Hello my friends,
This is Mark Ludman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks.
Welcome to another audio in our Invitations of Jesus series.
As we begin,
As always,
I just invite you to allow yourself to settle into this moment.
There's nowhere else you need to be.
Just simply allow yourself to become fully present.
Notice your breathing.
Notice the sounds around you.
Notice the sensations in your body and let them be exactly as they are.
As you become aware of yourself,
Just become aware also of the quiet presence of God.
A God who is already here.
The God in whom Saint Paul tells us we live and move and have our being.
As we continue through this journey of the invitations of Jesus.
We arrive at what might be the heart of all of them.
Every invitation we've heard so far has been leading here.
Come and see.
Follow me.
Do not be afraid.
Come away and rest.
Come to me.
Learn from me.
Each of these opens to today's invitation.
Remain in me.
So listen now to these words from the Gospel according to John chapter 15 verses 5 and verse 9.
Jesus said.
I am the vine.
And you are the branches.
Those who remain in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me,
You can do nothing.
As God has loved me.
So I have loved you.
Remain.
In my life.
If you look carefully,
You'll see that there's a noticeable shift.
In this invitation.
Earlier Jesus invites us to come,
To follow,
To learn.
But now he invites us to remain.
So the movement seems to be.
.
.
From beginning the journey.
To living.
The journey.
And remaining.
Or abiding.
As it's often translated,
Is one of the great themes of John's gospel.
Some translations also might use the word stay.
All of the words remain,
Abide,
Stay point towards the same reality.
To make our home.
In Christ and to allow Christ to make their home.
In us.
And I think this is one of the deepest invitations of the Christian life.
Because our hearts are rarely still.
We drift all the time,
Our attention constantly pulled in.
In a hundred different directions.
The next responsibility,
The next worry,
The next notification,
The next disappointment.
Without noticing.
We begin living from fragmentation rather than from the presence that's with us.
So Jesus offers another way,
Remain.
Notice that Jesus chooses the image of a vine and its branches.
I know we've talked about this before,
But it's worth thinking about it again.
It's a living image.
It's organic.
It's quiet.
It's patient.
A branch doesn't produce grapes through determination.
It bears fruit simply because it remains connected to the vine and life flows naturally from the vine through the branch and fruit is simply a consequence of that connection.
Now this.
.
.
Challenges quite significantly much of the way that we approach life and,
As a result,
The way we approach spirituality.
We often become preoccupied with producing fruit.
Becoming.
More loving,
Becoming more patient.
More generous,
More peaceful.
And their beautiful desires.
The problem there is that becoming.
Because there's an element there that says we're trying to force things along.
But Jesus points us towards something else.
Instead of asking,
How do I produce more fruit,
He invites us to ask,
How deeply am I remaining connected to the source of life?
So I can produce the fruit that comes from that.
Fruit grows where life is flowing.
And look,
This is a difficult truth for many of us to grasp because the culture around us teaches that everything depends on our effort.
That if we work harder,
Try harder,
Organise ourselves better.
Will become the people that we want to be.
Maybe even the people that God wants us to be.
There is truth in disciplined effort.
The Christian traditions always valued spiritual practice,
Prayer,
Silence,
Scripture,
Service,
Community.
They're not ways of earning.
God's love,
Their ways of remaining open.
To the life of God,
And that's a really significant thing.
Difference that matters a lot.
One is forcing ourselves and pushing things along,
The other.
.
.
Is falling back.
And consenting.
And there's a phrase in this passage that's shaped Christian spirituality for centuries,
Remain in my love.
Now it's really easy to read that as remain worthy of my love or earn my love or convince me to love you.
Remain in My Love takes all of that impetus away.
Love is already being given here.
The Invitation.
Is simply to live consciously within that love.
And this is one of the beautiful discoveries of the contemplative tradition.
Prayer doesn't persuade God to become present.
But it's the tool that awakens us to the love in which we already live and move and have our being.
The mystics often describe this awakening as coming home.
And I love that,
Particularly if we're thinking about what it means to abide.
To come home.
We spend a lot of our lives searching outside ourselves for what's being offered by God and God's presence all along.
It's not hidden anywhere.
It's just that our attention has been diverted to other things.
And so to remain in Christ is literally to return home again.
And again,
When we become distracted.
We return when we become anxious.
We return when we fail.
We return when we rejoice.
And we return.
Remaining isn't about getting everything perfect.
It's simply about returning again and again.
And again.
And that's why the spiritual life is filled with so many new beginnings.
Because every return is an act of abiding.
There's also some words here that we can find a bit confronting.
Apart from me,
You can do nothing.
And at first.
.
.
Those words sound pretty severe.
Maybe they're just a description of reality.
A branch separated from the vine can't continue living.
Likewise,
We were created for communion with God,
And when we live disconnected from that source,
Our souls become dry.
God hasn't abandoned us at all,
But we've forgotten where life is found.
So it's not a guilt trip that Jesus is doing here.
He's reminding us of that importance of reconnection.
Come home,
Remain and receive life again.
One of the beautiful paradoxes of the spiritual life is that the more we deeply remain in Christ,
The less self-conscious we become.
Our attention shifts.
We become less concerned with managing our spiritual progress.
We don't set out to prove ourselves.
We actually become more available to love.
To be attentive.
We find ourselves more capable of delight.
Fruit appears.
Almost unnoticed sometimes.
Others might even see it before we do,
The patience,
The peace,
The kindness,
The compassion.
The joy,
All these things given,
Growing through the hidden work of grace.
As we remain.
And so that invitation today.
Is not about becoming a bit of branch.
It's just remaining connected to the vine.
To trust that God is already doing in you what only God can do.
So just still yourself for a moment,
Allow your breathing to become your anchor once more.
Slowly but naturally.
Just settle.
And imagine yourself walking through a vineyard in the early morning.
The air is cool,
The light is soft,
Everything's peaceful.
You notice the vines stretching quietly across the landscape.
Branches.
Resting naturally in the vine.
Simply life.
Flowing.
And now imagine Jesus walking beside you.
He gently places his hand upon one of the vines,
Looks at you with kindness and says,
Remain in me.
Hear those words again.
Remain.
In May.
Notice what happens within you.
Can't you hear them?
Maybe there's relief,
Or possibly resistance.
Maybe some sort of longing.
Just notice.
Remind.
In May.
Now imagine placing your whole life into Christ's loving presence,
Your work,
Your relationships,
Your hopes,
Your disappointments,
Your question,
Nothing left outside of his love.
And rest there.
Remain.
And as you rest,
Just quietly pick up a breath prayer,
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
In you and breathing out.
I remain.
And just let that gentle rhythm become your prayer.
In you.
RMA.
And you.
RMA.
Jesus,
You are the true vine,
The source of every good and beautiful thing within us.
Thank you for loving us before we knew how to love you.
Teach us to remain in that love.
When we become distracted.
Bring us back.
When we become anxious,
Draw us home again.
When we begin striving to become worthy of you,
Remind us that we already belong to you through your grace.
May your life flow through us so naturally that love,
Joy,
Peace,
Patience,
Kindness,
Generosity,
Faithfulness,
Gentleness,
And self-control quietly become the fruit of our lives.
May everything we do grow from communion with you.
And may that grace,
Peace,
And love go with us and remain with us today and always.
Amen.
And as you go through your day to day,
Just remind yourself of that one simple word.
Remain.
Or abide.
Or stay.
And whenever you notice yourself becoming hurried or overwhelmed,
Just pause for a single breath and quietly ask,
Am I living from connection today?
Or from this connection.
And then gently return your awareness to the presence of Christ again and again.
This,
Friends,
Is the quiet rhythm.
Of abiding.
And over time you'll discover that the deepest transformation in your life has come.
Not because you had to try harder,
But through remaining more deeply in the love that has always held you.
And so until next time,
May you remain in Christ and may Christ remain in you.
Bye for now.
