28 April 2024

11:00 Choral Eucharist

Revd Canon Harriet Neale-Stevens

On Wednesday mornings, I lead a discussion group here at the cathedral where we read and talk about the Bible readings set for the coming Sunday. We begin the group each week be slowly reading the Psalm set for the Sunday. As we read and listen, we keep alert to whether there is a particular word or phrase that catches our attention.

One of the lines in the psalm that caught my attention this week was, “no man hath quickened his own soul” – a reminder that it is God who gives us breath and spirit, and not ourselves – we are in God’s hands – totally reliant upon him for our life.

We also noted that we were looking only at the last section of Psalm 22 – where the mood is confident and thankful. But the Psalm doesn’t start this way.  It begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”…and continues in a vein of hopelessness and loss for some time before reaching a turning point.

Psalm 22 is a narrative – a confession if you like, of a person’s journey with the Lord – through a time of extreme trial, doubt, uncertainty, to a renewed sense of hope, confidence and trust. The opening words of the Psalm are words we hear on the lips of the crucified Jesus – and they might very well be our words and our prayer in those times when we have been in a situation that has threatened to overwhelm us, and have had to throw ourselves upon the Lord’s mercy, until he hauls us up and out of danger.

This is how we learn to trust in the Lord – not through blind faith, but by staying close to the Lord and inviting him to be with us in all that we live through – not just the good bits of our lives but the really awful, and terrifying parts too.

Many of you will have attended the lecture a few weeks ago given by Michael Weir. In it, he suggested that Christians can use the ancient disciplines of the church to create space for grace within our politics and daily lives. Things like cultivating silence, solitude, habits of prayer, and obedience to the Lord.  In an aside – he said that if we practice these disciplines in the ordinary times, when we are in extremis, we can fall back on them and rely on them because they have become a part of our daily practice. In other words, if we can learn to abide in Jesus Christ in the easy times – when life is difficult, we will be more likely to be hang on to.

Or to flip that round – if we can’t do it in the easy times, how much harder will it be when life is rocky.

In today’s Gospel, John gives us the beautiful image of the vine to help us picture what our relationship with Jesus might be like – I am the true vine, says Jesus, abide in me as I abide in you.

The image of the vine helps us to see that abiding in Jesus is a two way process – we abide in him, as he abides in us.  We worship, we pray, we feed on God’s word and on Jesus himself in the Eucharist – and the more we do so, the more we come to know Jesus Christ, who makes his home in us.

And whilst we’re doing all this, God the Father is tending the vine – pruning and nurturing it so that it grows well and bears fruit.

And all this is relatively slow work – we’re not suddenly going to be transformed into perfect fruitful branches overnight any more than the branches of a vine can suddenly produce ripe bunches of grapes in 24 hours. The kind of abiding that Jesus calls us to do, requires commitment, and faithfulness, and far more reliance on the work of God than on ourselves.

But we also have in the mix this morning the story from Acts where Philip meets an Ethiopian eunuch on the wilderness road. There is much that might strike us in this passage, but when we read this passage in the Wednesday morning discussion group, the first thing someone said was, ‘if only the Holy Spirit would speak to us as directly and clearly as it did to Philip.’  “Go”, says the Spirit, and Philip goes.

Is this story an illustration of what a fruitful branch might look like?  Philip, so well formed in the faith, abiding so well in the true vine, goes about his life wholly dependent on the Holy Spirit to guide and direct his every move.  I think we tend to doubt whether this kind of thing happens outside of the Bible.

When I was a teenager I came across a book called God’s Smuggler – by a man known as Brother Andrew – perhaps you’ve read it to. He was a Dutch Christian missionary who smuggled Bibles into Communist countries during the Cold War. His work was risky and dangerous. He begins his book with the story of his conversion to Christianity as a young man, and it’s from this point that his extraordinary adventures begin. What is so striking in his story through, is not the work he does, but the relationship he has with God as he goes about his work. In one particular episode, Brother Andrew is stuck at a checkpoint, with crates of bibles in the back of his car, in full view of the border guards. He prays – Lord, please do something to save me. And almost instantly, the sky turns dark and stormy, the heaven’s open, and the rains come down, and the guard immediately waves him on, no questions asked, before he dashes back inside. When I first read this book aged about 14 I discovered a God who is so involved with his people that he even has a sense of humour! Brother Andrew’s relationship with God is as lively and as real as any relationship we might have with another human being.

So, whilst it is necessary for us to abide in Jesus Christ in order that our lives yield fruit, and in the fullness of time, to grow more like Christ, God doesn’t wait until we’re fully formed.  All God needs from us, to be able to use us to his glory, and to abide in us for others, is our willingness to be a part of him, a hunger and a longing to be rooted in Jesus, the true vine.  He will do all the rest – the watering, the tending, the pruning, the nurturing.

So watch out for surprising things – and be warned – if you so much as say to the Lord in your prayers – “Abide in me, Lord Jesus, and I in you” – you are committing yourself to the most extraordinary adventure.