This year's theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is "Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit" (Jn 15:5-9). Each contributor to our series has reflected on a daily verse from this Scripture passage, as indicated by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for each day of the octave.
Today, Day Three, Rev.d Ruth Frampton reflects on the verse “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12b).
Forming one Body
By Ruth Frampton
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God; all things came into being through him” (Jn 1:1,3). God planted the vine and saw that it was good. But the human stock from Adam turned away from God; humanity needed rescuing after the Fall “and the Word became flesh and lived among us” (Jn 1:14).
Jesus, the true vine, is the second Adam, the rootstock, where we are all grafted in a new creation. The nature and name of that rootstock is Love; Love is the Spirit binding us together in the true vine.
Jesus asks us to love each other as the Father loves him and as he loves us.
This is a tough love, a love that prunes and cleanses. Just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father — they “abide” in each other — so we are to “abide” in God. If we abide in God, we will abide in each other, growing together in the vine, nurtured with the same love. We abide in each other because we are grafted on the same rootstock. Love prunes away all the barriers we throw up between us — the thorns and prickles of sin — that prevent us from twining together as we grow towards the light.
God abiding in us will produce the fruits of love in abundance, as has been apparent in the past year. COVID has been dreadful, keeping families apart and destroying lives and livelihoods. But it has also acted as a catalyst to bring people together in a common cause.
Local food banks have been birthed by diverse groups that previously would not have met. They may never go into church to worship, but they, too, are branches of the vine pruned by the Word of the Grower. Guided by Love, they feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Vines grow inside and outside buildings: Jesus prayed in the synagogue and on the mountains. Jesus poured out an abundance of the wine of Love at Cana and on Calvary; he is the true vine, “the head of the body, the church…and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17-18).
Even before COVID struck, many people were excluded from public worship by reason of illness, frailty and poverty. They were the hidden “scattered church,” visited at home by the priest with Holy Communion, but otherwise under the radar. During the COVID lockdown, we discovered that we are all church, scattered but united in one vine. Virtual services online and by telephone conference for those who, for whatever reason, have limited access to modern technology, created a level playing field, where all could worship on an equal footing as one body; this realization is a gift of Love.
We have learned anew that God is not confined to buildings. We do not go to church to find God because we bring God with us: God abides in our hearts.
Suggested listening: The Lamb by John Taverner. Sung by King's College Choir, Cambridge.
Image courtesy Rev.d Ruth Frampton
Rev.d Ruth Frampton (2014) was ordained a priest for the Church of England in 2016. She ministers in parishes in six rural villages in the Benefice of Teign Valley & Haldon Hill on Dartmoor, near Exeter, England.
