Today I offer my final reflection on John 15, using biblical commentator Dale Bruner’s new translation of “stay at home with Jesus” for “abide with me.”
John 15 offers many great promises of “staying at home” (abiding) with Jesus, but today we see there is also a warning.
First, however, I want to remind you that as bad as it feels right now here in the U.S., millions of our African brothers and sisters are facing situations that are far worse. I encourage you to keep them in your prayers.
Gigantic New Locust Swarms Hit East Africa
New waves of locusts are hitting just as the growing season gets underway, threatening millions with hunger and now extending beyond Africa to as far as India
I’ve written before about the worst locust plague in Ethiopia during the past 25 years and in Kenya during the past 70 years. Click here for an excellent updated article with many photos and facts from National Geographic. This second wave will be even most devastating than the first wave last spring.
New swarms can now swell to 70 billion insects—a swarm large enough to blanket New York City more than once—and can destroy 300 million pounds of crops in a single day. Even a more modest gathering of 40 million desert locusts can eat as much in a day as 35,000 people.
The region’s growing season is underway, and as the swarms have grown while the coronavirus complicates mitigation efforts, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates up to 25 million East Africans will suffer from food shortages later this year. Already 13 million go without eating for an entire day or have run out of food altogether.
“We fear for our future because these kinds of swarms will mean we don’t have anything to feed our animals,” a farmer is quoted as saying. “We pray God will clear the locusts for us. It’s as terrifying as COVID-19.”
I, I am the real root of the Matter, you disciples are the branches.
The individual making a home with me (as I am with him or her)–there is the person bearing much fruit!
Because the fact of the matter is this: apart from me you can do absolutely nothing.
If an individual is not making a home with me, he or she is thrown out like a (dead) branch and is withered. They gather such branches and throw them into the fire and that person is burned.”
(John 15:5-6, Bruner translation in his commentary on John’s gospel)
It’s easy to spot when a branch is withered.
- Healthy branches are supple; withered branches are brittle.
- Healthy branches are green with sprouting buds; withered branches are brown and dry.
- Healthy branches evidence fruit and new life; withered branches are declining toward death.
Have you ever felt your relationship with God was withering away?
I certainly have.
Instead of feeling supple and flexible as I face challenges, I feel brittle. Instead of new shoots of insight or inspiration, everything feels dried up inside.
Branches wither because they lack nourishment from their roots. When we neglect to “stay at home” with Jesus who is our Root, we also wither. And if we remain disconnected from our source of life long enough, we wither up completely (and die).
I’m currently re-reading Mere Christianity, and last night’s chapter spoke exactly to this point.
C.S. Lewis says we received our natural life as a gift from our parents, but we must do certain things to stay alive:
“You can lose it by neglect, or you can drive it away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it: but always remember you are not making it, you are only keeping up a life you got from someone else.
In the same way a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it.”
What are these efforts to keep our life with Christ? Very simply, all are about “staying at home”–interacting, listening, sharing our lives. They include reading and studying Scripture, prayer, regular participation is a worshipping community, engaging other believers through fellowship and service, and more.
Lewis goes on to make an important point in his inimitable way:
“As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not. A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself.
In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble–because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.”
Here’s the good news: as long as I know my faith is withering, I’m still alive.
No matter how far I may have walked away from Jesus through conscious choice or slid away through benign neglect, as long as I know my relationship with Jesus needs improving, it’s not too late.
As long as I feel the dryness, the deadness, the lack, the need, the Christ-life inside me can be repaired.
Ironic, isn’t it? Avoiding spiritual death (the dead branch that is thrown on the fire) involves a “kind of voluntary death.” Once again I die to believing I know best for my life, I die to calling my own shots; I instead choose to believe that Jesus knows best for me.
But what of Jesus’ promises of eternal security?
By the time we get to John 15–Jesus’ great “stay at home with me” chapter–we have already heard some of our all-time favorite promises:
“And this is the will of the One Who Sent Me, that I should lose not one single one of all that he has given me.” (John 6:39).
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will ever snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)
As I discuss in my book Paradox Lost: Rediscovering the Mystery of God, many key ideas in Scripture are paradoxical, with biblical evidence promoting logically opposed views. So, we find Jesus’ own words on both sides of the issue of eternal security, just within John’s gospel.
However, my goal is not to solve the paradox, but rather learn to live within the tension the paradox creates.
As the great physicist Neils Bohr said: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.”
- I must take Jesus’ warning to “stay at home” seriously, and therefore act whenever I feel my relationship with him is withering away.
- I must take Jesus’ promise seriously, that, as C.S. Lewis says, the Christ-life in me can always be repaired–no one can snatch me out of his hand.
Or as biblical commentator Dale Bruner says it after wrestling with this paradox:
“Dear Lord, please screw our heads on right and help us want to make our home with you and to be seriously aware of the dangers of not making this home, as you are clearly trying to teach us.”
