pruned and cultivated to bear? What does that fruit look like? We know from John’s letter that abiding in God means to abide in love, because God is love - we know that by living in love, we live in God, that people know we abide in God by the way we show that love which God has given to us. And we know that, as we continue to abide in God and in God’s love through Christ and in the power of the Spirit, we will slowly but surely become more and more like God - as John writes, “we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.”
What does it mean for us to bear the good fruits that are given to us through this life of love? What does that look like for us not just to say “I love God,” but to truly love one another, to allow God to fully live within us, and to allow ourselves to abide in God, as well? We find ourselves in a time where questions like these are at the forefront of our conversations and our daily living: we live in a world that has lost its sense of what love really is - we think we know what love is, and we strive to embrace and celebrate that ideal in our culture, our entertainment, and our very lifestyles, but all it takes is one look at our world around us to realize that we don’t understand love in the least, let alone the kind of love that Christ calls us to embody. We’re surrounded by broken relationships, by structures and systems that drive us deeper and deeper into fear instead of love. We’re watching communities shattered as time after time, they are faced with the inability to love one another, to trust and respect one another, and to treat one another as human beings worthy of dignity and compassion, and even as the church seeks to be a witness to Christ’s love in the midst of all this chaos, pain, and distrust, the Church itself is hampered in its witness by its own brokenness and divisions.
And yet, in the midst of all these things, in the midst of our own pain, our own broken and corrupted systems, the Spirit still speaks clearly and gives us hope: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. writes, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Until we start viewing all people as human beings with thoughts and emotions, then there will be no peace.” Jesus teaches us that the greatest way our life of real love is shown is a life lived in absolute, true, and loving community with one another. Nearly every time that love is discussed in the scriptures, it is discussed in the context of community - of people intentionally letting go of themselves to live out of love for one another, to lift one another up, and to invite more and more people further into that community of love together. It means seeing the other as just as valuable, if not more valuable than ourselves - it means being willing to step beyond generations and cultural structures of distrust to give water to police officers in riot gear. It means looking past the cross on someone’s neck or the Koran in someone’s hand to see another beloved child of God who faces persecution, and then being willing to put yourselves between them and their persecutors as a human shield while the other prays and worships God. It means being willing to live into the South African philosophy of ubuntu - a word that translates, “Because we are, I am.” May the peace of Christ which passes all understanding wash over us all in this time, and may we live our lives always in the love of God our Father, to whom be all glory. Amen.
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