Abide

 

Propers: The Fifth Sunday of Easter, AD 2021 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Abide in me.”

Jesus repeats this phrase five times in the eight verses we read today from John’s Gospel: abide in me, abide in me, abide in me, abide in me, abide in me. And that word “abide”—μένω in the Greek—means to remain with, to endure, to be held, to be kept, not to perish, not to depart, but to stay present. “Abide in me” as branches abide in the vine and thus put forth their fruit.

Throughout the Bible, the image of the vine represents God’s people Israel. You’ll find it in the Prophets, in the Psalms, in the coins of the day, even carved into the entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem. The logo of the tourism board for the modern state of Israel is two spies bearing between them a mammoth cluster of grapes. When Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” he is tapping into a deep well of rich biblical symbolism.

He is saying that he himself is Israel; he himself is the people of God; and that those who abide in him, stay with him, trust in him—even if they must be pruned by the keeper of the vineyard, cleansed for their own health and good—nevertheless put forth their fruit to the greater glory of God.

The issue of root and fruit, of works and faith, has been a pitfall for Christians almost from the beginning. On the one hand you have those who would claim that salvation must be earned by our good works, our good deeds, be they ritual or ethical. We have to win heaven for ourselves, didn’t you know? We are rewarded according to our deeds. But this way lies arrogance and fear.

On the other hand, there are those who would say that salvation is simply a matter of creed, of confessing the propositions of faith, and so long as you check the right boxes, the deeds of your life are all moot. We’re saved by grace, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we then sin, that grace may abound the more?

The one extreme we call works-righteousness, climbing a ladder to heaven, saving ourselves by the sweat of our brows. The other we call antinomianism, which means lawlessness: all things are pure for the pure, after all. Both are wrong.

We are saved by grace through faith—and our faith is shown in our works. They are not at odds, faith and works. They are one and the same. To ask which one is salvific is like unto asking which blade of the scissors does the cutting. But it is important to note that works are the fruit, not the root.

Now, there is in Eastern philosophy a concept known as wu wei or “actionless action,” which might sound a little odd at first. But the idea is that when we are at peace with God and with the world around us, things will come to us naturally. There is no need to strive or stress, so long as we focus on the harmony between Creator and Creation; the rhythms of life, the flow of love, the selflessness of bliss.

And this doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything. It doesn’t mean that you climb up on a mountain to leave the world behind. Rather it is a way of humility and tranquility that enables one to do more good than money, strength, and power ever could. And Jesus speaks like this. Jesus speaks of mustard seeds that reach up to fill the heavens. He speaks of a grain dying and being buried, only then to put forth a hundredfold new fruit. For Jesus it is the power of the small, the strength of the weak, the wealth of the poor, that resurrects this world. And he’s forever using images of nature, growth, and love.

“Have you ever noticed,” wrote Andrew Murray, “the difference in the Christian life between work and fruit?”

A machine can do work; only life can bear fruit. A law can compel work; only life can spontaneously bring forth fruit. Work implies effort and labour; the essential idea of fruit is that it is the silent, natural, restful produce of our inner life. The connection between work and fruit is, perhaps, best seen in the expression, ‘fruitful in every good work’ (Col. 1:10). It is only when good works come as the fruit of the indwelling Spirit that they are acceptable to God.

Under the compulsion of law and conscience, or the influence of inclination and zeal, men may be most diligent in good works, and yet find that they have but little spiritual result. Their works are man’s effort, instead of being the fruit of the Spirit, the restful, natural outcome of the Spirit’s operation within us.

Moralism, in other words, is not enough. Unless it is the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of true and humble faith, all our moral posturing amounts to little more than judgment and disdain. And that brings division, not harmony; damnation, not salvation. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I am told.

So what does this mean, then, for the Christian? What are we to believe, or to do? Surely we cannot do nothing. Yet surely our works will not save. How does one chart the middle path between the extremes of lawlessness and ladders? And the answer, thank God, is as simple as it is sublime: “Abide in me,” says Jesus. Stay with me; remain with me; rest in me. We look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. We look to Jesus, who is himself the true people and vine of God. We look to Jesus, in whom Creator and Creation find harmony, find union, find bliss.

If we keep Jesus ever before our eyes, if we abide in him as branches abide in the vine, then the rest will come naturally. His Spirit will flow into us as sap flows through the vine. Here we find forgiveness; here we find life; here we find peace. And how does one do this, exactly? How does one abide in Jesus? Well, John’s Gospel gives us those answers as well. We abide in Jesus by listening to his words; by eating his flesh and drinking his blood; and by the love we show to one another.

Keep the words of Jesus ever before our eyes, through our ears, in our hearts. Come to the sacraments, the promises of grace, and receive the living God. And love one another, not with sappy sentiment, not just by being nice, but by making the choice to put the good of others, of our neighbor in his need, ahead of our own. That’s how we abide in Christ and he abides in us.

You’ve probably heard of the trolley problem, right? It’s this hypothetical situation whereby a trolley is running out of control along the track, and you’re at the railroad switch. If you send the trolley down one way, it will kill someone. But if you send it the other way, it will kill five people. Oh, dear. What do you do?

This is an example of situational ethics, offering up no-win situations as squirm-inducing brain teasers, that we would never actually encounter in real life. In contrast to this, the Church has traditionally taught virtue ethics, based on Jesus’ lesson that he who is faithful in a little will be faithful also in much.

What this means, in real terms, is that Christians are to practice everyday goodness, small sacrifices, honesty in trivial things—so that virtue becomes automatic, unthinking, reflexive; all so that we will do the right thing when we must, when true crisis rears its head. It’s like working out with small weights so that you can lift big ones when it counts. And we don’t do this for us but for our neighbor in his need.

That’s the difference between work and fruit, between the letter of the law and the spirit. But to get to that point—to the sort of life in which goodness and beauty and truth flow forth from us naturally, harmoniously, into all the world around us—we must ever abide in Jesus. We must trust in his love, in his promises, in his grace. We must remain with him, stay with him, rest in him.

That’s what he means when he says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” This doesn’t mean that God is some genie granting wishes. O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz? What it means is that our spirit will be in harmony, in union, with the Holy Spirit of God, so that all we could wish, all we could need, in order to bear forth good fruit even in times of hardship and pruning, will be done for us from above and from within.

For “my Father,” says Jesus, “is glorified by this: that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” And there could be for us no greater salvation than that, in this world or in the age to come.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.