October 11, 2026 | Abide in His Love

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in my love.

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.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing.

But I have called you friends.

For all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Please be seated.

Well, it is such a joy to be here today, along with my wife Nancy, as St.

Paul officially installs and institutes Jonathan as your new rector.

It's important actually that a congregation, a people, a community like St.

Paul's mark moments like this.

And that's exactly what we're doing today.

We're marking this moment, this transition of leadership, and we're doing so with a sense of gratitude for the Lord's faithfulness to this congregation, and in gratitude for your commitment to the mission and life of St.

Paul's and the impact that God desires for it to have in this community.

We're very thankful that Jonathan and Rachel and Elizabeth and Charlie and Lucy and Maggie all have left the foreign mission field, that foreign country we call Texas, and they've made their way back to the homeland, to the promised land, to the upstate of South Carolina.

And we give the Lord thanks.

Let me open us with prayer as we open God's word together.

Father, we do thank you for this day, for the joy together with your people to worship you, to hear your word, to come to this table.

Lord, you're so good and your mercy endures forever.

And so we pray, come, Holy Spirit, open this word and make it alive.

Make us alive.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So once upon a time, a traveler, the story goes, came across three individuals all working with stone, and he was curious as to what these stone workers were doing.

So the traveler approached the first one of the workers and he asked, What are you doing?

And without hesitation, that first worker said, I'm a stone cutter and I'm cutting stones.

The traveler, still unclear about the worker's task, approached the second worker and he asked him the same question.

To this, the second stone worker thought for a moment and briefly gazed at the traveler and explained, I'm a stone cutter and I'm cutting stones to earn money to support my family.

Still perplexed, the traveler approached the third worker and he asked him, What are you doing?

And he stopped for a moment, and the worker stared at the stone that was in his hand, and he slowly turned to the traveler and said, I am a stonemason and I am building a cathedral.

Three men, all working the same site, all performing the same task, but each had a very different perspective as to the grand purpose behind the things that they were doing.

Beloved, it's crucial that we see this people here at St.

Paul's sees the grand purpose behind the things we do.

It's certainly true for us today.

Our gospel reading today was one of the ones that's assigned for this occasion.

And I want to say this John 15 reading points us explicitly to our grand purpose.

It's a continuation of Jesus' teaching in John 15 of the vine dresser, the vine and the branches.

And Jesus in this passage declares himself to be the true vine.

He's using this old covenant image of the vineyard of God's people to drive home the transforming reality that He is the source of life for the branches.

And that's who we are in this story.

We're the branches.

And Jesus is saying, He is the vine to which the branches are connected.

What he's saying here, in essence, is stay connected to me.

Abide in me.

It's very personal, it's very relational.

Stay in vital relationship with the source of life, which is Jesus.

That's what John 15 is about.

In fact, he goes on to say in this chapter that apart from me, you can do nothing.

And that seems a little mystifying because we know everybody does something, but what Jesus is saying, apart from me, you can do nothing of eternal impact.

You can do nothing that really matters at the end of the day.

If we're not connected to Jesus, then the implication is no fruit.

We're simply dead branches, disconnected from the vine.

And so now, continuing in this passage we've heard read, verse 9, Jesus goes on to speak to us about the life-giving, vital connection we have with Him.

This reading, I believe, is suggested for this occasion with great reason, because I believe that this is the essence of what a godly rector, I know Jonathan well enough to know, this is what he is wanting and attempting and will be cultivating in the life of this community as he leads and loves and serves in this place.

It's the first order of things in Christian community.

And it always starts with a relationship with Jesus.

John begins the gospel saying, in him was life, and he was the life of the light of men.

So what exactly does it mean to have relationship with Jesus?

Is it simply that we said the right prayer or we responded to an altar call or we believe a certain set of doctrines?

I think what we see in this John 15 passage is that it is so much more.

What Jesus is speaking about here is central, it's life-giving, it's life-sustaining.

And in a word, if you heard it, the word is love.

Love lived out and nurtured in community.

Not merely some kind of warm, fuzzy, sentimental kind of love, but actually a love that's rich and inexhaustible and multidimensional in so many ways.

Just in these short number of verses, there's so much to wrap our heads around and our hearts around in these verses, that Jesus is teaching us about this love.

And he does reveal in verse 11 the reason he's doing this, these things I've spoken to you.

He says, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

We need to let that sink in.

Jesus is not laying down some kind of burden.

Instead, he's inviting us into the fullness of joy.

And aren't you glad?

It's deceptive to think that the Christian life or Christian community in any way is boring or dull or joyless.

We are, by design, a people of joy.

It's what we bring to our worship.

And the reason we're a people of joy is because we've been touched by the lover of our souls.

The one who knows us completely and loves us completely, the one who pursues us and invites us into relationship.

So forget about any kind of notion that Christians are somehow intended to be grumpy and legalistic and without joy.

That's just not simply what we read about in the book.

Jesus is saying this so that his joy may be in us.

Are you joyful?

Do you know the joy of the Lord?

He's not saying that there won't be challenges in life and difficulties and persecutions and suffering.

As a matter of fact, he explicitly says we can expect that.

But what he's saying is that in the midst of whatever challenges and suffering and difficulty we're walking through, there is in him an abiding joy, a laughter of the soul, if you will, that accompanies those who are connected to him.

And if there is no joy in your heart and in your life, then look to that connection.

Find that in that connection.

I think we've all seen this.

We see it in one another.

I know I've been to places like Haiti and refugee camps in Rwanda where I was blown away by the difficulty and the poverty of those circumstances, and yet what I encountered in the people of God in those places was a joy that kind of blew away anything I see in America.

A people that are full of the joy and the life of Jesus despite their circumstances.

And we see it sometimes in one another, in families walking through incredible suffering and illness and even death, and yet this testimony of a God who is abiding with them and a joy that is sustaining them in the midst of their trials.

All that we see about God, what God intends for us, flows out of these words of Jesus in verse 9 as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in my love.

Notice that he didn't say, abide in love.

He said, no, he said, abide in my love.

And the apostle John says it so well in his epistle, right?

It's we love him because what?

Because he first loved us.

He's the initiator.

It's that love that encounters us.

It's that love that pursues us, it's that love that overwhelms us with God's love.

A love that knows you by name.

A love that pursues you, even when you're not pursuing him.

This is the essence of the Christian life.

As the Father has loved me, Jesus said, so have I loved you.

Now think about what he's saying.

He's actually inviting us into the love that's shared in the Godhead, in the Trinity.

The love that the Father has for the Son, and the Son has for the Father.

Jesus said, that kind of love, that perfect love, is the same love that I have for you.

You remember Jesus' words in Revelation to the church in Ephesus.

He says, I know you're enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

But I have this against you, he says, that you've abandoned the love you had at first.

Jesus says, abide in my love.

Don't forget it, don't abandon it, don't lose it.

You see, that group somehow, in all of their steadfastness and in all of their works, had lost the first love.

And that happens, and that can happen to all of us.

This Christian life kind of becomes somehow duty or religion or a loss of the marvel of God's extravagant love that He demonstrates on the cross.

The love of God, the love that calls you beloved daughter or beloved son, the love that forgives, and the love that embraces.

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.

What Jesus is saying here is that the fruit of love is obedience.

You see, sometimes we get this mixed up.

We think that we have to be obedient in order for God to love us.

Good luck.

It doesn't work.

It's the other way around.

It's when we're encountered by this extravagant love that we are filled with the capacity to obey.

Clearly, for Jesus, the two go together: love and obedience.

In verse 12, Jesus says, This is my command that you love one another as I have loved you.

So now he's taking it from our relationship with God, and he's speaking about our relationships with one another in the body of Christ.

In other words, he's saying, allow this love to spill over, to overflow into your relationships one with another.

In Romans 5, verse 4, Paul says, God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.

Romans 5:4

Now we want the Spirit for gifts.

Yeah, gifts are wonderful, but the primary work of the Holy Spirit in our life is this love that He pours into our hearts.

And as we allow the overflow of God's law for us in Christ to impact our relationships with one another, the entire community, not only in this space, but the community beyond begins to be touched and transformed.

There's an ancient story of the Apostle John, who later in life could not even walk, but would be carried into the councils of the church.

And they were grappling with all kinds of questions about how to organize himself, how to execute the mission.

And the apostle John, they would turn to him and ask for his counsel, and he would respond, Beloved, love one another.

And they were like, is that all you got?

And he said, That's all I got.

Because if you're loving one another, if you're making sure that you're doing that well, then the organization, the mission, and the other realities will take care of themselves.

Jesus continues, verse 13, greater love has no one than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.

C.S.

Lewis, of course, in the Four Great Loves reminds us that there are lots of Greek words for the one English word we have, love.

In Greek, there's a word for brotherly love, and there's another word for romantic love, and then there's a word for this self-giving sacrificial love, agape love, and it's that one that Jesus is speaking about.

Not a feeling, but really a way of life, of living, of loving one another, of loving God.

And Jesus doesn't only offer it as a concept or an idea, he actually demonstrates it.

When he takes our place on the cross of Calvary.

Jesus said, No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from the Father, I have made known to you.

You see all the dimensions of this love.

There's a friendship dimension to Jesus' love.

That Jesus actually invites us into friendship with him.

However, he is still Lord, even while he's friend, he reminds us, you did not choose me, I chose you.

You know, I'm sure the disciples were thinking, but I did.

I remember I was fishing and you came and called me, and I made a choice to drop those nets.

But the reality is that choice was driven by God's choice first.

That God chooses us.

And if any of us look back in the rearview mirror of our lives and our story, we realize we're not the primary player.

That God is the one who's initiating and moving and leading.

All these dimensions to love.

It's Christ's love.

This is the love that's shared in the Trinity and it's ours in Christ.

And beloved, I want us to know as a people that that means there's a joy dimension and an obedience dimension and a cross-shaped agape love dimension and a friendship dimension and a lordship dimension and a fruit dimension.

Because Jesus said, I chose you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide.

As he returns to that vineyard image.

And there's only one way for us to do this.

That's where I started.

It's to stay connected, to stay connected to Jesus, the true vine, connected to one another, to his people, allowing his Holy Spirit to overflow in our lives.

And I believe this is the very thing that Jonathan wants and desires for this community.

And Jonathan, I want to say that the greatest gift you can give to this community is to yourself stay connected to the vine.

Show us by that connection the depth of Christ's love.

Let me encourage you all as a people to continually invite the Spirit of God into your lives, even today as you come to this table.

Let me encourage you to pray often and always.

Let me encourage you to be rooted in the Word of God and the corporate worship of God in this community.

And Jesus said an amazing thing.

He said, the world will believe as we love one another.

That's how they'll believe.

It's not going to be the best argument.

It's not going to be persuasion.

It's not going to be manipulation.

The world, Jesus says, will believe because of the love we have one for another.

And all that we do, the big and the small, may God give you the grace to see this great and grand cathedral that you are building for his praise and his glory and the power of his spirit and all of it through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Beloved, abide in his love.

Amen.