Homily by John Kerrigan for Ascension 2012

Did you ever wonder why the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus—albeit three notable events in his life—get so much attention and yet his ascension hardly ever seems to merit honorable mention? After all, this great ecumenical feast of the Church, which occurs 40 days after Easter, appears equally important even if it is far less well understood. It’s important because the Ascension has very little to do with the absence of Christ, and everything to do with his magnification. Pope Benedict tells us that Jesus was “not transported to another cosmic location.” Rather, his Ascension galvanized his disciples; they became witnesses who resembled thunderbolts in terms of the energy they brought to the task of proclaiming the Good News.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to take a step back, and ask you to picture with me three short vignettes. The first took place 16 years ago this week. It was Friday, May 24th, 1996, three days after our oldest daughter, Lauren, was born and time to leave the hospital and go home. After months of preparation, days spent devouring numerous books and articles—including the classic “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” putting time aside to baby proof our home, and the wonderful support of hospital staff and family, it was now time for Elizabeth and me to take full responsibility for this beautiful little girl. Among the many emotions I experienced that Friday morning was a genuine fear—one might even say panic—that I was utterly unprepared for this challenging task. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and I said, “It’s our baby, baby!” I suspect many parents have had a similar experience.

Vignette two: a few weeks ago, a Stanford student told me about the end of her first day as a freshman here at The Farm. Here are her words: “That first night, as I lay in bed, I thought to myself, I may never live at home again. I am on my own.” Can any of you identify with this thrilling, and at the same time, intimidating feeling?

This third vignette occurs at Stanford every year just about mid-June when thousands of black robed students in mortarboard hats flow past this Memorial Church, with beaming relatives trailing behind them decked out with cameras and bouquets. It’s graduation time, a time of great celebration. The students will be told many wonderful things, about leadership, about staying true to their ideals…. And implicit in all the speeches is this sobering point: now, perhaps for the first time in your life, you are going to be held responsible. After graduation parties have wound down, and academic gowns have been turned in, it may come as a shock for many graduates that from here on out the responsibility of making decisions and putting their lives together, getting jobs, paying off loans, even folding their clothes, rests no longer on parents or teachers, advisors or counselors, but on themselves. Life: “it’s your baby, baby!”

The joys and apprehensions felt by new parents, or a first-year or graduating student, are, I suspect, similar to the emotions experienced by the disciples described in today’s reading from Scripture. For a period of time after Christ’s death and resurrection, the apostles and disciples would encounter the risen Christ in unexpected places—in the upper room, or at the seashore of Lake Tiberius, or on the Road to Emmaus. But gradually these encounters grew less frequent, until finally they stopped altogether and the apostles realized that they were on their own. They couldn’t run to Jesus and ask “What do we do now?” Or “what’s next on the agenda? Where do we go next week to attend the sick or preach the Gospel?” No, now they had to figure that out for themselves.

This is the meaning of the feast of the Ascension: it marks that point in the mystery of Easter when the apostles realized that Jesus was now in the full embrace of God’s love, or as the readings put it, had been taken up into heaven. Neither they nor we are going to see him again until the end of time. This message is also clear: don’t stand there staring at the sky; the ball is in your court now! And whether they know it or not, the disciples are more than ready for the ball to be in their court. For over the past 40 days after Easter, we’ve been hearing about the transformation of Jesus’s followers from tentative, afraid and anxious men and women into persons who resemble thunderbolts in their zeal to proclaim and witness to the Good News.

Well, the ball is in our court too. The Feast of the Ascension reminds us each year that the apprenticeship is over; we’re the witnesses now. Whether you and I feel strong and firm in our faith, or like so many, have as many questions and doubts as answers—you and I are the ones chosen to make God’s love known, not throughout Judea and Samaria, but here in Palo Alto and the Bay Area, or in the daily asceticism of our academic disciplines and professional lives.

And when we do so with the vigor of these early disciples, these thunderbolts, we like Jesus before us will find ourselves more and more in the full embrace of God’s love.

Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024

What it means to love Jesus

John 15:9–17

As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.

Music Meditations

• “Open My Eyes, Lord” (by Jesse Manibusan) [YouTube]
• “Whatsoever You Do” (sung by Robert Kochis) [YouTube]
• “In Christ Alone”
• “Love (One Another)” (sung by The Maranatha Singers) [YouTube]

Opening Prayer

Your prayer, Lord, is that my joy may be complete. This joy, Lord, is not based on illusion or self-deception, but on knowing in my heart that you, too, faced evil and sorrow and still provided a way for us to keep your joy in our hearts. On our faces too… Help me to present a face of love to those around me, as you wished me to do. Here are those that need to be reminded of your love and friendship this day: [fill in a name or two here].

Help me to love as you do.

Companions for the Journey

Adapted from an online service called “Sermon Writer”:

Note: The term “pericope,” used in this section, refers to any selected section of scripture used for study or for liturgical purposes.

The gospel for today might be divided into two major sections, the first (9–12) focusing on the abiding relationship of love that binds Father, Son and disciples into one, the second (13–17) focusing on the empowering love of the Son by which he laid down his life for his “friends.”

“Just as” Love

Love is to be seen above all in the love of the Father as shown forth in the love of the Son. Our thoughts are intentionally directed back to the announcement of the depth of God’s love for the world as evidenced in the giving of the Son. “God so loved…” (3:16). In the interconnected and unfolding message of John’s gospel, it is as if every word and every passage mutually interpret one another. Using a modern analogy, one might imagine that every word in the gospel were hyperlinked to every other word in the gospel, so that “clicking” on one word necessarily explodes and expands into every other word as its commentary and frame of meaning and understanding. One of those important words in the first section (9–12) is a simple word variously translated as “so,” “as,” or “just as” (Greek kathos). In the original this word essentially frames the whole section. “Just as the Father has loved me…;” “…just as I have loved you” (9, 12). “Just as” is a key motif (31 times in the gospel) in John’s “theology” for what it reveals about the mutual relationship of Father, Son, and disciple community. As the Father has loved, so the Son loves. The Son’s love imitates and mirrors the Father’s love. The Son’s deep love in the giving of his life for his friends is no accident, but stems “just so” from the way the Father has loved the Son. To abide in the Son’s love is to know oneself as abiding in that same love which originates in the relationship of Father and Son.

Abiding in Love

The abiding relationship of vine and branches of last Sunday’s pericope, which culminates in the bearing of much fruit, is now given further delineation in terms of love. If abiding is not for its own sake but has an end or a purpose, we learn that in this passage, that purpose takes shape in love. Love is the fruit of the abiding relationship of Father and the Son, just as it is of the Son and those who follow his words. Those “words” of Jesus are characterized in this lesson as Jesus’ “commands” (5 times as verb or noun). Consistent with John’s “just as” theology, even these commands which Jesus calls upon his disciples to keep are simply an extension of the commands of the Father which Jesus has already kept. Jesus asks nothing of his disciple community that he has not already modeled in the abiding love which he has with the Father. In this way abiding, loving, and keeping commandments are all bound up together in a mutual relationship.

Lest we miss it, the first section concludes with a direct and clear statement of the outcome or fruit of this abiding love. The commandments of Jesus are not general or scattered but focused and specific: “This is my commandment, that you love one another” (12). The repetition of these words again at the conclusion of the second section (17) underscores their importance as a key to understanding the end goal of all this talk of abiding love (Incidentally, this repeated literary structure in 12 and 17 also makes clear that the NRSV’s translation of verse 17 cannot be correct. The text should read “I am giving you this command, that you love one another.”)

No Greater Love

If love for one another is the goal of our abiding in Jesus’ love, then the model for that self-giving love is stated clearly in the memorable beginning words of the second section (10–17). There is no greater love than that shown in the giving of one’s life for one’s friends. Though stated in general terms, the “laying down of one’s life” is a pointed reference to God’s giving of the Son, and in the narrative an only slightly veiled reference to and anticipation of the passion and death of Jesus on the cross. The power of God’s great love in Jesus, confirmed in Easter’s promise of the resurrection, always has its frame of reference and its power in Jesus’ giving of his life on the cross.

Jesus now speaks of the power of that giving of life to transform the disciples’ relationship and calling into a new status. These disciples are no longer to be counted as “servants” but as “friends.” In the cross and Resurrection they have come to know what this “greater love” has power to accomplish in them through their unity in the abiding relationship with Jesus and the Father. Jesus’ words now make it further clear that the power to respond to his command to love one another comes from Jesus’ own prior love and calling: “I have called you…; I have chosen you…; I have appointed you…" (15, 16).

Whatever You Ask

The key guarantor of this abiding relationship that will usher in the fruit of love is the power of prayer. Prayer, too, is grounded in the mutual abiding relationship of Father, Son, and disciple community. “The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name (16). When this promise is linked immediately with the repeated reference to Jesus’ command to “love one another,” it is clear that “whatever we ask” defines and directs Christian prayer toward the fulfilling of the command to love for the other. The promise that such love can be fulfilled resides in the giving that has already preceded in Jesus’ love on the cross. This confidence in the power of prayer (16–17) mirrors a similar promise in last Sunday’s pericope (see 15:7–8). If there prayer is grounded in “abiding in me” and “my words,” here it is grounded in Jesus’ announcement “you did not choose me, but I chose you.” If there we hear that the Father is glorified in the bearing of much fruit, here we now know that such bearing of fruit is to be found in the fulfillment of Jesus’ command to “love one another.”

Mutual Joy

To be called and appointed for such an exercise of love is for the Christian neither mere sentimentality nor drudgery. There can be no simple sentimentality in a love whose depth is to be seen in a life laid down for one’s friends. At the center of this text and at the heart of love stands the cross of Jesus. Nor can there be any painful drudgery in Jesus’ promise that all of this abiding love, this life given for us and for the other, has as its goal “so that your joy may be complete” (11). The abiding relationship in love of the Son with the Father is mirrored and modeled in the Son’s laying down of his life for the world.

Jesus came so that we might experience an overflowing life (John 10:10). Jesus expresses here the longing and the promise that his joy might be in us and that only in such abiding love and joy is the wholeness of life that the Father’s love has in its purview and promise. Just as the power of this love for our lives comes when we draw power from the vine, so our joy comes from knowing that we have been chosen, called, and sent. The abiding power of that love in and through us has power to renew and transform us and the whole of creation.

Further reflection:

• Commentary on Sixth Sunday of Easter (year B) from “First Impressions” (2024) >>
• Commentary on Sixth Sunday of Easter (year B) from “First Impressions” (2018) >>

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Remain in my love.

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

• What, exactly does the word “love” mean to me?
  Whose love was it that taught me the meaning of word?
  How does the world describe “love”?
  What do we learn about love from our parents, our friends, the media, our intimate relationships?
• What about love is difficult for me?
• Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision. Who have I decided to love today?
• If love is not so much affection as connection, how am I responding to the command at the end of today’s text?
• Who are my intimate friends?
  How important to me are those relationships?
  Am I more comfortable doing things together or just being?
  Can I think of ways I have made sacrifices for those who are dear to me?
• How have others invited me to move beyond casual friendship to a more intimate friendship?
• Have there been people who seemed to invite me into intimate friendships where the invitation seemed to be inappropriate?
• Do I experience God inviting me into an intimate friendship?
  Do I experience the invitation more as a “being” with God or “doing” with God?
  Are both aspects present?
  At times, does one aspect become more important at than the other?
• Am I comfortable calling Jesus “friend”?
• What do I need to change in my life to reflect better my friendship with Jesus?
• Do I realize that I do not need to earn God’s love?
• We often see Jesus in the scriptures, but do we see his love for us running through those scriptures?
• Do I consciously “abide” in God’s love?
  What holds me back?
• How are love and prayer linked?
• Do I see loving God and others as a chore or as a source of joy?
• From “Faith Book”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
  What prejudice, angry feelings and grudges must I lay down out of love for my sisters and brothers?
  How willing am I to "lay down" my free time when another has need?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

Today when we hear Jesus say, “Keep my commandments”, our minds tend to run to the 10 commandments, and we worry that we might have broken some of them. We forget that we had the ten commandments before Jesus even came on the scene. So let us assume that Jesus is speaking of something a little less negative and maybe quite a bit more challenging: Love one another as I have loved you. What might an unpacking of the commandment “love one another” look like in my everyday life? What or whom are my particular challenges? Do I understand that “like one another” is not always required? Do I feel like I can never match the love of Jesus so that I am discouraged before I ever begin? How does that feeling negate Christ’s love and understanding? (After all, his beloved in the world—his disciples—failed again and again…)

What part of my life must I lay down to love another as Jesus loves me—my prejudices, my unwillingness to help, my angry feelings, my envy of another, my list of wrongs I keep against a person, my resentment about where my life is right now, my exalted vision of what I am owed in this world, my need for material goods, my need for approval or need for power, etc.?

Finally, I spend some time thanking Jesus for being the expression of God’s love for us, and making some changes in my own relationship with others that might better reflect the commandment to love one another.

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

Read the excerpts from Psalm 98 (today’s psalm selection). Reflect on the ways that God has been revealed in your life.

Take some time to journal about your specific experiences which manifest God’s love for you. Ask yourself if you pray to God to curry God’s favor, to earn God’s good will toward you, or if you pray in order to create a relationship of mutual love and affection with the Lord. Finally rewrite this psalm so that you are talking TO God, not ABOUT God (I sing a new song to you, Lord, etc.)

O sing a new song to the LORD, for he has worked wonders.
His right hand and his holy arm have brought salvation.
The LORD has made known his salvation, has shown his deliverance to the nations.
He has remembered his merciful love and his truth for the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Shout to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song, and sing out your praise.

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:

Adapted from At Home with the Word:

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is intimate and urgent, repeating himself and using words such as “command”. How many times does he ask his followers to love him and each other, to remain united? “remain in my love, keep my commandments”; “love one another as I love you”; or, “this I command you, love one another”. He is begging those who follow him to accept what he has offered, no less than his life, by becoming and staying in a unified body of love and faith. Read John 17:21 and reflect further on Jesus’ overriding desire for us. Are you living out that desire? In what way do you foster unity in your faith community? Where do you perhaps encourage division? Does your love for “neighbor” go beyond praying for someone outside your circle? Does love for neighbor extend to some concrete action on behalf of the poor, the marginalized? In what ways can you make love not a noun, but a verb?

Whose love was it that taught you the meaning of the word?

Poetic Reflection:

How does this poem by Ed Ingebretzen, S.J. reflect on how to respond to the great and amazing love God has for us, for you?

“You Are Hungry”

Father
you are hungry
and we may be nothing in your hands

but let us at least
taste your fire:
let us be ash,
be dross, be waste
in the heat of your desire.

Let us at least
need, and want, and learn
that it is impossible
to want you too much,
to want you too long.

May the heat of our thirst
for you
dry the rivers
reduce the mountains to dust,
thin the air.

God, you who want us
more than we want you,
be a fan to our flame,
the end to our need,
the ocean we seek to drain.

—From Psalms of the Still Country

Poetic Reflection:

This poem by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, MMS, speaks to the need to love those no one cares about but Jesus. How does it speak to the countless women who may not realize that God is their mother?

I saw you in the doorway.
You were black and bruised and broken.
I knew you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter.
If she could, she would sit with you
and say how much she loved you.

I saw you in the shelter.
You looked much older than your years.
Your kids were tired and making a fuss.
I knew you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter.
Imagine her here as a sister, a friend,
saying how much she loves you.

I saw you on the news last night
on a dirt road in Soweto.
They were screaming at you.
You had no shoes.
I know you were someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and she is her mother’s daughter.
She has put up with so much abuse.
That shows how much she loves you.

I saw you in the delivery room
in drug withdrawal, writhing.
They say you have AIDS. You are three hours old.
And I know you are someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and she needs you to forgive her.
She doesn’t know how to love as yet,
but when she does, I promise you,
she will say how much she loves you.

I saw you in an orphanage.
How sad you looked, and lonely.
They say that you are hard to place,
but I know that you are someone’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter
and a foster mother’s daughter,
and one of these days she will come for you
and say how much she loves you.

I saw you in a nursing home.
You were slumped in a chair with a vacant stare.
I knew you were somebody’s daughter.

You are your mother’s daughter,
your Mother God’s own daughter.
Soon, very soon, She will come for you
and say how much she loves you.

Closing Prayer

From “Sacred Space”, a service of the Irish Jesuits:

A person blind from birth cannot understand color. A person who has never been loved can find love a baffling word. I feel I have an inkling of love’s meaning, but how? Whose love was it that taught me the meaning of the word? What do I know about the sort of self-giving that is unearned, unquestioning, looking for no return?

Lord, I have so much to learn from you about love.

Commentary on Sixth Sunday of Easter (year B) from “First Impressions” (2024)

Today’s gospel presents us with a vision for the church. Jesus has just told his disciples, “I am the vine; you are the branches” (15:1ff). Now he describes the relationship between his disciples and himself. It is not merely a gathering of friends, or like-minded individuals. Nor is it an institution with fixed offices and officials. Instead, as different as each may be, Jesus and his disciples are bound by sacrificial love. Our love is to be the same as the love he has for us: “This is my commandment; love one another as I have loved you.” We have our treasure and our relationship to Christ and one another; but we also have responsibilities. We are attached to the true vine and we are to share the love and life we are receiving now from Christ with others. The love Jesus showed us was a sacrificial love and so should ours be towards others, “in season and out of season.”

But such loving cost Jesus his life and it asks much of us. It is only possible because Jesus remains with us in his Holy Spirit. Just as he obeyed his Father’s commands, because of his love for God, the disciples will continue to know and enjoy Jesus’ presence by our obedience to his commands of love for one another.

Today’s gospel is part of Jesus’ last discourse. He is telling his disciples of both the privilege and responsibilities we have. He is the true vine we are grafted to. We have the joy of knowing this friendship that will be with us in both good times and bad. We will come to know that Jesus will not leave us and we will continue to know God and Jesus by keeping Jesus’ commandment of love. What kind of love is he speaking of? He says it quite plainly: it is love like his, a willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s “friends.”

We don’t just need a model of ideal behavior upon whom to fashion our lives. We need a savior who, once having lived and died for us, will stay with us to guide and enable us to imitate his own living and dying. Today, as last Sunday, we hear the importance of “remaining” or “abiding” in Jesus. This staying in Jesus will be the way we can live his commandment of love. One thing is very clear in this discourse; we can live Jesus’ life because he graces us to do so. Without our relationship with him, we would be left on our own to do our best to follow his life and live his commands. And the truth is, on our own, we wouldn’t be able to live such a life. Without Jesus’ abiding, grace-giving presence, neither we individuals, nor our church, can live the life he calls us to today: “Love one another as I have loved you.” His love is the kind that lays down his life for another.

Some people think the church has gone soft since Vatican II. Now, they complain, all we hear is talk about love. They would prefer the stricter black and white commands they remember from their childhood. But we are not children. The teaching about love goes back to our Founder; it is not a recent innovation, or a new-age trend. Jesus does lay down a commandment for us today, but he does so, he says, not as a master talking to servants, but as a friend to other friends. Servants follow rules, their lives are dictated by the one who holds authority over them. Jesus’ religion isn’t based on such a model. Instead, love is the foundation of our faith. We are assured we already have God’s love, it is not something we must earn by minute adherence to a code of proper behavior. Jesus is asking us to live out of the realization of that love. We are his friends, he tells us, so now go out and live like friends with one another. “Friends,” in this context, means “beloved ones.” We need to live out of that description for we are the beloved.

Commentary on Sixth Sunday of Easter (year B) from “First Impressions” (2018)

I was watching a special program on the Weather Channel the other evening. It was a look-back over the past year, when we had a more-than-usual number of tornadoes across the country. A commentator referred to those devastating weather events as “Acts of God.” In effect God was blamed, once again, for killing innocent people and destroying millions of dollars of property! While nature often shows the wonder and power of God—a sunset over the ocean, Spring flowers and tiny hummingbirds—I can’t name a killer-tornado as an “Act of God.”

But, as a believer, I can recognize a powerful “act of God”—God took flesh in Jesus and Jesus gave his life for us. As the gospel says today, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend.” God’s power was demonstrated for us by: Jesus’ joining us in our human journey; not avoiding pain, but accepting it as one of us and giving his life to prove how much God loves us. Now that’s what I call an “Act of God!”

So, we don’t have to come here to church to pray in order to please God; to earn God’s love and goodwill; to wear God down with lots of prayers so that God will favor us and give us what we pray for. We don’t pray and serve God to earn God’s love. Jesus’ life and death make it very clear: God already loves us, what more must God do to convince us? Jesus is a very powerful message that all can read, loud and clear: we didn’t love God first and God returned the favor and now loves us back. Rather, God loved us first and Jesus is proof positive of God’s love for us—if we have any doubts.

The real issue is: since God already loves us and has given such powerful evidence of that love, what should we do to show we got the message? How can we respond and show that our lives are transformed by that love; for love transforms the beloved? You can always tell when someone is in love, they radiate love. They are cheerful, kinder, and more patient.

If we asked Jesus what we must do in response to the love God has shown us in him, he says to us today, “Keep my commandments.” When we hear the word commandments our mind rushes to the 10 Commandments. We check ourselves: have I broken any Commandments? Have I done anything wrong? But we already had 10 Commandments without Jesus. Jesus isn’t talking about not violating the 10 Commandments. He is telling us, “Don’t worry about doing something negative. Instead do something positive: love one another.

It’s one commandment with many faces, many opportunities to put it into practice. If there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend then we can begin by asking ourselves what part of our lives must we “lay down” for the sake of another? For example: “lay down” my prejudice; my angry feelings; my enmity over what others have done to me; my selfishness; my unwillingness to give up my time to help another, etc.

Jesus doesn’t give 10 Commandments that can be checked off one by one, “There, I’ve done that.” But a broader commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Now can we ever say we have lived up to that commandment? Can we check off items and say, “Well, I’ve accomplish that!” No, because love asks a lot of us. When can a husband or wife say to the other, “There, I have loved you. There’s nothing more I can give or do for you?” Love is a fire that consumes us and leaves us looking for ways to love.

Does this sound exhausting? Jesus says we are not to live and think like slaves, groveling, trying to get everything right, fearing punishment. Instead he calls us, “Friends.” Friendship with Jesus isn’t sentimental or sloppy. Some friendships can close us off and make us neurotic. But friendship with Jesus is one of mutual love and respect. I have a friend who joined a men’s quartet. He became friends with one of the men in that group and his new friend taught him to sing without instruments and introduce him to songs he had never heard before. Friendship opens us to new life. Friends keep us normal: pull us out of ourselves when we close ourselves off; help lift us out of depression; are sounding boards when we need to talk to someone; introduce us to new worlds of food, hobbies, and music.

We are friends of Christ already. “I call you friends.” With the help of Jesus’ Spirit we are enabled to act that way now—to resemble our friend Jesus more and more and, as he tells us, “bear fruit” in our lives.

At this Eucharist today we invite Jesus to show us how we can live and reflect our friendship with him. We ask him to show us what must die in our lives, what we must lay down and let go of. We also ask him to show us how we can blossom with new fruit as we pray, “Jesus teach us to love one another and help us to live that love, so people will know we are your friends.”

Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 28, 2024

What it means to be rooted in Jesus

John 15:1–8

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.

“Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.

“Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Music Meditations

• “I Am the Vine” (John Michael Talbot) [YouTube]
• “Give Me Jesus” (sung by Fernando Ortega) [YouTube]
• “In Christ Alone” (lyrics by Chris Tomlin) [YouTube]
• “Abide With Me” (Matt Maher) [YouTube]

Opening Prayer

Adapted from “Sacred Space,” July 2012:

O God, you are with me, but more,
You are within me, giving me existence.
Let me dwell for a moment in your life-giving presence
In my body, my mind, my heart
And in my whole life.
Lord, grant that I may always desire
To spend time in your presence.
May I not forget your goodness to me.
Guide me to share your blessings with others.

Companions for the Journey

From “America” Magazine 2009, the national Jesuit weekly:

“Already Pruned”

“Remain in me as I remain in you” (Jn 15:4)

I am not much of a gardener. As a city-dweller, I am lucky if I can keep a few houseplants alive. What is especially difficult for me is to prune parts of a plant that still have life in them, even if they are scraggly and have stopped flowering. I have no problem clipping off parts that are clearly dead, but it is hard to bring myself to trim off something still living.

In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks of the Father as a vintner who prunes branches that are bearing fruit so that they will produce even more. There is a strong emphasis on “bearing fruit”; the expression occurs five times in the passage. It speaks not only of the fecundity in our relationship with God, but also of missionary outreach and of interdependence with the other branches on the vine.

The image of God as a vine grower and Israel as the vineyard is a familiar one in the Scriptures (for example, Is 5:1-7; 27:2-5; Jer 2:21; Ps 80:8-18). Most often the metaphor is used to express God’s disappointment in the lack of yield from a vine so tenderly planted and nurtured. In the Gospel of John, this is not the case. The disciples Jesus is addressing in this Last Supper scene are “already pruned” so that they will bear more fruit. Branches that do not bear fruit are taken away.

There is a word play between the verb airei, “takes away” and its compound kathairei, “prunes.” Moreover, there are verbal echoes of other parts of Jesus’ farewell discourse at the supper and the passion narrative. The imperative form of the verb airei is found in the cry of the people who call for Jesus’ crucifixion, “aron,” “Away with him!” (19:15). The adjectival form of the verb kathairei, which literally means “to make clean,” occurs in the footwashing scene (13:10-11), where Jesus assures the disciples they are clean (katharoi)

Pruning then is another Johannine metaphor for the passion. It is akin to the image in Jn 12:24, where Jesus speaks of the seed that must fall to the ground and die in order to bear much fruit. The emphasis is on the life that sprouts forth from the dying and the pruning. Expert gardeners know that the place to prune is, paradoxically, where the nodes are bursting with life.

From pruning, the stress in the Gospel shifts to the importance of the branch remaining united to the vine in order to bear fruit. A branch cannot bear fruit on its own; cut off from the vine, it withers and dies and then is good only for kindling. That remaining or abiding in Jesus is crucial for disciples is evident in that the verb menein, “to abide,” occurs eight times in these eight verses. This mutual indwelling has been spoken of since the opening chapter of the Gospel, where the first question asked by the initial two disciples is, “Where are you staying?” (meneis) (1:38). Another important moment is when the Samaritans ask Jesus to stay (menein) with them (4:40). In the Bread of Life Discourse, Jesus tells his followers, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, abide [menei] in me and I in them” (6:56). True disciples abide in Jesus’ word (8:31) and Jesus’ words remain in the disciples (15:7). When Jesus tells his disciples he is going to prepare a dwelling place for them (14:2), it becomes clear that the “abiding place” is not a geographical locale, but is Jesus himself (14:6), where also the Father makes his home (14:23) along with the Spirit (14:17).

How can we insure that we are abiding in Christ and he in us? In the second reading, 1 Jn 3:24 gives a simple formula: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.” The writer also spells out what it means to keep the commandments: “We should believe in the name of...Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us” (1 Jn 3:23).

Further study:

• Analysis of John 15:1–8 >>
• “I Am” Statements in the Gospel of John >>

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Remain in me, as I remain in you

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

• Are we connected to the life of God? Can we prove it?
• Do I believe that I am a friend of Jesus?
  What does that mean to me?

• From Paul Gallagher, OFM, in “First Impressions” 2006:

  Do you garden?
  What have you learned about yourself by trying to grow plants?
  What have you learned about relationships by trying to grow plants?

  Why do gardeners prune plants?
  What do they hope will happen?
  What, in human development, would be the equivalent of pruning plants?
  How does it happen in your own life?
  What happens because of it?
  What happens to you if you go through long periods without entering a process of being pruned?
  What does that say to you?

  How do you retain your relationship with Jesus and/or God?
  How do you know if that relationship is healthy?

  Do you have relationships where you have no responsibilities?
  How do you feel about the notion that you have responsibility in your relationship with God?

• Using the metaphor from agriculture, how are we changed by being grafted on to the life of the Spirit that is Jesus? Do we lose our personality?
• What does it mean to be rooted in Jesus?
  How do we do this?
• What is the role of the gardener in pruning and training the vine?
  How did Jesus’ passion prune and refine who Jesus was?
  Is it comforting or disturbing to think that Jesus’ own father in heaven cut off and trimmed whatever in Jesus that was not going to bear fruit?
• What in my own personality, goals, or behavior needs pruning to better dwell in Jesus and to bear better fruit?
  What would that better fruit look like?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:

Adapted from Professor Barbara Reid, O.P., PhD, President of the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago:

• In your own words, ask Christ to prune in you whatever impedes your “bearing much fruit.”
• Spend some quiet time today enjoying simply dwelling with the Triune One who makes a home in you.
• In your own words, give thanks for the Word and the Eucharist, through which we abide in Christ and Christ in us.

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

How diverse is our faith community writ large? How diverse is it in my local community? How does the vine and branches image respect the diversity within our church—in this community and beyond? How comfortable are we in that diversity? What are the personal and institutional challenges of diversity in our faith community? How do they affect you? How have we worked to minimize the diversity until we are comfortable?

Sit for a moment and let the image of the vine in this gospel speak to you about your rootedness in Jesus, and about our interconnectedness because we are ALL rooted in God. Where can you do better in this regard?

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Adaptated from “First Impressions”:

Imagine Jesus on that night in Gethsemane: Imagine the noises around you, the snuffling (read: snoring) of your friends behind you. What do you think is about to happen? How do you know this? Imagine talking to your Abba, your Father in heaven, telling him of your fears. What are you afraid of? Name it. What goes through your mind and heart as you ask for His help, his comfort, ask, even, to have this whole thing go away? How do you feel when there is silence from the other end? Is there silence from the other end? What makes you decide to let all of the events play out? Do you hope to be rescued? When you are at your lowest point, without even your friends to bear you company, and you hear the noises of an armed crowd coming through the darkness in your direction, what is being pruned in your spirit?

Upon deeper reflection of Jesus’ last days, we realize that out connectedness to God does not insure that life will be a cake walk. No one was more connected to the “vine grower” than Jesus, yet he had to “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” Look at how much fruit the “vine dresser” brought out of Jesus’ life through his suffering. Feeling abandoned may be a natural feeling when we are suffering; but faith in Jesus reminds us that we are not cast off and that, through Christ, we are in a powerful and meaningful relationship with God. It becomes easy to drift away from Jesus through busyness, anxiety, or personal and relationship preoccupations. What can I do to “remain” in Christ, letting his words nourish and direct me when I am in danger of losing touch with Him?

Poetic Reflection:

Read the following poem by the late Stanford professor and poet Denise Levertov. What does it say about the difficulty of “remaining” with and in God?

“Flickering Mind”

Lord, not you
it is I who am absent.
At first
belief was a joy I kept in secret,
stealing alone
into sacred places:
a quick glance, and away—and back,
circling.
I have long since uttered your name
but now
I elude your presence.
I stop
to think about you, and my mind
at once
like a minnow darts away,
darts
into the shadows, into gleams that fret
unceasing over
the river’s purling and passing.
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow.
You the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain’s heart
the sapphire I know is there?

Closing Prayer

Adapted from “Sacred Space”:

Dear Jesus, you seem to love that little word abide. Teach me what it is to live in you, and for you to live in me. It means being in love with you, being at ease with you, finding my strength in you and being ready, when questioned, to explain to others what you are in my life. Please help those who feel sad, alone, anxious, and abandoned to realize that you are always with them, always abiding in them, always loving them. Help me to reflect that love to others as well.