There’s a word in today’s Gospel story that feels like a church word to me. That word is “Abide,” it’s one of the most important in all of Scripture, I’d say. “Abide in me, as I abide in you.” Jesus invites us. It’s important, but I’d challenge you to think of a time outside of church, outside of the Bible or the hymnal, when you have used the word “abide” recently. With the caveat, for Big Lebowski fans, yes “The Dude abides.” But for all the talk about us being a so-called Christian nation, “abide” doesn’t get much use.
Which is a shame. . In Greek the word is “meinein.” which translates roughly “hang in there.” Translated that way, our Gospel would read “Hang in there with me, as I hang in there with you.” I once heard another preacher point out “there’s a big difference between hanging in, and hanging on.” Abiding, hanging in there, requires a certain degree of comfort, a certain degree of commitment. Today many of us seem to be just hanging on, frayed, worried, anxious about what is to come.
Pamela Paul in the New York Times this week said “we are living in a golden age of aggrievement. No matter who you are or what your politics, whatever your ethnic origin, economic circumstance, family history or mental health status, chances are you have ample reason to be ticked off.” There are moments when I can feel the grievance all around me. I can feel it welling up within me too. We’re thin on the resources of patience, humility, and grace these days (other good Bible words).
And into our aggrieved days walks Jesus to say, “abide with me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Abide.” Jesus simply says, “Become my disciples.” But how? How do we learn to abide that way? How do we learn to draw from the source, especially when the heat all around us is scorching?
God is Love – 1 John 4:7-21
I would point you to the reading we have from the first letter of John. For years I carried this reading around in my wallet. I cut it out of one of those pre-printed bulletin inserts that most Episcopal Churches used before we could just download the Bible for our bulletins. I folded the verses up, and tucked them in my wallet, and I pulled this lesson out to read, on the school bus, when I was waiting in line, when I was particularly frustrated with someone or something. This passage is one of the most important passages in scripture for me. “God is love.” I cut it out because I need the reminder.
God is love. Let us love one another. Later on I even had a word from this passage tattooed onto my ankle. The word is “Let us love.” It’s just one word in the Greek: Agapomen. The root is agape, divine love. John’s letter comes from the early days of the church, after Jesus’s ascension. In the letter Christians encourage one another: “Let us love.” This is Christians trying to figure out how to live in the world after Jesus. How do we approach the work of faith? Start with loving in the way Jesus loved.
When I was young I thought: Faith is simple. Christianity is simple: God is love, let us love one another. When I was in high school, those words helped me to grasp hold of the faith, to take God seriously. Because it seemed so simple: love.
As I’ve grown older, as I’ve gotten married and had a kid, I’ve realized just how complicated love can be. Love, it turns out, takes work. Love also, in our world, requires definition. The kind of Love Jesus talked about, it takes commitment. This Agape, this Godly Love takes a willingness to hang in there. We need to take time to encourage one another, to draw on the source of love.
Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch
To try and see what this love might mean, what it looks like, turn to the story from Acts. This is an unlikely story. One of the first converts to the faith is of another race, nationality, ethnicity, and the convert is a eunuch, sexually impure, outside the norms of the gender binary. Philip probably felt uncomfortable even talking with this person. The Ethiopian ticked all of the boxes for “outsider” and yet asks Philip “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
Deep down Philip was probably saying, “there’s so much to prevent you from being baptized!” And yet God’s Spirit pushes Philip, nudges him, to see, all these categories, all these assumptions and prejudices, they need to fall to the side. The Good News is bigger than your tribe, bigger than your prejudice. God’s love is for all, even the Ethiopian Eunuch, even you, even me.
The stories in Acts bring this message home again and again. The Spirit of God keeps pushing the church to expand, to let go of old prejudice, to include and to baptize every category and type of person they were taught were unacceptable to God. The new faith will be a faith for everyone, everyone. The Book of Acts drives home that the Gospel is not comfortable for the early followers, because the good news sends Jesus’ followers out, out to all of the people they were taught to avoid and ignore.
And Jesus’ followers don’t simply get have one surprisingly good conversation with an unexpected other, and then go home patting themselves on the back. The stakes are higher. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” asks the Ethiopian. The eunuch understands something that Philip might not have grasped on his own. These so-called outsiders, the people with whom we disagree, they have something to teach us. Christianity is a faith that belongs not to one a gender identity, not to one tribe, or one language, or people, or nation, or to one political party. Ours is a faith that starts with love. Ours is a faith which challenges us to embrace those we call “other.”
The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams put it this way. He said in “Baptism we are bound together in solidarities not of our own choosing.” In baptism, Philip and the eunuch are bound together. In baptism God says to them both, such different people, the same words “you are my beloved children, in you I am well pleased.” In baptism we learn that the distinctions we make between people: sexuality, gender, race, wealth, ethnicity, language, education, ability, culture, all those human distinctions matter less than our common identity as God’s beloved. Baptism binds us together with all of the wrong people. God challenges us to see our diversity not as a reason to be divided, but as a source of strength, a source of blessing, a source of growth.
Philip is invited not simply to tolerate this eunuch. Philip is called to love, to bring the Ethiopian into the household of God. Philip sees firsthand something wild and yet true: Stretching ourselves to embrace the other tends to strengthen our hearts rather than weakening them. Stretching ourselves to embrace tends to bring us more capacity to stretch, more capacity to love. We could all use some practice in stretching to love.
Hanging In There
The poet Fara Tucker wrote recently:
I’m Hanging On
by a thread. And so are you
and him and her and them.
But what if we tied our threads
together. What if we stitch
something strong enough
to withstand the weight
of it all.
What if we tied our threads together? What if we found ways in these anxious times, in these times when so many of us are just hanging on, to, instead, hang in there together? What if we chose, instead of grievance, curiosity and embrace? What if we listened to the Spirit’s nudges, and sought to approach one another, especially those with whom we differ, starting with love?
Beloved of God, when we are at our best, I hope that is what this church can be: A place to weave together, especially when we’re feeling a little threadbare. I hope church can be a place where we can come together, to learn, to breathe, to practice patience. Lord knows, in church committees we get to practice some patience. But at our best, I hope this is a place of weavers, people who are willing to hold together, even when we have disagreements. People who are willing to love, and to love, and to love.
Jesus said, “Abide in me.” We may only hear that word in church these days, but I’d argue it is a word worth sharing. When the world makes us weary, When disputes make us frustrated, when we find ourselves angry, can we turn back to Jesus’ words? Can we abide with one another, and trust that God abides with us? Can we trust that God is working always to weave us closer together? Those who abide in love abide in God. You’re welcome to cut those words out, if you need, and carry them around awhile.
Mike Angell 