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“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:9-12).

Hanging onto hope can seem like a hard thing to do these days.  Lots of division, heartache, disease, death, and loneliness threaten to rob it out from under us.  And if we have a hard time hanging onto hope ourselves, how can we possibly go out and offer it to others?

To be actively showing love, experiencing joy, giving care, doing justice, and offering hope seem like just the Christian things to be doing.  Our Christian faith comes with commands, after all: and Jesus says the only way to remain in his love is to keep those commands.  But that only leaves us feeling more stressed and guilty, because we’re tired and we’ve just got no energy left to be doing it all.  And if we can’t do it all, will Jesus still love us?  Hope is a hard thing to hold on to, indeed.

But of course, that’s not really what Jesus is saying at all here.  The picture behind this command, is that of the vine and the branches.  Just a few verses earlier, Jesus has said: “I am the vine; you are the branches.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

The first thing Jesus gives us then, is not a command, but an invitation.  And that invitation is not to do something, but simply to be.  To remain where we already are: in the love of Christ. 

It’s only from that place, of being nurtured and fed by the life-giving sap of Jesus’ love, that we are asked to do anything.  And what we are asked to do, is simply to be conduits of what we have received.  Love has been given to us and we pass it on.  Joy has been infused into our souls, and we radiate it.  Life is ours in Christ, and from his life in us: we bear fruit. 

But it is his work in us.  His love in us.  His joy in us.  That’s where our hope comes from.  From Jesus, as we do nothing more than remain where we are.  So, take heart.  Hope isn’t something we have to hold on to ourselves.  In fact, if we are branches on the vine that is Christ, it’s probably better to recognize that hope is holding onto us.