"In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word,
making a salvation-garden of your life."
James 1, The Message
It seemed like another ordinary day on the farm. A season of cultivation and soil preparation was giving way to another season of sowing. Suddenly something like an episode out of the “X-Files” began to happen around us. A caravan of white vehicles converged on a neighboring field. Out poured a team of men and women with white lab coats, pointy glasses and full pocket protectors. They were from the State University Department of Agriculture. Sticking long probes into the ground, they extracted hundreds of soil samples, carefully labeled them into separate containers, and put them into the vans.
The following week they arrived at the farm again where they staked out the field in sections with small red flags. At the end of each section they posted a sign with the name of a variety of wheat seed. They were conducting a demonstration plot. For years the professors worked in the laboratory to develop a new series of disease resistant, high yield wheat seed. The time for testing the seed had come.
Never in all my family’s years of farming had watching wheat grow been so interesting. Never before had such care been expended on one field. And never before had the harvest been so anticipated. We were not disappointed. The yields on this demonstration plot of wheat seed far exceeded anything we had ever conceived of in our wildest imaginations.
What a great image for our seminary: Asbury Farm, a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God. Seminary, after all, comes to us from the Latin term, Seminarius, meaning seed bed. This reader, like the preceding ones, aims to help our community practice the means of grace. As we read Scripture together, the Spirit sows the Word of God in our lives while sowing our lives in the seedbed of God’s Story.
The fifteenth chapter of John proffers a unique term for this idea, giving it an agrarian twist: Abide. The word “abide” captures the essence of the means of grace, inviting us inside the rich relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I will forever remember a walk with a friend in Wilmore a few years back. As we walked, we discussed the fifteenth chapter of John and particularly this notion of abiding. For so long in my own understanding abide meant to take more initiative in seeking God, to read more, to pray harder, to fast faster and so forth. Basically, it meant to rev up the treadmill of my devotional efforts in order to be nearer to God. Hule, my friend, shared his own journey, recounting a breakthrough discovery through a recent preaching experience. It happened on the college campus where he taught. In the “secrets-of-the-vine-esque” sermon he described abiding as the task of the branch to “stay connected” to the vine. He put it like this: “Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. Our job is to suck the sap out of the vine. That makes us sapsuckers!” Following the sermon, a student approached Hule for a conversation. The young woman, a PhD Botany student, affirmed the message yet offered a stunning critique. She said, “You got the part about the vine and the branches wrong. The branches don’t suck the sap out of the vine. It’s more like hypostasis. The vine literally forces its substance into the branches.” We want the secrets of the vine when the secret is the Vine. It’s simple and yet all consuming. “Abide in me and I will abide in you.” Abiding reveals the grace-filled way of the Word of God.
Our 2008 Lent-Easter Reader journeys us together through the inspired, illuminating, living active Word of God. Each day unfolds another bit of John’s Gospel along with the writings of trusted guides who have stood the test of time. Mark, highlight, underline. Make notes in the margins. Engage the text. Let it shape your prayers. This spring we will add the enhancement of a weekly podcast, welcoming some of our faculty members to offer devotional commentary on the Gospel. Additionally, enjoy the photo essay unfolding through this reader by Florida campus student, David Clark.
Remember our goal: submission, not mastery. I am fond of this saying I frequently repeat to my children and to myself: “Bit by bit, day by day the Word of God will light our way.” Let us open our hearts and minds welcoming the substance of the Vine, the Word of God, in the power of the Spirit to the end that we may become like our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to the Asbury Farm Reader.
Abiding with You,
John David Walt, Jr.
Dean of the Chapel
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