April 27, 2024 – 5th Sunday of Easter

Last week, I summed up the readings before I started and said that I was tempted to simply say that God is love and that’s all you need to know and sit down. And then I proceeded to travel down the rabbit hole of the stories of the Good Shepherd and how they were connected, but our miserable lectionary splits them up and so we never get the whole story at once.

Well this week, we have the beloved [cough, cough] story of the Ethiopian eunuch, which of course comes when the kids don’t have Sunday school. And so that left me to preach on love or on the vine and the branches or to find a way to merge the readings together. And then we talked in Bible Study and the solution became clear.

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) is often the way in which the first verse of the Bible is translated. But new scholarship tells us that we should really translate it as, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth.” Because God isn’t done creating. Creation wasn’t a one-time event that happened and is now done. Creation – and re-creation – is happening around us all the time. God is still speaking creation into the world. And with the new creation and re-creation, we who spend time looking and listening can hear God’s voice speaking through God’s new acts. Even the act of dying to one’s mortal body is a new creation in God as the mortal body helps to create new things.

If Philip were closed off to listening for God, he would not have heard the voice tell him to hit the road. But an angel spoke to him, and Philip trusted and set off. He encountered this Ethiopian who was yearning to understand God’s Good News. And in the end, Philip baptized this colored, foreign, marginalized person because of his own request. Because hospitality, we learn, is for outsiders as well as insiders, unclean as well as clean, for those with whom we identify as well as those with whom we don’t.

And although we are averse to the word “evangelism,” we have a real sense of what it means through the story related in Acts. Philip is guided by the Ethiopian’s questions. He does not speak, but listens. He has no ready-to-give answers, but responds to the needs of the Ethiopian. He lets his conversation partner lead the way. Philip may have had a story to tell, but it needed to be told in the terms of the questions, values, and experiences of that Ethiopian. The Good News was spoken personally and concretely, not abstractly. So, as we talk, we need to think about what the good news our community and neighborhood need to hear, not what WE want to hear. Perhaps the Good News is as simple as it was to this Ethiopian – you are welcome as you are. God is making all things new and continually re-making things for the good of us.

Psalm 22 continues this theme of trusting in constant creation. God’s care embraces the poor as things are made anew. The vulnerable, mistreated, and outsiders are the object of God’s love, turning the cultural values which cater to the wealthy and powerful upside down as God re-creates what humans have put in place. All of us, according to Psalm 22, are objects of divine consideration and care. All of us are important and are made perfect to one another in loving and inclusive relationships.

And then John’s first letter makes it clear that John sees love as God’s very nature. Love isn’t weak, but embraces all creation. God’s love transforms everything it touches – but most especially our lives – and sets us on the path to wholeness. God’s love flows to us and through us, and as we love, we share in God’s loving and healing power. Those who ARE loved let their love flow through to the vulnerable and the poor. Because in loving one another, we live in God, and in that loving relation, God lives in us. 

Love banishes fear. When we love and enter into loving relationships, we experience God and discover that despite the ups and downs of life, we are safe in God’s care and we are guided by God’s love. But too often, out of fear, we turn our backs on one another. Love invites us to “abide in love”. If love is the beginning and end of life, then ultimately we have nothing to fear. God’s overflowing, everflowing love gives us strength to love one another even when it is challenging or difficult. God’s love continues to create and recreate, even when we think we know best.

The Gospel of John speaks of God as the vine and us as the branches. The branches survive and thrive because they are connected to the vine. Christ is the energy of life, flowing through all things, inspiring all things, energizing all things. When we are connected with the vine, we flourish. When we are disconnected, we wither and die spiritually. The unfruitful branches are trimmed and pruned. John invites us to consider HOW we stay connected to the vine. It invites us to consider what it means for us to be spiritually pruned. Although the vine is the source of life, the branches aren’t passive. They must also nurture their own fruitfulness and support one another. There is an interdependence between God and us: while God’s existence doesn’t depend upon us bearing fruit, our fruit enhances God’s life and mission in the world. In tending both our branches and those of others, we share in God’s healing presence in the world and advance God’s re-creation in our time.

God is still speaking, still working in the world. Day in and day out, the impact of God’s creation touches each of us constantly. We simply need to look and listen as God’s energy flows, giving life to all of creation, giving energy to the branches of the vine, giving fruit to people who have faith. 

Love abounds. Divine energy abounds. Life abounds. And through God’s constant re-creation, God is ready to give us more than we can ask or imagine. And it all starts with love… love is from God. God IS love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. And those who love God must love their siblings too, no matter how much we identify with them or not.