Remaining
Love Never Dies, prt. 16
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
August 1, 2010
John 15:1-12 (NIV)
1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
John chapter 15 opens up with Jesus saying, “I am the true vine.” This is basically a restatement of his words in John 14:6, “No one comes to the Father but by me.” As I said last week, this is the quintessentially Christian view – that there is only one God, only one Lord of Life, only one who ushers us into God’s presence, both in this world and in the next.
But Jesus brings up this vine thing not simply to reinforce this point, but rather to show us something new. The new thing he wants to teach us is about remaining. Remaining. My friends, today I want to talk to you about remaining in God, which I’m convinced is absolutely the hardest thing for us to do. So hard that we can often only remain in God for a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, at a time.
“Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” I told you last week that the statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life – no one comes to the Father but by me” is probably one of the most important verses in all of Christian theology, and it is. And it should be. But this verse you hear much less about, and it is no less important. In fact it’s far more important to the way we actually live. Our understanding of “No one comes to the Father but by me” is critical for how we think about God and see God and his work in the world. It shows us the scope of God’s saving power, and points to the absolute transcendence of Christ. But our understanding of “Remain in me and I will remain in you” is critical for how we actually live in relationship to God moment by moment. It shows us that not only is Christ’s saving work huge, not only is it transcendent, it is also immanent – that means deeply engrained in us – incredibly close to us – available for us to know and experience – an actual part of who we are. You can know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life – as many people do – and never be changed in even the smallest way. But you cannot remain in Christ without being changed in every way that matters. Little wonder that we hear so much about the importance of believing that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and so little about actually remaining connected to him. One requires profession of belief – the other requires the long, slow death of self. One asks us to understand, the other asks us to submit. One requires verbal confession of Christ as the life. The other requires us to be complicit with God in our own deaths – the day by day extinction of the life we have always known as our own, so that the life of Christ may take root and grow in us. I’m not saying it’s not important that we understand that Christ is the way and the truth and the life. My message last week was on how important that is. But what we’re talking about today is even more important, for this is where we move past understanding, past theology, past verbal assent to this belief or that, and move into the heart of God – where we allow God to move into the heart of us – where the pre-existent Logos actually DOES that saving work – where he is not only the way, but MY way, faltering as it may be at times. Where he is not only the truth, but MY TRUTH -- found, faced, and followed. Where he is not only the life, but he is MY life – the source of my energies, the fountain of my perspectives, my understandings, and my aspirations. You can believe all you want that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. You can believe that no one comes to the Father except through him, and you can interpret that either of the two ways we talked about last week. And you can still live your life disconnected from the way of the way, separated from the truth of the truth, and therefore isolated from the life of the life. Religion is nothing – perhaps even less than nothing – unless it is not just understanding of God we seek, but rather union with him. The goal of religion is to lead us to life with God. And when I say life with God, I do not simply mean that we live our lives with the man upstairs as our co-pilot. I mean that the goal of religion is to lead us to participate with God in God’s life.
John 15 is the natural outgrowth of John 14. In John 14, Jesus establishes that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and in John 15, he asks us to live in that – to remain in him. The Christian religion, as taught in the West, nearly ends with John 14. We are asked to simply believe in who Jesus is and in his saving work. But we are not generally asked or expected to remain in him – or even to understand what it means to do so. Heck, in the evangelical tradition we even brag about it. “Just believe and receive.” As if that’s it. But of course we cannot receive if we do not remain. Receiving from God absolutely depends on remaining connected to him and to his life. Believe and receive implies that it’s something I did yesterday. Yesterday I believed and in return I received this or that from God. But we are not asked to simply believe and receive, we are asked to remain. And we are asked to remain precisely so that we can keep on receiving! There are an awful lot of people who think that the most important thing God ever did for them is in the past, on the day they “accepted the Lord.” What a shame! The most important thing God has ever done for you is happening right now! In fact, what God did for you in the past doesn’t even matter, except to help you continue to believe that God is still doing for you today, that your life INTHIS MOMENT belongs to God and that you are, in this present moment, being redeemed by God – that at this moment you are the target of his mercy and love and goodness. The past is old, dusty, and boring when it’s just about what happened in the past. But the past is vibrant and alive when the past points us to what is happening now!
I don’t care what prayer you prayed 1, or 2, or 5, or 10, or 20 years ago. That’s past-tense. Unless of course that prayer is still alive in you right now – unless something happened in that moment that is still happening today – unless the voice that whispered to you then is still whispering to you now! If that’s the case, then it’s not past-tense, it’s present-tense – it’s God, alive in you, in the present moment!
And that’s what Jesus tells us here in John chapter 15. Jesus tells us to live in such a way that God can be alive to us – and we can be alive to him – in the present moment. Remain in me. Stay in the center of the action. Don’t sit on the bench. Allow the way of God to be your way, the truth of God to be your truth – found, faced, and followed , and the life of God to be your daily, living, breathing, moment-to-moment reality! That’s what Jesus is saying needs to happen in you and in me.
Now there’s an immense simplicity to this. It is simple, but it is not easy. In fact it is one of the hardest things you will do in your lifetime. Because to remain in God is to participate in God’s life, and the more we participate in God’s life, the more our own life gets the old heave-ho. This is hard. It’s hard emotionally, it’s hard mentally – it’s just hard. And it is more difficult for some of us than for others. The ego, what Paul referred to as “the flesh” simply has a greater hold on some of us than on others. Losing our lives is going to be harder on some of us than others. But that’s what is required for us to “remain in Christ.” But it’s hard even for those who find it easiest among us. No one gets a smooth ride. Life with God does not come simply because we prayed a single prayer asking for it. It comes through the long, slow process of death to self. For some a single prayer may have been the beginning of their conscious decision to participate in the life of God, but the journey is yet to come.
Remaining in Christ is so difficult that even those who have been practicing for many years might only find themselves capable of staying there for a few minutes at a time. Indeed Mother Teresa said she was not usually able to stay in that place for very long! But it is our glimpses – our tastes of freedom and joy in the God-life – that fuel us on and keep us moving toward life with Christ, toward union with him, learning to remain in him.
See, even as Christians, the majority of stuff we do and say does not flow from the life of God. It just doesn’t. You know when Christians become extremely arrogant and even dangerous? When they assume that the fact that they prayed a salvation prayer and read their Bibles and attend church means God is dwelling in them in all his fullness and therefore whatever they do must have been something God “led” them to. You look at people sometimes and see the things they do, and you ask, “How could a Christian have done those things?” Well, that shouldn’t be surprising. Most Christians aren’t taught about remaining in Christ or how to do this. They’re just content that they know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life! Many that are taught about it aren’t actually practicing it. And all who are practicing it are finding it to be a long journey, where they often stumble and make many mistakes. The difference is that those who aren’t taught about it often will not realize how much they are living from their own lives and not from God’s. Those who are taught but don’t practice it will usually not realize it either. Those who are practicing it and stumbling often will still make mistakes and do stupid things, but they will almost always quickly realize those mistakes and intuitively understand what behaviors do and do not come from God. That is why those who the most spiritual will always be those who are most humble. They will be acutely aware of their failures and sins and mistakes and those times when they separate from God in a spirit of independence and make decisions apart from the flow of God’s life. Those who are not practicing the art of remaining in Christ will simply not often know that their lives are not godly. They will simply assume that because they believe this or that, or because they attend church, or whatever, that most of what they do is therefore guided by God. This is false. And extremely dangerous.
With some minor exceptions, God can only guide us when God’s life is in us, when we are remaining connected to God – when we are “plugged in” to the source of life and power and productivity. Every time we say no to resentment and bitterness, we choose to stay connected to Christ. Every time we reject hostility, we say yes to God. Every time we refuse to entertain harmful thoughts about others, we are remaining in the flow of God’s life. But every time we sink into bitterness, we take ourselves out of that flow. Every time we spread gossip, we are not in Christ. Every time we allow fear to run roughshod over us, we are not in God and are not allowing God to be in us. Make sense?
So then, how do we remain connected to Christ? What does it mean for us to remain in him? We learn to remain in Christ by putting to death those things in us that separate us from God. If you are entertaining bitterness, you already know it, and you are convinced that you must hold on to that bitterness. If you are angry with someone, you already know you are angry, and you already know that you cannot stay connected to God with anger in your heart, but that anger feels good to you – it feeds your ego, your sense of power. You actually fear letting it go! Most people I know actually seem okay with entertaining their grudges and bitterness and lusts and contempt, and they think that refusing to accept that stuff in themselves is something for spiritual giants. But we become spiritually mature precisely by learning to reject in ourselves all that separates us from God.
Now let me say right out what I’ve been hinting at this whole time. The way to stay connected to God, to learn to live in him, starts with being willing to reject in yourself what you have so far been willing to accept. It consists in letting go of your excuses for entertaining garbage and rubbish and negativity in your life. In fact, “That’s for spiritual giants to do” is one of the excuses I think is used most often. Take someone you admire spiritually, who has greater spiritual power than you do. Two things are true about this person. First, they currently refuse to allow in their lives many/most things that separate them from God. Second, they started out long ago, when they were much less spiritually mature, with a decision that they were no longer going to allow that stuff in their lives. What I’m saying is that the “spiritual giants” who we look up to because they can do what we cannot do are able to do what we cannot do because they at some point were like us and decided that they were going to learn to do what they at that time could not do. Long ago they stopped saying, “That’s only for people who’ve already arrived” and realized that growth comes by practicing the very things they were not very good at at the time!
So first, we learn to remain in Christ by rejecting many things in ourselves which right now we freely accommodate. Second, we learn to remain in Christ by practicing silence and meditation. Again, before you say, “That’s for spiritual giants,” I just want to say that, though I make no claims to be a spiritual giant, I wish someone I looked up to had told me about the immense importance of silence and meditation when I was a new Christian, and taught me that this stuff is essential. The reason so many Christians live spiritual lives that are dull and disconnected from God is because they have not incorporated these simple practices into their lives. Growth into spiritual maturity is dependent on these things and if you don’t learn to practice them, the growth you hope to see will simply never come, regardless of what other practices you may follow. It is in silence and meditation that you come to see the chokehold that your ego has on your life, and you cannot be freed from something until you know you are a slave. I’m just asking you to take this on faith, even if you don’t understand it.
Third, we learn to remain in Christ through love. Christ himself said,
John 15:9-12 (NIV)
9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
As is everything in the spiritual life, this is about love. In silence and meditation and prayer (and other disciplines), we come to live more and more in God’s love for us. As we do this, we naturally extend that love to others. It is not accurate to say love is the fuel of the spiritual life. Love IS the spiritual life. The person who is perfect in the spiritual life is the person who lives fully in the perfect love of God, and who loves others fully with that love. Of course no one is perfect in the spiritual life, but that’s what perfection would be. It’s all about the love.
So since this is about love, we learn to listen to voices of love and not of apathy or distrust or scorn. We learn to love ourselves even when we are not “performing well,” because God loves us even then. And, learning to love ourselves more and more, we will learn to extend that love more and more to others. I can only love others to the extent that I love myself, and I can only love myself to the extent that I know God loves me. If I do not know God loves me, I will not love myself, and if I do not love myself I cannot love others.
That’s why Christ’s words here in John 15 are circular. You remain in me, and I will remain in the Father and the Father will remain in you and in me. This whole thing really is circular! The way you love anybody is the way you love everybody. Jesus said “Love your enemies” because that’s what love does. Love does not set people into groups based on who deserves love and who doesn’t. Self-interest does that, but love doesn’t.
This entire sermon should point to this last thing I want to say. We learn to remain in Christ through the long-neglected art of spiritual direction. We allow someone else to come to know us, we submit ourselves to someone else’s wisdom, and we let someone else help us hear God. You might have found yourself saying through this message, “How do I put this stuff into practice?” The answer is that on your own you probably don’t. You probably lack the wisdom to fully come to understand your own spiritual condition and you almost certainly could benefit from the help of someone who knows how to help you listen to God.
Listen – you’re not going to become spiritually mature just because you’re getting older. I’ve seen some much older people in my life who are Christians – and even spiritual leaders – act in ways that are unimaginable – entertaining anger and selfishness they should have learned to give up decades ago. We don’t just learn because time is passing. We learn by practicing, by listening to the right people, by growing in love, and allowing spiritual direction in our life that can help us determine how God is leading us. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” If you do this, you will not need to believe that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. You will not need to simply believe it, because , remaining in Christ and living from his resources, you will come to not simply believe it, but to know it.
