Fifth Easter
Confirmation Sunday
John 15:1-8 I John 4: 7-21
Í am not much of a gardener. I dislike having
dirt under my fingernails and it seems as if all I have to do is look at a weed
to get a rash. But I like to see things grow and I enjoy the variety and timings
of flowering plants. So every once in a while I get energized to plant something.
I have one patch of garden on the south side of my house. I have tried to plant
many things there, the effort has been fruitless. Oh the plant may start and
look healthy for a time but sooner or later the leaves yellow and the plant
withers. It took me some time to realize that this particular location was the
repository for the hard clay that was unearthed in excavating for the house.
So the poor plants that get planted in this soil send down their roots. only
within a short time to meet the resistance of the hard clay and wither and die.
As healthy as the plant is it cannot get the nourishment that it requires to
flourish and thrive.
All living things need nourishment. That is a
fact of life. All living things need nourishment; plants, animals and yes, people.
In order to grow, we all need to know that we are valuable and important and
worthy. And that knowledge must come from somewhere outside ourselves. We have
connections, which feed us and help us grow, or we have connections, which do
not. Obviously our first and most important connection is our family. Moms and
dads have the strongest influence on forming the values and affirming the worth
of their children. It’s not long however before those young people are
looking beyond their parents to their friends and their peer group. If we connect
up with friends who are basically stable and healthy, the results will be positive.
If we "fall in with the wrong crowd," the results can be unfortunate.
Still later we begin to draw our sense of worth and our motivation and our values
from the business or industry or profession to which we belong. That, too, can
be both good and bad.
Even if these connections are more healthy than
unhealthy, their limitations inevitably become apparent to us. Most of us come
to a point at which we recognize that our mothers and fathers are themselves
flawed human beings from whom we get both good things and not so good things,
by whom we were both helped and hurt. We all discover somewhere along the line
that we cannot draw sufficient power for life from our connection with our parents.
Nor can we draw it from our friends. We can get a lot from them in the way of
love and affirmation. But they have lives of their own, and if we become too
dependent on them they will have to withdraw for self-protection. And if we
try too hard to be what they want us to be, we find that we are losing ourselves.
Even if we are fortunate enough to find an occupation in life that gives us
satisfaction and yields a useful service or product and provides an adequate
living, it is not sufficient to provide the spiritual, emotional and physical
energy we need to thrive. If we really become dependent upon our work for our
life, we find in time that it is taking more out of us than it is giving back.
The energy in us is not being replenished to the extent that it is being taken
out.
All of our human connections, taken together,
finally require more life from us than they are able to return. Only a vital
connection with the God who made us can give more life than it requires. This
is what Jesus knew. This was the reality in which Jesus lived, the reality of
being connected with God like a vine rooted in good, rich soil. In our lesson
today Jesus shares his most personal and intimate words with the disciples.
“Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by
itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them
bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus was talking
about the lively sense of identity and the lively sense of purpose and the enlivening
motivation and anticipation that was his because he was rooted and grounded
in God. He was talking about this fullness of life that others could have by
attaching themselves to him like branches grafted into the vine. "I have
come that you may have life and have it more abundantly." All other connections
will ultimately require more life than they can give back. A connection with
God through Christ gives, over the long haul, more life than it requires.
This is the first and most important message of
our lesson today, that when we were baptized, we were grafted into Christ, like
branches into the vine to be nourished and allowed to flourish. But there is
another lesson and one that is especially pertinent as fourteen young people
affirm their faith this morning.
Jesus says “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because
apart from me you can do nothing.” I John says “Beloved, let us love
one another, because love is from God.” The second point of our lessons
this morning is active—it is about what we are to do. Someone once said,
Jesus is not looking for admirers, he is looking for followers. Our faith is
to be active and alive. We are to follow; to do what Jesus did, to live in the
world as he lived. Christianity is a matter of activity, of discipleship. We
have spent two years preparing these confirmands for this moment. They have
learned a lot—I hope, no I do know that. They have experienced a lot together
but ultimately that is not what this is about.
Faith in Jesus is not first of all a matter of
having felt something, or having had an experience, it is not an intellectual
exercise in nuancing our beliefs; it is a simple willingness to stumble along
behind Jesus, to be behind him. What these young people are affirming is their
desire to follow Jesus, plainly and simply.
It was light bulb experiences for me to realize that the word “Professional”
comes from the word profess. A professional is one who professes, who declares
publicly a basic truth and then is willing to stand up for that truth. Like
a doctor who takes the Hippocratic oath, pledging to value life saying this
I believe, this I profess, this I will live by. Or a lawyer who is sworn in
and professes their belief in the import and validity of the law and pledges
to uphold that law. Today you, confirmands are asked to take your oath of office,
to be professional Christians if you will. You are asked to make a declaration
of what you believe to be a truth and to affirm your willingness to live by
that truth. This does not mean we have all the answers, that our wisdom is complete.
Far from it, it means that only now are we ready to grapple with the hard and
tough realities of Christlike life in a rough and tumble world. Only no as professing
Christians are we ready to ask, “How now do we live out our lives on the
basis of what we believe?” We are on the way. To be on the way means trying
to imitate the moves of the master in all we do.
Wherever you are, whatever you do, you are a disciple
of Jesus. A book of meditations for Christian college students begins, “As
a Christian who is also a student, your task is to be an attentive student.
Your discipleship means that you should study conscientiously and thoroughly.”
A discipling accountant is one who is fair and honest. I once had a friend who
was a real estate agent bemoaning how, as busy as she was, she did not have
time to do the Christian things in her life. A wise spiritual friend pointed
out that she dealt in one of the most basic of human needs—the need for
shelter. This spiritual friend suggested her Christianity was lived every day
as she helped people meet this need. Too often we think of our Christianity
and following Jesus as a matter of learning to do a few religious things on
top of the things we already do. It really shouldn’t be that way. Rather
being a disciple is a matter of doing all that we do in light of all that Jesus
does for us.
First John says “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because
he has given us his spirit” You will be able to look at a Christian’s
life and see evidence of the Spirit. You will be able to know the love we show
is a gift of the spirit in which we abide. The proof is in the pudding, the
faith is in the following. As First John says those who say I love God but then
fail to live in a loving way are deceitful. Who cares about their list of “alleged
values”? The test is in how they live their lives, not what they say. The
faith is in the following.
So today you are called to follow, today you become apprentices of the master. You are people who are attached to a larger vision of what life is about. You are representatives and ambassadors of Christ in the world. This is an awesome responsibility but as long as we are attached to the vine who is Christ we will have the strength and wisdom to carry it out.
Amen.