Anthony Amato
“Abiding in Christ”
April 28, 2024
Good morning! When our rector, Rev. Pamela, asked me to give today’s sermon, I admit to having felt some anxiety, maybe even some fear. I’m the type of person, after all, who gets nervous coming up here just to give the announcements. I’ve only recently become comfortable speaking in front of crowds after 5 years of public school teaching, and I’ve never officially preached in my life. In situations like this, I remind myself that even Moses had a fear of public speaking: “My Lord I have never been eloquent,” he says, “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” I always take comfort in God’s reply, “I will teach you what you are to speak.” As I began to study today’s scripture readings, I realized that God was teaching me what to say, but he was doing so through scripture, and any remaining doubts – any fears that I was feeling – all but vanished as I began to appreciate that I would be crafting a sermon based on some of the most beautiful passages the Bible has to offer.
In our Gospel reading for today, Jesus is sitting with his disciples at the Last Supper. He is saying and doing all he can to prepare his closest friends for the hardships and persecutions that await them after he’s gone. Amid their confusion and concern – their fear and anxiety – Jesus explains to them that he is like the center of a grapevine, and anyone who abides in him, will be like one of the branches. They’ll be connected to Jesus forever, and he will be the source of their spiritual nourishment for all eternity. He also tells them that if they abide in him, they can ask for whatever they wish, and it will be done for them. This Gospel passage in isolation does much to emphasize the divine generosity of God; God gives us everything, and asks for relatively little in return. One of the things he does ask of us is that we abide in his son, but how exactly do we abide in Christ?
This is an extremely loaded question, and one that could potentially be answered in a lot of different ways. Some Christians argue that abiding in Christ is as simple as being baptized and professing one’s faith that Christ is the Messiah. In fact, one of the many things that Christians disagree about has to do with whether good works bring about
salvation, or whether it is enough to “accept Jesus as your personal savior.” John, the traditional author of two of our readings today, would probably argue that this is an unproductive way of looking at this question. Now, it is true that the First Epistle of John says the following: “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” Simple, right? So long as someone confesses out loud that Jesus is the Son of God, then it must be the case that they automatically abide in him. Not exactly. Verbal endorsement of the idea that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God is not enough, and like most verses in the Bible, it’s generally a good idea to read the full passage before making a final opinion. While John does say that those who confess the divinity of Jesus ultimately do abide in God, he also says this: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” He goes on to argue that because God is love, “those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” So yes, having faith in the fact that Jesus is God’s son – and all of the beautiful complexity and mystery that entails – is ultimately how we stay connected to God. But demonstrating this faith is not as simple as verbalizing it.
To abide means to “live by,” meaning we must live by our faith, not just confess it, not just proclaim it. What John is saying is that when we show love to our fellow humans, to our brothers and sisters, we are making a God that we cannot see, a God that we can nevertheless know. We’re actually making God come alive in a way similar to Jesus when he walked the Earth and physically embodied God’s divine love. Now, unlike Jesus, we are not perfect images of God’s love, but we are each called images of God nonetheless. And this is what living as true, albeit imperfect, images of God entails: loving others as God loves us! When we love others, we make an invisible God visible. So no, it isn’t enough to say we believe in Jesus, if we aren’t sharing his love with others. We aren’t actually rooted in Christ the way the branches of a vine are rooted in its center, if the fruits of that vine – gifts of love, charity, compassion and forgiveness – are not being shared, particularly with those we might not like so much.
My friends, abiding in Jesus isn’t as simple as going to church every Sunday and reciting the Nicene Creed. Abiding in Christ requires loving God, and loving God requires loving others. As a concept, this
sounds simple enough, but as every human being sitting in this room can attest to, loving others, even loving those closest to us, is not always easy. Myself and five dedicated coworkers teach for the state preschool program at an elementary school in Woodland. Many of these young children (ranging in age from 3 to 4) exhibit early signs of autism; others struggle with managing intense anger and sometimes violent defiance.
Ask one of us how hard it can be to love a child who’s red in the face, trying with all their tiny might to land a punch or sink their nails deep into your skin. Ask someone who’s terrified by the current state of our country how hard it is to love those who vote or think differently than they do. Ask a child who lost her entire family to a missile explosion how hard it is to love the country responsible. So yes, the call to love can be challenging. It can even feel impossible. But loving others, especially in situations where it seems futile, is the exact kind of love that mirrors the sacrificial love of Jesus. Imagine how hard it must have been for him to love humanity after we put him to death on the cross. Yet he still pleaded: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
We are called not just to believe in the power of this love, but to imitate and embody this love ourselves. The real test of our abiding in the vine comes when we face situations where loving is hard. And fear, like the kind I spoke of earlier, can be one of those things that impedes our ability to love. Fear has the power to stop us doing even those routine acts of love we perform daily, like going to work or doing whatever it is we do to keep our communities happy, healthy, educated and looked after. I bring up the challenges associated with love, not to discourage us or make us feel ashamed when we fall short, but to remind us that faith in the power of God’s love will always be able to cast out fear. And I felt that fear leave me when I prepared for this sermon. At yesterday’s Fearless Faith Revival in Roseville, I was privileged to see the work being done at the parish level to fight injustice and protect our planet – this is work that was made possible by courage, because loving can so often be an act of courage.
Each of us will fall short in our endeavor to love others the way Christ loved us. Experiencing fear is, after all, part of what makes us human. In those moments when we find the courage to place our fears
on Christ’s shoulders, we prove to ourselves and to others that love always has the power to drive out fear, and what remains is a newfound confidence in ourselves that we can do what God calls each of us to do each and every day. Moments like these are when God’s love is perfected in us, meaning His love is made wholly manifest in this world. And even when we succeed in bringing God’s love to life; Jesus warns us that we, as fruit-bearing branches, will still be pruned. Even when we’re doing everything right, we’ll still face things like hardship, sadness, loss and even trauma. But God does this so that we may bear even more fruit later on. This isn’t punishment, but preparation for the life after this one, a perfect and everlasting union with God predicated on love, his truest essence. Here is how Jesus summarizes the nature of this relationship: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” This is the awesome power of God’s love. And when we find the courage to love others, even those we find difficult to love, God is glorified in us, and we are worthy of being called his “disciples.”
Loving others makes an invisible God visible. Amen.
