As the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my
love.
Aside from funerals and football matches, you don’t come across
the word “abide” very often today.
I’ve uttered it more when reading the Bible in worship –
particularly JWohn’s gospel – than in any other context – and in the first 11
verses of chapter 15 it appears no less than 11 times.
Well- yippy doodle doo, you might be thinking. So what?
If the NRSV chose an archaic word, why should that worry us.
Can’t we just go with “remain” - as some other translations do –
and press on to the tricky stuff about love.
We will in a minute, I promise – but I’d like, if I may, to
detain us for a moment first
You see, that verb, “abide” is all about staying
put, making yourself at home – which, of course, we are all VERY practised at
after the past year. We have abided in our homes, our places of safety – and
will have found them more or less attractive. We have had a chance to think
about what kind of space we inhabit and as a result we may have changed things
round, redecorated or disposed of things that no longer seem to have a place in
our lives, maybe made plans to move altogether .
We may have done a bit of reorganising of our
inner spaces too, discovering what we value and what we can discard from that
landscape as well.
Though the City of Culture tag line is “Coventry
Moves”, for the past year we’ve been more still than for centuries. There’s
hope that we may even have learned from the experience even if we feel we’ve
fallen a long way short of the Desert Fathers...who famously adopted the
teaching of Abba Moses of Scetis, who told a would be disciple who had
travelled miles to learn from him
'Go,
sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’"
I’m writing this on the feast of Julian of Norwich
– an anchoress, anchored not only in her tiny cell in St Julian’s Church
but also, even more firmly, in God’s love. She had surely learned the meaning
of abiding, her own brush with death not only concentrating the mind
wonderfully but opening her up to that amazing series of revelations of divine
love that have lost none of their power in the intervening centuries. You see –
I promised we would get to the difficult love stuff in time
Abide in my love, says Jesus. Make your home here,
with my love as the foundation, my love the walls that offer shelter from
life’s storms, my love the place of hospitality into which you may invite
others.
This is my commandment – that you love one another
AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.
That’s where all that abiding gets you – and we
can’t pretend it’s not challenging.
If we have responded to that invitation to abide, seriously intent on loving one another as
Jesus has loved us – well, we know how well that ended for him, don’t we.
It may simply seem too hard…Abiding is fine...Me
and Jesus in a happy huddle. Fabulous.
But unfortunately, not what he has in mind.
Love one another.
No helpful boundaries suggested – love those who
voted the way you did...love those whose taste in worship music matches your
own...those whom you see as a blessing to the world…
Love one another.
Oh help
That, of course, was the problem addressed in the
Acts reading – which is the end of the story of Peter and Cornelius, in which
Peter is taught to open the flaps of the tent in which he is abiding to make
room for others. Peter has been absolutely certain who he is called to love and
relate to – then along comes the Holy Spirit and shatters his world view just
like that. That’s simply what she does...pushing us to cross our self-created
boundaries, inviting us not just to be rooted, but to GROW...
Here’s the difference between abiding in God’s
love and hanging on to our own, limited, human version. Left to ourselves, we
seek safety among our own kind...create systems to determine who is in and who
is out, shrink our borders, include fewer people – but that’s not how Jesus
loves at all.
.He embodies God’s desire to include all – When I
am lifted up from the earth I will draw ALL people to myself – and invites us to
recognise the limits of our own vision, and to learn from others – people with
different politics, different cultures, - people we might not actually like
that much.
God’s love makes room – and so must ours. Jesus
doesn’t just issue commandments – new or otherwise. He calls us friends – makes
outsiders insiders as he invites us to sit down at his table with EVERYONE
else, to eat and discuss his great plan for the world with those who are,
perhaps unexpectedly, sitting beside us
Rowan Williams puts it rather well
To obey the new commandment of love is to stay
put: to stay with the people God has given us to love, to nurture and be
nurtured by, to challenge and be challenged by
He doesn’t add, though he might have done, “like
it or not”
We are to invite them into our tent, these people
God gives us to love – to make a space there for love to abide, and for us to
abide in love. This will probably involve a bit of humilty….a recognition that
as limited beings, loving an unlimited God, we need to learn from one another,
so that together we can harmonise with many voices that same theme: love God,
and love one another.
Remember, Jesus has no favourites...Jews and
Gentiles, Desert Fathers and Medieval mystics, Archbishops and Deputy Head
Choristers – all are loved equally and totally. Jesus laid down his life for
his friends – including each of us
By grace, we are all beloved...Let us ask for the
grace we need, so that we may truly abide in love and bear love’s fruit in a
loveless world.
.
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