Abiding in Love
A sermon by Revd Katherine Hedderly
Readings: Exodus 12. 1-4, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11. 23-26; John 13. 1-17, 31b-35
Our theme for Lent this year has been Abiding, based on the book by Ben Quash. It has seen us reflect on how we abide with God in our care for others and in our relationships with them, in the physicality of our bodies and minds, by being attentive and making space for God in our everyday actions and behaviours, in our attentive reading of scripture and in our listening to others, in the places we inhabit and how we live in them, including how we abide in the shared spaces of our communities, and with those who are strangers to us, finding ways to belong to one another.
We looked to at what it means to find stability and know God’s presence in exile, a sense of living with God, even when on the move or in places we couldn’t call home, and the paradox of God’s call both to be at home with him but also to be called out of our comfort zones into new things and experiences and places, and even there to know God’s abiding presence.
And as we drew deeper we reflected on the experience of our woundedness and how to abide with our own stories and the stories of others, where our wounds have shaped who we are, making space for that in the ways in which we treat one another and find our home with them. And finally we came to reflect on God’s peace that abides with us always. A peace that overcomes all of the fear and anxiety of our modern world and gives us the vision of abiding with God forever, beyond this life, in the dwelling place of his kingdom. We explored the challenge of having faith and trusting that God will abide with us, as he has before with other people in other times. And we shared with one another our own experiences and stories of being abiders, of finding the source from which our life flows.
It has been a journey of discovery, and obedience and faithful abiding with one another. We have endeavoured, each in our own way, to stay close to Christ and learn from him, about the love with which we are to abide in the world, through his abiding with the Father, the abiding love that is the very nature of God’s being – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – abiding together, the source of all creativity and life.
And so we come to this evening where we learn what it truly means to be an abider in Christ’s love. Here we enter into his actions and words and prayer, which are the source from which our life and the life of the Church flows. They are his gifts to us, the ways in which Jesus stays with us, and is with us now. In that Upper Room at that Last Supper Jesus gives his disciples a way to be with him and with one another that would take them through the horrors of what was to come, as Jesus comes to his final hour and is brutally taken from them to the darkness of betrayal and the brutal suffering and shame of the Cross. Driven by fear the disciples will all fail to stay with him and will desert him. Peter will deny ever having known him. The disciples will show, not their capacity to abide but their compulsion to flee, pulled by forces within and around them.
And yet, what Jesus gives them this night will remain with them, even when they fail to stay with him in the events of his passion and brutal death. These gifts of loving service, simple actions of love, the giving of bread and wine, are expressions of his love and the offering of his very self. They are the defining actions of Jesus’s new way of being with them – they will shape the heart of their community. It’s a new beginning breaking through in amidst a dark and brutal ending.
This new way of ‘abiding’ goes against the social conventions of the day, as Jesus puts himself in the place of the lowliest servant, takes a towel and kneels at his disciples’ feet. Peter is full of bravado and protest. But his and the other disciples inability to understand are not a barrier for Jesus. ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ Jesus does understand. He knows what he is doing. He is showing them, at this, his urgent Hour, the new way in which he will be with them. A precious abiding – the gift of himself.
In Holy Week we are struck by the detail of the events of these last few days of Jesus’s life as they come to life for us. In a little while some members of this community will have their feet washed. We might be one of those people. This action symbolises for us that gentle humble serving Christ who we find kneeling and offering to wash our feet. The intimacy of it is startling. The Son of God, come to meet our needs, to show us how we are to be with one another. This is love in action. Not a powerful love that sways nations and brings down mountains, but a humble serving heart, longing to minister to us, and meet our simple needs and teach us how to meet those needs in others, so that we can become a community that abides for the world.
I wonder, can we allow Jesus to wash our feet? Can you recognise Christ kneeling at your feet, gently ministering to you, feel the water, the towel, the sure hands and generous heart. Can we receive that tender abiding with us? And say, ‘yes Jesus abide with me’. I take down my guard and my bluster and protest that you can’t wash my feet because I’m the one that looks after others, or ‘there are many more deserving than me’, or ‘I’m alright by myself’, or ‘I’m sure you don’t have time for me’, or ‘I’m ashamed of my dirty feet and the way they are bent and crooked and out of shape’, or ‘I feel too vulnerable to put myself into your hands because I don’t know what will happen to me, whether I will be able to bear the touch and gentleness of your love’. And then we hear Jesus’s words to the disciples ‘Later you will understand.’ All we are asked to do is to place ourselves in his hands and trust his loving purposes for our lives. The disciples did not know what was to happen and neither do we.
This is Jesus who will allow himself to be put into the hands of others, in complete vulnerability, and will suffer and die, for the sake of those whom he calls his friends. This is why he wants to show his disciples and allow them to experience, as that death looms, this kind of abiding. Because in the face of the abuse he will receive, this is the kind of love and abiding, that through his disciples, and we trust in some way also through us, will change the world. In this kind of loving service he will be present with us.
Like the disciples we are torn between our desire to stay and abide and our compulsion to flee, to say ‘I don’t know him, it’s nothing to do with me’, to wash our hands of it and get away from this horrible mess. And yet we are called back, to stay…to be with him, to sit in the darkness of this church later this evening and watch and pray. Because a new way of abiding is being given to us.
In the last meal Jesus has with his disciples he takes bread and he breaks it and says this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me’. He takes wine and says ‘this is my blood, drink this in remembrance of me’. In this final Passover meal he shares with his disciples Jesus shows then that he is the new lamb come to redeem God’s people. It is a sign that it is only through his brokenness that our true abiding with God is possible. Through this love all barriers are broken down, and all are invited.
Soon after this meal the disciples are scattered and the abiding community is broken, but these actions will be the way in which they will be re-membered, brought to abide together, again and again. These actions look forward to the events of Emmaus when Jesus breaks bread and the disciples recognise him, and again each time we abide with one another around the Lord’s Table. Then we are reformed as his abiding community, a place where his love and presence are known.
As Jesus breaks bread and gives it to his disciples and offers them wine, God says to us, even though I know you will flee, I will never flee from you, even in your darkest hour I will be with you. I will abide with you forever. All the brokenness of the world cannot take away my abiding with you.
I will give you a new way to live in my love, that is generous, and merciful and full of love. Allow me to make you part of my abiding community. And the sign that you are re-membered and abide in my love is your love for one another.
In broken bread and wine outpoured, in simple acts of love and serve ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’
And so in the actions of tonight we are invited to stay and abide, and learn how to love…and be those in whose fellowship Christ comes to abide forever.
God’s gift of love to a broken world.
