Abiding In Christ

True love requires sacrifice! Abiding in Christ’s love means embracing a readiness to make sacrifices.

In today’s Epistle reading we are met with the following words, We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

The letter goes on saying, How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a sibling in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

I would like to spend some time reflecting on the word abide.

If any of you are like I once was, you may have heard the word abide or the statement to abide in Christ, but perhaps you aren’t fully sure what the word abide means.

To abide is to bear patiently, to endure without yielding, and to accept without objection.

Therefore, my fellow followers of Christ, we are tasked with the difficult reality of abiding in Christ even when we doubt our faith, and even when it’s super hard to put aside our wants to instead follow God’s call to live out the Gospel.

Mother Teresa is an exemplar of abiding in Christ.

Some of you may recall several years back when a book about the interior life of Saint Mother Teresa was published.

Breaking news - media sources wrote - Mother Teresa experienced years of doubt when she did not feel the presence of God.

For believers this may not have been a shock however for the secular world it was. How could she claim to be a woman of God and yet she did not feel God? Was she a hypocrite? Was she a liar?

The world was peering into the heart and soul of a woman who had been deceased 10 years when the book was released. She could not defend herself.

In fact, we now know that she did not want the world to know about her doubts. She asked that her letters and writing be destroyed, but her wishes were denied.

On one hand, it can feel abhorrent to think that the Church released her writings admitting a sense of an absence of God in life against her wishes,

but on the other hand, perhaps they did it to offer believers a sense of relief. Relief that even the most saintly amongst us have reservations about how God is working in our lives.

Mother Teresa is a model to all of us on how to abide in Christ. She was plagued by doubts and still she endured the work of God without yielding to her doubt. She bore her work with patience.

She lived a life of sacrifice in the name of God. She demonstrates that true love of God and the gospel does not mean having constant certainty, true love of God at least in part means making sacrifices even when it is so challenging.

Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, reported as early as the 1950s a darkness within her faith and a sense of God’s absence, yet she persisted in her mission to follow God and to do God’s work.

According to her writings, Mother Teresa found ways starting in the early 1960s to live with her doubts and never abandoned her belief or her work. For over 40 years, Mother Teresa experienced long nights of the soul and spells of deep doubt, yet she continued to abide in God!

It feels safe to say that had she chosen to stop being a nun and had given up her role in the church, a lot of people would have understood.

Her work was daunting, every day she witnessed the cruelty and pain that extreme poverty wreaked on those she served.

But she believed that message of love at the heart of the gospel was more important than the doubt she wrestled with.

Her story helps us remember that doubt is not contrary to faith, rather doubt is a part of faith.

In several of our Eastertide passages we are reminded that doubt is not grounds for rejection by God. Two weeks ago, we heard about Jesus going to Thomas who doubted the resurrection and we encountered our savior opening his arms to Thomas.

Last week, we read about the apostles who thought perhaps Jesus was a ghost. Jesus did not admonish them, he offered them peace and made room for their doubt.

To abide in Christ is to have patience with God and yourself. To abide in Christ is to continue to follow the call of the gospel to help others when we see they are in need, even when we have doubts in our hearts.

To abide in Christ is to follow the edict in the first letter of John to love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action, even when we aren’t sure of our next step.

Because to love as God has love means we are called to make sacrifices. These sacrifices may take on different forms for each of us.

But in a world where we strive to gain as much knowledge as we can, and we strive to have all the answers all the time, making room for doubt can seem blasphemous.

But to abide in Christ requires patience and sacrifice, and to have faith does not mean we are without uncertainty or hesitation.

In the famous words of the monk and theologian Thomas Merton, to abide is to admit that we have no idea where we are going or how the road will end and it is to believe that our desire to please God does in fact please God. And as the prayer says, may we have that desire in all that we do.

The first letter of John was written as a guide for Christians in doubt. Written around the year AD 95 scholars believe that the first letter of John was a commentary on the Gospel of John for a new generation of Christians.

According to theologian and scholar David Bartlett, the letter lays out the two major themes of the Gospel: to believe in our God and savior Jesus Christ, and to love one another as God has loved us.

The author of the letter appears to be making a case to love one another despite our differences. The Johannine community like the world today was faced with schism and dissent, and the letter of John implores Christians to follow Christ’s teachings to actually love one another.

To lay down our lives for Christ by giving to others in need, especially when we live with an abundance of money and goods. To lay down our lives, does not necessarily mean dying because we are Christian.

To lay down our lives also means to put aside our ego. To put aside our wants and desires of certainty, knowledge, and security, just as Mother Teresa did, and instead follow Christ.

Truly loving as God loves is to make sacrifices. Truly loving one another as God does means loving those we dislike and don’t agree with (it doesn’t mean we need to adopt their point of view, but it does mean we are called to love them).

Truly loving as God loves does not mean we won’t encounter doubts. To truly love as God does means to endure God’s call even when it is hard or doesn’t make sense, to be patient, to wait for all to be revealed and to accept the challenges of being a Christian.

Amen.