You might know I have a thing for plants.  I like plants and foliage (and miss the latter this time of year apart from evergreens and winter buds).  I like how plants remind us of truths of the kingdom of God.  There is so much biblical imagery around plants as we have already heard this morning.  We have two plants that live outside at the front of our church from spring to autumn.  When the weather turns colder, we put them on a dolly and roll them inside (they’re large birds of paradise or strelitzia plants).  Two winters ago, we had them in a room upstairs in which our Thursday night dinner/Bible study/prayer group meets.  They took up a lot of space in the room!  I said at the time what when January came, I was sure we would be glad to be surrounded by so much green in the room!  We were.

I’m glad now to have these birds of paradise in our sanctuary this season of Epiphany in the church calendar.  This is the time when we kind of catch our breath between Advent and Lent.  The colour for this time is also green.  Isn’t this welcome?  We’re in what I like to call the dog days of winter.  The so-called saddest day of the year is coming up (Blue Monday January 20^th, I checked).  What I’m liking so much about these plants is the reminder that in the middle of a lot of cold and meagre foliage, there is life.  There is light.  There is Christ.

Whose words we hear.  The invitation that is before us is to figuratively sit down in the green grass (think Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 or Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6) at Jesus’s feet and listen to him.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we begin this morning.

Over Advent we considered an exciting and hopeful question about life in Christ – “What then will I become?  For the hand of the Lord is with me.”  We’ve applied the words spoken at the birth of John the Baptist to each and every one of us in Christ (or maybe it’s better to say we’ve applied ourselves to these words).  In what ways will I be formed in the image of Jesus?   Over the coming 6 weeks, we are going to consider a parallel question – “How may it happen - being formed in very image of Jesus?”  Our foundational text for the series is Mark 12:28-31.  Last words can take on a special significance, and this is the last of four answers that Jesus gives as he is asked questions in the Temple during the week between his entry into Jerusalem and his death and resurrection.  The questions before this have been in the context of disputes – chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees trying to “get” Jesus as it were.  This last question seems to come from a place of openly and sincerely wanting to know the answer.  May we come with the same sincerity and openness.  Here is the story: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”  Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

1. “You Shall Love: Loving God, Loving Neighbour”.  It is no wonder that studies continue to show that relationships and connectedness are key to human flourishing.  This should come as no surprise to us, because this is how God made us.  We have been created to live in loving communion/fellowship/participation with God and with one another!  Someone has said relationships are not an option, they are the fabric of life.  Fullness of life is found in the love of God and the love of others.

I am aware that this might not be necessarily news to us, but may it always be new to us as God makes us new.  Loving relationships, just like a plant, need to be cultivated in order that they may flourish (and produce fruit) and not wither.  My Christmas desire for all of us was that we be in a good place, blessed, flourishing, doing well.  Over weeks 2 to 4 of this series, we are going to consider the vertical aspect of our loving relationship with God.  We will consider what it means for us as individuals, and for us a community of faith, to love God with our mind, our spirit, and our body. That’s the next three weeks.  In the final two weeks, we are going to consider the horizontal aspect of loving relationships with one another.  First with those who are near to us, or “easy to love” as the song goes.  We are going to consider what love looks like toward those who are not so near to us (metaphorically speaking).  Throughout these weeks, we will talk about practices in which we are invited to engage individually and together, daily, weekly, monthly in some cases. 

Before all of that though, is an invitation to remember who we are.  I find it welcome as we talk about catching our breath after the Advent season and walking in faith together through these weeks of Epiphany.  Epiphany means manifestation, and we want the love of God to be made manifest in our lives don’t we, in the same way that fruit is manifested in trees and vines and all the places in which fruit is manifested. Remember who we are. Listen.  This is always where we must start before we consider who we are called to be and what we are called to do.  When Jesus answers the scribe, he quotes a Jewish prayer known as the Shema, prayed morning and evening.  We find it in Deuteronomy 6:4.  Listen to how it begins.  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”  Hear.  Listen.  Soak this in like a plant take in water.  Let those words from the prophet Isaiah continue to echo for us.  Write them down and put them somewhere you’ll see them.  “For you are precious and honoured in my sight, and I love you.” (Is 43:5a)  I was running the title of this series past Nicole (because she is wise and I have gained a certain wisdom in 25 years of marriage).  “You Shall Love” I told her.  “I don’t know,” she said, “It sounds kind of commandy which is unlike you.”   “True enough,” I said, “But it’s Jesus’ command and maybe we need to hear it.  Maybe I need to hear it.”  I can’t be the only one.  Before the command though there is this great truth. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)  Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength – in other words with the entirety of our being – is rooted and grounded in and motivated by the boundless, unfathomable, transforming love that has been poured out in Christ Jesus.  Being formed in the image of Jesus (we call this spiritual formation) is coming to live in this love ever more deeply, that God’s love might flow from us.  Know it to flow and show it!  Love for others, near or far, is the overflow of God’s love – love divine all loves excelling, joy from heaven to earth come down – the overflow of God’s love in our lives, spilling over or maybe even gushing out from us.  Love for God and love for others is not something we have to find within ourselves or call up out of nowhere.  Someone has put it like this: “These two laws — ​ love God and loving others — ​ are the greatest because they epitomize the nature and character of God… Obedience to God is not about making sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed so that we are worthy to enter God’s presence. True obedience comes from a heart that has experienced God’s amazing grace and been transformed by it.”  As followers of Christ we are not loving out of a sense of obligation or duty or fear, but as an act of thanks and wonder and awe and praise at what love the Father has lavished on us so that we might be called children of God. God’s love is where we have our roots.  The evidence is in the fruit.  The root and the fruit!  I told you this plant thing was a great image.  Hear how Jesus describes it in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 – “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.  Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.  The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:43-45)

To be transformed by the love of God in us - by the Holy Spirit doing Holy Spirit transforming work within us – is for there to be a sameness or an integrity between our roots and our fruit.  It just makes sense.  To be transformed by the Holy Spirit is to have our hearts renovated, our wills and motivated shaped by self-sacrificing other-serving love.  All of this because we are rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.  Just like trees.  Remember “I shall not be moved. Like a tree planted by the water.”  This is the image with which the Psalms start.  “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.”  (Ps 1:3)    Here’s how the prophet Jeremiah put it: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jer 17:7-8).  This is the thing about our lives.  We will know drought.  We will know heat.  Drought and heat will come.  Actor James Woods spoke wisdom in the wake of the Pacific Palisades fires this week.  “One day you’re swimming in the pool, and the next day it’s all gone.”  It’s easy to be at our best when things are going well, no?  How easy is it to become irritable or short-tempered or impatient or self-focussed when things are difficult?  Our lives are in many ways a series of comings and goings.  Seasons too come and go.  The invitation here for us, and it is before us every day, is to remain rooted and grounded in the One who is the source of life, just as water is to a tree.  This is to know life as it is meant to be lived. 

I was speaking to a volunteer not long ago at our Out of the Cold ministry down at Trinity Square behind the Eaton Centre.  He told me that while he knew it was a cliché he would say it anyway – “I get so much more out of this than I put in.”  I told him that sometimes cliches become clichés because of the fundamental truth they contain.  I also said that in my understanding of God and life, God made us to serve one another.  This is why we feel such rightness in our turning toward others who are in need of help.  The Holy Spirit at work!

This is what we are made for and this is right and good, to be transplanted in the love of God like a tree that is transplanted by a life-giving stream.  There are things to do, practices of which we will speak over the coming weeks.  Prayer.  Hearing God’s voice in God’s Word.  Worship.  Praise.  Service.  As we close today, though, let us rest.  Let us rest in Jesus’ invitation from John 15.  This is the last of 7 “I am” statements that Jesus makes about himself in John’s Gospel (and there can be a significance in last words).  These are words of life dear friends.  Fullness of life.  This is what we were made for.  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” (15:1)  Hear the invitation this and every day, “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  (15:4)  We ourselves in Jesus.  Jesus himself in us, the hope of glory.  The unfathomable mystery of our participation in the life of God Father, Son and Spirit that is characterized first and foremost by divine love.  “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself 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.” (15:4b-5)

As we sit in the green grass at Jesus’ feet, let us first hear, then take up that invitation.  Abide in me.  Remain in me.  Live in me.  Rest in me.  This is life!  Tell your loved ones.  Tell your friends.  Show your loved ones.  Show your friends/neighbours near and far.  “You shall love” is a command, but it is founded in the good news of “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)  This is the one who is speaking to us.  This is the one who does not leave us to our own devices, but lovingly enables all that he calls us to be and do.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Amen