The most interesting thing happened this past week.  While reading Jesus’ words I discovered something I’d never quite seen before in this particular text and it is going to alter the way I live.  That may sound strange coming from your pastor.  Some, I suppose, think that preaching involves hopscotching from one great spiritual discovery to another every single week.  It is true that writing sermons involves learning on the part of the preacher.  At least it should.  But, at the end of the day, whether I learn or grow or not, I have to get up here and say words.  Sometimes I’m sharing something that has really inspired me.  Other times, well . . ..  I’m always praying that God will give both shape and purpose to what I’m writing for you whether it’s particularly inspiring to me or not.  But, this time, in simply reading the scripture, I discovered something I’d never quite seen before. 

Not only has it given this whole week new meaning, it holds promise for altering the way I live and lead.  Jesus said, “‘I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.’”  This is what those words have said to me, as never before.  Jesus is not so much interested in controlling us as he is empowering us.  That is not only his gift, it is also his calling. 

Let’s start with the gift.  This text has given new meaning to the words of a certain song we learn in childhood and never grow tired of hearing no matter how old we get, “Jesus Loves Me.”  You remember the words?  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to him belong.  We are weak, but he is strong.”  We are weak, aren’t we?  So miserably weak.  He is so wonderfully strong.  And, according to this text, God’s love does not stand at a distance only offering us his pity.  In his love, he comes to empower us to become all that he created us to be. 

This vine and branches text is a most beautiful image of the gospel.  When we sinned against him, God could have easily solved the problem by destroying us.  Instead, when we sinned, (GET THIS!) he moved to empower us.  When we hear the gospel referred to as a mystery, that’s one reason why.  Nothing about grace makes human sense, a grace that cares to empower those who sought to destroy it. 

In this mindless killing going on in the Middle East, what would happen if every time the Palestinians detonated a human bomb in one of their markets, the Israelis moved into the refugee camps, not to bulldoze them, but to improve them?  Naďve?  Maybe.  The question stands.  For one thing, if they don’t figure out another way of solving their problems, they are likely to take themselves down history’s drain and us with them if we are not all careful.  But, what if they moved to empower rather than bulldoze.  How would that change our world?  It is so bizarre that in the very place all this killing is going on was born the very same Jesus who, two thousand years ago, said, “‘You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.  You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . (Matthew 5:38-45).’” 

Whether or not the Israelis and Palestinians ever surrender themselves to a higher purpose than what they are achieving now remains to be seen.  Bringing if from global to local, we ought to ask ourselves whether we will or not in our personal relationships as well.  But, we can all thank God that, when we moved to kill his son, God moved in, not to bulldoze but to bless us, to empower us.  This is the gift of God imaged for us in the vine and branches.  We sin, he offers us forgiveness.  We sin, he offers peace.  We sin, he offers patience.  We sin, he offers kindness in return.  And, his gift is also his calling on our lives. 

Now, God comes to live in us in the person of his Holy Spirit and empower us to give to this world what he has given us.  When we are personally and intimately related to Jesus, through us will flow the fruit that relationship bears, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).”  The fruit about which Jesus is so impassioned is nothing less than the very character of God reproduced in us and through us to and for the world around us.  Here is the promise.  Not only that God loves us but that, if we are in relationship with him, he will reproduce his character through us.  The question is, how does that happen?

In my never-ending search for the worst marquee theology, I found one to add to my list this week, “The best vitamin for a Christian is B-1.”  That hurts saying it more than it just reading it.  Even for a connoisseur of puns, that’s a stretch.  It rates right up there with, “Seven days without prayer makes one weak.”  Which is a close cousin to, ““Pray like it all depends on God.  Work like it all depends on you.”  I’ve never liked that sentiment.  There’s something that just doesn’t seem to ring true about it.  It sounds like we’re asked to believe that the only way the work of God is accomplished in this world is if we are able to keep total dependence on God and total dependence on self in balance.  If that’s possible, all I know is that I’ve never been able to do it very well.  Whenever I walk that risky high wire of spiritual debate about how much of this is up to God and how much is up to me I always fall off, humpty-dumpty-like, onto the side of self-reliance. 

The specific word Jesus used is “abide.”  So, it does sound like there is something we are supposed to do in order to make this fruit happen.  If so, where’s the checklist?  I don’t see it.  Jesus said “abide” and then, like cherries on a tree in mid-summer, just left it hanging there.  Abide?  What does that mean?  Jesus even turned the heat up a little when he said that, failing to abide results in failure to produce.  Failure to produce results in removal from the vine.  All of a sudden I’m hearing holy hedge trimmers in the distance.  Is God coming to cut me off?  Is that what God does?  Is he going to cut me off?  What if I haven’t produced?

Just about the time I lean more toward what I have to do to get it right, I hear Jesus’ words again, “‘Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.’” In so very many ways, that cuts against the grain of all I’ve ever been taught.  All the models of leadership and work have been models of control.  And, here Jesus is talking about abiding.  Abide.  That word sounds so peaceful.  It draws me in.  Like sitting on the beach in the summer, just being there.  It makes me wonder if I’ve been missing something.

In the middle of my wondering I read some words that Julie Pennington-Russell, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, said to her congregation not one year ago.  At the very same time she was challenging her church to think about rethinking they way they did ministry and service, she asked them, “Are you tired?  Are you tired, even in your worship and service of God?  God doesn’t mean it to be that way.  Christ didn’t start up the church . . . in order to burn his people out.  Christ said, ‘I’ve come so that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”  She went on to say, “I’m not talking about our doing it BETTER, or trying HARDER . . . I’m calling us to SURRENDER.  Jesus never said, “Try harder.”  Jesus said, “Surrender more.”  (Julie Pennington Russell, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, Calvary Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, June 3, 2001).

That’s it.  That’s not only what Jesus meant by “abiding,” that’s our only hope of not burning out and being bitter and cynical and angry after all these years of, supposedly, following the Jesus who said, “‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28, NIV).’”  That’s what Jesus calls us to.  He didn’t call us to win.  He didn’t call us to achieve.  He didn’t call us to beat someone else out or control our lives or this church into being what we want it to be.  In time, good things will come from our work and our achievements, but only if they are rooted first in our total, absolute surrender to the peaceful rest of Jesus.  I can do that.  I think. 

Paul later echoed all of this when he called us to “be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).”  Perhaps it is possible to translate that word, “filled,” with language more titled toward control.  But, think about it.  “Filled” has to do with something happening from the inside out, not something that shapes and forces us from the outside, in. 

The Holy Spirit is not a moral straightjacket.  He is not a heavenly heavy weight trying to wrestle us into submission against our will.  He is the loving God of eternity wooing us into his rest.  Wooing us to give ourselves a break by letting God give us his life.  And, the only way that happens is when we surrender – our secret sins, our addictions, our thought lives that would make XXX film producers blush, our relationships that are so sick everyone is getting hurt, our ideas about how church ought to be and how everyone else in church ought to be.  If that’s what surrender meant, would we be willing to do that?  If not, then we better be willing to be burned out like an old branch, cut off from the vine, with nothing to show for all it had hoped to be. 

It’s one thing to pray, “God, use me.”  I’m coming to discover that God isn’t interested in using us.  A quarterback uses a football.  A hockey player uses a puck.  God empowers people, loves people, moves into their lives to bear their sufferings and sorrows, hopes and dreams, to create and re-create and re-create and again.  He only wishes to love us and for us to surrender ourselves to that love, and through its power to become all he created us to be.

I heard the story once of a mother who gave birth to a baby whose head was terribly misshapen.  With a wife who is a neo-natal intensive care nurse, I’ve heard more stories than I care to recall of parents who face heartbreaking decisions at the birth of babies with insurmountable medical problems.  In this case, the birth had taken place during the Depression, in an East Texas logging camp far from any kind of sophisticated medical care.  The baby’s head was so misshapen that the mother’s sister encouraged her to just let the baby die.  But, for some reason, the mother couldn’t resign herself to that.  She not only saw a child she loved as he was, but a child she could love into his full potential. 

In time, his head gained its normal shape and he grew into a very handsome young man.  He served his country in World War II as a very young Navy Corpsman attached to the Marine Corps.  After the war, he enrolled in Baylor University and then transferred to the University of Houston where he graduated with a degree in petroleum engineering.  Before he graduated, he married a beautiful young woman who had been the first homecoming queen in her high school’s history, in 1949.  In that marriage, he fathered three children of his own, one of whom is your pastor. 

Aside from all the times in my adolescent years I was willing to argue that my father’s brain had somehow been altered by the misshapen experience, I have come to appreciate the fact that none of us would be here, not one of us, had someone else not been willing to love us as we were and, through that love, empower us into reaching our full potential and more, and even more beyond that.  And, that someone is Jesus.  

No matter how misshapen your life may be, Jesus loves you.  Jesus loves you.   Jesus loves you.  And, if you will only surrender yourself to his love, Jesus will empower you for a life that never could have been otherwise.

Sing with me, will you?  I can’t do this alone.  I don’t do solos well.  Sing with me, “Jesus loves me, this I know.  For the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.”