Tuesday is for Hospitality: make your home in Me

Houseplant, James Grashow

John 15 shares this intimate invitation from the Messiah:  Make your home in Me just as I do in you.  Abide in my love. This is how I love you.  

Astounding.  

In our perspective, as the Church living with the Holy Spirit, the statement is astounding enough. Imagine being the first-person listeners to the Man Jesus declaring that He's made His home in you. 

And not only to find our home in Him: "This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends."

Astounding.

Houseplant Atlanta, James Grashow

In this week's Easter reading from The Rising by Wendy M. Wright, the author shares an excerpt from the Italian holy woman, Catherine of Siena, in her fourteenth century theological treatise, The Dialogue. Catherine wrote her masterpiece as a conversation between the Father God and herself.

"You, then, are my workers. You have come from me, the supreme eternal gardener, and I have engrafted you onto the vine by making myself one with you.

Keep in mind that each of you has your own vineyard. But every one is joined to your neighbors' vineyards without any dividing lines. They are so joined together, in fact, that you cannot do good or evil for yourself without doing the same for your neighbors.

All of you together make up one common vineyard, the whole Christian assembly, and you are all united in the vineyard of the mystic body of holy Church from which you draw your life. In the vineyard is planted the vine, which is my only-begotten Son, into whom you must be engrafted."

Not only does the love of the Father welcome us to make our home in His Son and His Son to make His home in us.  The love of the Father creates a home for us in each other.

Astounding.

Tonight is the final Tuesday for our small group to gather in our home. We've been piling in on each other each week, landing on couches, porch rockers, kitchen tables. Eating popcorn, drinking tea, sluicing off the grime and grief of our long work days. Andy and Maria bring their homemade wine. We drink together, passing glasses to taste, declaring our favorites.  Their basement vineyard has become our own.

Sculpture Houseplants, Purple, James Grashow