Easter 6B, 5 May 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Acts 10:44-48. Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
- 1 John 5:1-6. The Spirit is the truth.
- John 15:9-17. I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.
O God of grace, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
You know, it’s still Easter – in the Church’s 50-day season for praising God and reveling in God’s grace so abundantly given that transforms the horror of the crucifixion into the power of the Risen Lord. We’re still in that Great Fifty Days of celebration. I don’t know about you, but apart from worship at Emmanuel, 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 being directed to the right places; by news of people at war, by news of militaristic aggression at home and abroad, by layers upon layers of damage done by white supremacy, by corruption and famine, by climate change, by all kinds of oppression, and on and on. It all seems to conspire to keep me from reveling in the abiding love of God for more than a few hours on a Sunday. And today’s Gospel makes it clear to me that abiding in love and bearing fruit are part of the same thing – of reveling in God’s unearned and abundant grace. How can we celebrate Good News when we get so weighed down by bad news?
I’m reminded of what I know from my friend and mentor, Maurine Tobin, who for many years, divided her time between living in Maine and East Jerusalem. When people here would ask her about how her time was in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, she struggled to find words to describe it. It’s hard to describe how difficult it is for ordinary people to make their lives work in spite of overwhelming odds. But she said one thing that amazed and inspired her was that Christians there 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 understanding that God identifies with those who are poor, despised, downtrodden; and understanding that no army, no authorities, no weapons, no disease, no devastation can separate them from the love of God. “Alleluia! Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!” For Christians, this is a statement of faith and it is a prayer; and prayer must always lead to action. “The Easter message is a proclamation that requires action,” Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza once put it.
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 and challenges violence or oppression, often leads to conflict. Some of us were raised with the idea that being loving Christians meant avoiding conflict, perhaps avoiding the political. 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 scriptures in either our First or Second Testaments. Maurine Tobin’s husband and my sponsoring priest, Bob Tobin taught me that “political” means an effort to make decisions that shape the polis, the city-state, and the people of the city-state. Good politics shape the city-state in a positive way. Bad politics distort or damage the city-state and the people who dwell there. When we withdraw from politics in the Church, we abdicate our responsibility to shape the city-state in a way that honors the dignity of every human being.
Today’s Gospel lesson is from John 15, verses 9 through 17. It helps to remember that the setting for this passage is the same room and the same evening where and when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and told them that he was giving them an example for what they were to do for others. [1] 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 – and Jesus assures them, “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 lectionary readings. 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. It’s important to remember that, as Brian McLaren says, “Before Christianity was a rich and powerful religion, before it was associated with buildings, budgets, crusades, colonialism, or televangelism, it began as a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society.” In other words, the Gospel of John was written by and for people living in the margins.
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 sentimental greeting card love. 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 love challenges the individual and the systemic mistreatment of others. This love advocates for those who are being mistreated. The love Jesus is talking about bears fruit.
Jesus says to his followers, “I assigned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” 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 animals. The figure of speech (the metaphor) refers to producing that which, when processed, has life-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 vines, honey, from many bees, oil from many olive trees – it’s a communal effect that Jesus is talking about here, not individual achievements. And the community of the Church extends far and wide, from distant past to a future beyond our seeing, beyond our imagining.
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 coming up on two thousand years. People in all parts of Christendom have been acting on behalf of those who are dispossessed, devastated, down and out.
When this love that the Gospel of John talks about seems 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 was already doing it. It doesn’t matter what denomination one talks about, or what century, our reputation for bearing fruit that will last is spotty, locally and globally. Even with the extraordinary work that this particular community does, we still have far to go. The good news is God isn’t finished with us yet. The good news is God loves us just the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us remain this way.
One of the things that gets lost in translation in our Gospel portion for today is that whenever Jesus is saying the words “so that,” he is talking about purpose. The purpose of keeping his commandments is to experience joyful fulfillment. The purpose of keeping his commandments is to love one another. The command here is actually not a command to love. It’s keeping commandments of service to others for the purpose of love and joy – love and joy which are able to connect hardship with meaning, love and joy which are able to connect grief with comfort, love and joy which are able to connect passion with wonder.
What keeps us from believing this particular good news? Oh, things like disordered teachings about who is in and who is out of the circle of God’s love (here’s a pro tip: everyone is in the circle of God’s love). What else? Fear of being shamed, fear of being hurt, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of death. But I want to assure you that, as poet Audre Lorde wrote, “we were never meant to survive.” I want to assure you that resurrections start to happen when we give as much or more energy to enacting our hope as we do to leaning into our fear.
Some of you might remember that the line I like best in the Nicene Creed (alright, it might be the only line I really 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 spend some time each day until Pentecost, which is May 19 this year, looking for the resurrection of the dead and looking for the life of the world to come. During the next two weeks, go live and love in a way that has the lasting effects of giving and sustaining life, of healing and warmth for others – bearing fruit that will last. And report back!
- Thanks to D. Mark Davis for this reminder.