Will Rice - Sermon #25 - Audio

The text of the sermon can be found in an earlier post.


MP3 File

Will Rice - Sermon #25 - When Rejection is a Good Thing

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 6:1-13

This may be a bad way to start a sermon, but… I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. Yes you heard that right. I may consider it my biggest personal failure if I am never asked to leave a church. I hope it is not today or anything. I hope I am never asked to leave because I am perceived as lazy. I hope it is never because I messed up the finances or was mean to people for no reason. I hope that someday, I will be asked to leave because I came on too strong about the central message of the Gospel.

I love to hear that people like my sermons. I do lots of things to make them more interesting, easier to follow, even fun. But, when it comes right down to it, the message that I have to deliver is radical and counter-cultural and if it doesn’t occasionally make someone mad, I am probably not trying hard enough.

¹He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him

The idea of hometown is not as powerful in my generation as it has been. We are all so very mobile. The little town I grew up in was probably more like where Jesus grew up in the fact that, as a kid, most of the town knew who you were and knew who to call when they saw you doing something you shouldn’t be doing.

²On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!

I hear this a little differently each time I read it. I wonder if we see a difference in perception based on delivery verses content. Already read in Mark’s Gospel we have heard the amazing things that Jesus can do well. He has been healing, and teaching and telling these great parables that make hard concepts more understandable for common folk. Now he is in the synagogue and he’s got PowerPoint running. He’s using movie clips and props. He’s hired a praise band and he even gets worship out on time. Everybody loves this stuff. But then:

³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Most people read right over this and miss what happens, in one verse the crowd goes from adoring to angry. What happened?

I think they started listening.

I think for a while they were mesmerized by his performance, but then they started realizing that his content was a little upsetting.

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

The first two times I preached on this text, I read too much into this line. It is a pretty common saying in antiquity and I think we all sort of get it. People who know you too well have trouble taking you seriously.

I have a long time friend in Houston, we have been buddies since college and we have been through a lot of stuff together. He is about to finish his PhD dissertation. I was on the phone with him the other day and said, “Don’t expect me to call you doctor, I know you too well.” He said, “No problem, ‘cause I am still not calling you Reverend.”

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

I think that this may be more than Jesus stating the obvious point that sometimes people who know us too well have trouble taking us seriously. This may have just been Jesus way of saying, “My ultimate identity does not come from your evaluation of me.”[1]

Now Jesus didn’t post his sermon from that day on his weblog so I don’t have a copy of what made everybody upset. Luke’s gospel takes a stab at filling in the blanks but Matthew and Mark portray the scene with no reference to what was said.[2] I think it is less important to dwell on what was said and more important to look at the rejection. Jesus was preaching a radical message of love and grace, a message of generosity and justice a message of peace and hope, especially for those who had no hope, a message designed to turn the world upside down and when he preached it in his hometown, people didn’t like it. Jesus response, “oh well, I will go preach somewhere else then. My message is from God and the fact that you don’t like it doesn’t make it any less valuable.”

⁵And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.

Off he goes.

Jesus mission is a bit larger than he can tackle doing all the preaching himself, so he sends out some other folks.

⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

This is the first ever Every Member in Ministry campaign. And it is worth pausing to say that this is where our word apostle comes from. Most of us have heard of the 12 Apostles. Sometimes we use that interchangeably with 12 disciples; I get lots of questions about this. The word apostellw means to send. Jesus began to apostellw them out two by two. Disciple comes from the Latin translation of the word matheti which means student, apprentice or simply follower. So, technically, Jesus apostled (sent) the disciples (followers).

To be an apostle is to be one who is sent. Now listen to what they get to take with them:

⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

Man that is pretty drastic. I won’t venture much further than the mailbox without some cash, a number of credit cards, and about a gallon of bug spray. I might go without food, but that is what the cash is for.

¹⁰He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.

This is sort of a confusing line, let’s look a little closer. Whenever you enter a house… Alright, they are going to be going to people’s homes to talk to them about the good news of the kingdom of God… stay there until you leave the place. The New International Version says, “stay there until you leave the town.” Perhaps, when you go to a town, find a place to stay and stay there until it is time to leave the town, don’t go shopping around for better accommodations. Stay focused on what you are there to do.

¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

In our culture, it is too easy to read this as angry gesture. Shaking the dust of one’s feet might be likened to a certain hand gesture one might give another driver who has failed to yield the right of way as your are trying to exit S.P.I.D. But that would be missing the point of what is going on. Remember when things didn’t go well for Jesus in the synagogue?

⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

Jesus knew that the apostles, if they delivered that same world-changing message the Jesus delivered would sometimes be treated the same way. So he gave then a little ritual.

¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

Remember your ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of you. Your message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.

This is an important message. Sometimes as Christians we tie ourselves in knots trying to make the gospel message more palatable, more friendly. Let me clarify, there is a difference between doing our best to make it understandable, relatable, exciting, relevant – all those things that may attract people to hear the true message… there is a difference between that and beginning to change the message itself to make it more acceptable.

We are doing a lot to live as faithful children of God and we need to celebrate that and lift up what we are doing. We also need to talk about Grace and how God’s love is available to all even when we are not who we should be. We are, at times, struggling against churches that think that Christianity is all about judgment and damnation, so we are very clear in our emphasis of Grace, that overwhelming, unmerited love of God that pursues us and pulls into relationship with God no matter what.

Even that sometimes puts me in a situation where I have to make a decision. I have been in many a conversation with other Christians, talking about Grace and we will be having a happy conversation and they will be thinking:

Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him?

And then I will keep going and say that I believe that God’s grace is available to all of God’s children. And the hair on the back of their neck will stand up. And they will ask, “You don’t mean everyone right?” To which I respond, “Yes God’s grace is available to everyone, every single last person God created.” To which they ask, “You don’t mean to gay people or Muslims do you?”

Then, I have to make a decision. Do I back down so they will continue to like me or do I speak the truth about the Gospel as I see it remembering that my ultimate identity does not come from people’s evaluation of me. My message is from God and the fact that people don’t like it doesn’t make is any less valuable.

Most people are ok with the Grace thing. But, we also need to stand up occasionally and say things that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Pastors need to have enough gumption to proclaim the word of the gospel even when it means people at the door won’t say “nice job pastor” but rather, “get lost pastor!”

We need to have the strength to not just follow along with the tide of the community delivering an acceptable message, we need to occasionally lead up stream. The reasons is, no matter how well we are doing, here in our church, at being graceful and kind, however well we are doing praising and worshipping God, the gospel is calling us to look at the world outside. The world outside needs us. That world needs you and it needs me to stand up for the radical, counter-cultural message of grace, peace, justice, and kindness. We need to stand up for that message, even when that goes against the me-first, money is king, profit-before people, might before mercy, everyone for themselves mentality of the world. And that, sometimes, makes people angry.

The point isn’t to alter the gospel to fit the world, but rather to change the world in the light of the gospel. But now I have tread into dangerous territory. I may have accidentally given you a dangerous weapon when I was trying to give you a burden. Some believe that we stand up for the gospel by standing on high ground and hurling moral judgments upon people we don’t understand. I want to reread verse 12.

¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

This is where we get messed up. We think that our task, if we really want to stand firm for the gospel is to go out and tell people to repent. And when most of us think of repent we think that it means something about not sinning anymore or feeling bad about our sins.

First of all, repent, metanoe,w, actually conveys of sense of turning -- of changing one’s mind. My favorite translation of metanoe,w is to turn one’s heart toward God. Let’s look at the whole verse again:

¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

Kai. evxelqo,ntej evkh,ruxan i[na metanow/sin

So having gone out, they proclaimed in order that they all might turn their hearts toward God.

There is a big difference between telling people to repent, change their ways, feel sorry for what they have done, especially when we all still have some ways of our own to change - and telling people about the world changing, counter-cultural message of the gospel, a message of radical transformation, rooted in “compassion, love, generosity of spirit, kindness, peace, social justice,”[3] grace and hope – trusting that this message will touch them and turn their hearts toward God.

We have to be willing to stand up for that good news. We have to be willing to stand up, not to make moralistic pronouncements about others as though we are free from sin, but to say, in Christ, there is a chance for a world based in hope instead of fear. We have to be willing to proclaim that God news and trust that people’s hearts will be moved toward God. We have to be willing to stand up and say we believe in and are willing to work with God and each other to create a world where no child will go hungry, where money isn’t the most important thing, where the earth is a gift to be protected, where meaning is more important than possessions, where bombs are not the best way to make peace, where generosity wins out over greed every time.

I am going to stand up for that Gospel. Even if people don’t like me or maybe even, if I am lucky, ask me to leave.

Click Here to return to Pastor Will's weblog and comment on this sermon.

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[1] The quotation marks reflect the thought I am attributing to Jesus, the idea for this comes from Roberta C. Bondi, To Pray and to Love, Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 80

[2] Luke’s Gospel, 4:16-30 has Jesus reading from the 61^st chapter of Isaiah. It is worth reading Luke’s account and the reference from Isaiah.

[3] Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God, Taking Back out Country from the Religious Right, (New York: HarperCollins, 2006) 5

Will Rice - Sermon #24 - Audio

The text version of this sermon can be found below.


MP3 File

Will Rice - Sermon #24 - Two Stories about Seeds and a Really Big Tree

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 4:26-34

“Two Stories about Seeds and a Really Big Tree”

Check out General Sherman. It is a tree, a giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum to be more exact. It is located in Sequoia National Park in California. Let me tell you a little bit about this tree. It is 275 feet high. For a little perspective, the tree is as tall as a 27 story building. A thirteen story building would barely touch its first huge branch. The total volume of the trunk of the General Sherman tree - 52,500 cubic feet - is equal to the lumberman’s measure of 630,000 board feet. Since a board foot is 12 inches of 1x12 lumber, the trunk of the General Sherman tree theoretically could be cut into 119.3 miles of 1x12 planking. That would reach from our front door to this end of the 410 loop outside of San Antonio.

Giant redwoods like this have seed cones. When a forest fire burns through the forest, the updraft causes the cones to open dropping hundreds of tiny seeds to the ground, seeds so tiny that it takes 91,000 of them to weigh one pound. These tiny seeds fall to the ground onto the fertile soil produced by the fire and from them come more trees, trees with the potential to be as big as the one we just looked at. Now this is all just part of how nature works, but it is fairly mind blowing. From that tiny seed, comes that gigantic tree.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

Jesus loves to talk in parables, starting with things that we do understand to help us figure out things we don’t understand. Except maybe, this time, using something we think we understand, but really don’t, to explain something beyond comprehension.

There are actually two parables here back to back:

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,

³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;”

The kingdom of God is sort of like someone scattering seed on the ground, and sort of like a tiny little mustard seed. Let’s look at both of these.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”

Most of us have been through elementary school science. We know that if seed is scattered and the soil is fertile enough and there is enough moisture, it will sprout and turn into a plant.

However well I understand the science, it is no less miraculous. If you are a gardener or a farmer you toil in the dirt and work hard to make sure your seeds are in the right dirt and that they get plenty of water and the right amount of sun. However, there is a part you aren’t really in control of. That certain something that changes that seed from a seed to a living thing.

²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

We can plant seeds, but we can’t make them grow. This is an interesting lesson in mystery and humility. All of our efforts aren’t much compared to what God can do. That is true with the seed, we can plant it and fertilize it, but only God can make it grow. That is true with our efforts as people of God. In our efforts to help initiate God’s kingdom in this world, to bring change, to follow God ourselves and help others find their way to God, we can do good things, but it is truly God who can take those seeds and make them grow.

There is great mystery in the spark of life that turns a seed into a living thing and there is great mystery in how God takes what we do and truly turns it into something that can build the kingdom of God.

³⁰He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

Back to the General Sherman tree~ Remember those seeds? It would take 91,000 of them to make a pound of seed. Yet from just one of them can become a tree 275 feet high! That is part of the mystery, part of God’s work.

From the tiniest beginning, God can create wonderful, enormous results. The coming of the kingdom of God is a wonderful, enormous result. But all we have is little seeds. But that is ok. Because this is a God thing.

What I love about parables is that sometime we can hear them differently when we are in different places.

Let me give a couple of examples.

Pride

Betty is a young pastor, just a couple of years out of seminary. For her first appointment, the Bishop sent her to a small church that was just about dead. After only two years under Betty’s leadership, worship attendance has doubled, membership has doubled, there are a number of new young families with children, and they have just begun planning an expansion of their sanctuary to provide for all the growth. Betty sits back one day and thinks to herself, look what I have done. Our parables say, “look what God has done!”

1 Corinthians 3:7 reads:

⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

I think that this parable reminds us who is doing the work. It tells us to not give ourselves so much credit and remember that God is doing the real work. That is a pretty good sermon right there, so I could stop… but I am not sure that pride is the biggest problem we face.

Pressure

Let’s look at another example, another set of ears through which to hear this parable. Matt is a lifelong Christian, but while in a group Bible study really hears God’s cry for the poor. If you spend any time at all reading the Bible, you will see that God is much more concerned with the poor than God is concerned with issues that we want to pass laws about. So Matt does some research and finds out that 20,000 people a day perish die to extreme poverty.[1] He looks a little deeper and finds out that 1.1 billion people worldwide are living in extreme poverty, meaning they earn less than the equivalent of one dollar a day.[2]

Matt reads that and then says, “what the heck am I supposed to do about that?” He could have two equally dangerous reactions. One is to take the entire burden of this problem on his shoulders. He could become convinced that he needs to fix this situation. He might accomplish quite a bit, he may actually make a difference in the lives of many hungry people, but eventually he is going to burn out. He is going to miss out on the opportunity to work in unison, to be a vehicle of the amazing transforming power of the one who created the universe.

Matt could be overwhelmed by the pressure he has put on himself.

Complacency

I said Matt could have two dangerous reactions to being overwhelmed, let’s look at the other one with another example. Back in Austin where I was last appointed we have a lot of pan handlers. I mean a whole lot. Every major intersection featured at least one man or woman with a sign asking for money. Laurie comes to me one day and says, “I don’t know what to do about these panhandlers. I feel like I should help them, but I am afraid if I give them money they will spend it on drugs.” My response, “Good point, so what are you doing to help?” Her response, “Nothing.”

That other dangerous and perhaps more dangerous reaction to being overwhelmed with the enormity of the task is that of complacency. Sometime when we look at a problem as big as homelessness or as big as world hunger, we just say, “I can’t possibly fix that, so I am not going to even try.”

Laurie’s feeling of being overwhelmed has led to complacency. “I can’t do it all, so I will do nothing!”

2 Corinthians 9:10

¹⁰He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

²⁶He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

These two parables remind us of our place in all of this kingdom building. We can’t take all the credit (avoid pride). We shouldn’t carry the whole weight on our shoulders (pressure) and we can’t just do nothing (complacency)

The Parable in Action

Now I have given you examples of how this parable corrects us. Now, let me talk about where I have seen this parable in action. I was in a class with a couple of people like Matt and Laurie, the ones I mentioned in the examples. They were both convicted of their need to be in ministry with the poor but overwhelmed with the task before them. One was facing pressure the other complacency. I found out one day that they were both volunteering in downtown Austin at the homeless shelter serving dinner Friday nights. They weren’t ending hunger, they weren’t solving the problem of every homeless person in Austin, but they were doing their part trusting that God is faithful doing God’s part.

A lot of people know that there are a lot of parts of Corpus Christi that aren’t as nice as some of the neighborhoods we live in. There are neighborhoods with frighteningly high crime rates, drug trafficking, and enough violence to keep most of us away. In some of these neighborhoods live people who are trying their best to raise families and retired people trying to get by on fixed incomes. It is so easy to look at these people in these neighborhoods and either be overwhelmed with the pressure of trying to fix the entire situation or more likely to say, “I can’t fix that, I am not going to even try.”

There is that option and then there is the idea that if you were to go into one of these neighborhoods and touch one life or one family that you would be planting the seeds of the kingdom. What if you went to one family whose house was broken down, perhaps even falling down and said, “we want to help.”

That is exactly what Sea City Work Camp does and just go finished doing last week. Just during the week hosted by Grace, 10 houses 100 youth at least 100 adults supporting the whole thing. The Sea City organization takes applications from people who need help and then people go out and help. And you know, in two or three weeks each summer, the whole city isn’t changed. But what is amazing is the sort of life God brings out of those seeds. In the communities where the work is done, you can sometimes notice a little chain reaction as neighbors decide it is time to clean up their lots, mow their lawns, maybe even put on a little paint. There is a little more pride in the neighborhood. More importantly seeds of the love of God have been planted. Who knows what God can do with what has been done in those neighborhoods?

And what about the seeds planted in the young people. Yeah so they work hard for a week in the sun helping someone. But God takes that week and brings transformation out of it. Young people leave Sea City Work Camp forever changed with a deeper understanding of the call of God in their lives, a deeper understanding of people who don’t have what they have.

Now, I could meander around on this topic all morning. I could give you other examples and tell you stories and reread the parable another way. But instead, let me go against all the conventions of good sermon writing and ask this question:

Where is God calling you to plant seeds?

Are you feeling called to share the good news of God, but overwhelmed with the task? Is there one place, one person, one thing that you can do and then trust in God?

Is hunger and homelessness something close to your heart, but you can’t even imagine where to start? You know all the money collected at the communion rails today goes toward restocking our food pantry so that when people come to Grace looking for help, we can give them groceries. That won’t end hunger overnight, but we can do our part and trusting in God to be faithful doing God’s part.

God is calling us all to look after God’s most precious little ones. Some of us have a special call to help children. But where do we start? There are children right here in our city, right here in Annaville/CalAllen without enough to eat, without proper healthcare, with unstable households that nearly guarantee for them an entire life of poverty, and children without homes at all stuck in the system just hoping for a family to love them.

Well that is too much to even begin to tackle. But we can all support Metro Ministries or the Wesley Community Center which provide basic necessities for people who have fallen through every other safety net. Almost any one of us can all take part in our mentor program and give one child a role model that can help them escape from the trap of poverty. Maybe some us can open our homes to foster children through Methodist Children’s Home. These are kids who don’t want a new X-Box for Christmas, they just want someone who will actually demonstrate that they are worth loving.

Perhaps you worry about the young people in our community, about the choices they will make or how they will navigate this complex world. But there are a lot of young people out there and only one of you. What if you start right here working with our youth. Some will say, “Oh I am not ready to actually work with youth” That’s ok, there are ways you can support the people who do work with you, providing meals or transportation or even money for scholarships. Do what you can, we can trust God to provide.

As Christians we have to fight the temptation to sit back and watch the television or read the paper and say, somebody ought to do something about that! We have to be out there planting seeds!

Where is God calling you to plant seeds? Those seeds might be your time, your skill, your money. Those seeds could include a small commitment or a total life change. The seeds you plant might create instant results or through them God might create something you will never see.

You know, I have dreams for Grace. I think that God can and will do amazing things here. I am not just talking about more members and better programs. I am talking about real kingdom of God stuff, transformation that actually affects the community around us, bringing positive change and a tangible sense of the love of God. I see that happening here, but as a pastor, I see the hurdles. We need more room, more parking, more bathrooms, more signs, more money. But, I only worry so much, because I know that if we all really do what God calls us to, if we do our part, God will be faithful. We will be able to overcome any obstacle that keeps us from truly reaching out and transforming the community that surrounds us in the name of Jesus Christ.

If God can create a tree 275 feet high from one, tiny little seeds, God can transform anything we can offer into things beyond our belief. We should be spreading as many seeds as we can. Amen?

Click here to return to Pastor Will's weblog and comment on this sermon.

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[1] Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty, (New York: Penguin Press, 2005) 1

[2] Ibid, p. 20

Will Rice - Sermon #23 - Of Particle Spin and Other Things Beyond Comprehension

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Mark 1:9-11

I don’t want you to worry. In seminary, pastors are highly trained for all situations. Our professors know what challenges we will face in the local church. They know that once a year, on the church calendar, we will face the challenge of Trinity Sunday. They know that we will be faced with that day where we will have to explain how it is that God is three AND one and why that is important. When this subject comes up in seminary, it is one of the few times that the answer is very clear and non-nuanced. On Trinity Sunday, it is suggested by the giants of theological and pastoral wisdom at the seminary… you know, you might want to write this down in case you some day have a preacher in your family that doesn’t go to such a fine institution as the one I went to. On Trinity Sunday, you are to, without a doubt, without any fear or trepidation, find a guest preacher. It can be the Bishop, the District Superintendent, a friend from school, it doesn’t matter.

Most people have heard of the Trinity, but let me clarify what I am talking about. The Doctrine of the Trinity says, (this according to the Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church):

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power and eternity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.[1]

That is a bit to swallow, let me spell it out a little more clearly.

1. God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2. Each person is fully God
3. There is one God

Clear as mud. I find that people tend to fall into about five camps about the Trinity.

Camp One – They just get it, no explanation necessary
Camp Two – They think they get it, but don’t really
Camp Three – They don’t get it and don’t care
Camp Four – They don’t get it and they really wish they did
Camp Five – They realize it is not really about getting it

I am sure a bunch of you have read it and a bunch more have it sitting around the house. A few years back, Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds of our times wrote a book, A Brief History of Time. In the book, he did a pretty wonderful job of explaining things like space time, black holes, wormholes and basic astrophysics to people with little brains like mine. There was one part, thought that drove me nuts. If any of you here this morning are astrophysicists, please excuse me for a moment while tromp all over your field.

Hawking says that “everything in the known universe, including light and gravity, can be described in terms of particles.”[2] All of these particles have a property called spin, something that tells us what they look like from different directions (if you could actually see them, they are pretty small.) A particle of spin 0 is like a dot; it looks the same no matter how you turn it. A particle of spin one is like the ace of spades playing card, it only looks the same if you turn in all the way around 360 degrees. A particle of spin 2 is like the queen of hearts, if you spin it just half way around, it looks the same. Now, all of that makes sense, at least at a theoretical level. However, there are particles said to a have a spin of ½. For them to look the same as when you started, you would have to turn them two complete revolutions.[3] Not just one time around like my ace of spades, but around again.

I don’t have a picture for that because that, to my tiny little brain doesn’t even make sense. I just can conceive of an object that wouldn’t look the same if you turned it completely around, that would take an entire extra revolution to look the same as when you started.

I love reading stuff like Stephen Hawkins’s work because it reminds me that there are limits to my own understanding. There are limits to the number of dimensions that I can think of. I don’t even understand the building blocks of matter and energy, how am I supposed to hold any sort of monopoly on understanding of the one that created everything?

It is easy to forget that everything that we use to try and understand God is simply a model. A model is not the thing itself, it is a theory or an object used to try and understand and study something far more complicated. God warned us all about how far to take models.

Exodus 20:4-6:

⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.

The Reverend Charles Royden, the Vicar at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Bedford, England talks about the Trinity this way, “The Trinity is not an explanation of God, it is a description of what we know about God, albeit contradictory and contrary to logic as we know it.”

Think about today’s passage again for a moment:

⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Right in this passage you have Jesus, the Son, the Father speaking from heaven, and the Holy Spirit, the three persons of the Trinity in the same scene.

Back in my small high school, when we did musicals, occasionally someone would have to play two different parts, which worked fine, but the two characters could never be in the same scene.

Throughout the years, pastors and theologians have come up with a number of ways to help people understand the Trinity. Legend has it that Saint Patrick, who really is the Patron Saint of Ireland, not a Hallmark invention, used the shamrock, a type of clover. The clover seems to have three parts, but they are all really part of the same leaf. There are a number of limitations to this including the fact that a clover, can come apart. God is one.[4]

Another common explanation is water. There are three forms, ice, water and steam. There is a small problem with that, water can’t be all three things at once.

An explanation that I have always liked is that of a woman’s ability to be mother to her child, wife to her husband and sister to her brother. It is wonderful, except that this sort of thinking was condemned as the heresy of Modalism in the 3^rd century. The heresy of this view is that it contends that God just appears as three different persons and isn’t really three different persons while at the same time being one.

Studying the Trinity for a while is somewhat like looking at the work of M.C. Escher for too long.

With as perplexing as the Trinity is, you may wonder why we still talk about it. A lot of pastors and churches have lumped talk of the Trinity in with other “antiquated” “outdated” now irrelevant church stuff. Church growth experts tell us that we if want to reach a new generation of Christians we need to scrap all the stuff like this and preach sermons on relevant topics like “Lose Weight the Gospel Way” “40 Days and 40 Nights to Debt Free Living” or “Praying Your Way to a Promotion.”

I do not think we ought to toss out the doctrine of the Trinity. But, let me be clear, the point is not doctrinal correctness… the point is relationship! The point is transformation! In describing the Trinity, we are trying, in vain, to explain what we know about something greater than our knowing. We are faced with an impossible task, but one we must undertake.

Close you eyes for a moment – I want you to think about distance. It is about five miles from where you are sitting to my house is Wood River. From where you are sitting to edge of the visible universe is about a million million million million miles.[5] That’s just the known part. Picture that. You can open your eyes to see that number on the screen.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Our God is so beyond comprehension, that our words fail us, but if we stop trying, we can miss out on the true blessing of a God so radically abundant that our frail little models fall very short.

Although the model of the Trinity is limited, without it, we also may limit our own understanding. Without some discussion of trinity, we risk, placing all of our “theological eggs in one basket.”[6]

In our God we have God the creator, who made all this, everything we can imagine and more, a God that is powerful, all-knowing, ever present.

Our God, is an awesome God,

he reigns from heaven above,

with wisdom power and love

our God is an awesome God.

or

God of wonders, beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy

But, if this is all we consider, our God seems distant, removed, completely shrouded in mystery. If we worship only God, the creator, we risk having a faith that is sterile, completely theoretical as we hurl praise at a distant world maker hoping that some amount of grace might be thrown back. Our God is one God, three in one who is very real to us in Jesus Christ and who lives and breathes in us in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our God is Jesus Christ, a very human being who laughed and wept, who ate and slept, who was born and died. In Jesus God knows our pain, can relate to life on this Earth. In Jesus we can connect to God in a very personal way.

And he walks with me and he talks with me

and he tells me I am his own.

And the love we share as we tarry there,

none other has ever known.

Or

My Jesus, My Savior, Lord there is none like you!
All of my days, I long to praise, the wonders of your mighty love
My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength,
Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you!

But if we take Jesus without God the creator, where is the power, where is the mystery? If we worship only Jesus the Son, we may have a faith that is just too human, too limited, too practical. Our God is also a God of power, the God with the power to create and the Holy Spirit, empowering us in ministry.

Our God is the Holy Spirit, a very real presence in our world, empowering us and the church to do the work of ministry and live as God’s people. Without it, our faith could be distant, in the skies with our creator or stuck in the past with the historical person of Jesus.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of living God, fall afresh on me.

But if we consider only the Spirit, perhaps our faith could waver and change as fickle as the wind that blows.

We are the church of the Triune God! We are a church that invites people to experience the awe and wonder of a God that created and is creating billions of galaxies, stars of unimaginable brightness, planets of rock and planets of gas, great mountain peaks and deep lush valleys. Giant towering trees and beautiful fragile flowers of so many varieties that we could never see them all.

We are a church that knows the abundant love of that God through the very human Jesus Christ, God! who stepped from the throne to live among God’s beloved children, healing them and walking with them and telling them that they are loved. This same God in Jesus Christ said “I love you so much, there is nothing you can do to change that. You can even nail me to a cross!”

We are a church that doesn’t just see God in the heavens or of Jesus in our history but God alive and living and working in us, making us the church, sending us out to share the news that the God of all creation loves us and that in Jesus Christ that God overcame death itself, brought us into relationship with God and taught us to love our neighbor as our selves. In the one Triune God we have a God of transformation above us, around us, within us working to draw us into relationship with God and working to change the world!

We have a God so absolutely amazing all we can say is, “well it’s kind of like this: you know how water and ice and steam are really all just water?”

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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[1] “The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church” ¶ 103. Section 3—Our Doctrinal Standards and General Rules, The United Methodist Book of Discipline, 2004 (Nashville, The United Methodist Publishing House, 2004) 59

[2] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition, (New York: Bantam Books, 1988, 1996) 68

[3] Ibid, 69

[4] Rev. Will Rice, “The Trinity, Who Really Cares Anyway?” Preached at The Rock United Methodist Church, Cedar Park, Texas, 26 May, 2002

[5] Bill Bryson, *A Short History of Nearly Everything, (Broadway Books, 2003) 18

[6] Mary W. Anderson, “So Explain It To Me”, The Christian Century, May 20-27, 1999, p. 523

Will Rice - Sermon 22 - Truthiness is a Word, Really

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

John 8:30-32

“Truthiness is a Word, Really”

I am a big fan of the franchise of television shows called C.S.I. There is now C.S.I., C.S.I. Miami and even C.S.I. New York. I draw the line at C.S.I. New York but I watch the original, set in Las Vegas and the Miami spin off. I like the original the best because it is the most realistic. It is so realistic that I have become pretty convinced that if this whole pastor thing doesn’t work out, that I could be a crime scene investigator. Now any actually crime scene investigator would tell me I better stick to the pastor thing because what I see on T.V. is not real, but it sure looks real.

I wonder how many doctors and nurses find themselves getting corrected by their patients because they aren’t following the procedures that they saw on E.R. or on Grey’s Anatomy. I wonder how often jurors fight the temptation to judge the merits of a case based on something they saw on Boston Legal or Law and Order.

All of these shows have an air of “truthiness.” Yes, truthiness is a real word. It has been with us since 1824.[1] The American Dialect Society named it the 2005 word of the year.[2] Truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. It is “the notion that what ‘feels true’ must be treated as true.”[3] It refers to our temptation to say, “that sounds good, I am going to believe it, now don’t bore me with facts.

I am going to talk a little bit about Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code and the movie that came from it today. But, don’t worry if you haven’t read or seen it or don’t even plan to read or see it, because today’s sermon is about something much more important than one book or movie, today’s sermon is about truth.

As Christians, we have an interesting relationship with truth.

truth - (trth) n.

1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
5. That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence. [4]

We are the most interested in that last one. We are most interested in truth when it refers to ultimate reality. Our truth is more than just a collection of facts. “As United Methodists, we have an obligation to bear a faithful Christian witness to Jesus Christ, the living reality at the center of the Church’s life and witness.” [5] That is what our truth is about. As United Methodists, we see Jesus as a living truth. We don’t have a rigid, fixed set of doctrines that you must believe in - in order to belong. We are together on a journey, a search for Truth.

The spiritual father of the Methodist movement, John Wesley believed that truth was not something that the church handed down as an edict, but rather it was something that we could all understand together. He believed that the living core, the truth of our faith was “revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.”[6]

Scripture, tradition, experience, reason, they have become known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. We believe that Scripture is the primary source of what we believe. However our understanding of it doesn’t have to start over with each of us. We have a rich tradition that informs our study and understanding of Scripture. But we don’t just take historical tradition and understanding as its stands, we look to understand it through our own experience of God in our lives. Finally, we believe in the power of our own human reason to put this all together. We use reason to see if it all fits together, the Scripture, the tradition, and our own experience.

Any one of the dimensions of this quadrilateral can be dangerous if taken alone.

I have seen a bumper sticker that spoke of scripture reading, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” I don’t even really need to give an example, but I will. Leviticus 19:19 reads:

You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall you put on a garment made of two different materials.

If you spend any time reading the Bible you know as well as I do that some things need some input from tradition, experience and reason to even make sense.

If we weigh too heavily on the aspect of tradition we can get stuck just following what has come before, even if it turns out to be wrong or even if God is leading us somewhere else. Ask any of the church reformers like John Wesley, John Calvin, or Martin Luther.

Experience can get us in a lot of trouble if that is all we pay attention to. Experience separated from scripture and tradition can lead to us all developing our own personal religion separated from the community that God calls us into.

And reason, there is trouble there too. As I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, we face the temptation of letting our own reason rule the day. If it sounds good to us, it must be true. A lot of people reasoned for a long time that the world was flat. It made sense at the time. But when it turned out people never fell off the edge, it became time to start weighing the facts.

It is our over reliance on reason that made the Da Vinci Code such an intriguing book for some. Now some people read the book or saw the movie and said, “nice story.” But some, looked at what Dan Brown proposed and said, “it sounds reasonable, it must be true.” That goes back to that concept of truthiness, “the notion that what ‘feels true’ must be treated as true.”

In case you didn’t read the book or see the movie, let me give you a little synopsis. (Before I do that, in case you are thinking, “I don’t really care about the Da Vinci Code, get back to talking about Jesus.” Let me say this. It is very likely that someone you know, maybe someone who does not have relationship with God is going to see this movie and is going to say to you, “what did you think?” Let me also say this, I can’t count the number of times people say to me, “Will, I really want to talk to my unchurched friends and family about God and Jesus and the Bible, but I just don’t know how to bring it up.”) “What did you think about the movie?”

Alright, here is the basic gist.

The curator of the Louvre Museum is Paris is murdered, by an albino monk of all things, and in his dying moments leaves a cryptic message. Harvard cryptologist Robert Langdon is called to the scene to solve the puzzle (by the way the police also think he is the killer). Another police officer, Sophie Neveu, who turns out to be the dead man’s granddaughter shows up, gets Langdon out of there because they think Langdon committed the murder and are ready to arrest him. Together Langdon and Neveu dodge the police and other evil types while putting together clues left behind by the dead museum curator (Sophie’s grandfather). The clues lead them to a secret society that holds knowledge that could, and I quote “devastate the very foundations of Christianity.” This knowledge is about true nature of the Holy Grail. In their quest, our two heroes find out some amazing things, including the “fact” that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and had his child. They also find out that Jesus’ ancestors are alive to this day and that bloodline is what is actually the Holy Grail. However, all the information about all of this has been suppressed since the fourth century when emperor Constantine got rid of all the information about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, elevated Jesus’ status from mortal to God and decided what would be in the New Testament.

The book and movie make some pretty remarkable claims, which is fine, if you are writing fiction, which Brown is, except that before the book even starts, Brown makes some claims about the truth, including this:

All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.[7]

Now, I know nothing about artwork, architecture, or secret rituals, but I do know enough to know that Brown didn’t do a whole lot of research into the sacred documents he references. I will have more time to go into the details of this in the session on Tuesday night, but suffice it to say, Brown makes some factual mistakes. Let me show you one real quick. It is easier to reference the book since it goes into a little more detail. On page 245, one of the characters says,

These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,” Teabing said, “The earliest Christian records. Troubling they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible.”[8]

There is really no scholarly argument about this, there is nothing at all Christian about the Dead Sea scrolls, they are completely Jewish, with no mention of anything Christian.

The same character goes on to quote the Gospel of Philip and then point out something about the Aramaic language it is written in. Unfortunately, that Gospel was written in Coptic, translated from Greek.[9]

In some ways, this all seems unimportant; we usually leave this sort of stuff for academics and theologians. However it shows that Brown is mixing fact and fiction even when he seems to be talking about fact. And the problem with that is this, when we read a book like this, we have no way to separate the historical fact from the fiction.[10] The danger is that we say, “it sounds true, it must be true.”

The Da Vinci Code is not the first time we have been called to weigh truthiness against truth. Over the past few years, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins painted a picture of what they thought the Book of Revelation was actually about with the Left Behind series and many people did and still do believe it to be true. In 2004 Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was released. While that movie was based on Gospel accounts, in order to make it into a movie, Gibson had to use his imagination and people were left having to decide, which is the Gospel and which is Mel Gibson. In 1988 it was Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which outright offended many Christians, but left many others trying to wonder if it could all be true.

If a book or movie is written well enough, it will cause our reasonable self to ask, “is it true?” But what if we engaged the Wesleyan quadrilateral I mentioned earlier to judge. What if we looked at the Da Vinci Code through the lens of scripture? What does scripture say about Mary Magdalene, Jesus and the Holy Grail? I will leave the first two up for your exploration but I will tell you--you won’t find the grail in the Bible.

What about tradition? Well the tradition of the church stands contrary to the claims in Brown’s book. However, Brown makes it sound like there is some secret conspiracy, hiding all sorts of documents to hide the truth. If it is a conspiracy at all, it is a conspiracy of boredom. All this history, all these other gospels, all the research are quite available if people want to look.

The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Mary, the Gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, are not tucked away in a vault somewhere, you can pick them up at Barnes and Noble or order them at Amazon.com. You will probably find them quite boring and you may see some obvious other reasons that they didn’t make it into the New Testament.

What about reason? I said earlier we rely too heavily on reason, but our reason can help us when we don’t forget about the other parts. If we really consider scripture, in other words, read it ourselves, if we really look at tradition, not as the definitive answer, but as the faithful effort of those who have come before us to understand, we can make reasonable decisions about what it is we believe. We don’t believe something because Dan Brown makes it plausible, we believe because we have looked for ourselves.

Then what about experience? The movie version of The Da Vinci Code betrays the book in a wonderful way. At the end of the movie, just after the most climactic moment, (there weren’t really that many exciting moments) Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks reveals that he, as a child had an experience of Jesus. He had fallen down a well as a boy and in his fear had prayed to Jesus and had a powerful feeling that he “was not alone.”

Moments later Hanks says something that all of those who decided to boycott the movie will miss out on, he says, "What matters is what you believe."[1]

What matters is what you believe. And I when I say that, I am not asking you to say “I intellectually concur with some widely accepted views on God’s existence, character and activities.”[12] I am instead saying, what matters is that you have a relationship with God, one that is growing, one that is deepening. One that is seeking and self critical. One that seeks answers in scripture and tradition. And one that goes beyond factual answers and seeks the experience of relationship.

When books and movies like The Da Vinci Code come out, we are not all going to agree. Some of us will want to boycott them, some will want to read and see them, some will just not care. Some will build up walls to defend their faith, some will use them as opportunities to examine what they believe. For some they will cause a crises of faith, for others they will cause unimagined growth. For some, they will just be a moment to be entertained.

I believe in God and I believe that God works through all things, even over imaginative books and poorly lit, slow moving Ron Howard movies. If through all this one person comes and begins a relationship with God through Christ, if one engages their faith at a new level, I will thank Dan Brown, even if he was just trying to tell a nice story.

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[1] According to the American Dialect Society, see http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/truthiness_voted_2005_word_of_the_year/

[2] Ibid

[3] Rodney Clapp, “The appeal of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s truthiness”, The Christian Century, May 16, 2006, 22

[4] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[5] “Doctrinal Standards and Our Theological Task”, The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2004, (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 2004) 76

[6] Ibid, p. 77

[7] Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, (New York: Anchor Books, 2003) front matter

[8] Ibid, 245

[9] Bart. D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 19

[10] Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, (New York: Oxford, 2004) 189

[11] Thank you to the folks at Newsday for printing this quote, I wasn’t able to write it down exactly in the dark at the theatre. I got it from Carol Eisenburg’s article, “’Da Vinci Code’ Movie Not Exactly by the Book”, May 19^th 2006, online at http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-lidavi0519,0,5986963.story, accessed May 27, 3006; internet\

[12] Leonard Sweet, Out of the Question, Into the Mystery, (Colorado Spring: WaterBrook Press, 2004) 65

Will Rice - Sermon 21 - The One About Grapes

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

John 15:1-8

Grapes to me are more than snacks or the raw materials of juice, jam and wine. Grapes to me are about the very ebb and flow of time, the eternal clock of the earth. For, at a certain time every year, as a child, I would awake, inhale and smell the fragrant aroma of acres of quickly ripening grapes in the vineyard across the street from my home in Upstate New York. It never happened gradually. The smell would seem to just suddenly pervade the air one day when many of the grapes reached the peak of their ripeness and the north wind of fall would carry their scent through the window of my bedroom. Jesus said:

¹I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

While, I would awake suddenly one morning to this miracle, it wasn’t by some sudden accident that this decadent bouquet filled my nose. There was more to the rhythm of the vineyard.

Springtime in Western New York was always a drastic transition as the scene changed from frozen white to soggy brown. Before the green of spring, there was the mud of post winter. During that transition, I would overlook the vineyard and watch men and women in tall rubber boots march into the rows. They would be there all day for several days toiling over the now dead looking, leafless vines that had pleased my senses just months before. The vinegrower was there. It was a big vineyard. He brought lots of help. Jesus said:

²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.

So what were these people doing in the vineyard? Well after they had gone, I would wander through the rows wondering at the work they had done. They always left behind little pieces of string and little broken pieces of withered vine. Occasionally I would find a whole spool of string left behind. All through the vineyard, vines were neatly trimmed back and tied up with pieces of string. Vines that had been lying on the ground were now tied to the wires stretched between the vineyard poles so that they wouldn’t grow toward the ground. Jesus said:

²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

That is not a real popular line in scripture. No one likes to be pruned, even by God.

I didn’t learn until years later, when I was in college, that not all vineyards are the same. The vineyard I knew growing up was a pretty large commercial vineyard. In my freshman year of college I had a professor, who also turned out to make the best wine in town. Joe owned a very small vineyard and produced his wine from the grape to the bottle. He didn’t go into his vineyard with a crew of hired hands. He went in by himself. And because he was more meticulous with his small, fragile vineyard than the workers in the big commercial vineyard across the street from my childhood home, he helped me understand better what was going on.

As the mud slowly dried and post-winter turned into spring, I would walk or ride by bicycle up and down the dirt roads that wandered through the vineyard and watch as vines began to sprout leaves and eventually flourish into the green bushy creations that would remain with us until fall. It was sometime in the spring that in Joe’s small vineyard he would walk through and gently pinch off some of the smaller shoots so that the main fruit bearing branches would get all the nutrients. When I think of Joe, who so loved that vineyard and was so gentle with his precious plants, prune seems like a harsh word.

^2bEvery branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

I wonder how clear that is. The word we translate as “prune” is kaqai,rei from kaqai,rw which could well mean “prune” but it could just as easily mean “clean.” When I think of Joe out in his vineyard, I picture him “cleaning” away some of the shoots so that the main branches could flourish and bear more fruit! Jesus said:

³You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

That cleaning image I had of Joe might not be so far off since in the very next line the adjective form of that same word comes up: kaqaroi,. You have already been “cleansed” we read this time, not pruned.

⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

Without fail, at some point after the start of school in the fall, the aroma would fill the air. Before the giant machines that now do the grape picking in some commercial vineyards would come through, I would wander through the vines searching for the sweetest grapes. They were juice and jelly grapes. The skins were tough, so you would just squeeze out the insides, and toss the skins, but they were so sweet. I would walk through the rows of reds, and greens, and the wonderful purples and dark blues trying to find which ones were the tastiest that year.

I never heard this scripture passage until later in life and I wished I had heard it sooner. Because I hadn’t heard it, I couldn’t see the connection between those grapes, that vine, Jesus Christ and God.

^4bJust as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.

I didn’t need years of Bible study to get that. That aroma that told me it was fall, the sweet taste of those fresh grapes, would not have been without the vine.

⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

How many of you have used the word “abide” in conversation this week? It is an old-fashioned word. Some more modern Bible translations have translated as remain, or live in me, but it really conveys an idea of “persevering, continuing, lasting, staying with it.”[1]

We don’t use abide much anymore, perhaps because we don’t abide much anymore. Jobs, friendships, relationships, even marriages are more fickle, more casual, more flexible. For good or bad, we have become less likely to abide in something, less likely to stick with something that becomes difficult.

Even in our relationship with God. Many folks come and find a relationship with Christ and are completely transformed by it. However, at some point, our relationship with God begins to require something of us, and some, when they reach that point, walk away.

⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

There is something very interesting about this verse. You can’t see it in English, but if I translate it into Texan you will be able to.

Abide in me as I abide in you

mei,nate evn evmoi,( kavgw. evn u`mi/nÅ

Y’all abide in me as I abide in y’all.

This passage is most definitely plural. You all abide in me as I abide in you all.

Can you image one young, little grape deciding he would be better off to go it alone without all those other grapes dragging him down? That is ridiculous.

And that is exactly where this passage is going. To be in relationship with God means that we are in a committed relationship with God, one that is continual, one that involves perseverance, one that is constantly part of our existence, not just there when it is handy. To be in relationship with God means that we live that out together in “costly companionship.”[2] As tempting as it is to live as a Christian that just checks in with God as needed, that just isn’t what Jesus is talking about here. As tempting as it can be to be a “solo” Christian, it just isn’t part of the deal.

Following Christ means a commitment to the sometimes difficult work of abiding in Christ, together with our fellow Christians, while we allow Christ to abide in all of us, together.

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[1] F. Dean Lucking, “Abide in me…(John 15:1-8)”, The Christian Century, April 16, 1997: 387

[2] N.T. Wright, “The Vine and the Branches”, a sermon at the Eucharist on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 18 May 2003, Westminster Abbey, available online at http://westminster-abbey.org/voice/sermons/archives/030518_easter.htm, accessed 17, May 2006; internet