Genesis 28, Psalm 98, & John 15:9-17 NRSV
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What grounds you?
Maybe I should first ask what it means to be grounded…Stable, calm, sensible
When an airplane is grounded, it’s not flying off into the sky. When a kid is grounded, they’re not flying off to do things with their friends. When electricity is grounded, it’s connected to a stabilizing wire, sometimes literally connected to the ground, the earth.
For people of faith, it’s the peace that comes from being connected to the awareness of a higher power, a divine presence, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, God.
One of the ways this happens for me is through songs. I learned a new one a few weeks ago:
· The ground below me is how you hold me.1
Sometimes, I go back to a Vineyard song from twenty years ago:
· I won’t be afraid of the future, or carry the weight of the past, I’ll be still and know that you are God. Your love will always last.2
These songs help me remember that God is always here…wherever here is.
Sometimes that’s easy to remember and hold onto. Sometimes it’s not.
What helps you know that God is here?
3
Early in the Bible God promises to be with us. In Genesis 28, Jacob is in the wilderness on the way to his uncle’s place. He’s on the run from his brother Esau whom he tricked. Esau was the first born, but Jacob impersonated Esau to their blind father Isaac and got Isaac to give Jacob the first-born’s blessing. Esau was livid.
Out in the wilderness, Jacob literally gets grounded – he lays down on the ground to sleep, using a rock for a pillow. Sleep is an important way to get grounded. We see Elijah sleeping to recover from running away from Ahab and Jezebel. Jesus sleeps. Abraham sleeps.
While Jacob is sleeping, he has an amazing dream:
“…he dreamed that there was a stairway reaching from Earth to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, “…Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you …” (Genesis 28:12-13, 15)
Hearing God say in the dream that God will never leave him, Jacob is comforted and says, “Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16)
Then Jacob took the stone he’d used as a pillow and set it up like a pillar, anointed it with oil, and called that place Bethel which means “house of God.” Jacob marks the place and the event to help himself remember and know that God is here.
The stone was a way of remembering that God is here…wherever, whenever “here” is.
Another way we remember God’s presence is through songs.
4 Psalm 98 says “O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things.”
How many of you think that this is a controversial statement? We might not think it is, especially since the Bible talks about singing in 400 different verses and about 50 of those are direct commands to sing. The Bible says nine times to sing a new song.
If you’ve been involved in a church in which some people want to sing newer songs and others want to sing the older songs, you probably also know that discussions about what to sing can become quite contentious and emotional. Here at UPC we sing old songs and new songs in what we call “blended” worship, but there are those who want more of the older songs, and those who want more of the newer songs.
· Can an old song be a new song? What makes it new?
o New context? Singing that song in a new time or place.
o New setting/harmonization/instrumentation? Singing that song in a new way.
o New response to God’s presence and work? Being reminded of a song because the lyrics take on new meaning in a new situation.
There are new songs being written all the time. There are so many it’s impossible to keep up with them all.
One reason for that is that God is always doing new things.
· Making us new through the renewing of our hearts and minds.
· Breaking through boundaries we thought were impossible to break.
· Redeeming situations that seemed impossible to redeem.
What sorts of new things is God doing in your life? What new songs are you singing? What old songs are you singing in a new way?
In our singing, God is here.
5
Jesus himself was sort of a new song, a sign that God is here. One of our names for Jesus is Emmanuel, which means God with us.
In our scripture reading for today from John 15, Jesus is teaching the disciples on the night he was arrested. He’s preparing them to carry on without him. In this part of his teaching, Jesus uses the analogy of a grapevine with many branches.
What happens to a branch that gets broken off or disconnected? It dies. So Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in me. Abide in my love. Apart from me, you can do nothing.
Some people have interpreted that in a legalistic way to mean that only Christians can do good things. But I’m sure we all know people who aren’t Christians who do good things. Knowing how much Jesus reached out to people who were not perfect at keeping the law, it wouldn’t make sense to think that Jesus is telling us to abide in the law. He says abide in my love.
In the nine verses we read from John 15, Jesus uses the word “love” nine times. In verse 10 Jesus says, ”If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
Wait a minute. Isn’t God’s love unconditional? Yes it is. So why is this statement conditional? “If you keep my commandments…”? Because it’s about abiding in love. That’s the commandment. God’s love is always there, but not always what drives our actions.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Wait just another minute. “…as I have loved you”? Jesus has just washed their feet, and he has welcomed and accepted them, even though they were imperfect, and thickheaded. Judas had already betrayed Jesus, and soon Peter would too. They would all desert Jesus except John, and still Jesus loved them. But the real kicker is that Jesus was about to die.
The disciples didn’t understand yet, especially when Jesus next says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus is talking about serious sacrificial love that he himself is about to demonstrate.
The apostle Paul, in his description of love, makes a similar point:
“If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:3)
Love is the key. Where there is love, there is God. One way we know God is here (wherever here is) is that there are loving words and actions happening.
Then Jesus says:
I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
Joy is another of the ways that we can know that God is here.
Writer and speaker Brennan Manning told the story of a pastor who went to a monastery for a week of solace and renewal. Walking the grounds one afternoon he saw a monk sobbing under a tree. Intrigued, he approached the monk and noticed that the tears seemed to come from a place of joy. Filled with holy desire, he asked the monk how he also might develop such a profound love for God. “These tears are not shed out of a man’s love for God,” responded the monk, “Rather, these tears I shed because I am awestruck with God’s love for me. You see my friend, my Father is very, very fond of me.”6
Tears and a sense of awe are more ways we can know that God is here.
When God is at work, we might feel drawn to seek answers to problems, to find ways to do things better, to help people who are being ignored or abused or in trouble. We might be asking, “What do we do now?”7 In those kinds of moments, we can become aware that God is here.
When we’re in the midst of our daily lives, whatever those daily lives might be, we might feel like we’re alone in the midst of chaos and wonder where God is in all of this. When things aren’t going the way we want them to go, still, God is here.
When we’re sharing our resources, spending time together, helping people, caring about each other’s situations, God is here.
What grounds you? You might answer that differently, but for me it’s the knowledge that no matter what’s happening, whether I can feel it or not, God is here.
Thanks, God.
United Presbyterian Church 