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Sentence

In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  1 John 4:10-11 

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Collect

O God, 

form the minds of your faithful people,

that we may love what you command

and desire what you promise,

so that, amid the many changes of this world,

our hearts may there be fixed where true joys

are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Readings

• Acts 8:26-40
• Psalm 22:26-32
• 1 John 4:7-21
• John 15:1-8

next week

• Acts 10:44-48
• Psalm 98
• 1 John 5:1-12
• John 15:9-17

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A Thought to Ponder

Easter 5 – John 15:1-8

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower … I am the vine, you are the branches.”

“Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

From the music of the psalms to the engravings on the temple pediments, vines were a symbol of Yahweh’s many blessings to Israel. In his Last Supper discourse (from which today’s Gospel is taken), Jesus appropriates the image of the vine to explain his eternal connectedness to his disciples, their connectedness through him to God, and their connectedness to one another.

In Christ, we are “grafted” to God and to one another. The Risen One calls us to community, to be branches on the same vine, to realise our life in Christ is also life in one another.

We cannot live our faith in a vacuum: Unless Jesus becomes the centre of our lives, the faith we profess is doomed to wither and die in emptiness.  

The Easter season speaks to us of the eternal presence of Christ in our midst, present to us in the Word we have heard and has taken root in our hearts. Our faithfulness to the call to discipleship demands that we work to enable that Word within us to produce a “yield” of compassion, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation. In the “fruit” we bear as “branches” of Christ do we glorify God the “vine grower.”

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Sermon

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You can read the Pew Sheet here

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