Abiding in Love

      Rosie and I have moved 27 times in the almost 57 years that we have been married.  First, I was a radio and television personality and it was necessary to change jobs to get a better situation.  We would pile everything into boxes, put the kids in the car and move house when a better job came along.  Then there was the army when I was drafted and we moved according to my orders.  My television career ended in 1972 when I got the call to ministry and entered Virginia Seminary.  After that the moving slowed down a bit.  After graduation, I only had two churches.  At the last one, I stayed for 18 years before I retired in 1999,  but the moving wasn’t over.  We went to a place in the West Virginia mountains that we had bought and stayed there until I got bored with playing golf and reading and wanted to go back to work.  The Diocese of West Virginia used my talents as an interim rector in three parishes for about a year and a half each.  The last one was St. Mark’s in St. Alban’s, West Virginia.  After that, we moved back to Pittsburgh, anxious to be near our daughters and our grandkids.  It has been a migration of sorts.  We have been gypsies, but we have been overjoyed at the travel and the people whom we have met and the places that we have been.
 
I bring all of this up because of the curious word abide that is a part of the Gospel lesson in the 15th chapter of John.  Jesus uses this word many times in talking with his disciples:

As the Father has loved me, so I have 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. 
I have said these things to you so that my joy may 
be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
                                                                                            --John 15: 9-12

Abide is a word that I have always thought meant “a way of living.”  The dictionary classifies it as archaic in that sense, but I still think it has meaning about the way that we live.   I think that is what Jesus is getting at here.  “Live in my love“, he says.   A way of life.  I think that is one of the hardest things that we ever do.  To make loving and living the same thing.  It is obviously the problem with all of us.  Our inability to love one another is what is wrong with the world.  Abiding in love, living in love, is the solution to all of that.  Making love our way of living.   It would certainly change the way that we talk to each other.

Our political campaigns have become times to impute the worst to our challengers.  It was fascinating to see the two candidates for the democratic nomination to congress in this area appearing together and the loser endorsing the winner.  That would be a wonderful thing except for all of the things that each said about the other during the campaign.  Why is it that we so quickly resort to negativity when we campaign for office?  The reason is that it works.  We all respond to negative advertising better that we do positive.  The old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes is certainly true.  But negativity is not loving.  It is the opposite of that.  It produces hatred.  That is why our political campaigns have reduced us as a society to such a terrible state.  The problem is our inability to love.  To abide in our love.  Instead, we empower the extremes and accuse those who don’t agree with us of being outliers.  That is not what Jesus had in mind for us when he spoke about abiding in his love.

We have many issues that divide us in this country.  Respecting those who disagree with us is the first step in solving them.  Reducing our governing to what our extremists have in mind for us will keep us in a constant state of turmoil.  All of that might sound obvious, but is isn’t obvious to those who are vying for political office.

Loving is the answer.  Abiding in the love that Jesus has for all of us.  Including everyone around us in whatever solutions that we suggest for our problems is the key.  If we can do that, we will return this society to one that produces the light for the world.  That light shines only through our love.  It is the light of God.