“Abide in me, as I abide
in you,” says Jesus to his disciples.
“Abide” is an
interesting word, and not one we use much these days in normal conversation. We
don’t tend to say of someone that they abide in No 23; we say they live there.
A South African former boss of mine when I was first ordained used to say that
so and so was staying at such and such an address. It confused me no end. To me,
“stay” meant “visit”. We stay in a hotel on holiday; we don’t live there. It
was a long time before I realised that this was the South African way of saying
that this was their permanent home. Words that seem to be part of the same
language often change their meanings subtly from one culture to another. We think
we understand each other, but we don’t.
Whatever word we use for it,
though, we know what it means to be at home somewhere, and what it feels like
not to. If you’ve moved house, you’ll know it can take a while before the new
place feels like home. Young people leaving to set up on their own often talk
for a long time about going “home” to see their parents. It takes time to feel
“at home” somewhere else, to get to the point where we feel we have a right to
be there, and can treat it as our own. There comes a point though, when the
peculiarities of the place become a familiar and comforting backdrop to our
lives - the sound of the front door opening, the stairs that creak when you
walk on them, the gurgle of the plumbing.
You have to “abide” to get to
that point, to wait, to stick with it. The Greek word translated as “abide” is
“meno” - indirectly, via the Latin, it gives us the word “remain” and that’s
what it means. It can mean to stay behind when everyone else has gone. Remains
are things that are still there when everything else has been taken away.
I’m labouring the point
because it’s important that we understand what Jesus is saying here. “Abide in
me, as I abide in you”. He’s not talking of a quick visit, getting together
with him once a week for an hour on Sundays, then going our separate ways, but
of a relationship that is permanent and stable, where he is woven into our
lives and we are woven into his.
One of the local projects we
support with our giving at church is Sevenoaks family Contact Centre. It
enables separated parents who for some reason can’t have access to their
children without supervision to meet with them and play with them, alongside
others in a comfortable environment. It is a very valuable project, and it
makes a huge difference to the lives of the families who use it; helping them
to stay in contact. But I am sure they would say that it’s not the same as
being together all the time. Children and parents know they are just visiting
each other, not living together.
It seems to me that it is
very easy for our relationship with God to be like this. This building, this
hour on a Sunday, can become a sort of holy Contact Centre, a place where we
visit God, and allow him to visit us, under carefully controlled circumstances
, where the words and the music have been mostly chosen by others, and we just
say our “Amen” to them. At the end of the hour we go back to the place where we
really live, as if God has been left behind. But Jesus says, “Abide in
me, as I abide in you.” But what
might it look like to abide in him? Abiding with others we share our home with
means knowing them, talking to them, so prayer and Bible reading have got to be
in there if we are going to abide in Christ. We share meals with those we live
with too, so the Eucharist should feature as well. But our second reading today
hints that it isn’t just these things that matter.
“God is love”, says John,”
and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.” There’s that word “abide” again. If you want to
abide in God you have to love, says John, because that’s where God is. That
small act of kindness, that decision to build people up instead of pulling them
down with vicious gossip, responding to the needs around us rather than turning
away, that’s where God is, that’s where we find him at home. If we want abide
with him, we need to learn to abide in those places too, to make love a habit, a
part of our natural environment.
I often say to couples at
their marriage service that I hope they will eventually look at each other and
say “that’s not the person I married”, not because somethings gone wrong but
because the love they share has changed them, so they have become bigger and better versions
of themselves. Abiding in love, whatever form that love takes, changes us for
the better. Abiding in God’s love is no different. Over time, bit by bit, it
transforms us.
I hosted a visit to church on
Friday for a class of seven year olds from Seal School. As usual, they
discovered all sorts of things about the church, and had a lot to say for
themselves. But there is one little boy in the class who has special needs.
This little lad often sees the world in a completely different way to everyone
else, and it’s not always easy to know what is going on in his mind. As he left
church at the end of the visit, he turned to me with a thoughtful expression on
his face. I wondered what he was going
to say. “You know,” he said, you’re beginning to look a bit like God”. Before you think that makes me sound really big headed, I should explain that he probably just meant that I was looking very, very old…and I was dressed in a
white robe on that occasion. But I loved the phrase anyway and it gave me a lot
to think about. Wouldn’t it be good if people could look at us and think that
we really were “beginning to look a bit like God”, not physically, but that we
were more loving, more forgiving, more joyful, more disturbed by injustice,
more courageous about doing something about it than we had been. Well, if that
is going to happen, it will only be because we are abiding in love , and
therefore abiding in God, close enough to him, aware enough of him to make a
difference.
Abiding in God makes our
lives richer and deeper, of course, but its not just an exercise in self-improvement
to give us a nice warm glow . It’s far more important than that. It is what
gives us the resilience we need to cope with the disasters the world throws at
us. Jesus speaks of the branches that aren’t joined to the vine withering and
dying – if we think we can cope with life all by ourselves we are going to find
ourselves without the strength we need when we need it. We’ve been reminded of
that need this week as we have seen the aftermath of the earthquake in Nepal,
striking out of the blue, ripping lives apart.
Abiding in God also gives us
the capacity to seize opportunities when they come along too.
The first reading today - that
encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian – doesn’t look as if there is much
abiding happening in it. The Ethiopian is on the road in his chariot – the
fastest thing on wheels in those days – and Philip seems to have been
transported to the spot by the Spirit, which is presumably even faster – no one
was hanging around. As far as we know they
never meet again afterwards. But both of them were ready for that moment when it came, and that’s because they
had been abiding in God for a long time beforehand. The Ethiopian was steeped
in the scriptures. He knew his stuff. He just needed someone to tell him about
Jesus for everything to fall into place. Philip had spent three years following
Jesus, literally abiding with him. So when this moment came he knew deep down,
instinctively, that there was no need to worry about any rules about who was
acceptable and who wasn’t. As a eunuch this man wouldn’t have been allowed into
the Temple at Jerusalem – he would have been seen as unclean - but Philip knew
that this wouldn’t have mattered to Jesus. The man’s needs were more important
than any rules, however ancient they were. And what happened in that brief
meeting not only changed the Ethiopian but also changed a whole nation. According
to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, it was this man who brought Christian faith
to their country, and there’s no reason to doubt them, because it’s one of the oldest
churches in the world.
Abide in me, says Jesus.
Stick around. Stay with God, be at home in him. That’s the message of these
passages. Pray. Read the Bible, not just when we come together, but for ourselves.
Most of all, love. Love generously. Love often. Love until love becomes such a
habit that we hardly have to think of it. If we do this, we will be ready for
disaster and opportunity when they come. We will be blessed, and others will be
blessed through us, and maybe we will even find ourselves “beginning to look a
bit like God.”
Amen
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