Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
Abide With Me
May 4, 2008
For the first ten years of my pastoral ministry, we lived in church-owned housing. At first glance, the idea of free housing elicits the same kind of response one might have when hearing that your hosts don’t expect you to pay for the food you’re consuming in large and self-indulgent quantities. Just like hearing the words “Free Food” makes our eyes light up, the endorphins start chasing the tired blood around the worn out circulatory system when we heard the words: “Free housing!” Being the clever people that we are, however, Betty and I soon learned that there was a catch to the “free” part of the housing that came with the salary package.
We discovered that there was at least one person in every church who seemed to be envious or resentful of the free ride we were being given, especially if they had worked hard to be able to drive their luxury vehicles back and forth to their vacation homes. We had guests who came to our parsonage in those luxury vehicles who would walk around behind us to turn the lights off in a room we had just vacated. On more than one occasion, I was called on the carpet by someone who seemed intent on reviving the good old days of the inquisition, wondering why we used twice as much fuel oil or electricity compared to the single pastor before us.
My response never seemed to satisfy them: “Well, there was one of him, and there are three of us. So if we’re using twice as many rooms and taking three times as many showers and doing three times the laundry, it would seem to me that having higher utility bills might stand to reason.” At least we never encountered the same problems as a friend of mine who was a Nazarene pastor. He used to have parishioners come up to the parsonage and stare in the windows. When he went outside to see what they wanted, they would leave, but he never did get used to the creepy feelings it gave him and his wife. Free housing came with a steep price.
When I left parish ministry to return to school, the apartment we moved into was cramped in comparison, but at least we didn’t have to answer to the grand inquisitors on why our electric bill was so high. And for the first time in our married life together, we felt free to put up Christmas lights without someone giving us dirty looks for using their electricity. So when someone I worked with at a hospice in Maryland asked if we would be interested in renting a house they owned for the same money we were paying in rent, we were pretty much packed and ready to go before they had a chance to hang up the phone.
The house had been sitting vacant for a while, and the winter that year had brought terrible ice storms which burst the pipes in the hot-water baseboard heating. They had been forced to go through the house to lay down new carpet, and paint the walls. It was a very comfortable home in a pleasant neighborhood, and we were thrilled to move in. After we had unpacked our belongings, I was outside doing yard work with Betty inside doing stuff in the kitchen, which featured a nice set of windows framed with pretty curtains. When I came in from outside, Betty remarked, “This is so wonderfully domestic, isn’t it?” I had to agree with her. There’s something about having a place to call home that settles our restless, anxious souls. Taming the wild grapevine by cultivating it and training it to its path has a similar feel to it.
When the master gardener plants a vine in the right kind of soil, with the right kind of exposure to the sun, it transforms the plant. These favorable conditions allow the vine to sink its roots down into the rich, life-giving soil. Once the branches respond to the good, nutritious sap running through the main vine, they will begin to grow very rapidly. Middle Eastern growers will often plant the vines 12 feet apart from each other to keep them from crowding each other out. But if they continue this wild, undisciplined growth, the fruit they produce will be bitter and sour, not at all like the sweet and juicy grapes we prize for our tables.
The fruit that we enjoy so much comes from a vine that has had to be trained, or domesticated, to yield the produce that will sell on the market. While we might chafe at the idea of being compared to the lowly grapevine, there are some spiritual lessons for us to glean. The branch growing out of the vine has a constant urge to press ahead, to branch out, to move in new directions. While the gardener might need to prune the sprouts back for their own good and for the productive designs of the farmer, the pruning is no sooner done with than the plant is once again being true to its genetic encoding, exploring, moving, and growing.
In using a grapevine to illustrate what it means to live a fruitful spiritual life, Jesus is pointing us toward a connection with God that is meant to be a living, vital one, where we are true to our imprinted spiritual codes by exploring, moving forward, growing, and learning from life’s lessons. And while our gardener might need to prune us back for our own good and for God’s greater designs for our lives, that pruning is no sooner done with than we are once again itching to be true to our spiritual encoding to continue exploring, moving, and growing toward the fullness of God’s love for us and poured out to the world through us.
At some level, of course, the analogy will break down, because as humans we are much more complex than a grapevine. Where the branch of a grapevine is physically incapable of removing itself from the main vine, we are completely capable of disconnecting ourselves from God, of disconnecting ourselves from the people around us, and living as if there is no God. It is regrettably easy to live as if there is nothing more important in the world than our own urges and impulses. So where the grapevine’s DNA makes it impossible to detach itself from its life source, our DNA makes it innately possible, perhaps even probable, that we will detach ourselves from our life source.
Where the grapevine literally cannot produce fruit without that vital connection to the vine, we have questions because we look at people who profess no belief in God, and yet who appear to be more fruitful in their compassionate service or their rich generosity than any number of Christians we have met. The analogy is in danger of unraveling at this point, because it seems to contradict Jesus’ words that apart from him, we can do nothing. I’m sure that Jesus, as a master storyteller, recognized the limitations of this analogy, but he still used it as a way to point us toward the truth that if we choose to disconnect from God, to disconnect from our life source, that we will only be disconnecting ourselves from the rich fruitfulness of living in connection with God. It is God’s joy and pleasure to pour out upon us the graces and gifts that come from that vital connection, graces and gifts that will not only enrich our lives but enrich the life of the world around us.
What does it look like, then, to abide, to remain, to put our roots down, to stay connected with the God who brings us life and love? There are a number of saints and commentators who point to a mystical, rapturous experience of God that they attribute to “abiding in Christ.” St. Catherine of Siena would become so caught up in the heavenly realm of her encounters with God that she would sometimes spend hours abiding in ecstasy. This would so enrage the others in the church that they would throw her bodily out of the sanctuary. In all Christian love, of course.
There may be a few exceptional people for whom abiding in Christ is a mystical experience which is beyond words to express. Most of us, though, are not going to have this type of experience. For most of us, abiding is going to require effort, like a gardener tending to a garden. We have to make a conscious effort to focus our thoughts and hearts on God, our life source. For most of us, abiding will mean arranging life, arranging prayer time, arranging silent time, making room in our schedules to let our creativity take shape and form. Abiding is the daily practice of turning things over to God when we feel frustrated or overwhelmed or bored. We may have to turn something over to God, and five minutes later (or less) go ahead and turn it over again.
Abiding is a process of listening for the inner voice, the true self, the whisper of the Spirit echoing against the edges of our consiousness. It’s a matter of cultivating the habits that help our brains restructure themselves. It’s the discipline of developing the attitudes that will help our souls reorganize themselves around the divine reality that we are loved with an infinite love. It’s staying with the program when it doesn’t seem like our faith is making any difference in our own lives, let alone in the lives of others. It’s a matter of developing an attitude that gives God freedom to move in us and through us even if we remain completely oblivious to, and cannot see, God’s work.
Yesterday, for instance, I performed a wedding for the brother of my boss at hospice. I ended up sitting at a table with some people who looked vaguely suspicious, for some reason that escaped me. As we talked, we recognized each other: they are members of a church that I served nearly twenty years ago. In fact, I had done some counseling with them, but had never heard how things turned out for them after I left the church to go back to school. They were thrilled to see me again, because I had apparently helped them in ways that I had never fully comprehended. They even remembered some of the things I had said that helped them turn the corner in the hardships they were facing. But during my three years in that church, I hadn’t been able to see that my faith was making a difference in my life, let alone in the lives of others. Until yesterday, I was completely oblivious of how God had used me in a time of crisis in their lives.
We want to be fruitful, but we’re not real crazy about the hard work that’s involved. A lot of us want to lose weight, but we’re waiting for the magicians at the pharmaceutical companies to give us a diet pill that lets us eat anything and everything we want without changing any of our habits or attitudes toward eating and exercise. We had a famous missionary on staff at our seminary, and Betty and I had the privilege of sitting in on an informal gathering with her one day. One of the students asked her how she managed to get up every day to do her daily devotions. “Teach us your secret,” they urged her.
The answer we got was something that none of us wanted to hear. “First, I turn off the alarm clock. Then I haul myself into a sitting position, and scoot over to the edge of the bed. I put one foot on the cold floor, then the other, and push myself into a standing position. From there, I go have my time with God.” We were all disappointed, because we were expecting a spiritual silver bullet that would help us overcome our lethargy about the discipline required to abide in Christ. But over the years, I’ve discovered something more powerful than the lethargy: it’s my desire to connect with God in some meaningful fashion.
Just as the vine instinctively sends its roots ever deeper and further afield in search of water and nourishment, so our souls yearn to send their roots ever deeper into the richness of God’s love for us. Just as the vine is encoded to push its way up through the soil and toward the light of the sun above, so our souls are constantly pushing up through the dirt of this world to seek the light emanating from the source of all life. Just as the branches stretch themselves out luxuriantly across the landscape of the vineyard, so our souls want to branch out across the landscape of our day. And just as the trained vine lives to produce its fruit, so our souls live to yield fruit for the divine gardener who tends to our days as carefully as a vinedresser nurtures the vital plants growing toward their greater purpose.
Order of Service May 4 , 2008 Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
Welcome, Announcements, Joys & Concerns
A Candle for Peace NC #592 (verse 3)
Call to Worship
Leader: Most wondrous God, from the beginning you have made available to each of us a love unfathomable in its depth, incredible in its intensity.
People: Living Christ, in each and every person you come to meet us. You dwell in the inner sanctuary of our souls.
Leader: In this quiet and holy place, you bid us come to quench our thirst for all that is holy in life.
People: In this hour, renew us by your Spirit and your presence.
Leader: As we seek your presence here, open our hearts to receive your affirming love.
People: For your love and mercy without ceasing, we lift a song in our hearts and worship you with reverence and trust.
Leader: Raise our hearts in exaltation, wonder, and thanksgiving for all that you give and all that you ask of us.
Hymn NC #43 Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
Responsive Prayer
Leader: God of love, we gather to praise you and declare your mercy. Open our hearts to the mystery and grace around us.
People: We remember that Jesus revealed your love through the most ordinary of things. Draw close to us as we go about our routine tasks, lifting our eyes to the splendor of creation.
Leader: We are learning what it means that you are the vine and we are the branches. Thank you for abiding in our midst and tending us that we might bear fruit for you.
People: Thank you for planting within us the seeds of love and justice. You have made our very lives the field from which you will draw a rich harvest.
Leader: Like any farmer who loves to survey growing crops and branches bearing buds, you, O God, kneel beside us, rejoicing when we grow, suffering with us when we are set back.
People: May we call to mind often the continual flow of your Spirit through us, which gives us life. May we never do anything to sever that vital connection.
Leader: As you help us to be fruit-bearing branches, so use us to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in each other.
People: We thank you for the sense of communion we find in this church. We thank you and pray for each person in our fellowship, both those who are able to worship here each week and those who are unable to be here.
Leader: Draw near to all who live in fear; refresh all who are dispirited; restore the lonely to the joy of friendship; heal and comfort the sick.
People: Send us out to share in God’s ministry and to help fulfill these prayers.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #313 Like A Tree Beside The Waters
Scripture Ps 91: 1-7, 14-16 Lamentations 3:21-26 Galatians 6:7-10
Sermon Abide With Me
Reflection, Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #506 What A Friend We Have In Jesus
Benediction
Leader: As we leave this sacred hour, lift our gaze from the troubles of our world to the glories of heaven. Remind us, O God, that from your throne on high, you are always with us.
People: Lift our gaze to see your face. Lift us upward and warm our hearts with the power to change our world. Then, O Lord, send us out to be your servants.
Leader: Go and serve the Lord with joy. Each day trust in God’s loving presence, as you abide in God. May the peace and love of the Lord surround you this week and always.
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