One of the metaphors Jesus used to describe spiritual life is “Abide.” Now I know “abide” isn’t a word we use every day. But it’s a great word! Because we spend every moment of every day abiding in someone, or something for life.
“Abide” describes the relationship between a vine and it’s branches. Branches thrive, and bear fruit, so long as they abide in the vine. But the moment a branch stops receiving the life-giving sap of the mother vine that branch begins drying up… until it is no longer good for anything, is cut off, and thrown into the fire.
When a baby is in the mother’s womb, the baby abides in mom for life. The mother and baby are tethered together through an umbilical cord. Through that cord flows all the vital nutrients, fluid, and oxygen the baby needs for life. Just like a branch is vitally dependent upon a vine a baby is vital dependent on his/her mother.
Now after birth, the umbilical cord is severed, and we’re left with an INY or OUTY belly button. And this is when the crisis begins. From birth, we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out who or what to attach our metaphorical umbilical cord to, in who or in what we can find life and peace.
Outside the womb, an infant first abides in mom. A baby wants mom’s attention, warmth, love, and nourishment. But even from birth a baby is learning a vital life lesson… that no matter how awesome mom is… mom can’t be everything the infant wants. To the extent that the baby abides in mom, the baby giggles, smiles, and coos. But the moment mom isn’t available, oh how the baby wails and cries! So as a child grow he/she begins looking beyond mom and dad for life and peace. As youngsters, many teenager supposes mom/dad are in fact an obstacle to life/peace!
And this is our story. From infancy we’ve been on this life-long search for something to substantively abide in for life and peace. Some things have proved more satisfying for peace than other things. But nothing is completely satisfactory. What are some of the things we abide in for life and peace?
We Abide in Various Desires for Life/Peace.
We really do live according to our appetites and desires, sometimes we live according to other’s peoples desires. Consider your own appetites: How many times have you found yourself hungry or thirsty? There is nothing wrong with being hungry or thirsty. We are after all, creatures. But nothing we eat or drink satisfies. Jesus told the woman at the well, “whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again.” And he told his disciples, “Don’t work for food that spoils.” We also tend to latch unto material things for life and peace. Jesus warned about the limitations of these things as well. “Moth and rust destroys our treasure… thieves break in and steal our stuff…”
So what happens when we try to abide in finite things for life/peace? To the extend we try to abide in finite things for life, they suck the life/peace out of us.
The seven deadly sins, why are they deadly? Lust is when we think sexual gratification will give us everlasting life and peace. Gluttony is looking to food, or drink, or drug. Greed is coveting money and things. Sloth is laying around all day, with TV and Internet hoping to click your way into everlasting life/peace. Anger is imaging that if only someone, something, or some circumstance were under your control you’d be happy. Envy is imagining that someone else’s life/peace is somehow robbing you of yours. Pride is imagining that the more people who know you, love you, ping you, like you, follow you, quote you, defer to you… the more life/peace you’ll feel!
The seven deadly sins are so deadly because they are so incredibly deceptive. They rob you of the very life/peace they promise. And other people’s desires are just as problematic as our own. For example, Paul warns how a husband wants to please his wife, and a wife wants to please her husband. Children want to please their parents. Parents these days spare to few measures to please their children. People of all ages… including pastors… want to be loved by the world. Whether we abide in our own desires, or the desires of others, life and peace seems to evade us.
We Abide in Various Words for Life/Peace.
It’s important that we understand the power of words. We actually think in words. There isn’t a moment of the day, when your brain stops spewing words. You have a thought, opinion and judgment about everything. Remember that Jim Carrie Movie, “Liar, Liar?” Could you imagine how much trouble you’d be in if your mouth spewed out everything your brain was thinking?
Words have been drilled into us so deeply, over the course of our lifetime. The words of parents, peers, professors, pastors, artists, authors, poets, celebrities… We live in the information age. We are inundated so rapidly, with so many words and messages, we couldn’t possibly discern the validity of them all. But make no mistake about it. Someone’s words have come to define you.
You measure your worth through someone’s words—but whose? You weigh moral choices through someone’s words—but whose? You view the world (its origin, it’s meaning/purpose, good/evil) through someone’s words. Some part of us recognizes that our words are the problem. You go to a therapist, why? You buy books, why? You compulsively listen to music and talk shows. Because you recognize that in order to find life and peace, you need better words. You need a better self-view, world-view, other person view, God-view. You realize your own thinking, and feeling, and machinations, and inner self-talk has become in itself, suffocating & toxic.
Just like we abide in certain desires for life and peace, we abide in certain words.
We Abide in Various Ways (of being) for Life/Peace.
We’re all followers & imitators of someone. When you look at the world, you identify certain people, and imagine that if you followed their way of life you would have true life and peace.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. There was a time I thought, “Like Mike, if I could be like Mike… be like Mike, be like Mike…” Not my brother Mike, but Michael Jordan. If only I could leap, and jump, and shoot, and dodge, and dribble, and look like, and smile like, and relate like him, and wear the same shoes as Michael Jordan!
I stunk at basketball, however, there was this certain singer everyone latched unto, who sang and danced with perfection, and did the moon walk. He was SO COOL! About the time I realized Michael was starting to get REALLY WEIRD, out came that hit movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise! If only I could be an F-14 fighter pilot! How many times have tried to abide in someone’s manner of life, hoping to find life/peace?
Maybe you’ve had this experience. There was someone whose life you idealized. You put them on a pedestal, jumped through all the hoops they jumped through, and hit the marks they hit. But as you began living their life you realized their way of life wasn’t all it promised to be… or maybe you realized that other person wasn’t all they appeared to be on the surface. And maybe overnight your dream became a kind of nightmare.
And so, we have this common crisis. We abide in various desires, various words, and the various ways of men/women we’ve idealized. But in the end, they rob us of life/peace. We’re left unhappily disillusioned, and full of despair.
But along comes this man Jesus and he says what? John 16:33. “In this world you will have trouble, even suffering. In me you may have peace.” John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives…” John 10:10, “I’ve come that you might have life, and life more abundantly.” John 4:14, “Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again, indeed, it will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 6:27, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”
You realize what Jesus is saying… “Attach your umbilical cord to me. Abide in me! I AM your life and peace! I AM Living Water. I AM the bread of life. I’m the resurrection and life. I AM the gate you’ve been searching for. The way, the path, the road.”
John 15:1-5, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. . . 4 Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me….”
How sick and tired of being sick and tired must we become… in our desires, our words, and our ways… before we look to Jesus for life/peace? How dried up, withered out, and fruit-less must we become before we ask the gardener, (who is your Heavenly Father) to graft us back into the vine (who is Jesus Christ the Son)?
By the way… your umbilical cord, your creaturely dependency, isn’t what’s wrong with you. The fact that you feel such powerful “desires”, that you think such potent life-altering “words, or that you continually search for some living-giving, peaceful “way of being” in this world… none of this is what’s wrong about you. What’s wrong is that we attach our umbilical to finite things, instead of the infinite God for whom we’ve been created. Let me give you a prescription for life and peace:
First, Let Jesus’ Desire Become Your Desire. Maybe you remember, how the Father’s voiced boomed from heaven, at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” In John 8:29 Jesus tells his disciples: “He who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what pleases Him.” Let me ask, when have you earnestly sought to please the Father more than anything else, and ever found yourself disappointed? Instead, when we most please the Father were most full of life and most fully at peace.
Second, Let Jesus’ Words Become Your Words. To the degree that you turn the volume of Jesus’ words, you’ll have life and peace. The most life-giving, peace-giving thing you could endeavor to do, is to “have the mind of Christ.” It’s to “take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ Jesus.” And why is this? It’s because Jesus claimed to only be speaking the words He heard from the Father. No more. No less.
To find peace, you have to change the words that define/direct your life. The majority of words out there are worthless words, empty words, hollow words, words void of life/peace. You can’t just accept words because they pop into your brain. Every word, every thought, must be subject to Christ Jesus. We must discern, test, weigh every word. And only if its true, and is of Christ, should we hold unto it.
I love that passage in John 6:67-68 where Jesus says to Peter, “Do you want to leave me too?” And what does Peter say? “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.”
Third, Let Jesus’ Way Become Your Way. Jesus didn’t just “say” what he heard the Father saying. Jesus “did” what he saw the Father doing. Peace isn’t just having right desires. It isn’t just having right words. It’s also having right actions—what we do.
Next Sunday is Decision Day. Maybe its time you begin abiding in Jesus for life and peace. In baptism, (1) we declare our greatest desire is to please the Father. . . (2) that we’re trusting Jesus’ words for forgiveness/eternal life. . . (3) that we’re following the way of Jesus, doing what Jesus did, living as he lived, walking as he walked…