All Saints Day

Isaiah 25:6-9

Revelation 21:1-6a

John 11:32-44

I remember learning the word “saint” from my Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Rocky.

Mrs. Rocky taught Sunday school for the younger elementary kids

at Park Forest Baptist Church in State College, Pennsylvania.

She loved Jesus and she loved children.

And I remember the day she taught us the word, “saint.”

She asked us what the word meant, and we were first and second graders,

So we said: “a football team!”

And to our surprise, she said, “my book here says that you would say that!”

And we were amazed that her book could predict we would give that answer.

Unity and Gift-sharing

Ephesians 4:1-16

The theme of unity has come up a number of times in conversations I’ve had recently.

And it’s certainly an appropriate theme given the fact that we are remembering this summer the fiftieth anniversary of this church being the United Church of Acworth, merging the First Baptist Church of South Acworth and the Acworth Congregational Church.

50 years ago there was a uniting.

But I mentioned a few weeks ago that I think it might be more accurate to say that we are a uniting church of Acworth rather than a united church.

Oneness is something that we work at and maintain through our life together by tending to relationships and having conversations about our differences of opinions with respect and patience.

Unsettling the Walls

Ephesians 2:11-22

"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall”

 

We are wall builders. 

They take various shapes and degrees of visibility.

From the Grants house on Charlestown Rd.,

I walk down Stebbins Rd.

And on my way down to the beaver pond

that I love to visit,

I notice walls intersecting the woods –

stonewalls,

some places kept quite well over all the years,

Other places disheveled.

I notice places where the walls used to

clearly separate two areas –

perhaps mowing from pasture,

or tillage from orchard?

But I wonder about these walls.

They speak to a time

when this space was imagined differently –

and used differently – than now.

Making Change

Ephesians 1:3-14

Not too long ago, I visited a small rural town,

not much bigger than Acworth

and had the opportunity to sit at a table in the church’s parish house,

and listen to some of the community leaders,

a nurse, a pastor, a funeral director, a state representative among them,

as they talked about the issues that their community faces.

They told a story that grieved them and grieved me to hear it.

How a teenage boy a few years before had overdosed on heroin and lost his life.

And this was a wake-up call for the whole community.

They grieved together, they held a memorial service for him,

But then they did something more.

They gathered together in the school gymnasium.

People from the church, people from the school,

people from the community who were not connected with either church or school. 

And they talked. 

They talked about how awful it was that this happened in their community. 

This young man who played soccer on the team that this neighbor coached. 

This boy that the community had watched grow, suddenly and senselessly gone.

They gathered, and they talked, and they listened.

Lifelong Learners and Lovers of Others

Mark 6:1-13

Rachelle and I set out on a Saturday night a month or so ago

and headed out of town on 123a towards Marlow. 

I had heard a strange noise just after we left the driveway,

slowed down, rolled down the window and then decided it must not have been anything. 

So I rolled the window back up and off we went down Hill Rd. 

Well it was just past Echo Valley Farm that I started hearing a more constant noise,
but I continued on, thinking that when I got to our destination I would take a look.

But then further down the road as we passed Tucker Rd.,

the noise had gotten louder and the car was driving with great difficulty

and it became clear that I was and had been driving on a flat. 

I pulled off to the side of the road just past the small bridge that goes over the brook. 

And I got out of the car and looked, and sure enough the tire was pretty near useless. 

So, knowing that I had AAA, since my in-laws had given me a subscription for my birthday,

I got out my cell-phone and called the number I had saved there. 

Only problem was – there was no cell service. 

Hope Returns When I Remember

Lamentations 3:19-39
Mark 5:21-43

“The thought of my pain, my homelessness, is bitter poison. 

I think of it constantly, and my spirit is depressed. 

Yet hope returns when I remember this one thing:

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue,

Fresh as the morning,

As sure as the sunrise.”

“Great is thy faithfulness.”

The writer of the book of Lamentations expresses the deep grief and heartache of a people who have lost everything that was most dear to them.

It’s not an easy book to read, and might not do the best on the shelves of a Barnes and Noble.

But it is real, honest, and heartwrenching.

It expresses the heartache and the anger and dispiritedness of grief.

It expresses the experience of humiliation and shame.

And yet in the brief passage we read this morning,

In the middle of the author’s lament,

There is a moment of hope.

From Caution to Courage

1 Samuel 17:32-49

Mark 4:35-41

How do we stand up to intimidating powers in our lives?

Today’s readings name an experience that is all too common in today’s world.

Goliath breathing intimidation and insult on the battlefield.

The storm that overtakes, divides, and dispirits Jesus’s disciples

while they are sailing through the sea of Galilee

reminds us of all the times we find ourselves

caught in the overwhelming storms of life.

How do we deal with the intimidating pressures,

the overwhelming forces that invade our lives?

I think we see in these readings two kinds of response.

There’s the response of fear. 

And there’s the response of what Paul calls in Galatians 5:6 faith working through love.

Fear or faith.

When the disciples are caught in the middle of the storm on their way across the sea of Galilee,

They were without the company of their beloved teacher.

And two things happened

And they became consumed with fear

And they began to turn against one another.

The Farmer and the Mustard Shrub

Mark 4:26-34

Last week I mentioned that one of the things that I’m thinking about a lot over this summer is the fact

that fifty years ago this summer the final votes and by-laws alterations were being done in order

to make one united church officially and legally

from the two federated churches.

And so I was only half joking when I said I am thinking both about fifty years past but also of fifty years down the road.

What is our fifty-year plan?

I love Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto where he writes,

“Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.”

We live from paycheck to paycheck, from budget year to budget year,

From election cycle to election cycle,

And perhaps, the more prudent among us, from five or ten year plans –

But what about a fifty year plan?

What about making our main crop that which we did not plant and that which we will not live to harvest?

How can this church be about the work of passing on faith and wisdom, love and community to the next generation?

It’s hard to work for that which you will not see the results of.

That’s not part of our training as Americans.

But this is precisely what Jesus calls us into when we become disciples of his way.

We inherit a way of being human that was around long before we came along,

And will continue to be long after we depart.

When I was doing research last fall about the origins of Acworth as a town,

I was amazed to find out that fields that I have passed by numerous times on my way to work

Are fields that have been in cultivation since the first year that a settler came to this town.

There are fields that are being mowed for hay

That were cleared over 250 years ago.

And it makes sense that that would be true,

but it somehow struck me to realize it - all the same.

As Christians we have been given a field to tend,

a garden to keep that was cleared thousands of years ago,

And we are invited by the one who said

‘Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.’

In today’s reading Jesus compares the kingdom of God to someone who scatters seed in their field.

The one who scatters the seed then goes about the other chores that need doing.

And the farmer does not know how the seeds grow, but they do.

And yet, all the while, the farmer trusts that this will go on

and continues to do the work of the day and to get good sleep at night.

The farmer is not staying up worrying and stressing about the seeds

because the farmer trusts that in the soil they will grow.

The farmer continues on in the work that needs doing and pays attention to the growth

And when the grain is ripe, cuts in with the sickle.

The kingdom of God is like a growing season on a normal field of grain.

When we were dating Rachelle and I planted our first vegetable garden together.

It was at my house and so I was the primary person responsible

for watering and tending to it. 

Two jobs I royally failed at keeping at.

The garden was a flop.

It wasn’t just that I would get distracted from  

Watering and keeping the garden.

There was a bigger problem than that.

Even though Rachelle thought it wasn’t a good idea and told me so,

I had gone ahead and ordered seeds that I knew

And remembered my family growing in the New Hampshire spring.

The only problem.  I wasn’t in New Hampshire.

I was in South Carolina.

But even though the garden as a whole was a flop,

I can remember the bush beans turned out okay.

And they were the first to come up of what actually grew in that little plot.

I remember the wonder of walking outside one Saturday morning and seeing all of the green bean plants having come up seemingly overnight –

with their wide pointed leaves opening up.

As I walked out there, I was like the farmer in the parable,

I did not know how it happened,

but I was full of wonder.

Later in the summer, I became full of frustration and a good bit of humiliation

when most of the other plants either didn’t come up

or worse, they did come up, and then proceeded

to wither and die in the South Carolina sun.

But those green beans did alright. 

Besides some cracked and fairly unflavorful heirloom tomatoes,

they were really the one harvestable produce of that small garden.

And I picked them and had them with spaghetti one night

when I made dinner for Rachelle.

They were dry and not very tasty,

but there was something of success in them all the same.

And so it gets me to thinking.

As we consider our fifty year plan.

It’s not good enough to merely plant seeds in soil.

We need to be attentive to the different soil conditions and climate

Or our seeds will not grow.

This is not directly what Jesus is getting at when he talks about the farmer scattering seed.

But it’s something that follows, I think.

The farmer is unknowing, does not know how the seeds grow in the hiddenness of the soil,

But that does not mean that, like myself in South Carolina, the farmer is inattentive to the growth or indifferent to the conditions in which the farmer grows the plants.

The farmer in Jesus’s parable was likely working with generations and generations of traditions about how to farm well in that place.  There was a consistent and stable cultural tradition that the farmer came into and participated in.

And it’s been like that in many different times in history where the faith,

the spirituality given by Christ

Was able to be taught and passed down with much less difficulty,

Because the generation that passed it down

shared the same culture, the same language,

 with the generation to whom they passed it down.

But we live now in a world of rapid changes in culture and ways of life,

and among many and various cultures and subcultures.

And it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a way of carrying forward the faith that we have been given,

The vision that we have found to be life-giving.

But it does mean that we cannot merely pass on the faith of one time to the people of a new time without paying attention to the changed soil conditions and climate in which the faith will be believed and practiced.

One practical problem that has come about through cultural change that I’ve noticed is

How in a society where people are overworked and often made by their employers to work on Sundays,

it is very difficult for many people to make it to regular gatherings for worship on Sunday mornings.

It’s also the case that partly because of changes in the work-week,

and a majority people that don’t go to church,

family events like soccer games are scheduled on Sunday mornings.

These are observations about changes in the soil conditions and climate for our garden.

To respond by bemoaning the changing culture and lack of respect for traditions may be a natural reaction,

But it doesn’t help the garden grow in the new conditions.

I’ve also noticed that there is a greater amount of demand on organizations like the Fall Mtn. Food Shelf.

People are working weird hours, multiple jobs, and still needing to line up at the Food Shelf.

People who can’t make it to church gatherings may still be interested in spiritual conversations and being a part of a community of mission and mutual care.

The human longings are the same even as the climate and soil conditions are changing.

We are still gardening, but we have to be aware of when and where we are gardening….

Is it New Hampshire in May or South Carolina in May?

In our fifty year plan I think we should consider how we might become more flexible

in our ways of being the church,

responsive and responsible to the time and place that we are given.

If suddenly there was a massive immigration of Quebecois refugees into our midst,

The practice and shape of our common faith may become more diverse,

We might have our worship in both English and French

-- I hope that we would have the courage and the trust in God to change and be hospitable to the new climate and soil conditions in which we would be carrying forward the garden.

---

Jesus doesn’t end with this parable of the garden.

He goes on to describe how the kingdom of God,

The healing of God’s creation,

Is not only like a garden.

But also like a mustard shrub.

It takes only the smallest of seeds

And in the hidden nurture of the soil,

The plant emerges and becomes the biggest of all… shrubs.

But the shrub provides shade, a welcome place for the birds and all small creatures

who might wander in need of protection from the sun or a haven from adversaries.

The kingdom of God that comes about in our midst, in our hearts,

and all of those places outside the church where the hungry are fed,

the naked are clothed, and people are shown the love that God has for them.

The kingdom of God is a place of welcome and nurture

A place of education and of common work for the good of community and world.

The congregation is not the kingdom of God – the congregation witnesses to this much bigger reality.

Jesus doesn’t just tell us about the farmer who trusts God and does good work,

not knowing how God gives the growth,

Jesus gives us a vision that is ever ancient and ever new

Of the healing of human hearts and human community

And the creation of a space of welcome – that is modest, the largest of the shrubs,

But is nonetheless a place that does not exist for its own sake,

But for the sake of the delight of its Creator

and wellbeing of all the wanderers who find their way to its shade.

In our fifty year plan.

Let’s take seriously the need to be attentive to the garden that God has given us to keep

in all of the changing soil and climate conditions.

But not perpetuate the garden for its own sake.

Rather – for the sake of all who may wander in from the wearying heat of the sun, or the frigid cold of a New Hampshire winter.

May we be a place where someone who is brokenhearted might find compassion.

And where someone who is despairing from the chaos of modern life,

Might find a place to be confused and hopeful in good company.

Change, as they say, is the one thing constant.

And all we have to do is consider the massive diversity of ecosystems around the world

to realize that there are millions of ways for life to exist on this earth.

Gardens in Acworth will look different than gardens elsewhere,

But the same principle of organic life is at work.

It’s the same for the changes that happen in one place over time.

It’s the same faith, hope, and love,

But it will grow under different conditions.

May we be responsive and responsible to the changes in our place,

And faithfully witness to God’s love in the time and the place that is given to us.

May we never grow weary when we do not see the growth or the harvest,

But trust in the God whose patient care endures forever.   

A Fifty Year Journey

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Fifty years ago this summer, this congregation

was in the process of completing the paperwork

And taking vote after vote, changing the wording of by-laws

In order to make one church out of two.

It was not easy to get the two churches together.

It took a lot of conversations, it took a lot of votes,

It took a long time.

It was Pastor Raymond Danforth who was hired in 1932 that was the first pastor hired to serve both

The Acworth Congregational Church and the First Baptist Church of South Acworth.

He kept a crazy schedule, teaching in Claremont, serving as selectman in Acworth,

And doing two services every Sunday morning.

One in South Acworth at the Valley Church building

And the other in the center here.

1932.  That was 83 years ago.

83 years ago, necessity forced the hands of two small historically divided congregations to cooperate.

Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

33 years after that, the final vote was cast that fully merged the churches into

the one United Church of Acworth.

Breath for Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Acts 2:1-21

We find the prophet Ezekiel in a trance

in the middle of a desolate valley.

And in this valley there are countless desiccated bones –

Covering the ground.

Ezekiel in his vision is led all around the valley

Taking stock of what is there.

And his report is chilling:

“I could see that there were very many bones and that they were very dry.”

And if I was Ezekiel, I could imagine being overwhelmed.

And perhaps this was the Lord’s intention

Because after leading him all around the valley

to survey the very many and very dry bones,

The Lord asks the prophet very directly:

“Mortal man, can these bones come back to life?”

Or in the words of the King James Bible,

“Son of man, can these bones live?”

And I might have laughed at that question.

What a preposterous question!

Finding the Way in a Strange New Land

John 17:6-19

Someone came into the store yesterday and looked quite lost.

And as it turned out they were quite lost.

She was dressed up in formal attire

I greeted her and she asked, “Am I anywhere near Rindge?”

I said, “depends on where you’re coming from.”

Which in hindsight wasn’t the most helpful thing to say.

But when she said she had started in Concord

I knew that this was going to be a frustrating realization.

I’m not sure how she got sidetracked from Concord to Acworth on the way to Rindge.

Acworth is really no part of that route.

But, she said, she was following the GPS.

And one thing led to another.

She was on her way to graduate from Franklin Pierce

and so I pulled out my little Android phone and put Rindge in and showed her the best way by the map

and gave her the most immediate directions.

Take a right out of this parking lot and when the road T’s – take a right on Route 10.

She thanked me quickly and in the distress of someone who knows they are going to be really late,

she left the store.

Working Together in Love

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

There’s a bumper sticker, you may have seen it.

And it says “Love one another. It really is that simple.”

Have you seen that?

To quote Jeff Tweedy, “If love's so easy, why is it hard?”

Loving others does not come naturally to most of us.

And Jesus knew this.

Which is why he showed what he meant by love when he washed his disciples’ feet.

But that just made an already hard thing even harder.

Why couldn’t he have just stopped at “love one another” and let us interpret what that meant for ourselves?

Why did he have to go and get feet all mixed up in the picture?

It makes me think of the messy love of a mother for a baby – since this is Mother’s Day.

Love is not in words only, but in diapers.

And Jesus goes on to say that this is where joy lies.

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

We don’t talk a lot about joy in American culture.

We’ve been stuck with happiness ever since Jefferson stuck that word in the Declaration of Independence.

And happiness means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

And some people might think of happiness and joy as synonyms.

But I like to keep them separate.

Because I don’t think I can feel happy at the deathbed of a friend.

But I can feel joy even through tears.

Happiness is good, but joy is better.

Happiness is easier; joy is refined by hardship.

 I was reading through the Faith and Covenant of this church again and came upon these relevant lines:

We are united in working together in Christian love. 

We are united in remembering each other in prayer and aiding each other in sickness and distress. 

We are united in cultivating Christian sympathy in feeling, justice in our dealings, and courtesy in speech.  We strive for mutual understanding thus avoiding offense as set forth in the Word of God.

Working together in Christian love.

When we think of Jesus and the disciples,

the dirty water and towel hanging over the chair in the upper room –

We remember that this working together stuff was never promised to be a cakewalk.

Working together in Christian love –

Means putting others above ourselves.

Means seeking to listen more than to be heard.

And I think one thing that’s really difficult about working together in Christian love,

Is not taking offense unnecessarily.

We are sensitive people.  I am one of the most sensitive.

And we are at the same time often very careless with our words.

And one person’s careless word added to another person’s sensitivity and you have the seed for a hurricane.

The hard work of Christian love is for both people in that equation.

For the one to be careful in their words – intentional with their speech.

And the other to not jump to conclusions.

But so much of this kneejerk reactions that it takes time and effort to get better at.

Time and effort.

What’s that quote, “Anything in life worth having is worth working for?”

Agape love. The love that Jesus teaches the disciples in the upper room.

Is a love that is not primarily about desiring and acquiring.

Agape love.  The love that Jesus teaches the disciples in the upper room.

Is love that is a giving love.

But a giving not of gifts, but of ourselves.

And this goes against every deep down tendency in our human nature.

It goes against the anxiety that keeps others at arms length.

It goes against the suspicion that hears in others words an ulterior motive.

It goes against the anger that responds to insult with insult.

It goes against the pride that seeks to be in control and to have others work to meet my demands.

Agape love.  The love that Jesus teaches the disciples in the upper room.

Is self-opening love.

A hospitality of the soul to another person.

Because

Agape love.  The love that Jesus teaches the disciples in the upper room.

Not only calls us to serve rather than to be served,

But to imagine anew who we are and who others are.

Jesus says that he calls his disciples friends.

And we read in John’s first epistle

That we are children of God.

That God is our mother and father, the source of our life and the director of our steps.

And if I am child of God and you are a child of God,

Then if I understand genetics right,

That makes you my sister and me your brother.

At the very least if I love God my Father

then I will need to take seriously that God loves God’s other children.

As it says in 1 John 5:1 “Everyone who loves the parent loves the child.”

Look to your left and look to your right.

Your sisters and your brothers.

And that doesn’t mean we see eye to eye as blood sisters and brothers can amply testify.

But it does mean that we are related

That we share a common parent.

Again a connection to Mother’s Day.

And by becoming members and friends in a tangible way in the congregation together,

We covenant with one another (what an ancient sounding phrase)

We make an agreement, we join, we come together and intentionally seek to build community.

We covenant with one another to work hard, not just to raise money, but give of ourselves,

To submit to the hard teaching that sounds deceptively easy:

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Until we read the next sentence of the teaching:

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

We are united in working together in Christian love.

And our covenant wisely moves from the general to the particular:

Remembering each other in prayer and aiding each other in sickness and distress. 

This church does this very well.  Cards sent, visits to hospital and nursing home.

“Cultivating Christian sympathy in feeling, justice in our dealings, and courtesy in speech.”

This has got to be the hardest.  How do you find time to be sympathetic when someone is clearly being unreasonable or spiteful?

And can I expect to show courtesy in speech to someone in public when I have failed to have courtesy in speech towards that person in private?

I’m reminded of the warning in James that it only takes a spark to set a forest ablaze, and the tongue is a fire.

“[Striving] for mutual understanding thus avoiding offense as set forth in the Word of God.”

In a church that has so many committees and does so much through conversation and democratically.

We really have to strive for mutual understanding – because it’s so easy to misunderstand.

We speak different languages and use words and phrases in ways that are so different from one another – that we assume someone means one thing when they may easily mean the opposite –

This has happened to me on so many occasions.

This requires patience.

Love is not easy; love takes practice.

And I think there is a lot of wisdom in this Faith and Covenant we’ve carried with us for the past hundred or so years.

Love is not easy; but the net result is joy.

When a deeper connection has been made,

When a spirit of joining and mission has been reached.

When a vision for a hopeful future for our community and our lives arises,

When a new sense of purpose and a new feeling of community comes to us

Like a glass of cool water in the desert of a world

in which everyone is more and more isolated from everyone else.

Love – the hard work of basins and towels – yields joy and contentment, faith and hope.

Let us trust that the Lord will lead us into greater love, and let us open ourselves to the possibility of

Fullness of joy. 

Abiding in the Vine

John 15:1-8

1 John 4:7-21

Growing up, I had regular chores.

Filling wood boxes, emptying the trash, cleaning and vacuuming a certain section of the house.

And then there was the garden.

There were a few times when I was actually required to work in the garden.

But I invited to a lot

and did find myself out there at times

pulling weeds, mostly.

And there was one summer when I was given a small plot for a “salsa garden.”

I made my own salsa brand, “Mr. Spicy” when the harvest came.

But for the most part I avoided the garden.

Because, I didn’t have to work in the garden.

And when I was invited to come out and do some weeding,

on those June evenings with the black fly swarms

I, well, found other things to do.

It’s one of those things of growing up, I suppose.

We try to navigate the path of least responsibility.

The path of least intention.

And I think as much as we learn responsibility,

There’s still a part of us that will choose the path of least intention.

And few things require more intention than relationships. Amen?

And yet few things get less intention.

We are very prone to autopilot in our ways of relating to others.

And autopilot that was learned in our earliest experiences of community,

In families of origin, or adopted families, the community in which we were raised.

Often ways of relating (especially ways of navigating differences)

 that were as unhelpful then as they are now.

And yet we’d prefer the path of least intention

To seeking a better way and changing our habits.

And my resistance to weeding on a June evening in the midst of hungry black flies makes sense.

But the garden requires intention and attention if they are going to be fruitful.

And relationships are like gardens.  They do not become fruitful and healthy by just being let alone.

But in Jesus’s metaphor of the vine, we are not in the place of the gardener, doing the tedious work of weeding.

We are in the place of branch, pruned and tended by God.

We are branches in the vine with one another –

And so we’re off the hook, right?

We don’t have to go out and weed in the black fly evening

Because we’re not the gardener.

The branches just receive from the vine.

They just sit back and receive, like someone watching a sportsgame

with that drinking hard hat on the couch,

with straws coming from cans on both sides,

easily accessible for your drinking pleasure.

That’s the tricky thing about metaphors and parables.

You can press them in all directions.

You have to see them in context in order to get the central point that’s being made.

And this part of Jesus’s discourse to his disciples takes place in the upper room

on the night that they were together before he was betrayed and arrested.

And as we remember, that was the night when he gave them the command to love one another as he has loved them and to pin down a word that can be used in so many different ways he showed them what he means by the word love

And pulled out a basin and a towel and washed their dusty road weary feet.

“I am the vine,

and you are the branches.

Whoever remains in me,

and I in him,

will bear much fruit;

for you can do nothing without me.”

There are a couple of ways to hear these words.

And one important way is to understand how necessary it is to be in relationship with Christ in your own personal lives.

Christ is the power of God in us to love, to forgive,

As we commune with God in Christ we are strengthened and encouraged,

Given eyes of faith, and renewed in hope.

Paul says in Philippians 4,

“I have learned to be content with whatever I have.

I know what it is to have little,

and I know what it is to have plenty.

In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry,

of having plenty and of being in need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

There is a crucial dimension where abiding in Christ, our vine – the source of our nourishment – is a personal reality, an inward reality,

where we commune with God in our hearts and we find peace and contentment. 

Where we can confess our sin, find forgiveness

 and find the power to live more faithfully.

We might see this as the branches “receiving” task – opening themselves to the nourishment of the vine.

It’s receiving but it’s not passive.

This requires intention and taking responsibility for your spirit.

And there is a second dimension to the fruitfulness of abiding in the vine.

The branches participate in the life of the vine even as the vine sustains the branches.

We think of photosynthesis as an example.

Where this breaks down because we’re humans is that we can choose to photosynthesize or not.

We have an agency that the branches do not.

And that agency, that ability to choose

 has to do with the basin and the towel.

The fruitfulness of the vine is in the branches participating in the life at the source – and there’s a personal part in that.  But there’s also a practical and social/communal part in that.

We participate by remembering.

Just as today we will remember Christ’s death as we eat the last supper together,

We remember Christ’s basin and towel existence.

The way of being human that was not primarily for himself, but for God and for the healing of the world.

To abide in the vine, is to be intentional and do thinks like wash each other’s feet.

It’s not a passive but an active abiding.

And this is brought out in our other reading from 1 John.

“No one has ever seen God,

but if we love one another,

God lives in union with us,

and his love is made perfect in us.”

And this is where it gets tricky and hard like weeding in black fly season.

But spirituality has to be both personal and communal.

And wherever there is Christian community there are people erring on one side or the other of this balance.

Either we are quietist who seek God in our personal prayer lives and otherwise live a fairly normal American life.

Or we are activists who see our spirituality as primarily a matter of social action, feeding the hungry, opposing unjust laws and social structures.  Perhaps too busy to spend time in prayer and meditation.

But I’m so sick of this dichotomy.

It’s not about personal vs. communal spirituality,

prayer vs. empowerment, 

it’s about basin and towel spirituality.

Receiving God’s love

And then saying, “if God so loved me…”

And then risking everything to complete that thought.

Some of us have found that it suited our temperament to be the quietist Christian

And others that it better suited our temperament to be the activist Christian.

I go through stages of both.

We need both temperaments, but also

Both temperaments need to learn from each other.

We need a prayerful, basin and towel, table-turning,

Spirituality.

“For he cannot love God,

whom he has not seen,

if he does not love his brother,

whom he has seen.

The command that Christ has given us is this:

whoever loves God must love his brother also.”

Love God – but love your sisters and brothers also.

Personal. And communal.

And this is hard work.

Because personal spirituality requires us to open our hearts to God in prayer and that can feel like turning on the lights when our eyes are not adjusted to it.

And because communal spirituality requires us to do our best to understand and respect

and above all call sister and brother –

those that we have been trained in society or our families of origin,

To call enemy or some other label.

It requires the hard work of seeking to understand and care for those who I’d rather avoid.

But in both the personal and communal we abide in the vine.

We receive love, power, and grace as we pray to God, as we sit in the stillness of God’s being in prayer.

And we are made more alive and more joyful as we find sisters and brothers, friends we never knew we had

And as we confront injustices and silences that oppress.

As we seek to build a better home for all of God’s children.

Abide in Christ the vine,

And realize in your hearts and in your relationships

And the promise is

that the love that is made more perfect in you

Will give joy and displace fear.

“There is no fear in love;

perfect love drives out all fear.”

What does your soul need right now?

How are you abiding in the vine?