# Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter April 30, 2024 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D โ€™13 Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, April 28, 2024)* ![The Rev. Matthew Potts headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/thememorialchurch/files/050421_potts_matthew_headshot_copy_2.jpg?itok=Jza33LVD) So we have two baptisms today here at the church, Bennett and Thomas. And anytime we perform a baptism in this church, I think that baptism is the most important thing that we do all day. And that's true today. But lots of things can be important at the same time. I know that there are other things on our mind this morning. Of course, as I mentioned in our opening prayers, the encampments and protests on our campus, but also the deeper crisis to which they point, whatever else these protests represent. And we have to admit how fraught and contested their representation is. The students who have gathered not far outside the doors of this church are responding with urgency to a true humanitarian and moral crisis. We praise them for that, for calling our attention to that crisis. But it is fraught. My heart also goes out to others in our community, students whose families have suffered intergenerational trauma. If my parents or grandparents or great-grandparents had died in genocidal violence in Europe, I can understand that I might hear anti-Semitism where it is not intended. I can understand how I might not, but I can understand that I might. But also we know that anti-Semitism is everywhere. It's in the church, it's in the university, and so it'd be naive to think that it also doesn't operate in protest spaces too, even though these protests are right to lament and to cry the death of so many innocent people in Gaza. But again, nothing is perfect. So why should we expect that this necessary protest movement should be any more perfect than we are or than our society at large is. Basically, I've been spinning all week. I've been spinning since October 7th, and this was a hard sermon to write. Part of the struggle of any any sermon is to figure out how these old, old texts, these almost 2,000-year-old texts, how they might speak not only to what was going on then, but also to what we are going through. And also, as I said in the opening prayers this morning, each week in this church I hope that what we do in here has some real connection to what is going on out there. Otherwise, why are we doing it? What does this lesson say to us? The thing is, when I look at this gospel lesson from the Gospel of John, the first thing I see are problems. There's this pruning metaphor, "I am the vine. You are the branches," and especially the way that image is carried forth at the end of the passage that Margaunt read, "the useless branches wither and are discarded and thrown into the fire to be destroyed." That's not a great image, not to me anyway, because it suggests some theologies of purity and punishment and exclusion. It suggests that if God is on my side and you are not on my side, then I can purge you and destroy you. The second problem I have with this passage is also right at the end. Right after Jesus says, "The withered branches will be pruned and destroyed and thrown in the fire," Jesus says, "If I abide in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be granted to you." I think anybody who has prayed before knows that this does not ring true. And to put a finer point on it in our contemporary moment, if it were true that anything we prayed for with love in our hearts would be granted, then all the Israeli hostages would be safe at home and tens of thousands of Palestinian dead would be alive and hundreds of thousands of Gazans would not be suffering, starvation, and displacement. I mean, it's more than that. It also suggests exactly the problem with the first thing, about the withered branches being cast into the fire and destroyed, because it suggests that Jesus exists to do my bidding. And so if I believe that God is with me, my wishes are justified as God's wishes too. And so if I wish the destruction of my enemy, then God is on my side and God will do that for me. I think these theologies lead to violence. I think they lead to violence in all kinds of contexts in our own history, the history of the church, and contemporary politics in this country. And of course as we see around the world, especially perhaps in the holy land. โ€“โ€“ Embed [Harvard Memorial Church](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church "Harvard Memorial Church") ยท [The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts Ph.D. - April 28, 2024 | Sunday Sermon](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/the-rev-matthew-ichihashi-potts-phd-april-28-2024-sunday-sermon "The Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts Ph.D. - April 28, 2024 | Sunday Sermon") So let me turn more directly to this passage and tell you what's going on here. We're in the Easter season. It's supposed to be the time we're reflecting upon Jesus' resurrection, but these teachings from Jesus actually come the night before He died. This comes from a sixth chapter segment of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John's only 21 chapters. Almost a third of it is this hunk right here that we're in the middle of, which is called the farewell address. And Jesus, it's the night before He dies, and He's saying goodbye to His disciples. He said to them, "I'm going away and you're not going to see Me anymore." And they're stressed out about it. In the chapter before this, they say, "Where are you going? What do you mean You're going?" And He says, "I'm going." And they're saying, "Where are You going? How do we get there?" He says, "You can't come to where I'm going." And then He says, interestingly, "But don't worry, I will come to you and I'll make my dwelling place with you after I go." The word that is translated as dwelling place here actually shares a root with the word that shows up in our passage for today many times. In today's passage, Jesus says again and again, "Abide with me as I abide with God and God abides in me. I will abide in you and you will abide in me." That's one translation. Another way to translate this Greek word is remain. "I will remain with you. I'm going away, but I will remain with you and God will remain with me." He's consoling them as He departs and He's telling them that He will remain with them. And especially He tells them, "God remains with Me, and I remain with you." And if that is true, there's a sort of spiritual transit of property here, where God remains with you. "It doesn't look like I'm there. You don't see me anymore. But if you love, God remains with you. If you love as I have loved you, then I am in you and God is in you and I will remain." And indeed this is what the first letter of John, which was also read this morning, a sacred text of the same community that produced the Gospel of John says the same thing. God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. "I will remain," Jesus is saying, "I will remain in you when you love." This is the context in which Jesus says this final line, "So ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you." Because I think it's a little bit of wordplay here. It's not like God's a genie in a bottle and you can just ask anything of God. If I abide in you, what are you going to ask for? The destruction of your enemies? No. If I abide in you, then what you'll ask for is love. And if you ask for that, it will be granted to you, and I will be there with you. It's a self-replicating, self-repeating promise. It's even more than that. In the context in which this is described, the way that this is described, we you, the church, become the fulfillment of that promise. Jesus says you discard the withered branches and toss them into the fire because they're useless. But a commentator I was reading, Karoline Lewis, who's a professor of preaching at Luther Seminary, she said, "A vine is also pretty useless without branches. Vines can't bear fruit unless they have branches." God is love, and love is not an abstract idea, it is lived in the world. Guess who does the living now that Jesus has said goodbye to us. Guess who does the living of that love in the world. Us, we do. And God is in us when love is in us. So the message here, as with so much of the New Testament, as with so much of Jesus' teaching, the message here is love, God is love, and God is in us when we love. But actually, I'd like to stop there, but we can't stop there, because love isn't easy or obvious or unconflicted. To put a fine point upon things, our enemies love people too. Their anger and their fear and their righteousness is often born of love they have for their beloveds, just like my anger and fear and righteousness is born of love. All of us are loving and all of us are conflicted, and all of us aren't sure what our love ought to do or how it ought to be. So what are we supposed to do with that? I think the point, if what Jesus has said is true, is that if God is love, if God is where love is, then we can't reduce our opponents and our antagonists to their ideas and their reactions. Even if their love is imperfect, like my love is imperfect, God is with them even as God is with us. The point Jesus is making, I think, is that our love is not meant to be the superior one, the one from which all fruitless branches are pruned and destroyed in fire. My love is not the one that grants my every wish, including the wish for vengeance, including the wish that my enemy to be destroyed. If God is love, and if all of us broken people are doing our best to love, then the truth is that God lives in and among my opponents and antagonists too, that their love, like mine, is complex and imperfect, but that God abides and remains in and alongside their imperfect love just as God lives and abides and remains with me. And unless I recognize that God is with both them and us, that God loves them as much as God loves us, we won't actually start bearing the sort of fruit that God invites. We won't start bearing the kind of fruit that draws God more deeply into our world, that draws God more deeply into our lives, that draws the love of God more deeply into our conflicts and confrontations. We won't be living the kind of love that, in fact, gives rise to God's holiness and hopefulness, that gives rise to peace in our world. This is why it is so suitable that today we are having two baptisms. Baptism traditionally is a sacrament. It's a sign. A sacrament is a sign, so what is this a sign of? I'll tell you what it's not first. The traditional error in the way we understand what baptism is that it is like a ticket of entry into God's good graces. Indeed, the reason we baptize babies like Thomas and Bennett today is because early theologians were concerned that innocent children, unless baptized, would be thrown into the fire just like these useless branches, as if a sprinkle on the head were a ticket, an entryway into God's love for them. This is poisonous theology, which creates all the exclusions that have railed against. Baptism does not confer God's love. It acknowledges it, it bows before it, and recognizes it as holy. We bring these two beautiful children before God today and recognize altogether that what is most essential and important about them is what their parents already know and what they don't need me or this church or anybody else to tell them, that these children are absolutely and infinitely and already beloved and will always be no matter what they do or fail to do their lives to come. When they come to this font to be baptized, you and I are going to stand and promise them, promise these two children to treat them that way, to treat them as if they are what they actually are, which is infinitely and absolutely beloved, to treat them that way for the rest of their lives no matter what they do or fail to do, just as we have promised to treat every other beloved child of God that way too. These beautiful children, Thomas and Bennett, are waiting for us to make that promise. So also is the world. See also:- [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) - [ Matthew Ichihashi Potts ](/media-archive/matthew-ichihashi-potts) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)