5th Sunday in Easter, May 3, 2015

Collect for the Day

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Reflections: I love this collect because it reminds me that “everlasting life” is much more than a promise of life after death; and it’s not just a reward waiting for us in some future state. No, it is much more intimate and immediate than that.

As the collect says, “everlasting life” is “truly to know God.” This is not the same as knowing about God. Knowing about is abstract, objective, external, and mental. Knowing is intimate, immediate, and involves our whole being.

“Everlasting life,” is not merely a distant hope, but a present invitation. An invitation into the present, in fact. To say that is not to reduce “everlasting life” to the boring and frustrating mundanity of everyday existence. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is experiencing the everyday in light of the eternal here and now. “Everlasting life” is an invitation into the ever-present reality of God.

Well, if that’s true, why don’t we experience it all the time? After all, God is everywhere. We, however, are not. Most of the time we’re preoccupied with worries or memories or zoned out entirely.

God calls us to seek that we may find, to open our eyes and ears. And you will see in the readings that follow, perhaps the most important key is our hearts. 

First Lesson: Acts 8:26-40

An angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

 

"Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and like a lamb silent before its shearer,

so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth."

 

The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. 

Reflections: Notice the attention to the present moment, and the humility of both Philip and the eunuch.

Philip is alive to the promptings of the present moment. No business calls him to the wilderness road; he has no agenda to advance. A social nobody, Philip responds to the urge to approach the entourage of a VIP and engages him. Similarly, the eunuch isn’t offended by the upstart stranger who is clearly of lower social status; he even admits that he is struggling to understand—and accepts Philips offer of help. I am frankly astonished by the genuineness of their interaction.

It is no surprise, then, that the message of Jesus Christ flows freely through Philip’s interpretation of the Hebrew Scripture, and that the two men suddenly find themselves near water and all but beckons them to baptism.

Had either men been preoccupied, they would have missed this miraculous moment—and would never have known.     

Psalm 22:24-30 Deus, Deus meus

My praise is of him in the great assembly; *
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied,
and those who seek the LORD shall praise him: * "May your heart live for ever!"

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, *
and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.

For kingship belongs to the LORD; * he rules over the nations.
To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; *
all who go down to the dust fall before him.
My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; *
they shall be known as the LORD'S for ever.
They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn *
the saving deeds that he has done.

Epistle: 1 John 4:7-21

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. 

Reflections: In this passage, John continues to unpack the theme of love. He seems to talk in circles. How could he not? We love because God first loved us; God is the very basis of our love, because God is love. “To know God,” as the collect put it, is to enter into the mystery of divine love, and therefore it means to be loved and to love. It is God’s love that we receive, that we share; God’s love for us, therefore is the very basis for our relations with the world. And we know it is God whom we love by the love that flows through us into the world. 

Gospel: John 15:1-8

Jesus said to his disciples, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 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, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples." 

Reflections: Jesus’ image of the vine and the branches illustrates this profound reality of divine love in terms his hearers understand well. Sap flows through the vine and into the branches, through the branches to produce fruit. Even though we can name and point them out, the branches aren’t really objects on their own; they don’t exist (except as dead husks) on their own. 

So without the sap, branches have no life and can produce no fruit. Even attached to the vine, a branch might produce no fruit. Mother Karen invited us to consider what might inhibit the branches of our own lives from flowering and producing fruit. What obstructions choke off the life of those parts of ourselves? Which branches need to be pruned or cut away?

It is our very nature to be rooted and grounded in God, for God’s own love to flow into and through us, for it to blossom richly in the world.