Memorial Day

A prayer for Memorial Day, May 28, 2012.


O God, creator of all, all we have been given has you as its source.
And so we come to you again and again with grateful hearts for your generosity towards us.
We thank you for this beautiful day,
for the green all around us,
for the sun shining bright and warm,
we thank you for the flowers and the vision to enjoy their beauty,
we thank you for beautiful music and we thank you for a day off to enjoy all this.
You created us for life, for joy, for beauty,
but we come to you now remembering those who did not remain with us to enjoy your gift of life.
We come to you remembering our fallen brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers.
We come to you remembering that their lives were cut short in the chaos of conflict.
You have created us for peace, for fellowship with our fellow human beings,
but humanity again and again finds itself embroiled in war.
Many of these men and women were from small towns like Acworth,
and we remember in particular today those who went from this place,
to unknown lands, into unknown destinies.
O God, you have created us as a remembering people,
we remember some things so well and others so poorly,
we remember some things as they really were and others as we would have liked them to be--
our capacity for memory mingles with our capacity for creativity and we create tall tales.
Today we ask, O God, that you would give us the clarity of mind, the grace of thought, to remember truthfully our brothers and sisters fallen in battle.
So often we want to glorify the fallen, but they were human too.
So often we want to transform their war into an event of mythic proportions, but war fought by those close to us is nonetheless destructive and horrifying.
O God save us from too free an imagination.
We pray that we would neither romanticize the fallen, nor forget them and the wars in which they fell.  We continually face the temptation to forget history, to live only in our own small worlds of work and amusement.  We pray, O God, that you would save us from becoming blind in forgetfulness.  May we remember truthfully, neither idealizing nor disdaining the fallen in an attempt to exempt ourselves from the sacrifices and compromises of war.  And let us not forget the wars of the past, or ignore the present wars and thus find ourselves doomed for more of the same.
Most of all, save us from abusing the memory of the soldiers for our own agendas.
Politicians have already used and reused the memory of the fallen for their own purposes.
Today we want to remember them truthfully, as individuals.
May our memories not be tainted by a spirit of retaliation -- deliver us from the tendency so ingrained in our minds and hearts to turn one violent act into a longing for another one.
Let not violence breed more violence in us, O God.
Help us to remember them as human beings, as fellow human beings, as those who laughed, ate, drank, slept, cried, who longed for home.
Help us to remember that they were so much more than soldiers, that they were once like us here, gathered together on a beautiful May morning.
Help us to remember that they loved peace, they loved home just as much as we do.
As we decorate their graves, O God, we ask that we would do it as fellow human beings who are grateful for the strength that these men and women showed as they left home to face to horrors of war.
We ask that as we recognize our common humanity with the brothers and sisters that we remember today, that we would realize also our common humanity with those who lost loved ones.  So often we get caught up in our own feelings about this day, our own memories, our own stories.  We ask, O God, that you would give us grace to step outside of ourselves this day that we might show our love and support grounded in our common humanity.  Knowing that our gestures and words only go so far in showing our care, we ask that you would make our love known in a real way to all those for whom this day is especially sorrowful, especially those who have recently lost a loved one in battle.
We ask that you would spur us this day as we remember the fallen, to create here and now in our communities, in our families, the kind of society that would manifest a peace stronger than the temptation to war.
As we breathe in the fresh spring air, we ask that you would inspire us by your beautiful creation and its harmonious order to be agents of that harmony, agents of that beauty in our daily walks.
May this Memorial Day not leave us in the past, but point us to the future.  May the stings of death’s arrows produce in us a fervent longing for the fullness of life that we can live by hearts of love through works of love, here and now.  May the memory of the fallen be transformed into an inspiration to go out and make peace.

We come with hearts equally full of joy and sorrow, of gratitude and remorse.  Give us O God a vision of your beauty, a vision of your design for this planet and may it drive us to depths of appreciation for your goodness and for all of the gifts we have been given in life -- especially by those who have gone before us.

We thank you, O God, for this day.  We thank you for our brothers and sisters all across this globe.  Inspire us by the peace we enjoy to work for that peace for all people.

We pray this in the name of the one who created all things and called them good,

Amen.

Babel and Pentecost

A sermon for the Sunday of Pentecost given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on May 27, 2012.

Ezekiel 37:1-14 
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b 
Acts 2:1-21 
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Babel and Pentecost MP3

In the World, Not of the World, For the World

Preparation notes for an extemporaneous sermon given on May 20, the seventh Sunday of Eastertide, at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH.


Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 
Psalm 1 
1 John 5:9-13
 John 17:6-19


The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

Last week I tried to answer the question why come to church.  I want to continue to answer that question this week.  
Perhaps we could put it the way many people do:  “Church.  what’s the point?”
When Jesus knew that he wouldn’t be with the disciples much longer, he taught them about how they should live when he is gone.  He gave them the picture of the vine and told them that they must abide by faith in God’s grace and only through abiding would they be able to produce the fruit that they were made to produce.

The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

Now when we ask the question.  Or make the accusation: “Church.  what’s the point?”  We assume that we’re all agreed on what we mean by the word church.  
But since the word church can mean a few different things it’s a word that notoriously leads to miscommunication.

We call this the Valley church and by that we mean a building.  For many “the church” means the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  We say we’re going to church on Sunday and by that we mean an event that takes places at 10 AM and involves reading the Bible, singing, prayer, and preaching.  But the word church as it’s used in the New Testament almost always means one thing: an assembly of people.  The Greek word ekklesia meant a gathering of people who have been called out for some political or religious or social event.  And all throughout the New Testament it is this word that is being translated into our English word “church.”  
Church is a gathering of people.  Not just meaning the gathering of people every Sunday for service and Bible Study, Fridays in the summer for potlucks, and Wednesdays once a month for Council.  
It’s deeper than that.  The church is a community that has been called out for a purpose.  And that purpose is to manifest the way of life of the kingdom of God.  This is the vine image.  As the followers of Jesus abide in the vine, they are able to bear fruit.  And that fruit is for the sake of those who are not on the vine.  So the church, the people who have by faith and baptism become part of a different way of living, a different way of looking at things, the church exists for the sake of showing a different way of being in the world.
 
The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

So when Jesus says “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” what does he mean by “world.”
“World” used here and many places in this gospel means those who reject the message, the revelation of God in Christ.  The revelation is that God loves the world, that Christ came not to give a message of condemnation, but of salvation.  But the kingdom of God, the inbreaking of God’s new spiritual activity is a threat to the status quo and the light when shed on injustice makes the unjust violent in its resistance.  The world is the world insofar as it resists Christ’s revelation of God’s new way.
By baptism we’re a consecrated people.  
Jesus prays in today’s gospel reading, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”  To sanctify is to set something apart.  It is to consecrate it for a higher purpose.  We are called out to be different than the world, to be separate.  We are called to a live a different way than the way of life which excuses injustice and oppression if it is profitable.  We are called to the light, to love -- to wholeness and not destruction.
So often this call to be different, to be set apart, to be holy, has been understood individualistically and selfishly.  Hence the phrase “holier than thou.”
But Jesus prays for his disciples that they would be sanctified in the truth.  And we learn from reading John’s gospel that Jesus is the truth.  In fact when Jesus prays “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth,”  he is speaking about himself.  In John’s gospel we read that in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God and that that word became flesh and dwelt among us.  To be sanctified in the truth, then, is to be sanctified in Christ.  So what does that mean?  
It means to be set apart to be little Christs in the world, to be corporately Christ, the revelation of the glory of God, in the world.  Just as a Christ was set apart on earth for a mission to display the glory of God’s love, the disciples are being set apart for a mission to demonstrate that love by their life together in community.
We may like to do our own thing, to have our own spiritual path which is completely private.  We may like to keep to ourselves or to our own safe haven of like-mindeds.  But that’s not church.  To be church, to be the ones called out by Christ, is to be in the world.  This means in the community, involved with other people, participating in the events, relating to the people that we encounter in the marketplace, in the everyday world.  It is a call to be in the world, to be in the midst unjust systems, of broken relationships, of oppressive corporations.  It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.  The community of faith are not called to separatism and seclusion, but to be incarnate in the everyday, to work within the normal in order to testify to extraordinary, the new in Christ.

The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

Jesus says here, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”  The disciples by being called out to a new a way of life, leaving their nets and starting down the road with this rogue Rabbi, are becoming separate from the world.  Many have understood this “not of the world” in different ways.  This is the idea behind monasticism -- to live a separate and contained existence in a cloister.  That is not what is being said here.  Many of us literalists will hear “not of the world” and think immediately of alien life forms and UFOs.  Neither monks nor ALFs are the picture here.  And this is because “the world” is not some actual building or actual group of people.  “The world” is the people who reject the light of God’s love.  And because “the world” is those who reject Christ, all of us are the world.  The line between church and world is drawn down the middle of all of our hearts.  We are all those who have heard the call of Christ to live differently according to the law of love grounded in faith in God’s forgiveness and love for us.  Yet if we’re honest, we are not always loving and giving people.  We are not always those who have faith.  We are not always “abiding in the vine.”  The line between church and world is drawn down the middle of our hearts.  With one breath we praise God and with another we curse our neighbor whom God loves.  Salt and fresh water pour forth from the same stream with us.  We do not become part of the church because we have attained a place of spiritual arrival, we come because we know that there is something beyond the determined, what is -- there is a freedom, a what ought to be --there is possibility for love and for grace and for change in our own lives in the way of Christ which we receive by faith.
We have the line of church and world drawn down the center of our hearts, but by baptism that line has been drawn.  Before faith and baptism our hearts did not know that there was another way to live, another way to be, a new kind of thinking and feeling, freed from the tyranny of self and sin and meaninglessness and death.  Now we have participation in the way of Christ through faith and we live in the world but have started to learn what it means to live “not of the world.”  
Because we have world in each of our hearts we are saved from the possibility of exalting ourselves over others.  We are not trying to say that we have arrived, only that there is a better way, a better road and that we’ve discovered this.  Come and see.
To be “not of the world” is to inevitably question the practices and ideas of the world around us.  Where there is injustice, where there is fear-mongering, where there is guilt-tripping, where there is violence, we see by contrast with the light, the power of darkness and its grip on human minds and hearts.
Where there is exploitation, we grieve because we have come to follow the one who sought not to be served but to serve but we also know that the roots for exploitation, the selfishness that is its seed remains a part of our own psyche that is only slowly being healed by God’s love.
The church is in the world but not of the world, it must be in order for the world to see a different way of being.

The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

To be sanctified in the truth is to be made holy, to be set apart for the purpose of living a life of a distinct nature according to the call of God.  This call to be set apart is not for the sake of our own enjoyment or personal fulfillment (that may be at times an experience but the persecuted church in all times and places can remind us that it is not necessarily the case).  This call to be set apart in a particular and peculiar way of living is not for our own sake but for the sake of God and our neighbors.  The church exists as a gathering of people who demonstrate a different way of life than the ways of life around them.  
Jesus does not pray that God take the disciples out of the world.  If the disciples are taken out of the world, then the world has no way of coming to know Jesus’ way.  They may wish that Jesus prayed the opposite -- the earliest readers of John’s gospel would be Christians who lived under threat of persecution.
Jesus does not pray that God take the disciples out of the world because though they do not belong to the world, they have a mission to the world.  As Christ demonstrated the kingdom of God through his teaching and care for the poor, the marginalized, the demon-possessed, the sick, the gathering, the church, the ones called out from the world are to demonstrate the kingdom of God, embody the kingdom of God in their time, in their place in the care for each other and in their care for the poor, the marginalized and the sick.  The church is set apart to manifest the glory of the love of God to a world that needs to know and experience that love.  And that love needs to be embodied in the way of life of the members of the Christian community.  They will follow the example of Christ and put one another’s needs above their own.  And this basin and towel servanthood education will not only help them show the same kind of self-giving love to the stranger and the enemy, but will create a new kind of community with a new kind of way of relating to one another that is as attractive as it is hospitable.
Gandhi is famous for saying “be the change you want to see in the world.”
This is the call of Christ to the church.  Be the change that God has for the world.  And this has to be lived out in community because love cannot be understood if there is not a community in which to show that love and to learn how to love unselfishly.  So the church is called to be a community that manifests a way of relating, a power dynamic that is a response to God’s radical grace and forgiveness toward us.  This new way of life, lived out in community becomes a living witness to grace that others will experience when they encounter the community of believers.
And this has ramifications beyond the personal.  The church can testify to an economics, a politics, a sociality that is not grounded on power and violence and greed, but on love and faith and grace.  And that is the kingdom of God -- a new community, a new possibility for humanity made known by the grace of God and carried on generation after generation by the actions of those who have come to believe Christ’s revelation of God’s radical love.

The Church is in the world, not of the world, for the world

The mission is carried on by the disciples.
Two extremes are to be so in the world that we are indistinguishable in our lifestyles and to be so apart from the world that we live only for ourselves and maintaining our own “holy” identity and image.
We are not called out of the world for the sake of leaving the world, we are called out of the world in order to offer a different way of being.
We are carrying forward the misson of Christ to manifest the love of God, to be light in darkness.  This is why we come together to pray for one another and with one another, this is why we listen to one another’s needs and offer to help one another and share one another’s burdens.  This is why we raise money to be a blessing to those in need.  This is why we come together for Sunday services and other times.  Because we have been set apart to a new and different way of life than what is offered in our consumerist, partisan society.
In a world of division and fear of the other, we are called to trust God and love the neighbor and even the enemy.  Not because we will feel good about ourselves for doing it or because people will admire us, but because that’s what Christ came for.  That’s the purpose of God with us, Emmanuel.  Christ is Savior because Christ rescues us from the ways of life we construct as humans who are bent on self-preservation, self-advancement, self-gratification.  Christ is Savior because Christ offers us a way to die to ourselves and rise to a new life where all is for God and we can love and not fear our neighbor.

“Church.  what’s the point?”

This is the kingdom of God.  This is God’s coup d’etat, in Karl Barth’s words.  This is how grace is manifested, in a new community founded on God’s love.  And all of the powers of darkness tremble at a church which has learned to witness to this radical new way.

Abiding, Bearing Fruit, Filled With Joy

Preparation notes for an extemporaneous sermon for the sixth Sunday in Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on Mother's Day, May 13, 2012.

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

We began this Eastertide remembering the empty tomb, expectations reversed, the women's surprise and fear at the bewildering new reality of resurrection.

As those who have joined the disciples in following Jesus, we have inherited this resurrection reality.

We come here into this building every Sunday to worship God and hear again, be reminded of the good news that has come to us in the person of Jesus.

We come here into this room every Sunday because the kingdom of God is near, it is breaking in to our world and we have heard the call to join in the intrusion.

We come here because we've heard the words of our teacher and friend, passed on to us through the stories of our Bible that we should change our minds, change our hearts, to give it all over to God and hear the sweet good news of salvation, of forgiveness, of love unconditional.

When I was baptised in Lake Sunapee I was dunked into the water and brought back up. This symbol reminds us that faith means that we die to our selves and rise anew to a life in relationship with God. By faith we have become able to pray to God and enjoy the blessing of God's presence with us. We have become a people of the new hope which is available to all of humankind through the powerful love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

And all of this resurrection excitement is fun and good. But there are days when we just don't feel it. There are days when resurrection is not our reality. We feel only the cross. There are plenty of days when we don't feel the presence of God by faith, we feel empty. There are plenty of days and plenty of times when we expect expectations reversed, only to find out that we're stuck with what we got. There are plenty of days when nothing seems new, when nothing seems changed or changeable. There are days of frustration. There are days of fear. There are days when we want to just give up on trying.

It's important that we not deceive ourselves. We are a people who live by ideals and can often find ourselves in a laughable state, like Tom Ryle who was standing neck-deep in water claiming that he took a couple steps on the water before he went down. We are not called to undying optimism. Christianity is not the power of positive thinking even if there are some parallels.

To proclaim the resurrection, to proclaim the new life, is not to proclaim that death no longer is with us. To proclaim light is not to say that darkness is no longer a reality.

The Kingdom of God is near, not here.

The resurrection is a declaration that life has triumphed over death, good over evil. But even though we are assured of the final outcome, we must endure the battle all the same. The resurrection is the first fruits of a harvest that is still being had.

As the saying goes, we are not saved from the presence of sin and death, we are saved from the power of sin and death.

Jesus calls us into community together for precisely this reason. God has called us into the story of God's redemption of humanity. The kingdom of God is a mustard seed, Jesus says, “when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet 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.’”

The kingdom of God becomes manifest on earth as in heaven by the new community that Jesus has called into existence. This is our purpose. This is why we are here on the earth at this time, this is why we enter these doors and sing these songs. The gospel is God's changing of the world, God's rescuing it from the tyranny of sin and death and bringing it back to health and wholeness and life. And we are here because God desires for us to be the means by which this good news is embodied and proclaimed in human history.

So we're stuck with sin and death and we need not look further than the newspaper to realize this fact. Murder, greed, hate, and selfishness seem to make headlines every day of every week. And it's to that world that Jesus calls the disciples to proclaim the gospel.

So how do we proclaim the gospel? Do we write it on pieces of paper and hand it out to people? Do we stand at the Village Store entrance and make sure that every person who comes through hears us say “Come to church!” Surely that would turn good news into annoying or obnoxious news.

What we find in Jesus' words is not a call to do or to say primarily, but a call to be.

Last Sunday we saw how Jesus calls himself a Vine. Jesus sees himself as beginning a new community of the people of God. God spoke through the prophets to Israel, in Jesus God speaks to the whole world.

The ones who hear Jesus' words, his disciples, are the branches. They participate in this new community, the community of salvation, in fellowship with their Savior.

So often this picture has been used to lead us to some personal spiritual devotion. We need to “abide in the vine” – and this of course means to retreat to a solitary space and have some mystical individual experience with God.

While this may happen to you in your relationship with God, and it has happened to many in the Christian community throughout history, it is not primarily what Jesus means here.

Rather, the Vine parable is a call to the disciples to participate in the new community, and we find that participation in this new community is not just about the vertical “me and God” but just as much about the horizontal “me and you.”

We are called together into the Vine because it is in community, in fellowship with one another and with God that we learn what it means to live life in light of the resurrection, in light of in-breaking kingdom of God. And by learning this way of life in community, we can become a community whose generosity and love is so attractive that others seek shelter and comfort in our fold, among the sheep, under the good Shepherd. In Gandhi's words, Jesus calls us to be the change you want to see in the world. And this is the reason that there is a church – because if a new economics and politics of love is to break into this world and offer us a valid alternative, it is going to have to be embodied in people's lives, in practices, in interactions in community.

Let's go to our text with this question, how might we be a community that not only proclaims, but embodies the love of God and draws people to God for new life in grace.

Here's the answer that I see:

Jesus calls his disciples to see that it is in abiding in the love of God that they will become a congregation that learns true joy in the bearing of the fruit of love for one another.

Three things, then.

The Easter community abides in God's love.

The Easter community bears the fruit of love.

The Easter community experiences a joy that fulfills.

So, first. The Easter community abides in God's love.

We are to make our dwelling place, our home in God's love. And this is not something we can just put on our to-do list and go out and get done. The reason is this. A vine may give life to the branches, but the branches cannot give life to the vine. A branch does not abide by some act of its own, it abides by allowing the grace, the life-source to nourish and grow it.

When we are called to abide in the love of Christ, we are called to receive that love and let it nourish us, let it heal us, let it change us.

To abide is not to do, to abide is to be. We are called to find our rest in God. St. Augustine famously writes: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

We must recognize the true source of our life, of our very existence, and by faith dwell there and let thankfulness pour out of our hearts as we realize the goodness of God's gifts in our lives, the gift of life itself. We are restless because we are constantly trying to justify ourselves in this world. We are constantly feeling as if we are in control and are the only one looking out for us and ours. Faith is to recognize that ultimately we are not in control, that we are unable to justify ourselves, no matter which set of standards we try to live up to, we will fail – we will fall short. Faith is to realize that all such striving to justify ourselves, striving to control is founded on the idea that I am God – I am the one who gives life to myself, I am the one who takes care of myself, I am the one who has made myself and I am the one who will sustain myself. Faith is the humble realization that God is the source of all life and all existence and God is the one who created each one of us for lives of good. Faith is the resting in God's goodness, forsaking our striving, and living the release, the freedom of life as a gift, not earned.

To abide in the vine, to abide in God's love is to live a life of faith, not works. To be not to do. In the words of Rudolf Bultmann, it is an allowing of “oneself to be held” like the way that the branch is held by the vine.

We rest in the love of God, and trust in God's forgiveness, and God's continual care in our lives as we pray prayers of thanksgiving and faith.

The Easter community abides in God's love.

Second, The Easter community bears the fruit of love.

To be connected the source, to abide in God's love is to allow God's love to nourish and strengthen the branch and to produce the fruit for which the vine was designed.

There is no possible way to abide in the vine and not bear fruit. If one abides in the vine, the fruit will come. In the same way there is no way to grow fruit if the branch does not abide in the vine. Any branch cut off from the vine will find itself unable to bear the fruit for which it was created.

We cannot just commit ourselves to bearing fruit and try to go about our task of bearing fruit without receiving the nourishment of the mother-vine.

Fruit organically comes from the branch that abides in the vine.

To receive the love of God by faith creates within us the right conditions for freely giving that love to others. It's analogous to the idea characterized in the words of Lily Hardy Hammond who wrote, "You don't pay love back; you pay it forward.”

We receive from God out of God's abundance, and our resting in that, our faith in God's care, God's love produces within us the conditions for being able to love freely our neighbor.

Just like the vine, so is the love of God. We receive in order to give.

What kind of love do we receive from Christ?

Earlier in the night, before Christ says the words of our gospel reading, we read that he “got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Jesus then says in our reading, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Commenter Karen Matthews Huey helps us see what kind of love we are called to. She writes:

“Love, of course, doesn't mean the romantic, ephemeral feeling that fuels our popular music, our films, and all too often, our personal quest. Being other-centered rather than self-centered, even to the point of giving up our lives (suddenly or over a lifetime) fulfills the law of Christ. Purity codes and legalisms fall away. How well we know the challenge of being other-centered: in our culture, with mobility, career pressure, distractions, and overloaded calendars, it's difficult even to make room for friendship. We don't stay long enough to get to know one another, let alone to care about one another. And yet this Gospel keeps talking about staying, about abiding, about making our home in God, in the Body of Christ.”

In Karen's words, the love is “other-centered.” In a world with so much focus on the individual and personal satisfaction, we need to be reminded of Jesus' words, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

This radical way of life, this radical love is not something we can just put on like a coat. We must learn this by spiritual education in the house of God. We must abide in the vine by faith among other learners, other abiders in order to truly be nourished and grown to produce fruit like this.

This love is “other-centered” and that's what makes it so radical. It calls us outside of ourselves, it calls us to welcome and help and serve those who are radically different than us, those of different ages, races, cultures, classes, languages, genders, and sexualities.

To abide in the vine means by faith to receive the radical love of God in Christ who gave his life for the whole world, not just part of it. And as we receive this love like the branch to the vine, we will become fruitful, givers of the love that we see in the basin and the towel, the love that seeks to serve and not be served. The difficulty is that we want to jump write to doing these things and all of a sudden we find ourselves powerless to do them or frustrated in our attempts at radical other-centered love. We must always remember that there is no possible way to abide in the vine and not bear fruit. If one abides in the vine, the fruit will come. In the same way there is no way to grow fruit if the branch does not abide in the vine. Any branch cut off from the vine will find itself unable to bear the fruit for which it was created.

The Easter community bears the fruit of love.

And finally, the Easter community experiences a joy that fulfills.

“[Jesus] said these things to [us] that [his] joy may be in [us], and that [our] joy may be complete.”

We seek joy in all the wrong places. We seek joy in personal fulfillment, we seek joy in entertainment, in food, in sex, in buying and selling. And all of these things are wonderful and good – but none of them will satisfy us in and of themselves. If you imagine a fountain, they are the drops from the fountain which evaporate from the rock, they are not the fountain.

A joy that fulfills cannot be found in anything bound to time and space. A joy that fulfills must be founded in the eternal life of the God who loves. By faith we abide in God's love, and by the abiding we are nourished and given the fruit of other-centered love. It is in this existence in relationship to the God who created and sustains this universe and who loves us in the life-giving sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is in this relationship, this participation in God's love, that we can find the source for fulfilling joy. Now joy does not mean smiles. Joy is a deeper happiness, a satisfaction with life.

Jesus invites us to find our joy and satisfaction in relationship with God and in relationship with one another. Joy comes from being all that we were made to be. And we were made to be lovers. Lovers of God and lovers of one another. We were made for God and for each other, to live in community and to show the care, the hospitality, the giving of our lives that God shows us in God's love.

We were not made for war. We were not made for greed. We were not made to be islands of self-interest. We were not made to build ourselves up at the expense of others.

We were made for peacemaking. We were made for generosity. We were made to be bridges of compassion. We were made to build others up in love.

“[Jesus] said these things to [us] that [his] joy may be in [us], and that [our] joy may be complete.”

The Easter community experiences a joy that fulfills and completes.

So what have we found in Jesus' words? Nothing short of a manifesto for the living out of the good news in community. We are members all of us of one body – one vine and many branches. We have been invited to abide in that vine, to be held by the love of God, the forgiveness and compassion, and daily mercies of God, to see anew our lives as gifts of God and to rest in the reality that God loves us as we are. As we abide we find ourselves nourished and healed by the love of God and God's generosity and we reach out filled with the other-centered love of God and bear fruit of love for one another. And in all of this we find joy, the joy of fulfilled living, knowing God's love and being that love. We were made not to be reservoirs of grace but channels of that generosity to a world that needs to hear the good news of the love that has been revealed to humanity in Christ and which will go forward bearing fruit through all who dwell in the vine that God has planted.