History of our Church Name
Abiding Presence Lutheran Church

3rd Sunday of Easter
Pastor Dan Whitener, Jr
Text: John 15: 1-8
April 27, 1997
 
Sermon preparation led me to make a strategic phone call this week to Webster City, Iowa. Bible study drove me to inquire about an historical detail in the span of the congregation's life. Pastor Roy Miltner, our first pastor and mission developer here, was gracious enough to supply answers to my question. "How did we get the name Abiding Presence? I can sum up the conversation with three quick statements: (1) the source of the name was a chapel, the Church of the Abiding Presence, on the grounds of the Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where Pastor Miltner studied to be a pastor; (2) The significance of the name is its scriptural richness in capturing God's persevering presence in the face of earthly changes and human resistance; and (3) The specialness of the name is that in 1963 no other congregation in the Lutheran church in North America had one like it. (This part of the history alone tells me that this congregation from the outset was trying to say in a frisky sort of way: don't put us in a mold!)
 
Our gospel reading for the 5th Sunday of Easter draws us right into the richness of our congregation's name. Jesus says to his disciples, "Abide in me as I abide in you (you here is plural) ... I am the vine, you are the branches .. Apart from me you can do nothing." Brothers and sisters, abiding has to do with persevereing, sticking with it, remaining steadfast, keeping promises. Contrary to abiding would be fleeing, avoiding, withdrawing, evading, escaping.
 
In parentheses next to the word abide in my dictionary are the labels "archaic" and "poetic." Abide is an archaic word. You don't enter the church building and look for the "abide rooms." Vacationers don't wheel into "abide stops" on I-95. ESPN baseball announcers don't sum up the inning with "one hit, one error, a walk, and two runners abiding on base." This word seems to be old-fashioned. Maybe it belongs in a time capsule or cornerstone of a 19th century church.
 
Abide is archaic because it no longer describes life as we see or experience it. Maybe it never has. Friendships end when they are no longer convenient. Nations fail to honor peace accords. Only the Lord knows completely the depth of pain and grief associated with broken marriage covenants. Thirty years mean nothing to companies who terminate staff two years before retirement. Sociologists now tell us that bowlers no longer commit to leagues and teams, but now more than ever do their thing alone as isolated individuals. Even our churches are diminished by church shoppers out to find the ideal community only to become disillusioned and paralyzed, then winding up committing to no fellowship of faith at all.
 
But all this absence of commitment and abiding is no surprise to our Lord! So when does he proclaim his word, his abiding weld? He directs this word to the twelve disciples on the very night when they would leave him in the lurch. Why would Jesus waste such a rich word on the likes of Judas and Peter, you and me? Because abiding becomes embodied and seen in the One who never veers from the chide course to a cross, a cross on which he would die for all of us who fail to abide in so many ways. Who else needs a direct, abiding word, who else needs the Abiding Presence but those of us who fail to abide in God or in one another? Who else needs an abiding word of hope but those of us already cleansed, baptized, grafted into the very life of God but currently stagnant and apathetic in our praise to God and in our love for the 'least of these" among us?
 
Albeit archaic, abide is also a "poetic" word. By poetic we don't mean the word just sounds smooth and pretty. Abide may sound nice but its activity looks more like blood, dirty hands and sweaty foreheads, more like overalls and lab coats. The root meaning for the Greek word from which we get our word poetry or poetic is "to do; to create; to fashion; to make." In the creation story at the beginning of the Bible, when God said "let there be light" -- there was light! The word created a reality. When Jesus proclaims the word "abide in me as I abide in you," he creates here and now a new life counter to what we and the disciples are accustomed to! An encounter with Jesus and his word means a new life of steadfastness and sticking with it that flows from the vine of God's steadfast love and strength. By the presence of the Holy Spirit, Jesus' abiding word creates an abiding grit-the-teeth kind of people who shoulder one another's burdens and stick with the perpetual problems of a broken creation with patience and perspective.
 
There are moments in the sequence of pastoral visitations when one sees the beautiful connection between the abiding word of Jesus and an abiding life-response that flows from that word. Several years ago in my first parish I used to visit an elderly couple in my congregation who lived in a small trailer. At the time, the husband worked as a never-to-retire diary farmer. His wife suffered from Alzheimer's disease. I visited this couple on a regular basis and brought them Holy Communion. The routine was simple. Begin with the confession. I read them a scripture reading. Then came the words of institution. We all prayed the Lord's Prayer on our knees as was their household custom. I then shared with him the cup and bread. he would then gently offer her a sip from the true vine and a morsel from the abiding bread of life. And with the closing prayer, the gentle farmer would pack me up a sack full of groceries for the local food pantry. As I left, he would get back to caring for his wife without any home health care assistance. This gentleman knew and I knew that the abiding strength for him to keep on keeping on cam from the sacred body and blood, the Abiding Presence who knew himself what it meant to carry a cross. The abiding word of Christ sustained this couple through their strain and sorrow. Mercifully, she now abides in the arms of the Heavenly Father and he once again participates at the Lord's table in that little Lutheran church on the Virginia hillside.
 
Abide. In a world game for every fleeting fancy and flashy soundbite, is there any better word? Call it archaic or old-fashioned. Call it poetic if you like. Is there any better way to identify ourselves as a congregation than to say: as the Lord abides in us, we too may abide in his strength and put on our work clothes to stick with our neighbors through thick and thin? Connected to the vine of God's very abiding life, we go out nourished to branch out in the spirit of commitment and patient endurance. Amen.

Come Visit Our Building
posted May 13, 1997