It’s still Easter – the Church’s season for praising God and reveling in God’s grace so abundantly given that the horror of the crucifixion can be transformed into the power of the Risen Lord. We’re still in that Great Fifty Days of celebration.  I always like to remind anyone else who will listen, and myself, that Lent is 40 days and Easter is 50 days because it takes longer to get it.  We get Lent, don’t we?  A sustained celebration of goodness and joy is so much more challenging.  So how’s it going?  How have you celebrated Easter this past week?  Have you done any reveling in the abiding love of God?  The Emmanuel Center event this past week was a pretty good opportunity!  

I don’t know about you, but apart from events like last Tuesday, often the details of my life and the details of the world weigh me down.  I feel weighed down by what looks like too much to do and not enough time; too much need and not enough resources; by Swine Flu (or the media flu) and the economic recession and senseless deaths wherever they occur, whether in Iraq or sub-Saharan Africa, or in Boston; by corruption and famine, all kinds of oppression, and on and on.  It all seems to conspire to keep me from reveling in the abiding love of God.  And today’s Gospel makes it clear that abiding in love and bearing fruit are part of the same thing – of reveling in God’s grace. 

What does that look like?  Well, here’s one example.  My friend and mentor, Maurine Tobin, divides her time between living in Maine and living in East Jerusalem.  When people here ask her about how her time is there, she struggles to find words to describe it.  It’s hard to describe how hard it is for ordinary people to make their lives work in spite of overwhelming odds.  But she says that one thing that amazes and inspires her is that Christians imprisoned in the small towns in the West Bank, greet each other on every street during the Fifty Days of Easter by proclaiming joyfully, “Alleluia!  Christ is Risen.” and the response without hesitation is, “The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!”  

What makes one person say that to another in the midst of so much loss and humiliation, so much death and destruction?  I’m not sure – but my hunch is it’s knowing that God is a God who sides with those who are poor, despised, downtrodden – and that no army, no authorities, no weapons, no devastation can separate them from the love of God. “Alleluia!  Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia!”  It is a statement of faith and it is a prayer; and prayer must always lead to action.  Harvard theologian, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, puts it this way: “The Easter message is a proclamation that requires action.” 

Now you don’t have to have a whole lot of experience in the world to know that action, especially action that stands up to – that challenges violence or oppression, often leads to conflict.  We don’t like that so much.  Many of us were raised with the idea that being loving Christians meant avoiding conflict.  In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we have been taught that abiding in love means the absence of discord or controversy or even disagreement.  But that teaching doesn’t pay much attention to or honor the scripture in either our Hebrew Bible or New Testament.

The Gospel lesson we heard is from John 15, verses 9 through 17.  Do you know what verse 18 says?  “If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.  And the rest of the 15th chapter of the Gospel and all of the 16th chapter are about conflict, suffering, destruction and even death – but, Jesus assures them, “so you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”  But we don’t hear much about the world hating us in our church.  We jump from this portion about love in chapter 15, right to chapter 17 next week and hear about protection and sanctification that God provides.  (But we don’t hear protection and sanctification from what.)

What we hear a lot about is love.  Between the Gospel of John and the first letter of John, the word love is used more than 100 times.  It starts sounding like nonsense to my ears, especially when it is lifted out of context.  This isn’t greeting card love sent from one individual to another.  The love that Jesus talks about is the same love that the Hebrew Scriptures talk about.  Specifically, this love is not a feeling, it is action on behalf of those who are dispossessed, devastated, down and out.  This is love that challenges the mistreatment of others.  This love advocates for those who are being mistreated in small and big ways.  The love that Jesus is talking about is love that bears fruit.

Jesus says to his followers, “I assigned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”  Did you hear that?  Fruit that will last.  That caught my ear. So I spent some time thinking about fruit this past week – fruit that will last.  We’re not talking about preserving apples and pears and drying banana slices into chips or making raisins to eat long after fresh fruit would spoil, as the basis for this ancient figure of speech.  In biblical literature, the word that we translate “fruit” was broad enough to cover wine (as in fruit of the vine), oil, honey, bread dough, and even wool.  The word includes harvested, processed products of living things – plants and insects and animals.  The figure of speech (the metaphor)  refers to producing that which, when processed, has live-giving, life-sustaining, healing and warming qualities.  So this is the assignment for followers of Jesus according to John’s Gospel:  go live and love in a way that has the lasting effects of giving and sustaining life, of healing and warmth for others.

And notice this – the products, when processed, become lasting fruit – the processing is communal – the individual offerings get blended with others – what becomes wine comes from many branches, honey, from many bees, oil from many olive trees – it’s a communal  effect that Jesus is talking about here, not individual achievements.  (Of course individuals are needed to make communities.)  And the community of the Church extends far and wide, from distant past to a future beyond our seeing.

Which takes us back to the greeting Maurine hears in Palestine during Eastertide.  “Alleluia!  Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia!” is a greeting, a statement of faith, a prayer, a celebration, and a call to action that transcends individual, organizational, cultural, geographical, and chronological boundaries.  People in all parts of Christendom have been saying this to each other for nearly two thousand years.  People in all parts of Christendom have been acting on behalf of those who are dispossessed, devastated, down and out.  But it’s not always what the Church is known for.

When this love that the Gospel of John talks about seems difficult, even impossible, it’s worth noting that the Church has had a hard time fulfilling Jesus’ assignment.  It’s worth noting that this would not have had to be written down if the early church were already doing it.  It doesn’t matter what denomination one talks about, or what century, our reputation for bearing fruit that will last, locally and globally, is spotty.  Even with the extraordinary work that this particular community does, we still have far to go. However, the good news is that God isn’t finished with us yet.  The Good News is that God loves us just the way we are.  AND, God loves us too much to let us remain this way.  The Risen Lord is at work in and all around us, no matter what. 

You know, the line I like best in the Nicene Creed (alright, it might be the only line I like in the Nicene Creed) is the line that says “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  We look for the resurrection.  In a statement that purports to be all about believing things that sound so strange to our post-enlightenment ears, it’s striking to me that the line doesn’t say, “we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  Nor does it say that “we have found the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come!”  It says, “we look.”  That is what we do.  So if you’re embroiled in conflict or just not feeling quite up to celebrating resurrection this far into the Great Fifty Days of Easter, perhaps you could spend some time each day until Pentecost looking for the resurrection of the dead and looking for the life of the world to come.  And report back!