+I struggled with this week’s sermon... that is until I realized that I didn’t need to quote a bunch of theologians to preach on abiding love and being pruned by God.
I’ve lived it.
The story of abiding in God and the necessity of being in community is the message of today’s readings. And it’s what has saved my life.
As many of you know, my wife Pete died six months ago. We’d only been married a little less than 5 years and only together for 7. We thought we had 20/30 years to be together. We laughed at how long it took for us to find each other. We had plans, we had hopes, we had dreams. We thought we’d get old together.
But cancer took it all from us. For just about a year we walked the walk familiar to so many of us…treatments, surgeries, new treatments, more surgeries…we just kept waiting for her to get better. Once she was better we would do this, we’d do that, we’d get on with our lives.
But that’s not how it worked out. Suddenly and surprisingly she died. In some ways it felt as if we had just begun to fight, in other ways it seemed all we’d been doing was battling illness.
I felt as if my legs had been cut off from under me. My heart was in a million pieces, I was wracked with grief, exhausted, terrified, angry, lonely, lost. I couldn’t pray, at times I couldn’t breathe. But, I carried on. Our son needed me, our nieces and nephews needed me, our animals needed me, my job needed me. Somehow, someway I’ve gotten out of bed every single day. I’ve done barn chores, cleared snow and ice, then more snow and more ice. I’ve dealt with broken fences, frozen doors and relentless exhaustion. I’ve learned what to do when you find a fox in the barn or a skunk on your deck, or a dog lost in the woods.
I’ve learned how to be alone… by realizing that I’m not.
I’ve asked for help, I’ve reached out, I’ve accepted others reaching in.
I’m healing…by feeling the pain, by asking for help, by sharing my grief, by abiding in others and letting others abide in me. Including and especially God.
Jesus says abide in me as I abide in my father.
Endure with me as I endure you.
Hold into me while I hold onto you
Love me while I love you.
Abiding, my friends, is to take up residence with one another’s sorrows and joys and all that’s in between. Abiding is holding fast to another when your own branch has been cut out from under you.
Abiding is being there when the pruning feels too severe, when the growth is too painful and when the living is just too hard.
Abiding is being strong for others who are feeling weak. And vice versa.
Abiding is being a community. Abiding is taking the example of God being within Jesus, bearing all things that Jesus bore and doing it.
Here.
Now.
With one another.
Abiding is being the face of God to each other.
Abiding is what gets me up every single morning. Abiding is what is allowing me to prune the vines of my own life. To know what to hold onto and what to let go of.
Abiding is what you’ve done in this community for the past 20 months.
Abiding is what you need to do as you go forward in your search for a new priest.
Abiding is what helps us survive being pruned.
I was pruned when Pete died.
You’ve been pruned through all the losses and betrayals and disappointments of these past months.
But here we are. Upright. Breathing and ready to keep on living.
How? Why? Because God abides in us and we abide in God. Because God cries with us, rails with us, comforts us and challenges us. Because God is in us and we are in God.
You don’t look like you did before this pruning, you don’t think like you did. You don’t like all that’s happened, you may wonder about what will be, but together you have abided in love, light and hope, even when the days were dark, the love painful and the hope fleeting.
This is life…we have great joys and we have great sorrows…and in between we have regular old life. The lesson of our readings is that pruning happens and that pruning, no matter how painful, no matter how much we pray it didn’t happen, does lead to growth, to change, to new life. The journey is arduous, the path not always straight, the way often confusing but, as long as we hold onto the love of God and the love of community, as long as we abide in one another and in God through Jesus Christ, we’ll survive the challenges, we’ll survive the loss, the anger, the sadness and the worry.
Why? Because, as John says in today’s epistle: God is Love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Come what may.
So…
Keep abiding.
Keep loving.
Keep moving.
For God is with us in the pruning, in the growth, and in the abiding. Always and Forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment