There were three men cast away on a desert island. After many months of waiting for any sign of rescue, a bottle floated up on the beach. As they all gathered around, one of them picked it up and rubbed off the sand. Lo and behold, as he rubbed, a genie appeared! The genie was extremely grateful to be released from the bottle and announced that, as usual, he had three wishes to grant. Because there were three of them stranded on the island, they could each have one wish. The man holding the bottle immediately spoke up, “I am sick of this island. I miss my family and my friends. I want to go home.” Poof! He was gone, home to his wife and children. One of the other men said, “I feel exactly the same way. It has been too long. Please send me home.” Poof! He also was gone, home once again. The third man was left alone with the genie. He was, you might say, the slowest of the three. He looked around at the island for awhile, and then said, “You know, it sure is lonely here without my two friends. I wish they were back.”
In our Gospel text for this Sunday, John 15:1-8, Jesus says to His disciples in verse 7, “ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Prosperity gospel preachers have done a booming business telling people that those words, lifted out of context, can be taken at face value and that they must just be clever in their wishing (praying?), more clever than the third man on that desert island. Yet it’s easy to see that one must include the first part of the verse: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish…”
Many of us may escape the crass materialism of prosperity “gospel” and not make our wishes about wealth or power. Yet we may still fail to meet the condition Jesus made. By focusing mostly solely on ourselves in what we ask of God, whether on our own physical or emotional health or even on our personal spiritual well-being, we may fail to “abide” in our Lord. That’s why the lead in to this promise of “whatever you wish” is both preceded and followed by the image of a grape vine.
To abide in Jesus, He says in verse 5, is to be branches of the main stem which is His own life and being. Thus to abide in Him, we must not just offer praise and love toward Jesus or focus on our personal salvation in Him. To abide in Jesus, we must be extensions of what He does, of His concerns. We cannot be, like the third man on the island, only interested in our own wishes, but also in the wishes and needs of others, just as Jesus is.
Of course, to abide in Jesus in such a way is not a simple or brief transformation of how we usually think or live. We may be more clever in deferring or sublimating those desires which are aimed at our own benefit, but even when we genuinely wish to be concerned for others our wishes for ourselves often play a part. Coming to abide in Jesus in such a way that whatever we wish for is so much in tune with His own wishes, so much a genuine branch of His own Spirit, that of course the prayer for those wishes will be granted, is a long and likely difficult process which can take a lifetime… or more.
Our aim, then, is for a way of life which will bring us into the sort of relationship with Jesus which will transform our desires, our wishes, to align with His. It’s not a direct process of simply changing what we wish for. I can’t simply decide to want something different from what I want, anymore than I can just decide to believe something different from what I believe. But I can enter into a long course of action which will change what I think and feel over time. That’s what it will take to learn to abide in Jesus and then get whatever we wish.