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“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in
me.” We were talking about this scripture last week in Joyful Noise Choir,
about what it means to abide in God’s love. Well, when you abide with a
person, you live with them. And when you live with a person, they see things
about you that other people don’t normally see. For example, all of you
kids, when you come to church you are always dressed nicely, you are polite
and well mannered, you are perfect and wonderful in every way. Are you
always like that at home? And us grownups, when we see each other at church,
we are usually happy and smiling. Our teeth are brushed, we’ve had our
coffee and had a nice hot shower, we have our church clothes on, and we’re
ready to spend some quality time with our friends at church. Kids, do your
parents ever act differently at home than they do at church?
At home, the people we live with see us when we are at our best and when we
are at our worst. That’s what God wants from us. God wants our clean, shiny,
happy selves and our bad-breath, stinky feet, grumpy selves. God wants to
share every part of ourselves with us. So this scripture tells us that we
are to abide in God, knowing that God loves every part of us, the good and
the bad, and that knowledge is to make us joyful: so joyful that we can’t
help but go into the world and bear fruit. So joyful that we can’t help but
do good things that give the people of the world examples of God’s love.
Now that sounds pretty easy at first glance, but how we bear fruit when are
going through the difficult times in life? How do we teach others about
God’s love when we’ve been practicing all summer to try out for the baseball
team at school and we don’t make it?
When it’s two days before prom and we get dumped?
When we feel like we just weren’t good enough to
get in the college of our dreams?
When someone we love is sick and we can’t do
anything to help them? There are all kinds of
things that happen in our lives that make us feel empty and alone.
The early Christians knew all about living through difficult times. In 70
AD, the Roman army had had enough of Jewish rebellion. They destroyed the
temple in Jerusalem; burned it to the ground, and
the Jewish people were scattered. The temple had been the center of Jewish
life and now they had no center. As time went on, small groups of Jews began
to form communities and the synagogues, the places where they gathered
became the centers of their lives. They found themselves in the minority in
cultures that worshiped different gods and followed different religious
customs. The Jews must have felt as if their way of life was being
threatened, so they circled their wagons and struggled to articulate and
record their beliefs in a way that could be carried from community to
community. They started making copies of what we call the Old Testament. The
problem was that within their little communities were some followers of
Jesus, who were trying to change some things. As a matter of fact, the
Jewish community was so worried about the new followers of Jesus that they
wrote a prayer against them.
Reader:
And for slanderers, let there be no hope,
and may all the evil in an instant be destroyed and all Thy enemies be cut
down swiftly; and the evil ones uprooted and broken and destroyed and
humbled soon in our days. Blessed art You, Lord, who breaks down enemies and
humbles sinners.
This blessing, the Birkat HaMinim, was used as a test to see if you were a
good Jew. There were 19 blessings in all.
And, if you were a follower of Jesus, you could
recite the other 18 blessings, no problem.
But how could you recite this blessing and call
down curses upon your own people? If a chazzan, the person who sang or
chanted during public worship, couldn’t or wouldn’t recite this prayer, he
could be accused of heresy and expelled from the synagogue.
So the followers of Jesus faced being expelled from a small marginalized
community into an even smaller even more marginalized community. They had no
one to rely on but each other. This scripture was written for them, to give
them hope and to let them know that even though they were separated from the
community they were used to living in, they could count on God to be their
community, to be their dwelling place. All they had to do was follow God’s
commandments, let God into their lives and bear fruit in the world. In other
words, they could abide in God.
So what does this scripture say to us today? Christianity is a major
religion. In this country, we are free to worship when, where, and how we
please. Some of the early Christians were worried about being kicked out of
the synagogue because they had different beliefs than the other Jews. No one
can kick us out of our communities for having different beliefs, but we
still have our difficult times and we still sometimes feel like we have
nothing to give to God and God’s people. Maybe the challenge for us is to
realize that we can bear good fruit even when we are in dark and lonely
places in our lives, by allowing others to minister to us.
As I think about the life of this church, I can remember so many times when
people made themselves vulnerable and allowed others to minister to
them. Wes Harper shared his sadness over his best bus-riding friend moving
away. Jasmine Smith allowed her friends to see how
worried she was about her dad going to Iraq. Harry
and Mary Criscolo let people come into their home and spend time with Harry
as he showed us what it is like to die with dignity and ministered to all of
us by letting us say goodbye. I know that for me it isn’t easy to share with
people when I need help and to accept help from others.
But I think that’s what God really means for us to
do. If we are to abide in God and in each other, we have to let our true
selves be known, warts and all. Perhaps in the
end, that’s how we can measure our lives; not by
what we’ve done for others, but by the ways we’ve
allowed others to truly know who we are. And we can accept the fact that
each of us is loved by God and by our communities, and that that love is
bountiful! Maybe we measure our lives in love…
Singing: Allison Kelly, Jim
Simpson, Jr. & Katherine Bixler
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure
A year in the life?
How about love?
How about love?
How about love? Measure in love
Seasons of love. Seasons of love
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes!
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Journeys to plan.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life
Of a woman or a man?
In truths that she learned,
Or in times that he cried.
In bridges he burned,
Or the way that she died.
It's time now to sing out,
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends
Remember the love!
Remember the love!
Seasons of love!
Oh you got to got to Remember the love! Remember the love,
You Measure in
love know that love is a gift from up above Seasons of love.
Share love,
give love spread love Measure measure you life in love. Amen. |
