With God
With #1
May 5, 2019
Commonwealth Bridge Worship
John 15:1–8
Daniels Run Elementary School, Fairfax, VA
We are doing a new sermon series called “With.” Last Sunday, I talked about how I believe that the word “with” is the most important word in our Christian faith. And then I laid out five different questions asking what it means to “be with.”
Today, I want to go over the first question, which is:
What does it mean to be with God?
A simple way to understand what it means to be with God is by looking at prayer. Everything about prayer has to do with being with God.
In his book Beginning Prayer, author John Killinger explains what prayer is.
Prayer is not something we engage in because we wish to achieve anything. Prayer is communion with God. It is a matter of making connections with the One who stands at the center of all life and joy, and of learning to live with those connections all the time. That’s all it is. Nothing more, nothing less.
Prayer is … simply being with God.
So being with God is praying, and praying is being with God. And as Killinger explains, the purpose of prayer is to learn to be with God all the time, like how our phones are always connected to data. In this light, the famous scripture verse, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17) sounds like a whole new phrase. It doesn’t mean to verbally pray to God without ceasing. Instead, pray without ceasing means for us to always find those connections with God in our daily life.
In today’s scripture, Jesus calls himself the true vine and we are the branches. The scripture highlights the need for us to always be connected to the vine, or in Jesus’ words, always abiding in the vine. “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Or you may be familiar with a different translation, “Remain in me as I also remain in you” (NIV). This is a call to stay connected, patiently remain attached, and let the lifegiving source circulate within you.
When the branches are connected to the vine, with the provisions from the gardener and mother nature, they will bear fruits. It is natural but not always automatic. If you’ve tried gardening in any shape or form, you know what I am talking about. For branches to bear fruits, what is required is a lot of care and provision. In our case, for us to bear love, we need encouragement, instruction, and directions. This is why we need the word, the teachings of Jesus.
Again, the outcome of our constant connection to God is to bear fruits. Here, fruits could be two different things. Either it signifies love or the acts of love; or it may also signify the act of bringing others into this relationship with Christ.[1] These two things are not mutually exclusive, however; our love is what enables us to bring others into the relationship with Christ. When we truly love someone, we want to share with that someone what is most important to us. If it is done without love, it is simply a marketing ploy for business growth.
So, what does it mean to be with God? It means to stay connected with the true vine, the life-giving source, the Son Jesus Christ. This is our unceasing prayer. And the outcome of this prayer is fruit, is love.
So then, what does this prayer look like? How do we pray in a way that we are constantly connected with God?
John Killinger writes on how we should pray:
All you have to do is to become aware of the fellowship, to pay attention to it the way you would if you were with an ordinary friend.
Here, I like the word “friend” a lot. I have heard some feedback that the word “friend” is cheesy, but I think this idea of friendship is something that needs to be reclaimed within our lives.
Yesterday, I had the honor of giving a toast at my friend’s wedding reception. This is my second time doing it, and it’s quite funny how these two friends who gave me this honor were the ones whom I relied on the most when I was going through a tough time.
I met both friends as a freshman in college. Coming from out-of-state, all of us found ourselves in Georgia, far away from home. This is also the year where I seriously injured my knee, tearing my knee ligaments. I spent the latter half of my fall semester taking pain killers daily and being on wheelchairs and crutches simultaneously. And I spent the entire spring semester going through rehab pretty much every day.
And these two friends were pretty much my caregivers; my Jarvis and my Aflred. 😊 One friend, who was also my roommate, took care of the basic necessities of my life. He delivered me food, helped me so I could take showers without getting my scars infected, pushed me in a wheelchair, woke me up for classes when I was drowsy with painkillers, and much more. The other friend helped me in a way so that I could live a life a little. He took me to church on Sundays, pushed me to go to various hangouts and social gatherings on weekends, and found ways to go off-campus to get some real foods together.
Looking back, I was such a liability, a burden, and a hassle for these two. Yet, at the same time, I wonder how I would’ve survived that freshmen year without their presence. I was a kid living away from my parents for the first time, in a state where I didn’t know anyone, not able to do the thing I loved the most — which was playing sports, and not able to do anything alone. Yet, I had these two with me. And I’ve found a genuine solace in their friendship. We were just being friends as we knew it: being there for one another, being attentive to one another, being patient with one another, enjoying one another’s presence, looking to have fun together, and not expecting anything back in return. Looking back, it was friendship in its purest form.
I feel like it’s so hard to find that kind of friendship as a grown-up. Relationships, in general, seem to be transactional. It must meet each other’s needs in a fair way. If one gives, then the other is anxious to give something back. If one always receives but never gives back, then the other simply deem that relationship as “not worth my time.” People reduce one another to objects; and friendships are used as means to gain something, achieve something, or experience something It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there; we are always wary of another’s ulterior motive.
Perhaps, this is the reason why even as we grow older, our closest friends are still those whom we met when we were innocent and pure; when the purpose of friendship was as simple as being with one another; when all we cared about was how to spend more time together. Nothing more, nothing less.
In today’s scripture, Jesus calls those who bear fruit as his disciples. And in the following pericope, verse 15, Jesus calls his disciples friends:
but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
The way Jesus understood friendship was also pure. Friends don’t hide things from one another. Everything is made available, just as every resource from the vine is made available for its branches.
If praying is being with God through Jesus, then such a prayer looks a lot like us being with a friend. Friends are there for one another; simply showing up. It doesn’t require any agenda, any verbal communication. We simply acknowledge and recognize each other’s presence.
Prayer is us simply showing up and acknowledging God’s presence and recognizing that God is a God and we are not. Such an acknowledgment and recognition looks a lot like what Brother Lawrence describes in his book, The Practice of the Presence of God:
[God] does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.
Friends are attentive to one another. Imagine yourself listening to your friend who is going through a crisis. It requires not only our attention but also our patience. It requires us to embrace ambiguity and to ask the right questions. It requires of us to enter our friend’s story with compassion. It’s a lot like reading a poem or a parable. It doesn’t do justice when we just comprehend what’s on the surface; it’s more like entering a mystery and exploring its depths.
Prayer is us being attentive to the word of God, that is the Bible. Last weekend, a young man terrorized a synagogue in California, and later we found out that his Christian faith was part of his motive that intertwined with anti-Semitism and white nationalism. This topic in and of itself requires a lot of deconstruction and cultural analysis; but what I want to point out without too much oversimplifying is that this is a kind of outcome that occurs when the Bible is read without attentiveness and patience; and when the Bible is utilized as a tool rather than received as a mystery. The Bible is a lot like a poem and a parable, but much more. It requires of us to patiently dig deeper, while embracing its ambiguity, with our questions and compassion. What the Bible does is direct us to God who is a mystery and not a tool. And prayer is entering a mystery and not finding mechanisms for gaining what we want.
Friends enjoy one another’s presence. And look to have fun together. The best example of this is friends loitering at a parking lot, trying to think of what to do next. This does not occur to them as a waste of time because they enjoy each other’s presence. Enjoying one another’s presence is the opposite of using one another. As St. Augustine puts it, “For to enjoy a thing is to rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake.” We enjoy one another for who they are; rather than using one another to enjoy the outcome we desire. In other words, we enjoy one another as human beings; rather than as objects that would bring us to our desired outcomes.
Prayer is knowing that God also enjoys me for who I am and us enjoying God for who God is. Samuel Wells writes,
God is present to me; attentive to me; sees the mystery of me; delights in me; participates with me; and is in partnership with me. This is what it means for God to enjoy me.
Prayer is our way to recognize this truth; that we are God’s children whom God enjoys. And when we recognize this truth, we do the same with God. We are present to God; attentive to God; see the mystery of God; delight in God; participate with God; and is in partnership with God. Rather than to use God as an object, we enjoy God as our Father, as our Friend, and as our Advocate.
What we proclaim during Communion is that we are one with Christ. This is similar to how the vine and its branches are constituted as one tree. And the natural outcome when branches remain with the vine is bearing fruits, that is bearing love.
When we fail to recognize that we are the branches and Christ is the vine, that’s when we disconnect ourselves from the One who stands at the center of all life and joy. We cannot love unless we abide in the vine.
Prayer is us recognizing this truth, being nourished by the word, and enjoying life together as one. Prayer is not a program, but a state of being. Prayer is what it means for us to be with God. Let us pray.
[1] Bill Loader
