Theme: Love / Abiding in Christ / Vine and branches / God’s
love for us, our love for others /Bearing fruit.
Sentence: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in
God, and God abides in them (1 John 4:16b)
Collect:
Christ of
the new covenant,
Give us the
happiness to share
With full
measure, pressed down,
Shaken together
and running over,
All that you give us. Amen.
Readings:
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm
22:25-31
1 John
4:7-21
John 15:1-8
Comments:
Acts 8:26-40
Note that Philip here is one of the seven deacons (Acts 6:5),
and not Philip the Apostle, one of the Twelve. His evangelistic adventures have
been told from 8:5.
How did the gospel progress from Jerusalem to the ends of
the earth? A qualitative answer is “Not as well as might be expected.” Acts
8:1-4 makes the implicit point that the gospel was stuck in Jerusalem until
persecution ‘began against the church in Jerusalem’ (1). This led to a
scattering of Christians who ‘went from place to place, proclaiming the word’
(3). Philip goes ‘down to the city of Samaria’(5) with the gospel, thus
fulfilling one specific detail in the Great Commission of Acts 1:8.
The next part of Acts 1:8, after reference to Samaria,
mentions ‘to the ends of the earth.’ Acts will end in Chapter 28 with Paul
proclaiming the gospel in Rome (though not as the first person to do so) and
along the way we will have followed the progress of the gospel around the
Mediterranean, anti-clockwise, from Antioch to Athens (so to speak), via three
great missionary journeys of Paul.
But there are other ‘ends of the earth’ and the passage
today tells us how the gospel went from Jerusalem to Ethiopia, a region in
Africa to the south of Jerusalem, and a place where, indeed, the church is most
ancient being wonderfully faithful to the gospel first shared by Philip with
Candace’s unnamed eunuch (27).
Obviously there is an unusual if not unique aspect to this
story which generally we do not and cannot follow by way of an example: ‘Philip’s
Transport’ where there seems to be some extraordinary airlifting by the Holy
Spirit at the conclusion of the encounter (39-40) and possibly in order to make
the encounter happen (26-30).
But everything else in the story is worth pondering as
example and guide in our own evangelistic work. Consider:
- - Philip is open to the direction of God through
his angel (26);
- - The gospel is easier to explain to those who
already have a point or points of connection with the things of God (noting the
eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship (27); was reading Isaiah when Philip
turned up (28);)
- - There are ‘God moments’ we can ask God to
provide for evangelism to be fruitful: the eunuch was not reading any old part
of Isaiah but Isaiah 53:7-8 (Acts 8:32-33), a passage which applies to the life
and work of Jesus Christ; the eunuch was an enquirer who sought to understand
what he was reading (34);
- - Evangelists ask open ended questions which lead
a conversation closer to God: The eunuch is reading so Philip asks ‘Do you
understand what you are reading?’(30);
- - Evangelism is ultimately fruitful when hearers
(a) believe and (b) are baptised (that is, enter into the fullness of life in
the body of Christ the church);
One final note to observe here is the strategy of God. If we
were Philip and had an Ethiopian mission in mind, we might rate ourselves
pretty smart strategically if we found a key government official to convert.
But Philip had no such strategy in mind! God had the strategy in mind and in an
unusual mode of direction and transport, made Philip into an agent of his
blessed scheme!
Psalm 22:25-31
In these verses from a psalm we mostly associate with the
agony of Jesus on the cross, we find the psalmist entering into praise of the
Lord with a vision which sees ‘All the ends of the earth’ remembering to turn
to the Lord and ‘all the families of the nations’ worshipping him (27).
This vision is fulfilled in Acts, and our reading from Acts
today tells us of one nation which will turn towards the Lord.
1 John 4:7-21
By this stage in the letter, if we have been reading every
verse, we may be wondering why John seems intent on saying a few things
repeatedly. One answer is that John is very concerned about the false teaching
influencing his readers and thus takes the greatest of pains to make sure there
is no misunderstanding about the truth (i.e. true teaching v false teaching).
We can note here that although John has previously written
about ‘love’ (e.g. 2:5, 10, 15; 3:11-18, 23) he now does so more extensively
than previously, and what he writes leads him to make the single most important
statement about God made in all Scripture: ‘God is love’ (a statement made
twice, 4:8, 16).
Reading the striking, challenging, inspiring words of verses
7-12, I am not sure that I want to ‘explain’ them. They need reflection,
responsive action and should lead to praise and adoration of the One Who Is Love!
Some notes are worth making about the next verses, partly
because they are more puzzling.
What, for instance, does verse 13 mean? The
confident elucidations of the Father and the Son in this epistle seem to falter
when it comes to the Spirit: how do we know that we have received the Spirit
who enables us to ‘know that we abide in [God] and he in us’? The answer seems
to be implied rather than explicit: the Spirit is given to us to empower us to
love as God has loved us (7-12), we understand that the Son has come into the
world to be our Saviour (10, 14), we confess ‘that Jesus is the Son of God’
(15), and we have a sense that God loves us (16a).
When John speaks of themes of judgment/fear/punishment/perfection
we are reminded of last week’s verses, 19-23.
(Thus we can surmise that in part the false teaching John
was countering was a teaching which shattered the assurance which Christians
ought to and can have, that if God has loved us first then we are loved and the
power for us to love one another flows from the loving initiative of God who
desires our blessing, and thus love in and through and from us may be perfected.
Therefore we need have no fear of judgment by the God who is love).
The last few verses of the passage make clear that the love
John is speaking of is not a theoretical love or a feeling of love: it is love
demonstrated in the concrete actions of service to others, those whom we see
and touch and thus demonstrate through our love for them that we love God who
can neither be seen nor touched.
There is much more to say here. A thousand sermons will
never exhaust the profound truth which permeates these verses. A specific
omission in my comments above concerns the theme of ‘abiding’. To that theme we
turn in the gospel reading.
John 15:1-8
Some passages of the Bible are more famous than others and
this is one of them!
There is a haunting poetic quality to these words, which are
part of the moving, poignant ‘last testament’ of Jesus as he sets out for his
disciples what the future beyond his death is going to be for them.
Here Jesus assures them that he will always be with them and
commands that they be with him. The Greek verb maneo is translated ‘abide’ in the NRSV and other translations,
with ‘remain’ and ‘dwell in’ being offered by others. The sense is of a
spiritual uniting of Jesus and his disciples – a uniting illustrated by the ‘vine’
and ‘branch’ imagery: the branch is nothing without the vine to which it is
joined; the vine is not up to much if it has no branches.
We might (I suggest) think of the close bond of husband and
wife who are united in body, soul and mind; or of two people who think alike
and perhaps share feelings and attitudes in common, often described as ‘soulmates.’
We could say that Jesus is talking here about what it means to be his soulmate.
First, it means a relationship with a purpose. Jesus does
not simply want us to be his ‘best buddies’, hanging out together in a closed
circle. He wants us to ‘bear fruit’ (2, 4, 5, 8). Yet ‘fruit’ is not defined
here! Perhaps that is because John reckons it is obvious what ‘fruit’ would be
in this context.
If so, then the obvious ‘fruit’ in a purposeful relationship
would be fruit in keeping with the overall purpose of this gospel account of
Jesus’ life and mission. When we go to John 20:31, we would reckon that ‘fruit’
is new believers in Jesus Christ.
Secondly, it means a relationship in which the purpose is
not optional but intrinsic to the relationship. All the talk in these verses of
the branches which do not bear fruit being at least pruned, if not removed is
serious, pointed and (to be honest) somewhat scary (starting with verse 2).
Disciples do not live for themselves alone but live to bear fruit, to bring
more people into an abiding relationship with Jesus.
Thirdly, it means a relationship in which we are
continuously soulmates of Jesus. We are not penfriends who occasionally ‘touch
base’ with each other. ‘Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless
it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me’ (4). If we have
any doubts, these words in verse 5 are decisive: ‘apart from me you can do
nothing.’
So these words are challenging but they are also
encouraging. If we abide with Jesus, allow ourselves to be pruned, then ‘Those
who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit’ (5).
What then do we make of verse 7 which sometimes has been
taken to mean that (say) when we want a new car, we just ask and it will be
provided (with possible devastation to faith when we walk out to our driveway
to find the same old battered sedan is sitting there). Noting that abiding is
about being ‘soulmates’ with Jesus, we should understand verse 7 to mean that
when we understand Jesus and what his will is for the world, we will only ask
for what Jesus wants to happen. (Occasionally that might include a new
vehicle!)
Jesus’ life, according to this gospel, has been solely
focused on glorifying God. It is no surprise that those who abide in him will
also be glorifying God (8).
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