First Reading: Acts 8:26-40
26An angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. 27And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. 33In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” 34And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 38And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 40But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Psalm 150
1Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy temple; praise him in the firmament of his power. 2Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him for his excellent greatness. 3Praise him with the blast of the ram’s horn; praise him with lyre and harp. 4Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe. 5Praise him with resounding cymbals; praise him with loud clanging cymbals. 6Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah!
Second Reading: 1 John 4:1-21
1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Gospel: John 15:1-8
1{Jesus said,} “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
Test the Spirits and Abide in Me
How many of you have heard the axiom, “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter?” It’s a quote that was popular in my house, and I’ve heard it many times throughout my life. Well, I did some digging, and the original quote was first printed in a newspaper here in North Carolina in 1968 and was then quickly reprinted in several other newspapers across the Eastern seaboard. The original quote is attributed to an anonymous scientific researcher. The actual quote is, “Aging is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
It’s funny where sayings come from, at how quickly they spread, and how they’re adapted to a person’s situation. Another abused phrase has to do with our desire to make something happen, often referred to as will power. This reminds me of the story of a man whose nickname was Mr. Will Power. As you might expect, Mr. Will Power had an iron will. He would do anything he set his mind to.
Mr. Will Power, it seems, was the champion of mind over matter. People loved to challenge his powers of will. One of the ways he first caught people’s attention was his ability to withstand hot and cold. Someone dared him to walk through a bed of fiery coals, he did. Another dared him to expose himself to the bitter cold for a full day, again he accomplished the challenge. If someone dared him to do something, he did it. “It’s just a case of simple willpower,” he would say. “You can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it.” In other words, if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. On another occasion, Mr. Will Power was challenged to stay awake.
The challenger dared Will Power to sit upright in a chair staring straight ahead for 48 hours without sleep, again, he completed the task set before him. Anytime someone dare the man, he did it. “It’s just a case of simple willpower,” he would say. “You can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it.” Another thing people loved to see is what Mr. Will Power would eat.
Folks came up with the craziest concoctions of food. Plant, animal, bug, it didn’t matter. If it wasn’t poisonous, he’d eat it. You can use your imagination. People brought horrible assortments of edibles and dared him to chow down, and he’d eat whatever it was. “It’s just a case of simple willpower,” he would say. “You can do anything you want if you just put your mind to it.” One day someone got him. They got him with an interesting dare. “We dare you to stay alive through your willpower alone.
You can have no food, no nourishment of any kind. Just some water to keep your mouth moist.” Well, a dare is a dare, and Mr. Will Power couldn’t resist. He was determined to prove he could stay alive by the sheer force of his will. And so, he accepted the challenge. You can guess the outcome. There was, of course, no way he could will life itself. But try telling him that. He tried. He willed life with every fiber of his being. That was the last dare Mr. Will Power ever accepted. The moral of the story is clear: there are some things that our willpower cannot do.
Mr. Will Power could not will life itself. In the same way, on our own, followers of Jesus cannot will life with God or the fruit of a life with God. That’s one way to look at these sayings of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel. Listen again to Jesus’ words: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). I think that sometimes we get the mistaken notion that being a follower of Jesus, being Jesus’ disciple, is something that we do as a matter of our willpower. We forward that if someone would give us a list of what a Christian should do, then we can set about doing it. “It is just a case of simple willpower,” we might say. “We can do anything we want, if we put our minds to it.”
I haven’t heard it for some time, but the AVIS Rent-A-Car company used to advertise by saying: “We try harder.” That was their way of saying why we should rent from them rather than from another company. “We try harder.” I sometimes hear people talk about Christianity as if it were the AVIS of world religions. If asked, what does it mean to be a Christian?, these people basically tell us that being a Christian is a matter of following a set of dos and don’ts and trying harder to live a better life than anyone else. That’s the difference between Christianity and other religions they suggest. “We try harder.” Well, I hate to break it to you, but nothing could be farther from the truth than this “AVIS” approach to Christianity. We cannot earn God’s mercy.
The Christian faith isn’t primarily concerned with our willpower, our willpower to be good. Jesus didn’t call us to simply be Mr. or Ms. Will Power in our obedience to Him. There are things that our willpower simply cannot do. That was the moral of the story. Mr. Will Power couldn’t will life itself. Followers of Jesus cannot will life with God or the fruit of life with God. Mr. Will Power had to receive the nourishment that food provides in order to stay alive. We need to receive the nourishment that comes from Christ in order to stay spiritually alive as Christian people. We’re like branches on a vine. That’s how Jesus explains it. Branches have no life in themselves!
Branches are only alive as long as they receive nourishment from the vine. “I am the vine,” Jesus tells us. You must “abide in me, and I in you.” And just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you or I, unless we abide in Jesus (John 15:4). Earlier in John chapter 8, “Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (vss. 31-32). Being a Christian is, first and foremost, a matter of abiding in Jesus Christ. We must abide in Jesus because, as He puts it, “apart from me you can do nothing.”
Therefore, our question for today is, What then does it mean to “abide in Jesus?” If Christianity isn’t about our power of will, and is about abiding in Jesus, how then do we do it? How do we abide in Jesus and how does Jesus abide in us? Let me give a general answer and then a more focused answer to that question. First of all, we abide in Jesus and He abides in us through hearing the story of Jesus – by hearing that story over and over again. St. Paul reminds us, “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17).
To abide in Jesus, we must spend time reading the Scriptures, we must hear the story of Jesus. When we listen to God’s Word preached, we hear the story of Jesus. When we gather with two or three persons in Jesus’ name, we hear the story of Jesus. When we remember the promises that God made to us in our baptism, we hear the story of Jesus. When we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper, we hear the story of Jesus. Even in our times of our Christian fellowship, we hear the story of Jesus. Such hearing is abiding. To hear Christ’s story is to grant Him inner access to our lives. Through the hearing and telling of His story, Jesus Christ comes to abide in us. That’s the general answer to the question of how we abide in Jesus. Now let me look more specifically at just one of those means.
Jesus abides in us when we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper. It’s hard to avoid the reality that Jesus’ words about the vine and the branches are related to this sacrament. “I am the vine,” Jesus tells us. He also said, “I am the true vine” (vs. 1). One of the elements of the Lord’s Supper is, of course, the wine – wine that is the fruit of the vine. Shortly, you’ll hear me recall Jesus’ words, “And after supper, He took a cup, and when he had given thanks He said, take this, and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:17-18)
“I am the vine”, Jesus said, and this cup is the fruit of the vine. When we drink of this cup, we partake of the fruit of the vine. When we drink of this cup, we receive His nourishment, we receive His life for our life. When we drink of this cup, we abide in Him and He abides in us.” In this way Jesus speaks to us. The matter could hardly be more clear. There are things that our willpower cannot do. Willing life with God is one of them.
Life is something we cannot will into existence. Life, God’s life, is something we can only receive from God Himself. We drink the life of our Lord into our bodies. Jesus also said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:54). That’s how we have life with God. That’s how Christ abides in us, and we abide in Him. But the matter doesn’t end there.
The Christian life begins, and begins over again each day in the hearing of Jesus’ story. The Christian life begins in baptism and is sustained by eating and drinking God’s life into our bodies. That’s how the Christian life is fed and nourished for service. But that isn’t where the Christian life ends. Something happens to us when we eat and drink Jesus Christ into our bodies. “The one who abides in me, and I in [them], bears much fruit.” What, after all, is the function of the vine? The vine gives nourishment to the branches so that they can produce fruit. Jesus Christ, the true vine, gives nourishment to all the branches of His body and that nourishment produces fruit, good fruit, ripe fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. But like the vine, we’re not left to our own to produce fruit. In Jesus’ analogy, God acts as the gardener or the vinedresser of the vine.
“Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, God takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit God prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2). The fruit of the Christian life are clearly not produced by our own powers of willful obedience to God’s commands. The fruit of the Christian life comes through Jesus Christ abiding in us. The Christian life begins in baptism and continues by drinking God’s life into our bodies. The Christian life blossoms as we live the life of healthy branches.
The Christian life blossoms as we serve those who are starving for nourishment. The Christian life blossoms as we serve those in any human need and share with them the life-saving gospel of salvation in Jesus. The Christian life blossoms as we give the fruit of our life away to our needy neighbor. And in so doing we give glory to God. “By this my Father is glorified,” Jesus says, “that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8).
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me make it clear one more time. We do not give glory to God by sheer will power or by simply choosing to be obedient children of God. Mr. Will Power is not the model for Christian living. We don’t prove that we’re disciples by producing fruit as the product of our own willpower. There are some things that our willpower cannot do. We, on our own, or by our good works alone, cannot will ourselves to be God’s children. We cannot will ourselves to bear God’s fruit. Becoming God’s children and bearing God’s fruit come only through abiding in Christ. To be a Christian, we must receive nourishment from the vine.
We must drink God’s life into our bodies. By doing so, Christ abides in us, and we abide in Him. But this eating and drinking isn’t solely for our benefit. We are nourished so that we bear fruit for God’s kingdom. In our First and Second readings for today we get examples of why we need to constantly hear God’s word spoken to us and be nourished at His table. In our Acts reading (8:26-40), St. Luke tells us that an angel of the Lord came to the Apostle Philip and tells him to take a trip. The purpose of this trip is to share the gospel of Jesus with another believer, an Ethiopian man headed home.
We read the story earlier, Philip runs beside the chariot as the man is reading from the prophet Isaiah and Philip shares the story of Jesus with the man. For today’s sermon, the point is that Philip had to be prepared. Philip had to have studied the teachings not only of the Hebrew Bible, but the words of Jesus as well. Philip had to be connected and nourished by the vine in order to bear fruit for the kingdom. This lesson is for you and me.
As St. Paul instructs Timothy, we need to “be prepared in and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2) to share the gospel of Jesus with whomever God sends us. Our daily lives must include study of God’s word, prayer, and we need to “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25). Our second reading gives us yet another reason.
In our Epistle reading, St. John gives us warning about learning to discern between the good and evil spirits. In chapter 4 we read, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (vss. 1-3). If we try to test the spirits on our own, how will we be able to properly discern which ones are true spirits and which are false spirits? Remember when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness? Even satan can quote scripture! To be able to discern between the true spirits, that is those who share the true gospel of Jesus, and the false prophets who distort the gospel, we must be grounded in God’s word and abide in the true Vine that is Jesus.
We cannot live a Christian life by sheer will power or simply by doing good. We must be fully connected to the Vine and abide in Jesus. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit [the Father] takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit [the Father] prunes, that it may bear more fruit (vss. 1-2). Then 5 verses later, Jesus continued, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (vss. 7-8).
Amen