Easter 5  

Opening Verse of Scripture 1 John 4:7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Collect Prayer for the Day—Before we read we pray

Almighty God, who through your only–begotten Son Jesus Christ have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: grant that, as by your grace going before us you put into our minds good desires, so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect; through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Risen Christ, your wounds declare your love for the world and the wonder of your risen life: give us compassion and courage to risk ourselves for those we serve, to the glory of God the Father.

First Bible Reading Acts 8.26–40

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Second Reading 1 John 4.7–21

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Gospel Reading  John 15.1–8

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Post Communion Prayer

Eternal God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: grant us to walk in his way, to rejoice in his truth, and to share his risen life;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Commentary

You could be forgiven for thinking that you were reading Gardener’s World this morning with Jesus speaking in John’s Gospel about pruning. I used to watch a quite a lot of Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don telling us how to look after our gardens. The technicalities of pruning were always quite fascinating until I found read some studies which showed that all this careful pruning produced no better roses than simply going at them with electric hedge cutters. Jesus is talking about branches and pruning. He speaks of vines and pruning and cutting away the dead wood, but those who listened to him would have had a distinct advantage over us. They knew his words had a much deeper meaning. When Jesus spoke to his fellow Jews about vineyards and vines he was drawing on a long tradition of Jewish thought in which Israel was considered to be God’s vineyard or God’s vine. Vines were everywhere in Israel, Galilee were Jesus came from was known to be a great wine producing location, the best region for growing grapes, it still is. My own favourite wine Chateaux Musar comes from a bit further north in Lebanon.  But Jesus isn't interested in the grapes for wine. The vine and the vineyard were important theologically because they were metaphors for Israel. The prophet Isaiah said

The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting

 The people were reminded of this when they visited the temple because they were greeted by a golden vine on the front, with bunches of grapes the size of a man. Coins were minted with vines on them.  The prophets spoke of how God brought his vine out of Egypt and planted it and cared for it and tended it. Psalm 80 makes clear, God was once the gardener who cared for Israel. 

You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

Israel was this vineyard that God protected and put a wall around and a watchtower to protect the precious vines. The problem was that whenever the prophets spoke of how wonderfully well God had looked after his vines and his vineyard, the prophets all then went on to say how Israel had thrown God’s care and attention back in his face. They said that Israel had been a rotten vine and God would destroy the whole vineyard. The prophets called Israel God’s vine but they criticised the people for failing to produce good grapes. It was following this failure of Israel to bear any fruitful grapes that Jesus now has this newsflash and spoke of himself as God’s True vine.

Jesus want his disciples to recognise that the future for them lay not in the religious practices of the past, vine which had failed to live up to the care and devotion lavished on it, but rather in him. So Jesus is telling his disciples in this lesson before he goes off to Gethsemane to die, don’t put your hopes in the past, forget Israel, forget the Jewish past. Jesus was the place where God was now working. The past was the old Israel, the Old Testament Covenant which God had with the Jewish people, that was the old vine, the failed vine. After all of the work that God had done to look after his precious vine Israel, it was now regarded as dead wood. The Jewish covenant was no longer fit for purpose. It could all be bundled up and thrown into the fire. There was now a true vine to be established in Jesus, those who trusted in him would draw strength from him in exactly the same way that the branches of a vine draw strength from the vine and bear fruit. God would be the gardener and this vine would bear fruit. The Father has now stopped tending the vine of Israel which has failed to bear fruit, instead God had entrusted to Jesus his Son the true vine to be looked after.

This meant that the disciples are no longer to remain faithful to the laws and conditions of the Old Covenant God had with Israel, they are to remain in Jesus and receive his love. This is why Jesus broke the old testament commandments, he failed to observe the sabbath, broke the food laws. This is why we are no longer Jewish. And so we are called not to adherence of circumcision or the Old Testament laws of the Old Covenant, we are called instead to abide in Christ. You can see why the Jewish authorities wanted him dead,!

Jesus keep using this word ‘abide, seven times in this passage he encourages the disciples to abide in him. But what does it mean for us to ‘abide?’ Jesus likens the disciples to branches of the vine. The disciples, just like branches of a vine, would be nourished by Jesus. They would find their spiritual strength from being close to Him. The Greek verb for remain ‘menein’ is in the present and continual tense, it means “Remaining,” Jesus is saying keep on remaining in me - it’s an ongoing process, not a one off already completed, ‘done that’ process. It is about continually learning to place our trust and confidence and obedience in the promises of Jesus in our daily life. It’s recognising that it is in Jesu that we find our meaning and purpose in life day by day. Just as sap flows through a vine, so that the branches can receive the goodness which they need to grow, so we live our very best lives when we remain close to Jesus. As Christians we stay close to Jesus so that they can receive the resources which they need to grow and stay healthy. As Saint Augustine put it

‘You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you’   

There is nothing mystical in this, to stay close to Jesus you don’t need some form of meditation or mystical prayer routine. You don’t need to join a reclusive religious society. Jesus sets out some very simple and very normal expectations. So often folks think of a commitment of Christian faith as being something restrictive, which stops us having fun and enjoying ourselves. There is none of that with Jesus, he says that if we love him we will keep his commandments but that is not a burden, obedience to the teachings of Jesus are the very path to joy and peace. The teaching of Jesus are not complex to understand, love God and love your neighbour as yourself. In our secular and materialistic culture which is so ill at ease with itself and floundering around for meaning this is where spiritual peace and purpose for our lives is to be found. Jesus says that to abide in him is not an onerous chore, rather he says John 15:5 – “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” So many people today are seeking this kind of abundance in their lives but not finding it Come unto me Jesus says because my burden is light you will find rest for your souls.

We know what these fruits are, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness gentleness self control. These all the things which we as individuals and our world so badly needs. They are the outpourings of a life which is lived following the teachings of Jesus. Following his call to love one another, and to show that love by the way that we treat one another and care for others. All of us have habits, dispositions, obsessions, memories, thoughts, behaviour, which need to be pruned and cut back so that we can grow better and our lives become more fruitful. But in the thousands of little choices we make each day. If we abide in the vine, we will become fruitful We know that Jesus commanded his disciples on the night in which he gave them this instruction to continue to meet together to take the bread and wine and he said that those who eat his flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. As we are obedient to our Lord’s command and share in this perfect sacrifice this morning, may God draw us ever closer to abide in his love. Charles Royden

Meditation

Christ, whom we meet in bread and wine, in body broken and love outpoured, fill us with your compassion that we may hear the cries of the poor and challenge the satisfaction of the rich. Engender in us a thirst for justice that our longings may turn to action and our actions lead to transformation. And nourish us with a vision of a world made whole that we may reach out to friend and stranger and work together to make all things new. Amen. Annabel Shilson-Thomas

Hymns

• O worship the King, all glorious above
• He is Lord Tune Hanover
• Thy ceaseless unexhausted love Tune University
• Come Holy Ghost our hearts inspire Tune Veni Creator
• Crown him with many crowns Tune Diademata

Prayers for Sunday and the week ahead

Lord Jesus, it is better to light one candle than to give up hope and curse the darkness. It is better to save one stranger from deportation and reunite one separated family, than it is to say it is not our problem and we can’t do much to help. It is better to join hands in one work of love than to sit on our hands and feel powerless. Lord, help us to love you in the stranger and the refugee. Help us to love ourselves enough to believe that we can change things for the better. Help us to love as you have loved us. Amen. Christian Aid

I saw a child today, Lord, who will not die tonight, harried into hunger’s grave. He was bright and full of life because his father has a job and he has food and water, but somewhere, everywhere, ten thousand life-lamps will go out and not be lit again tomorrow. Lord, teach me my sin. Amen. An African Christian prayer Christian Aid Prayers for the drought in east Africa /05.06

We come before you Lord needing the love you alone can provide, and knowing that within you and by you and through you all that we need can be found. Pour out upon us today your grace and mercy - make your Spirit move strongly within us - that in our hearts their may be an abundance of your holy love and in our minds the fullness of your sacred word. Abide in us and with us and help us to abide in you as we proclaim your glory and seek your strength - both now, and indeed forevermore. Amen.

Additional Material

Commentary

The encounter between the Ethiopian traveller and Philip recounted in the reading from Acts, is a wonderful example of the collision of two cultures. Philip, a follower of the Lord Jesus from a Jewish background, met up with a high ranking financial advisor to the queen of the Ethiopians. Philip was just embarking upon what would be an exciting life of evangelism and travel, and this meeting, apparently a chance, one would kick-start him on his life’s work. In fact the life-changing meeting was ordained by God, as we are told that an angel decided the direction that Philip’s journey would take.

We have always tended to read the meeting from the perspective of what the Ethiopian learnt from Philip. Of course it was profoundly valuable for the Ethiopian, since it converted him to Christianity. But we can see that Philip too was changed by the stranger. Philip was challenged by the directness of the questions fired at him, and was forced to address deep questions about the faith. He might also have been thrown by the spontaneity and enthusiasm of the Ethiopian “here is water, why shouldn’t I been baptised here and now?”

The encounter reminds us of the experiences of the wonderful Missionary women and men who have gone out across the world to spread the name of Jesus. When they get home, they are frequently scathing of the legalistic and solemn approach to faith here. What matters is the love and faith of Jesus’ followers, not their ability to stick to traditions and formulas. As the Ethiopian challenged Philip, we must allow ourselves to be challenged by the people we encounter, perhaps children or those without faith, those who make us reassess the way that we conduct our mission and worship. Sometimes we must ask “why do we do this”, does this really advance the Kingdom or is it a rut that we have fallen into! Revd Dr Joan Crossley

Meditation

As followers of Jesus we live in a relationship of love which we seek to share with others. This sharing of love is God's mission - our calling is to work in partnerships, based on trust and respect, offering mutual support. The nineteenth century idea that we should encourage people from other cultures to be just like us, the British, have now gone. The paternalistic model of mission abroad and at home has been replaced by one more mindful of the traditions of other societies and respectful of what is valuable within them. We now recognise that in giving to and interacting with mission partners, we are also fortunate recipients. St. Paul wrote to the Church in Rome: "I long to see you that I may impart some spiritual gift to make you strong - that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith." (Romans 1:11-12). So it is with the worldwide Church today - we have much to learn from each other and then to share with others.

Commentary

Live obediently and live in prayer’

How do we remain close to Christ as he calls us to do in the reading today? How do we remain or stay in union with Him? This is a question which many people often ask? We are told that it is love which unites the believer to Christ, as a branch is grafted to the vine. Often when people speak about their faith they complain they feel far from the love of God. If by love we mean the emotion which is often spoken of as 'being in love' then this is perhaps not surprising. However what John means by abiding in the love of Jesus is shown in verse 10
"If you obey my commands you will remain in my love"

It might seem disappointing to be told that the love of Christ is about obedience, but the two go very closely together. The effect of Christ's love is obedience from the believer. The example of this is found in verse 10 in the relationship which Jesus had with God the Father, "even as I have kept my Father's commandments"

Jesus remained in God's love by keeping the commandments and if this is how Jesus remained close to God - then this is how we must also seek to draw close to God. This may all seem very mundane, but it is also reassuring. The love of God is continuous even when we feel that we are far from God. If we remain obedient then we will enjoy God’s love, it is not subject to the vagaries of life. So it was that Paul would have known the love of God when he was shipwrecked, Peter when he was imprisoned, Stephen when he was stoned to death. They all had something which was capable of carrying them through not just the emotional up's and downs of life but facing death itself, so that their faith was not tossed to and fro like a leaf on a pond. They had a faith which was built upon the rock of their obedience to God.

Likewise, the difference between the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand was obedience. Both men heard the word. This is not a parable about the believer and the unbeliever- both build houses. The difference is obedience. The wise man is obedient and so his faith works. The fool is not obedient. Our love is synonymous with obedience and if we are obedient, then we will begin to know the presence of God ever more deeply in our lives.

Surely is this not true of any human relationship? Is our love not shown in commitment irrespective of all else? Even when we think we feel more strongly for another we know that love does not follow such feelings. Instead we are obedient to the promise we have made and the commitment which has been promised.

Prayer is also important in this. Jesus says
‘If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.’
Jesus is saying that prayer is not asking God for things for ourselves. It is about being in fellowship with Christ and able to discern His will so that our will becomes one with the will of God. Charles Royden 

Prayers for Sunday and the week ahead

We pray, mighty God, for those who struggle that their life’s flickering flame may not be snuffed out. We pray for the poor and deprived, for those exploited by the powerful and greedy and for a more human sharing of the plenty you have given your world. Amen

Grant us, O Lord, the royalty of inward happiness; and the serenity which comes from living close to thee. Daily renew in us the sense of joy, and let the eternal Spirit dwell in our souls and bodies, filling every corner of our hearts with light and gladness, so that, bearing about with us the infection of a good courage we may be diffusers of life and meet all that comes, of good or evil, even death itself, with gallant and high hearted happiness, giving these thanks always for all things. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Jesus our healer, we place into your gentle hands those who are sick. Ease their pain and heal the damage done to them in body, mind or spirit. Be present to them through the support of friends and in their care of doctors and nurses, and fill them with the warmth of your love now and always. Amen

Eternal God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life: grant us to walk in his way, to rejoice in his truth and to share his risen life; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Loving and eternal God, through the resurrection of your Son, help us to face the future with courage and assurance, knowing that nothing in life or death can ever part us from your love for us in Jesus Christ our Saviour; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.