Abiding with God

Spring comes to Door County slowly. But it comes. The daffodils. The lilacs. The trillium. And the trees. The pencil-thin branches silhouetted against the soft blue sky over time turn to a verdant green abundance. Made possible because those branches are connected to the trunk. Invisible to the naked eye, the trunk is pulling moisture and nutrients from the earth, making life and fruit-bearing possible.

Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” It’s a beautiful image from John’s gospel about what it means to be connected to Jesus. To further strengthen that image, John uses a word that has almost disappeared from ordinary conversation — abide. Remain. Stay with. Persist. Continue with. Be steadfast with.

Jesus tells his disciples to abide in him as he abides in them. Not just abide in me. Abide in me as I abide in you. The image of the branch and the vine gives us one picture of what that abiding might look like, but I think of other images. A mother sitting in the rocking chair with the little one; the sense of time disappears, as she watches her sleeping baby. That’s abiding. Or the one who goes to sit with his dying friend. He comes and reads the paper and tells the stories that he’s told a hundred times and which he knows will bring one more smile and a welcome chuckle. That’s abiding. God abiding with us and we with God.

It’s useful to remind ourselves what Jesus is trying to do with these words of encouragement and challenge. This is the night of Jesus’ arrest. He is preparing his disciples for his departure and wants to assure them of his presence, even when life gets hard. For those first disciples life is about to get very hard. Denial. Betrayal. Crucifixion. 

Think even beyond those first disciples to the first Christian community that would have been reading this gospel in their small assemblies. That community had been thrown out of the synagogues, rejected by friends and family, and left feeling pretty alone and orphaned. They were, quite literally, feeling cut down. Through retelling Jesus’ words of farewell and comfort, John offers a different frame of reference by which to reinterpret their experience. Their experience is going to serve as a kind of pruning, preparation for bearing fruit, a preparation laden with rich promise:

For many of us, it’s been a hard year. As spring comes slowly to Door County, so we are also slowly returning to some sense of normalcy. Regardless of the challenges, sorrows, burdens and griefs, Jesus is with us, abiding us, holding us, loving us, and refusing to let us go.

Jim Honig, Pastor of Shepherd of the Bay in Ellison Bay