Returning Home, with Rev. Tyler McQuilkin.

Returning Home, with Rev. Tyler McQuilkin. Series: QUEST: The Awakened Traveler A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: John 15:1-17.

Join us this Sunday as Tyler unpacks Jesus’ final teaching to his disciples in John 15, where he calls himself the true vine and calls us to remain rooted in our relationship with him. What if abiding in Christ is not merely a set of rules but a means for growth, fruitfulness, and transforming love for others?

Join us each Sunday, 10AM at bendfp.org, or 11AM KTVZ-CW Channel 612/12 in Bend.  Subscribe/Follow, and click the bell for alerts.

At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

Thank you for your support of the mission of the First Presbyterian Church of Bend. Visit https://bendfp.org/giving/ for more information.

Keywords:

jesus, disciples, abide, life, love, fruit, god, indescribable, christ, leaves, give, lord, father, christianity, continues, bear, branch, fall, spacious, amazing, presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Kally Elliott, Tyler McQuilkin, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

0:39

Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian we, at First Presbyterian practice a spacious Christianity, which means, no matter where you are in your faith journey, you belong and there is space for you at the table, there is space for your doubts and questions. We believe doubts and questions are a gift that invite us into deeper conversations and a more authentic faith. We believe diversity is a strength. Every story is sacred and everybody matters. We do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. We are so glad to connect with you in this way. We would also love to worship with you in person, if you ever in the neighborhood on Sunday mornings at 830 or 10am and never hesitate to reach out to us to learn more about us or how we might support you. I hope you enjoy this worship service. Welcome God, we have known your love. We have experienced your care and your provision. Some days we are able to rest in your love. Other days, we find ourselves anxious, restless, sometimes even hopeless. But even on those days, even when we doubt, your love for us is steadfast and true, holding us close help us to recognize that love, to know it intimately and to share it with the world around us. Help us to care for others as deeply as we care for ourselves, or sometimes help us to care for ourselves as deeply as we care for others. We bring to you the needs of our world and in your mercy, we ask that you hear our prayer. We pray for those who do not have what they need in order to survive, those without enough food to eat or shelter to keep them warm, those without employment or enough money to pay their bills, those without access to medical care or medicine to keep them healthy. Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer. We pray for those who have more than enough to meet their needs, but who continue to feel empty inside those who struggle to find meaning and purpose in life, who turn to alcohol, drugs or other destructive behaviors to try to hide their pain. Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer. We pray for those who are struggling physically, who are battling life threatening disease or injury, who are living with chronic pain, who are coping with dementia or facing death. Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer, and we pray for those who are caring for loved ones who are sick, be it physically or mentally, give them strength and friends to lean on in your mercy. Hear our prayer. We pray all of this in the confidence of your great love for us and for all of your creation. And we trust you hear us as we pray, as your son taught, saying Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom. Come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen, John's Gospel is the only gospel that tells this extended story of Jesus's last evening with His disciples. The gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke all share some details of what Jesus did with his disciples on this last evening with them. But this is all limited to usually just a chapter or section of a chapter, John goes into great detail on this last last evening with the disciples, he dedicated five chapters of his gospel to tell the events and the conversations that went on during the last evening Jesus spent with His disciples. Jesus gives a final teaching to his desire to his disciples that I'm sure he hopes they will remember once he leaves them. Jesus says in John 15, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you, just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who abide in Me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing. Now you might be familiar with the seven I am, statements that Jesus makes in John's Gospel. These are statements. Sense Jesus makes about himself to describe his relationship to the world and to humans. In his I am statements, he says he is the bread of life, the light of the world, the door, the Good Shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the Way, the Truth and the Life, and the last one comes here in John 15, on this last evening with his disciples, Jesus says, I am the true vine. And then he calls the disciples the branches that branch off from the true vine. Now remember, this was the last night that Jesus spent with His disciples, He knew what was coming, and he knew that a transition was coming in their lives because of what was about to happen to him. When you know a loved one is entering a new chapter in life, what do you do? They could be leaving for college or starting a new job or maybe getting married, no matter the change coming up, we tend to give advice or share important words to them before those we love enter this new stage in their life. And in a similar way, Jesus is doing this with his disciples before he leaves. So what is this final wisdom Jesus wishes to share with His disciples? When you first hear it, it sounds pretty simple. Jesus tells the disciples to abide in Him. Now we don't use this word abide too often in our modern English, the Greek word used for abide could also be interpreted as remain in or stay. Essentially, Jesus's final teaching to His disciples is to stay in relationship with Him, to stay rooted in Christ. So often, either when people think about Christianity or have questions or skepticism about Christianity, the quote, unquote rules of Christianity come to mind people either say I could never be a Christian because of the rules you have to follow and how rigid Christians are with their life and their worldview, or some say I like the idea of Jesus or being a Christian, but there's something I just don't want To give up in my life that Jesus probably requires. So some might hear what hear this language when Jesus says, Abide in me, and they might take this as a set of rules you have to obey. I think this is a sad reality, and I think it's a very fair critique of how Christianity is often lived out today. If you were to ask a group of pastors what they think Jesus might mean by abiding in him, depending on the pastor and their theological convictions, I think you would likely get a range of responses. Some might say you have to sign off on a certain set of beliefs or doctrines, and having the right beliefs is what makes it so you are truly abiding in Christ. Others might emphasize certain types of behavior that you embody. This might might focus more on purity or sobriety or having a clear routine or set of practices that makes you a good, abiding Christian. And other pastors might focus on a certain set of issues to align yourself with, like a certain cause to work for or social issue to give yourself to. In short, all of these responses easily fall into this idea of rules and regulations that make up Christianity. One theologian says that all of these answers fall into mechanical compliance instead of organic change, because you put all of your focus on busyness for Jesus rather than friendship with Jesus. Christians today find it a lot easier to fill up their lives and their schedules with service, study and meetings and work, thinking that this busy schedule is what makes them loved by God. And this theologian goes on to say, what we are doing is inferring the love of God instead of experiencing and drawing on the. Love of God. When we think of abiding in Jesus, we have to be careful not to fall into a specific set of behaviors, beliefs or routines that will think that we think will make Jesus happy and loving toward us, rather than abiding or staying or remaining in and with the actual person of Jesus Christ. So although Jesus is leaving the disciples here and they won't be in physical proximity to him anymore, Jesus tells them to lean into the time they have spent together, and to remember and live into the life Jesus lived. To make this clear, Jesus gives the disciples this this seventh and final I am statement. Jesus says to the disciples, I am the vine and you are the branches, just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. Jesus is simply calling himself the source of our lives and the source of the fruit we bear with our lives, most of us here probably buy a Christmas tree each winter. We maybe go out to the Deschutes forest and cut down this tree, we put it up in our home and decorate it with all sorts of colorful ornaments and lights and decorations. And this helps put us in the Christmas spirit. It looks good for a while and is fun to have in our homes, but eventually the tree starts to change. I'm sure we all know that when you take down the ornaments and lights from the tree, the branches are not as strong as they were when you first decorated it. When you take it down and lug it out of your house, green and brown, probably a lot of brown needles scatter across the carpet, leaving a big job for your vacuum cleaner. And we all know why this happens, because we have taken the tree away from its source of life, we have literally cut it down and removed it from its natural place of rest, sure we water it to keep it alive for a little bit. But this is only a temporary fix. When Jesus tells His disciples to abide in him, it is to tell the disciples what gives them life and to help them continue to grow by staying rooted in Christ. Jesus continues in this final conversation with the disciples, saying, My Father is glorified by this that you bear much fruit and become my 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. Abiding in Christ is not an end in itself. Jesus has growth in mind for his disciples, so that they bear fruit and produce good things in the world because of their transformation and life as disciples, whether it is in Jesus, certain behavior a political party, maybe it's a relationship or something else we view as important and valuable, Everyone has a vine that they try to root themselves in. The difference between Jesus and so many other vines we try to root ourselves in is that so many other vines will let you down, whether it is another person, an activity we find value in our political identity or maybe our career, we find fulfillment and see the good things that come out of these. But at some point, our spouse or a friend will let us down. We might get tired of the hobby or activity. We find value in politics change with the times and things change in our career that make it hard to find fulfillment in the difference here is that Jesus has growth and producing fruit in mind for His disciples, He tells them that when they abide in him. Him, they will inevitably produce fruit for the world. And when we think about this fruit, we can look to the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians, where he names the fruits of the Spirit. And I think it is safe to assume that the fruit of abiding in Jesus would likely be similar to the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, chapter five, Paul says the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control when we abide in Christ, when our life reflects the life of Christ, love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control become natural to us at the end of this conversation, Jesus gives the disciples one final command before he leaves them. Jesus says to them, This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command you, I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing. But I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name, I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. Ultimately, Jesus wants the disciples to love to lay down their lives and humility and to be friends. In my intro to Christian theology class that I took in undergrad, the professor started the class by writing a very short sentence on the whiteboard. He wrote because of the revelation of Jesus Christ, blank and then he just put a little blank line. He said that every theological statement we make about God, what it means to be human, and about creation, and so much more should be made through this lens because of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we can say what it means to love each other. We can say what it means to lay down our lives for others, and we can know what it means to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So when Jesus gives this command to love, we don't have to look at the world or or our sense of what love is. We look to the person of Jesus, Christ, the fact that God came to the world and revealed God's self to us in Christ, and by looking at this revelation, we can begin to understand and know what God's love for us is and how we are called to extend that love to others. We are closing this series called the awakened traveler. Summer is a popular time to travel. Many of us leave home. We encounter other people and places and experiences. We then reflect on these encounters away from home and we leave changed. Finally, we return home as we look at the spiritual journey and how new encounters and reflections impact our faith when we return home, abiding in Christ, this command to love continues to expand to the new places, people and ideas we encounter. We love those we encounter that are different than us, that don't share our exact same views. We are called to abide in Christ, to bear fruit and to love, though it's not always easy, and we often fail to do this well, God continues to give us grace so we can bear this fruit of love to a world that desperately needs it. Amen. You. Amen, may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed this worship service. If you would like to make a donation helping make these podcasts possible or support them many ways. First, Presbyterian seeks to serve our community. You can make a financial gift online at bend fp.org, every week we hear from someone thanking us for the gift of these broadcasts and what a difference they make. Your support makes that possible. Our church is committed to reach beyond our walls, bringing hope where there is despair and love where it is needed the most. Your generous support helps us to be generous in love. Go to our website, bend fp.org, and click on the link. Give online. Your support is really appreciated and makes a difference in people's lives. Thanks again. I hope to See you next week. You