Rest in God, dear boy | A Sermon on Abiding
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), May 2, 2021
Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8
Fifty years ago, poet and novelist Jay Parini had an encounter with W.H. Auden. A graduate student at the time, he had spent the day at the library in London. He writes,
Walking back to the train station in late afternoon, on a crowded street, I felt [horribly] overwhelmed. My hands grew sweaty, and I couldn’t breathe. For respite, I found a quiet passageway where I sat in a doorway for an hour, quite certain I would die. I slowly made my way back to Oxford by train. Heading into the college gate, I ran into the old poet W.H. Auden. Seeing that [Parini] looked [distressed], Auden said, “Whatever is the matter, dear boy?” [1]
Auden ended up inviting Parini to his cottage, where he offered him a stiff drink and a bit of advice – advice that would stay with Parini indefinitely. Parini recounts,
Auden had a cracked and wrinkled face, like a baked mudflat, and he told me that he would soon be dead.
“I’ve learned a little in my life,” he said. “Not much. But I will share with you what I do know. I hope it will help.”
He lit a cigarette, looked at the ceiling, then said, “I know only two things. The first is this: There is no such thing as time.” . . .
Auden went on to say that eternity was without beginning or end and that we must come to terms with what underlies time or exists around its edges. He quoted the Gospel of John, where Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” . . . –upending our notions of chronology once and for all. . . .
[Parini] listened, a bit puzzled, and then asked, “So what’s the second thing.”
“Ah, that,” he said. “The second thing is simply advice. Rest in God, dear boy. Rest in God.” [2]
W.H. Auden would die not too long after, and yet these words would sit in the heart of Parini, held close, to resurface in the early days of the pandemic as he sought to remember those things he had been told over the course of his life that truly mattered. Auden’s words resonating in a new way.
“Before Abraham was, I am.”
“Rest in God.”
I think about these twin offerings of Auden’s when I hear the words of Jesus in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of John:
Abide in me as I abide in you.
I am the vine and you are the branches
As the Father has loved me,
So I have loved you:
Abide in my love (John 15:4-5,9).
Jesus is quickly coming to the end of his time with his disciples. And so, he gathers them round for one last conversation. Imagine the growing sense of panic amongst them, the growing sense that something life-changing, even life-ending, is afoot. The wondrous abundance that has always marked the atmosphere around Jesus is fading, replaced by an unsettling sense of scarcity –the disciples want more: more time, more explanation, more understanding.
Jesus has given the disciples six “I am” statements already and now, in response, he makes it a perfect seven: I am the true vine (John 15:1).
Before Abraham was, I am. . . . The Good Shepherd. The way, the truth, the life. And now, the Vine.
Jesus is placing himself at the center of it all, at the heart of all that lives, moves, and has it’s being. It’s as if he’s saying, “I am the core, the very epicenter of all that God has been up to –past, present, and future.” There is nothing out of reach, nothing that can be done apart from, nothing that can outlast the true vine.
It’s interesting, really, the way that Jesus reaches for us, sources our very lives through the abundance of his love. And not just me. Or you. But us, as community, as a human family, as a created order. We, the branches, live lives of almost unimaginable interdependence, rooted in and dependent upon Jesus, apart from whom we can do nothing but wither and die.
That’s a hard pill to swallow, I know. Our culture values self-sufficiency, independence, a pick yourself up by the boot-straps mentality above all else. And yet, these are an illusion. And I think most of know it or suspect it at the very least. The Good News is this: that when all else fails us, and it will, there is at the center of the universe a loving God who is both infinite and intimate, resurrected and crucified.
Listen closely as Jesus calls to you, abide in me as I abide in you.
No less than eight times in four short verses is this word uttered, abide. Not to mention the six times it’s repeated in today’s epistle, the first letter of John. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them (1 John 4:16). This is the task of the disciples. This is our task: to abide.
Tarry, cling, depend, remain, rely, stay, preserve, commit, endure, acquiesce, accept.
In the words of Debie Thomas,
[Abide.] It’s a tricky word. Passive on the one hand, and active on the other. To abide is to stay rooted in place. But it is also to grow, to change, and to multiply. It’s a vulnerable-making verb: if we abide, we’ll get pruned. It’s a risky verb: if we abide, we’ll bear fruit that others will see and taste. It’s a humbling verb: if we abide, we’ll have to accept nourishment that is not of our own making. And it’s a relentlessly communal verb — if we abide, we will have to coexist with our fellow branches. We will have to live a life that is messy, crowded, tangled, and gorgeous. A life that’s deeply rooted and wildly fertile. [3]
To abide. A difficult task, even in the best of times, not to mention in these times, when we are so divided. And yet, to return to the root, to remember our source, is to submit ourselves again and again to the only truth that is eternally life-giving and life-sustaining.
Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. Like it or not, our lives are already bound for ever and ever amen in Jesus, in a God whose name, whose very way, is love.
W.H. Auden, in all wisdom and at the end of his life, noted: There is no such thing as time. Remember that Jesus said: Before Abraham was, I am.
I think Auden knew something about love, the type of love God is, the type of love made flesh in Jesus, the Christ, stretched out upon the hard wood of the cross.
About the power of love, about its eternal, self-sacrificial quality, about its sacred presence in the very heart of the universe. That is the love in which we are rooted. That is the love out of which we are to love others.
In a poem titled, “September 1, 1939,” penned about the day Germany invaded Poland on the day WWII began, Auden wrote, “We must love one another, or die.”
Yes, Auden knew something about love. And he knew that the challenge and the promise of this kind of love was to abide. To Rest in God. To consent to live in relationship with our Creator and our fellow created –messy, imperfect, and entangled as it may be. This is life eternal, communally rooted in our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me. [4]
Amen.
*The image is a 1956 press photo of W.H. Auden in the public domain found on WikiCommons.
[1] Jay Parini, “What W.H. Auden taught me about Easter, God, and surviving a season of Covid-19,” CNN Opinion, 9 Apr. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/opinions/easter-coronavirus-wh-auden-parini/index.html.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Debie Thomas, “Abide,” Journey with Jesus, 22 Apr. 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1759-abide.
[4] Henry Francis Lyte, “Abide with me: fast falls the eventide,” The Hymnal 1982, 662.
