Wh

May 21, 2006
John 15: 9-17

"Abiding Love and Complete Joy"

Men’o en mou aga’pe ~ Abide in my love
Humon’ chara’ pleroo’ ~ that your joy may be complete

What more beautiful and compelling words could there be in all of written literature than these: Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete. I cannot imagine any other words that would find their resting place in my soul more quickly nor more receptively than these. In the tumult and tension of the world – that which is near and everyday as well as that which is far off and seemingly endless – these words come as fresh water to parched lips, warm food to a hungry belly, gentle grace to a yearning soul. Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete.

I need to hear these words of assurance, both that God has love enough in which for me to share and the world has joy enough in which for me to share. I long to hear them when I’m at my wits end trying to discern God’s will for me and how to live that will out with integrity. I yearn to hear these words when it seems everything I do is met with resistance, compromise, or failure. I hope for them to be said to me as I lay my head on my pillow at the end of the day not knowing whether my efforts, ideas, or perspectives made one iota of difference to anyone. Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete.

In an existence that seems cold and calculating, where only the survival of the fittest (meaning survival of the most cunning, most persistent, most unethical) appears to rule the day, I am taken by the thought that God’s essence is love, and a love that is so abundant that I can live in it, dive into it, dance around in it, thrive in it.

In a life that seems dour and grinding, where the most one might hope for is a few brief laughs (often at someone else’s expense) I am transformed by the idea that God is intent upon us living a life of joy, and a joy that is full, expansive, and unending.

Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete.

I have known those who exhibit such traits. I have heard of, seen, been in the presence of persons who clearly have heard God whisper in their ear these words and have chosen to live by them in some way, shape, or form. I can be mesmerized by those who shape the contours of their daily living around the shape of God’s promise of abiding love and complete joy. Like a child looking through the toy section of the Sear’s & Roebuck Christmas Catalog I stare in wonder at how to get such love and such joy for myself. I am reminded of the now infamous scene in the movie, When Harry Met Sally, in the diner when Meg Ryan’s Sally gives a demonstration to Billy Crystal’s Harry to illustrate how a woman might, shall we say, falsify her enjoyment. The woman at a nearby table, having witnessed the fake ecstasy, turns to the waitress and says, “I’ll have what she’s having.” I watch with fascination those who truly know how to abide in God’s love and those who surely have found some fullness of life’s joy. “I’ll have what they’re having!”

But we instinctively know that abiding love and complete joy are not items to be ordered on a menu. Deep down, in our heart of hearts, we know that such qualities of life are not something to be obtained, like a product from a store, a download from the internet, a drug from the pharmacy or the guy around the corner. We are aware, informed by some primordial gene tucked away into our DNA, that the loving and joyful facets of life are there for us already, are meant for us from the dawn of time, can never be purchased but only be found. Love and Joy are both readily accessible and yet difficult to obtain.

And Jesus, the one who promises such richness of life, while making it clear that they are ours for the asking, does not guarantee they are easy. In fact, he tells us these things after, during, and before he illustrates what is required to find them. After he has knelt down and washed the feet of those who were his followers, he says, Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete. While he is sharing with them all that he knows from God, who is as close to him as a parent is to a child, he says, Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete. Just before he is betrayed, arrested, mocked and beaten, crucified… just before he is to die for the very ones he has befriended, he says, Abide in my love… that your joy may be complete.

Are we so ready now to glibly say, “I’ll have what he’s having?” Is our craving for love and joy so great that we are willing to follow the path our new friend and savior Jesus has taken? The life of unquestioning servanthood? The life of wisdom-seeker, truth-sleuth, knowledge-gatherer? The life of sacrificial giving? Service ~ Wisdom ~ Sacrifice

I don’t know about you, and as strange as it seems, such a path – treacherous as it most certainly is – does not seem so unreasonable. Yes, even if it leads to death, for at least it is a death with meaning. The path I’m on right now, the one filled with heartache and anxiety and turmoil, the one that keeps turning me back in on myself, the one that seems to lead to nowhere, isn’t so compelling either. And I am quite certain its meaning is limited, its conclusions are pointless.

And Jesus trusts us with his path. “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.” Personally, I am very careful about whom I call “friend,” and rightfully so. Friendship is not a something to be offered lightly, or received trivially, or engaged in thoughtlessly. Surely if one defines friendship as thoroughly as Jesus does, one for whom you would lay down your life – be willing to die – then one should honor it as much as one honors life itself.

Jesus honors the disciples, who have held on with him through thick and thin, and by extension then, honors us with that designation, and almost immediately backs up word with deed, laying down his life for his friends. I could not ask it of him. I am not worthy of it being done. But it speaks to me of an abiding love and gives me a complete joy to know that he was willing to go the distance.

It is an imperfect example, an imprecise illustration, but I cannot help but think of the movie “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.” In a similar way servanthood, sharing of wisdom, and sacrifice are bound up together as Elliott and Gertie and Michael befriend and are befriended by the little green extra-terrestrial (who seems to know more about abiding love and complete joy than all of the adults in the movie combined!) Not to push the comparison too far, but this simple movie does give us a helpful perspective on how life can only be fully engaged when we are deeply and profoundly connected to one another, and are willing to risk life itself for their well-being and safety. Elliott teaches us to serve those around us, even the strangest ones among us. Elliott and E.T. demonstrate a constant willingness to learn from, grow in knowledge about, understand others. And finally, as the life-force is being drained from both Elliott and E.T. we see an unequivocal willingness to offer up one’s life for a friend.

Perhaps another illustration, for those who have read Charles Dicken’s classic “A Tale Of Two Cities,” might bring to mind the good-for-nothing Syndey Carton unexpectedly tricking his imprisoned friend, Charles Darnay, into changing clothes with him and eventually taking on the unjust death of which sentence Darnay had been convicted. Disguised and bound for the guillotine, but filled with a love and a joy he’d never before experienced, Sidney Carton dies for the love of his friend. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.”

Lacking a bit of love in your life? Missing that feeling of joy you’d hoped you would experience by now? Me, too. Such ways of being in the world are tough to come by and even harder to hold on to. I can’t promise you an easy path to get to them, but I can tell you of one who has led the way. How’d he do it? He didn’t expect the world to give it to him on a silver platter. Rather, he served those around him humbly and gratefully. He didn’t bottle up his wisdom inside of him and he didn’t keep secrets. Rather, he shared openly and freely all that he had learned about life. He didn’t assume that the meaning of life was to hoard up everything or to even make himself indispensable and irreplaceable. Rather, he offered himself up to God, for his friend’s sake, as a beautiful and fragrant sacrifice to God.

Men’o en mou aga’pe Humon’ chara’ pleroo’ ~ Abide in my love that your joy may be complete.

Through service, wisdom, sacrifice may we, too, be vessels of that love and messengers of that joy. Amen.

Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) ~ Cleveland, Ohio


Rev. Allen V. Harris
 

Copyright 2006 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096