MEETING GOD IN COMMUNITY

John 15:1-17

This morning our theme is 'Meeting God in community' . At first sight our gospel reading from John 15-that great passage about the True Vine, may seem to have not much to do with this subject. When we read such words as Remain in me, and I will remain in you, this seems to be too personal and too subjective, and so we carry this thought on right to the end of that passage we had this morning, so that we take as personal and individual, Jesus' words I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit. Yet this, I suggest is the wrong emphasis of the passage.
  In his commentary in the 'Bible Speaks Today' series on John's Gospel, John Stott points out that we often take this passage (as we do, don't we, many other passages) out of context . It is part of a long discourse of Jesus' in the Upper Room on the night before his betrayal and crucifixion. At the human level this was His 'Last will and Testament' to his disciples, and the whole theme as Stott points out is the 'Post-Easter Mission of the disciples". These were the things Jesus wanted them- and us, as their successors, to remember above all else.

He speaks to them in terms of intimate fellowship: we can be in little doubt that his meaning included that He would be found in their fellowship, in their community, and he addresses them corporately, for example This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. The Christian life is always one intended to be lived in community. At times someone may for some reason or other have no other choice, but not generally. We recall Jesus' vivid words:  Wherever  two or three come together in my Name, there I am with them. WE ARE THE COMMUNITY WHERE GOD IS MET.
            Jesus, where'er thy people meet,
               there they behold thy mercy-seat.
            Where'er they seek Thee, Thou art found,
               and every place is hallowed ground.

So what I would briefly consider is: WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY IS IT WHERE GOD'S PEOPLE MEET, AND WHERE HE IS FOUND?
  I would seek the answer in these words in John 15, and begin by noting that Jesus spoke of a vine. It could well be that he had in mind the great moulding of a vine above the Temple in Jerusalem, which they would very shortly walk past on their way to Gethsemane. Equally, he would be alluding to the frequent references in Scripture to Israel as a vine. The election of Israel in Genesis is combined with God's promise that they would be a blessing to all people and a light to the Gentiles. Old Testament history tells us that they signally failed. As John Stott says:
   Israel , however, was more attracted by the God's of surrounding nations, than by her
   potential for penetrating them as a missionary. Israel had, for a season at least, forfeited her position. Now Jesus tells his disciples and us I am the true vine...you are the branches. As branches our role is missionary; we are by constitution a missionary community. But that apart, what else do Jesus' words here in John 15 tell us about our life as a 'Vine Community"?  WHAT WILL CHARACTERISE THE COMMUNITY WHERE GOD IS MET? I would suggest four principals:
-It is a cultivated community
-It is a faithful community
-It is a loving community
-It is a fruitful community

THE COMMUNITY IS A CULTIVATED COMMUNITY
That's not got anything, of course, to do with 'culture' as we think of it. We are a community which is cultivated by God: My Father is the gardener. He cuts of every branch in me that bears no fruit said Jesus. God wants a fruitful vine; He looks to us and expects us to be bearing fruit- more than that he is always wanting to increase our fruitfulness. Being church, being God's community is serious business. Again we need a cautionary note, such as that that John Stott gives:
    While more 'subjective' aspects are not entirely absent, the primary objective
    remains bracingly objective and missionary..
As is clear in Jesus' words there are two aspects to this pruning work God does. Firstly, he cuts away any dead wood. That's a basic aspect of any gardener's work, surely. I recently gave our climbing roses an overdue pruning- and the first thing I did was to cut away the dead wood, which would clearly never do any good to the rose, except maybe produce 'die-back'. We need to take this word to heart. Sin cuts off the flow of sap as it were until eventually we become dead-wood and can do no further work in God's Kingdom. His word can make us clean: does any of us need to apply it to our lives? Secondly, He will cut away any rank overgrowth that we may be more fruitful. It's possible that we're 'doing" an awful lot but producing little. The only work of value is the work which God's Spirit empowers. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. We need to ask God to show us if there is anything we are doing which is not part of his Kingdom work. We need to keep our lives rooted in Jesus: it's so easy to become so busy that we neglect Him. So it's important that we retain in each day time when we can draw apart from life's hustle and bustle to be with Jesus

THEN THE COMMUNITY IS A FAITHFUL COMMUNITY.
We 'remain', or as the older translations have it, we 'abide' in Jesus. It's so easy to be distracted, there's so much to distract us. Just as I spoke of Israel being distracted by the gods of the surrounding nations to whom they were to be a blessing, so it's possible for us to to become distracted and taken up by the 'gods' of  our society. We need to remember, though, that John in his first epistle warns us that anyone who becomes the world's friend becomes God's enemy. We heard the other week at Harry Crowe's funeral that passage where Paul spoke of having fought the good fight of faith; now his course was over and the crown of righteousness awaited him. That is what delights God's heart: those who, come what may, will remain faithful to their Lord and Saviour.

THEN THE COMMUNITY IS A LOVING COMMUNITY.
This is something Jesus said time and again in this Upper-Room discourse. Twice we have it in today's Gospel reading
-Verse 12  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you
-Verse 17  This is my command: Love each other.
In John 13 Jesus speaks of this as a 'new'command. There He is not saying that he is over-riding the command to love our neighbour, but giving a command of a new character. We are commanded to love one another in a special way. To love as members of a family love. For we are, are we not, as adopted children of God all by this adoption brothers and sisters, and as John in his first epistle time and time again emphasises, this is a sign of our adoption- we love one another. Thus love of Christians within the Christian community is a special witness, that we will support each other through thick and thin.

But above all, we are to be A FRUITFUL COMMUNITY
Some would say that means that we are to produce the 'fruit of the Spirit'. This may be true, but surely the primary emphasis is this. The teaching we have hear is set with the Vine-context. The produce any plant produces is, by its fruitfulness, to produce more of its kind. We are to produce, as Christians, more Christians. Now the production of a Christian is God's work: we are His new creation in Christ. But have a role to play. We are Christ's body: his hands, his feet, his voice, and so on. It is a mark of his trust in us that He has left his work on earth in our hands.
  'Meeting God in community' That is our theme this morning. But who does the meeting. Ourselves? Well, yes- we come here to meet with God, and what a privilege. But is is that- a privilege, and one He desires that we extend to others. primarily it has to do with OTHER PEOPLE MEETING GOD IN OUR COMMUNITY.
   And now I want to pull this all together and find what I believe is the burden of what God would have us think about this morning. We are in the middle of the Contagious Christian course- a course originating in the Willow Creek church in America, and I believe God is saying much to the church today through the work of Willow Creek. I recently listened to a tape of a talk given in 1997 to the Christian Booksellers' Convention by Lee Strobel, one of the Willow Creek pastors. He told his own story and how for years he would never think of going into a church. And what do people find if they do? William Leith gave an account of his visit to church, writing in the Independent on Sunday in 1994:
     Will anybody spot me? It's like when you're in a step-club; you think with relief, well if they do spot  me, they're here too. Organised religion has sunk pretty low these days, at least among the people I know; the feeling it's just third-raters who get involved, oily tin pot careerists or neurotics, people afraid of the modern world.. This is my local church, these mild looking people must be my neighbours, and I've never seen any of them before; religious people and pagans live in completely different worlds these days. The church gores all look like the nicer characters in Australian soaps: calm faces a permanent half-smile, slightly out-of-date inexpensive clothes...
    And now we're standing up and ...chanting. In unison like some kind of Masonic ritual. I was forced to go to church several times a week at school, but I'd forgotten all this. 'So many things we ought not have done' The voices have that assured, scary twang to them.   A ritual is being organised. Quite a frightening one, with people standing in formation round the altar, my God! Someone's carrying a baby toward them! My satanic-abuse needle gives a jolt. The
      woman says
             'Do you turn to Christ?
             They chant, 'I turn to Christ'
             'Do you renounce evil?
             'I renounce evil'
         I can't believe this. I' cringing. I want to escape. What have I got missed up in here? The people
      like druids around a camp-fire, warding off evil spirits....
         At the end, I'm bolting for the door, pushing a bit, unable to help myself.....irreligious world
      looks great. And, so, I didn't get God.

That sounds a bit High-church for Christ Church, but there's a message there, loud and clear. The reporter didn't meet God.
   Lee Strobel, in that tape I mentioned speaks about how we 'do church'. For so many churches this is what puts people off, and certainly we'll never get people in church until we are willing to alter the way we do things. We don't have to, indeed God forbid that we do abandon Biblical principles, Biblical teaching, a Biblical faith. But is the way we 'do church' a way which will attract people. Is it and are we the kind of community where people will meet with the living God; for many there will be no other place- and that bit from the Independent on Sunday, whilst maybe a bit of a caricature, shows that 'church' may well be THE place that puts them off.
   What drives Lee Strobel forward is the fact that one day he will have to stand face-to-face with Jesus Christ. So will each one of us. We must ask ourselves what Lee asked himself. Will be prefer to hang on to our traditions and have a church where just we, the chosen, privileged meet God. Is that what we vale most; we who are the vine-community?; we who are a community whose foundation is missionary. Do we have God's heart for those thousands outside? The thousands who are, unless they find God, unless they find salvation in Christ, they are lost and hell-bound? Will we have his heart for the thousands out there, who feel we're a bit irrelevant?
  For we have a treasure without price? Will we, then, find ways to induce those outside into our church, will they, here, be in a community where they meet God, and will they find that in that meeting is the one thing of eternal importance; the one thing more important than their car or their television or their bank-balance; more important vane than winning the lottery. One day we will meet Jesus Christ face-to-face, the One who said to us: I chose you, and appointed ( ordained, set-apart) to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last.  How will we answer them? Will we have to say, 'I preferred rather to keep things as they were; that's what I was comfortable with', or will we say, 'Yes, Lord. You gave me the privilege of choosing me and calling me into the community of faith, your vine-community, and I did all I could to open the door for others?
 
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