Good Shepherd Lutheran Church(elca)
Following Christ, Growing in Faith, Sharing God's Love
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Abide in Me
Pastor:
Pastor John Gerike
Sermon audio:
May 2 and 3, 2009
The apostle John reminds us
that we bear fruit
when we are connected to the vine.
When we abide in Jesus,
we become what we are created to be.
When we abide in Jesus,
our joy is complete.
I like the example of a stringed instrument.
I have here a guitar string.
It’s free.
It’s not bound.
It’s loose.
But have you ever tried to make music
with a loose, free string?
Not too easy.
But if you take that string
and you connect it to the instrument.
You stretch it tight between its pegs.
The freedom is gone.
But the music is there.
Which is better for the guitar string?
To be free and useless?
Or to be bound,
connected to the vine,
abiding in Jesus—
--doing what it is created to do?
We are created for love.
To abide in Jesus.
To follow Christ,
Grow in Faith,
Share God’s love.
Sometimes we hope for a false freedom—
--like the guitar string.
But our life is complete,
and our joy is complete,
when we are connected to the vine,
abiding in Jesus.
To get an idea of how important this concept of “abiding” is,
I invite you to take a pen or pencil
and walk through the Gospel with me—
--circling all the times “abide” occurs.
It certainly seems to be important.
And what does it mean to abide?
How do we do that?
The word that is translated abide,
can also be translated:
remain
stay
live
dwell
last
endure
continue.
How do you do that?
It’s a lifelong quest.
You never arrive.
It’s not a matter of doing certain things.
It’s a matter of relationship.
How do you remain in relationship with Jesus?
How do you continue to build that relationship?
What do you think?
Some ideas?
Prayer.
Small Groups.
Worship.
Bible Study and reading
Sharing your faith with others
Service to others
Sometimes we talk about it as:
Following Christ,
Growing in Faith,
Sharing God’s love
Sometimes we talk about it as:
Worship
Learning
Witness
Service
Fellowship
And perhaps our reading from 1 John helps us, too.
I’m not going to do it now,
but you may want to go through and circle all the times “abide”
shows up in this reading.
But what’s the other word
we keep hearing in 1 John?
LOVE
And I think of the great commandment:
LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD
WITH ALL YOUR
AND LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.
As Christians, that’s how we live.
But we mess up.
We fall short.
We sin.
We don’t love the way God wants us to love.
So what does God do?
In order to grow the fruit of love in us?
He prunes us.
Not always read pleasant.
But as we look back in our lives.
Hopefully you can see how God has been at work in you,
even when you didn’t like it.
I grew up hearing things like:
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
Or:
“Don’t mess with a good thing.”
When we moved to
20-some years ago now.
We had 2 apple trees in the back yard.
And I think it was the first year we were there,
we had so many apples.
We sat around in the evening,
with the TV on,
peeling apples—
--for apple pie
--and apple crisp
--and applesauce
--apple anything.
And whenever people would come over,
we’d send them home with a bag of apples.
2 if they wanted them.
Now,
nothing was broken,
so we didn’t mess with it.
No pruning of those trees.
The next year—
--you know what—
--less apples.
The year after that—
--even less.
Now the fact is,
I know little enough about apple trees,
that I don’t know for sure
if pruning would have helped.
But I’ve heard it might have.
And,
I’m not sure I’m skilled enough to know what to do
to prune effectively.
But we have a heavenly Father,
who is the vinegrower—
--the gardener.
And God knows what God is doing.
And God prunes us.
My experience is that I don’t look forward to pruning.
It can be really painful.
And there are times I wish God would just stop.
But there are also times when I look back
and give thanks.
As God prunes me.
And God prunes you.
And God prunes Good Shepherd.
Why?
So that we can produce more fruit.
And that fruit is---
---love.
When you read chapters 13 and 14 of John,
you read about loving God and loving others.
And that’s what God prunes us to do.
And that leads us to verse 7.
Would you read that with me:
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,As we talked about this at our Monday night Bible study last week,
we struggled with this,
because it didn’t always seem to fit our experience.
But folks also shared a couple helpful thoughts
in our conversation.
One was that God does whatever we wish,
“WHEN WE ABIDE IN CHRIST AND HIS WORDS ABIDE IN US.”
So, when we are most connected with Jesus,
the things we tend to pray for
are the things that Jesus would pray for.
And, we trust, in that relationship of abiding,
that when it doesn’t go the way we hope,
God must have something else in mind.
It doesn’t make it easy.
It doesn’t answer all our questions.
But it focuses on abiding in Jesus.
And the second thing about that verse
that you can’t tell in the english translation,
is that all the “You”s are plural.
It’s not just what I want.
It’s what leads us to pray for together
as together we abide in him.
That’s why we, as a congregation,
are involved in a process called
Partnership for Missional Church.
And that’s what the insert in your bulletin is all about.
This is a 3-year process,
for the purpose of discerning God’s
preferred and promised future for our congregation.
The first year is a year of Discovery.
A number of things are happening
and will happen as the year continues.
What’s happening this weekend
is the Church Timeline activity.
It is designed to help us think about times, events, and persons in the past
that we are proud of,
not-so-proud of,
and that give us hope for the future.
You are invited to take part in this today.
You have post-it notes that are red, blue and green.
On the red you are invited to write
a time, event, or person in the past that we are proud of.
A red-letter day.
On the blue you are invited to write
something that we’re not so proud of—
--something in our history that makes you blue.
And on the green,
you are invited to write something
that gives us hope for the future.
Then, after the service,
stick those on the timeline in the narthex.
And at
we’ll gather in the gym,
have a little lunch,
and spend from
reviewing what’s been written
and talking about that in small groups—
--along with time abiding, dwelling in God’s Word.
So, sometime between now and the end of the service,
jot just a couple words on your post-it notes,
and stick them on the timeline after the service.
As you think about that,
one more story about abiding in Christ’s love.
When the starter said:
“On your mark, get set…”,
the contestants were lined up at the starting line.
The crowd was excited.
This was the Special Olympics.
And on this day,
it was particularly special.
When the starter said “GO”,
the runners moved down the track shoulder-to-shoulder.
Suddenly,
one of the young women tripped and fell.
Sprawled headlong on the track.
She rolled over in some pain,
but mostly sadness and embarrassment.
The rest of the runners kept going for another 10 or 15 meters.
Then,
without any communication among themselves,
it seemed,
they all stopped,
turned around,
and jogged back to their fallen friend.
They helped her up off the track,
comforted her,
and then linked arm to arm,
they all ran together to the finish line.
Those runners would rather finish together
than win the race individually.
As we abide in Christ,
we love God and one another,
and are bound to one another,
through good times,
tough times,
hopeful times.
May we together follow Christ,
grow in faith,
and share God’s love.
As we, together,
are connected to Christ,
and abide in him.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Following Christ, Growing in Faith, Sharing God's Love.
© 2007 Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (ELCA) at Manchester, MO
© 2007 Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (ELCA) at Manchester, MO