Abiding

Fifth Sunday of Easter

I am the vine , you are the branches - John 15:5

"Abide in me as I abide in you", Jesus says (John 15:4). Abide is not a commonly used word these days, yet its meaning comes through to us in the image of vines and branches in today's gospel. Just as branches abide in vines so that they may bear fruit, so too does Christ abide in us through God's love. The union - the abiding - is the natural, healthy, and life-giving. Just as he abides in us, he says, also abide in me.

Martin Luther once observed that the branch does not need to be taught how to bear fruit, and neither does the branch count how many grapes it has produced. All these comes on its own accord, in a non-self-conscious way. There is no need to grow anxious over a quota, imposed by self or others. The key is to stay connected, to abide.

But with the abiding we can also discover deadness and dryness in our own branches. We have season in our lives we could describe as those of pruning: not experiencing the fullness of God intends for us, or finding ourselves lacking the strength to trust the promises of God's love. Usually only in retrospect doe we see how God's continuing, abiding presence sustained us even through our most trying of times.

Christ abides in us, even our imperfect abiding. The baptismal grace poured out as sign and sacrament has abiding power when we lost hope or despair. In the rich imagery of the vine and the branches the life-giving sap of God's love flows from soil to root to vine to branch, to produce fruits which abide, and bear a remarkable resemblance to their source.

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