Abiding in Christ: Living like lichen

A sermon on John 6: 56-69

Preached on August 25, 2024 at Lawrence Road Presbyterian Church in Lawrencville,NJ. To watch the entire service, click here.

Today’s gospel reading comes at the end of Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse.

At the beginning of this discourse, Jesus is on the shores of the sea of galilee and, as so often happens, a crowd has gathered around him. And before he even says any words of wisdom to them, he feeds them. From just a few loaves of bread and fish, he feeds the multitudes

Now, Jesus teaches those gathered around him. Jesus tells them about who he. And he says something very strange. He says “I am the bread of life.”

And if that isn’t strange enough, he goes on to tell them, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.”

Abide—that’s such a strange word isn’t it?

            The word in that Jesus uses is the Greek word “meno”

                        Which can mean abide or remain

This word meno connotes a certain closeness, a one-ness or intimacy

But it’s not just that Jesus wants to be —physically, emotional, and spiritually-- close to us

            Christ yearns to be as close to us our next breath

                        But even more than that

Christ invites us to be part of himself—a part of God’s own self

The eating metaphor Jesus himself uses can help us to more fully understand what this all means.

It can help us understand what it means to abide or reside within God. When we eat something, the food is absorbed into us and becomes part of us. Eating absorbs the “other” in us—into our very molecules. As we eat the bread or wafer of communion our bodies take in those nutrients and Christ symbolically becomes part of us.

But abiding in Christ doesn’t just mean that we are sustained by Christ through communion, but we are also changed by him. Professor of New Testament, Peter Claver Ajer, explains how abiding in Christ also transforms us. He says “Abiding in Christ means that we absorb his teaching, his character, his mind and his ways.” By abiding in Christ, we become more like him

And if anyone was worried, This whole Christ residing in us and us in him doesn’t meant that we are no longer recognizable—that we are no longer ourselves. Having this extreme closeness with him doesn’t mean that our own particular and unique identities are wiped away.

We can be sure of this because the kind of relationship Christ beckons us into is the same kind that Christ has with God.

For that to make sense, we need bit of a theology lesson first: One of the basic tenants of Christianity is the trinity: the idea that God is somehow both three personsand one. The Creator, the Sustainer, and the Redeemer And the three of them dance together like a spinning merry-go-round in a blur of joy and creativity to make up the Godhead

And it’s this same intimate, mutually enmeshed, yet still distinct, relationship that Christ has with God that Christ invites us into.

We can kind of see something sort of similar in nature—in symbiotic relationships. Lichen are a great example of this. For a long time, it was thought that lichens were just one thing—one weird little fungus thing. But in the late 1800’s, a Swiss botanist discovered that lichen are actually made up of two completely different entities. Lichens are the result of a symbiotic relationship between  fungus and algae. This means that because of their relationship,both the fungus and the algae are able to make a life in places where neither could survive alone.

While Christ doesn’t need us to survive the same way fungus need algae and algae need fungus, I think lichen can still be a helpful metaphor. Because the intimacy between Christ and God and Christ and us is very similar to the intimacy between fungus and algae.

The same way that we abide in Christ and Christ in us, so too does the fungus abide in the algae and the algae in the fungus.The waters of individuality are muddied but not entirely lost

Fungus and algae

            Us and Christ

                        The three persons of God

All separate and distinct but also intertwined and enmeshed in one another that it’s impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends

Abiding in Christ is a beautiful, messy, confusing, and life-giving relationship that brings us further into God’s kingdom ways.

Now at this point, some of us might be thinking “and now what?”

What does all this theology—all these metaphors and lichen—have to do with me?

I guess my question back then is

            What does this change for you?

                        How do you now feel?

                                    How do you now think?

                                                What do you want to do now knowing that we have been taken up into participation in something larger than ourselves?

I don’t think I can answer that for all of us here. Just like how in an eco-systems, each symbiotic relationship looks different than the one next to it, the same is true for us as well

For me, I know this mutual abiding means that I don’t have to do or say anything to convince God to love me. Knowing that we abide in Christ and Christ in us, means I don’t have to keep striving and worrying that something I might do or say will push God. And because of that, I can be free—free to be my full authentic self. Free to try and mess up and to try again because God’s grace will always be there

For some of us, Christ abiding in us and us in Christ means resting in the comfort of the truth that we are never alone—that even in our darkest nights, Christ is with us.

Our mutual abiding may mean that even if we feel the pangs of loneliness deeper than our own bones, we can have the comfort of knowing that while that that pain is real, so too is Christ’s enduring love and presence with us

For others of us, knowing that we abide in Christ and Christ in us, means that we might feel moved to work to honor that truth in others—to find a local organization that excites your passions and encourages your gifts. Knowing that we all are mutually enmeshed in Christ might push us to work towards a world in where all of God’s children can live in full dignity and can flourish in beloved community

While we all might respond in a different way to this beautiful truth, the mutual life in Christ remains the same. We’re all different and important parts of this big eco system that is the body of Christ. Each with our important roles. Each completely known and loved by God.

May we know this. May we be this. May we do this. Amen.