May 5, 2024

John 15:9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Abide is an unusual word. I cannot say that I hear it terribly often in casual conversation. In fact, on such rare occasions it is usually in a negative fashion, such as “I cannot abide” such and such. But abide in the sense of our reading is rather different. As we heard:

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

The Greek word used is meno, which means to remain. Remain in this sense is about waiting. So, Jesus is asking his disciples to remain in his love, to wait in his love. The instructions are not simply to wait however, but to follow the commandments Jesus left for his followers. Love God and love one another. If you do so, you will abide in love.

It may sound logically circular—if you love you will abide in love. But the love you are amidst is not exactly the same as the love you are offering to the world. One is related to the other, certainly, but to love in this sense is a gift of love as much as an invitation for love.

Have you ever heard the expression that God is a verb? God is a verb. The word “God” is not actually a verb—to god, to have godded. But the ways in which God is described in the Bible are generally verb like.

Conversely, God is not typically described in a physical way (compare however the psychedelic description in the Book of Ezekiel). Many people nonetheless hold an image of God as an old man up on a cloud. That has more to do with Western European artistic conventions than it does with the Bible. God is referred to as the father, so that may be the source of this old man imagery.

In the Book of Genesis, the personal name of God is represented by the letters YHWH. That name can be translated as “I am who I am.” “I am who I am” which is a nebulous way of trying to capture the undefinable nature of God. God at one point tells Moses that he should tell the people that “I am” sent Moses to them, which would be a strange statement I am guessing. This name can also be rendered as Yahweh or Jehovah, but its ambiguity has not changed.

Names strangely take on characteristics independent of their meaning. The names in the Hebrew scriptures are often charged with meaning that give you a sense of what really is going on. For example, the name “Adam” has taken on the meaning of the first man, but the actual word is adamah which means earth. The being known as Adam was made of earth into which God breathed life. But our shorthand use of Adam in English closes us off from the deeper meaning of the name. In case you were wondering, the name Eve is havah, which means life. So, when we consider the story of Adam and Eve it means something entirely different if we think of it as the story of Earth and Life in the Garden.

The same is true with the name of God. “God” is simply a generic term while “I am who I am” is a mystery that avoids rounding God off into an easy concept for us to grasp. If anything is beyond our grasp, it should be the concept of God. If we ponder the meaning of God as “I am who I am” or “I am what I am” or even “I am that I am” we must expand our understanding beyond an old man on a cloud.

We might hazard a guess that God is everything, God is the sum total of existence. That is a possible answer, but just to be clear, that is not the traditional Christian answer to what God is. To describe God as all that exists is known as pantheism. Pantheism is a heresy because as a religion, it can be reduced to nature worship. No tree huggers need apply.

No, instead, Christian traditionalists describe God by the concept of panentheism. The divine extends to all space and time and to everything beyond space and time. We have no ready ability to describe that sort of thing, so it gets rounded off into mystery.

But ironically, by doing so, we often cheapen the significance of the world around us. This is the material world, which is fallen. Fallen in the sense that Adam and Eve, or Earth and Life, fell from grace and so did the rest of us. Beyond the material world is the spiritual world, or the heavenly world, and that is what matters more in the mind of many Christian traditionalists.

Now if you have been paying attention over my years here at the church, you may have concluded that I am not a Christian traditionalist. And you would be correct. Personally, I have no preference between pantheism and panentheism, because honestly I do not have much concern for that which is beyond time and space. I live here amidst time and space and therefore I do not give the undefinable, unknowable rest much thought.

There is another passage in the Bible describing God that I think offers us more guidance on the subject. In the First Letter of John, there is a line I always return to: Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. And then the author of the First Letter of John, who might have been named John or not, this author said something else that ties directly back to what Jesus said to his followers: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Occasionally, when I read something, I have to put down the book, get up, and walk around for a while. I have to walk around because I do my best thinking that way.

God is love. Those who abide in love abide in God. And God abides in them.

There is that word “abide” again. It is the exact same Greek word, meno, but depending upon your translation it might be rendered as abide or it might be dwell. I like dwell better because it makes more sense: God is love, and those who dwell in love dwell in God, and God dwells in them.

Again, I needed to get up and walk around for that one. I even got a cup of tea.

Those who dwell in love dwell in God. That is not something remote, off in some metaphysical other place. That is not somewhere perched on a cloud with a halo and a harp. That is right here and right now. That is how we are in this moment and every moment. Those who love dwell in God.

In our prayer book, there is a line that I change when I recite it. People have asked me about why. The actual line is: Where two or three are gathered together in thy name thou wilt grant their requests.

I do not say that because I think it is troubling theology without much basis in human experience, God as a juke box in the sky. But more importantly, it is a quote from the Bible, or to be accurate a misquote. Jesus was telling his disciples that he would be among them when they gather. Not that he would be taking requests. Not that he would serve as a genie in a lamp, which is a strained notion of praying to God.

God is in our midst when we gather. God is in our midst when we love. And therefore, for our purposes, there should be no difference between gathering together and loving. No difference at all.

It is no great secret that churches are not doing as well as they used to. According to one 2022 survey, about 63 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian. That is down from 90 percent in the early 1970s. In 2022, another 29 percent of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Now that can mean unaffiliated with religion in general or from organized religion.

But even among those who defined themselves as Christian, church attendance is by no means a guaranty. Less than half of those self-named Christians are members of a house of worship, let alone attend with any regularity. So that larger number hides a smaller church population.

I was at a talk at Harvard Divinity School recently and one of the deans described these people as being spiritual and religious—religious even as they do not regularly go to church whatever that entails. There are lots of reasons for this disaffiliation from churches, such as distrust of religious institutions, the increase in politics within church life, and so forth.

But for whatever underlying reasons, I think this shift is a bad thing. Not simply because I like having people in the pews, which I do, but because I truly think this change is bad for people generally.

There are many people who would rather be home having their corn flakes and reading the morning paper. Maybe taking a walk in the woods among the spring flowers. Henry David Thoreau would approve.

But let me ask a question: When you go for that Sunday walk in the woods, what is the goal? To be among the beauty of nature? To get a bit of exercise? All good, all good. But let me ask you this: are you planning to find God out there in the woods? If you do not believe in God, no worries, enjoy your hike. And if you happen to be a druid or a Wiccan, feel free to continue, do not mind me at all.

But if you believe in God, if you believe in God in the sense of God represented in the Bible, do you think God is out there in the woods? We could probably have a long and fruitful conversation about that idea, and I welcome the prospect.

Let me ask you a different question: if you go for a walk out in the woods, do you expect to find a pastrami sandwich? Yes? No? Do you expect a pastrami sandwich to fall from the branches of a tree into your hands or to wait for you perched upon a boulder? Probably not. The woods are not the natural habitat for pastrami sandwiches. No, you find sandwiches in restaurants, in delis, at your kitchen table. Because sandwiches are made. They do not grow on trees. They are not assembled by even the most enterprising of squirrels or raccoons. If you are looking for a sandwich, you need to look elsewhere.

And the same could be said about finding God. That does not mean that I think God lives here in church, like it is some kind of heavenly nature preserve. This is not the zoo for God.

Think back to the name for God: “I am who I am.” Think back to the idea of God as being a verb. God as something active. God as love. God is love, and those who dwell in love dwell in God, and God dwells in them.

The problem with free range religion in the “spiritual but not religious” sense is that such people are focusing inward rather than outward. It is about my personal prayer life, my personal relationship with God. And I will tell you my opinion, which is only my opinion as always. That personal focus is not enough, it is not sufficient. Your personal relationship with God is not enough for there to be an actual relationship with God, at least as I understand God in the context of these passages of scripture.

If God is love and those who dwell in love dwell in God, there needs to be some degree love. And I will be the first to admit that church is not the only place to love people. But I will be perfectly honest with you—I do not currently see much gathering around with others, in the woods or otherwise, for the sake of loving. Not loving others, not even loving ourselves.

We are ever more isolated in this country. Ever more anxious, ever more cynical. And so, I think people would be better off going to church. Physically going to church. Reading my sermon online is nice, but seeing people here would be better.

But please do not get the wrong idea. Going to church is not about trying to find that pastrami sandwich in the pews either. Church is not a service business like a diner. I am not going to ask if would you like fries with that. Though I might indeed ask if you would like a cup of coffee over in the parish hall. Church is not here to service people’s needs, like a shop or a restaurant. Church is different than that.

In our tradition, church is often referred to as a congregation, a place where people gather. They gather to listen to me, of course, but that is merely one specific aspect of gathering. Where two or three are gathered together: gathered together for the purpose of being a community, for the purpose of being a loving community. We congregate for that purpose.

We are not here to sell sandwiches, or even to make sandwiches, even if that is a lovely idea. Much like God, church is a process, church is a verb, church is a way of being. And you cannot “do church” alone just like you cannot congregate alone. Not that personal prayer is not important or useful. Not that being alone in the woods does not have important spiritual qualities.

But church is about more than a personal relationship with God. It is a communal relationship with others. It is about caring for other people in person. Encouraging relationships, building friendships, growing together in mind, body, and spirit.

There are lots of reasons why people have lost interest in going to church. And one reason is that church has stopped being a place to congregate in that deeper sense. It is often a marketplace of opinions that you are pressured to accept. It might even be about choosing sides in a cultural conflict.

That can be a troubling and off-putting environment to find yourself in, so many people have left. My hope is for our congregation to be more than that marketplace of stilted opinions, more than one huddled tribe within a culture war.

Now that does not mean that there will not be hard conversations about important questions here in church. Questions about values and ethics, about the nature of life and the good of society. There will be such conversations and that is exactly when the abiding love of God comes into play.

God does not exist in the answers to those questions. God exists within the process of us being together to answer those questions. God is not in the recipe for making the pastrami sandwich. God is the way that we are with one another as we make the sandwiches, as we eat together, as we learn to live with one another in a community (you might prefer to envision this as the Holy Spirit—no problem).

The best parts of such a community are not that we stand around agreeing with each other. They are more about how we manage to stand around caring about each other. Caring about those here and those out in the world. Think back to that line from scripture: God is love, and those who dwell in love dwell in God, and God dwells in them.

I take it on faith that this line from scripture is an accurate description of the way that God can enter into our lives. How God manifests in the spaces between us when and as we show concern and care for one another. How when two or three are gathered together in God’s name—in the name of God who is love—then God will be in our midst. Guess what? That means God pops into our lives as and when we love one another.

Think about that.

Have you ever felt adrift in life? Alone or isolated. The walk in the woods might make you feel less anxious, but it is not going to make you feel more connected to other people. Again, if you are grooving on nature, I am not trying to break you away from that harmonious experience. If nature is your point of contact with the divine, please do not let me stand in your way.

But if we imagine that God is love, you are not likely to find that connection to the divine on your own. Love requires connection. Love requires reaching out into the world. Love requires us to engage with others. Love is the process of establishing and growing and deepening the connections we have with the people around us.

And that can happen in a lot of places, but it is the fundamental purpose of a place called church. At least in my definition of church. Church is not just about sermons or music or even theological questions. Church is a place to gather with the purpose of cultivating the presence of God in our lives which takes the form of love.

Church in this sense must be, has to be, an activity. Not a product, not a sermon, not a sandwich. Church is as much about having coffee together in the parish hall as it is praying together in the sanctuary. It is as much about telling me stories about what you did this week as it is about me telling you stories from the Bible.

We have been told that God is love which means axiomatically in my brain that love is God. Love is God so when we love others we have God in our midst. We have God in our minds, bodies, and souls. That is how we commune with God in this life by being the conduit for love which is God. And for once, this is not my heretical take upon the Bible. It is bread and butter Biblical teachings from Jesus and his disciples.

God is love and love is God. You could forget every other word in the Bible and still have the whole message of Jesus’ life and teachings in that simple sentence. God is love and love is God. So go forth and love one another. Amen.