Life In Abundance. Acts 2:42-47;Psalm 23 ; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

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1 Life In Abundance Acts 2:42-47;Psalm 23 ; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10 In today's lessons it may be too easy for us to get too caught up in the world of Jesus' imagery with yet another round of sheep and shepherd images. The 1 Peter pericope concludes with a sheep reference: "For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls" (1 Pet 2:25). The appointed psalm is the beloved 23rd, the "shepherd Psalm." And, in the Gospel, we have Jesus confounding the disciples with mixed metaphors about sheepfolds and gates and shepherds and sheep stealers. The images are among the church's favorites. All the Gospels, and several other New Testament writings, have sheep references. Our lectionary makes a point of having a shepherd theme day each year, marked by the appointment of Psalm 23 being read on the fourth Sunday of Easter. While this psalm is beloved by every generation of believers, some listeners may grow weary of hearing this particular preacher trying to find new ways to talk about an animal we hardly know anymore. How many times do church people really need to hear about the natural stupidity of sheep (and how much we are like them!) who need a wise guide to lead them to pasture? Most of us don't know much about the world of sheep and pastures, sheepfolds and thieves. If you close your eyes, you might just imagine how heavenly it would be to live in such a serene and pastoral place though. Jesus promised abundant life. Could this be it? Or could it be our own local version of it? Might abundant life be one where there is plenty to eat, plenty of health and wealth, and few troubles to disturb us, life in lush green pastures? When the world thinks of "abundance," it usually thinks in more concrete terms. It thinks of wealth. Money. Here are a few famous remarks noting that worldly point of view: "A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." (W.C. Fields, ) "The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights." (John Paul Getty, ) 1

2 "I am a millionaire. That is my religion." (George Bernard Shaw, ) Is that the abundant life that Jesus speaks of in John's Gospel? Did he come to give us the kind of abundant life which is comfortable and convenient? Recall what Peter says to us today: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24). His wounds? Our sins? The wounds he bore are the wounds we inflicted. Which reminds us that life is not always green pastures and quiet, rustic scenes. We're in Easter. Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. But remember that the Christ who is raised is the one who was horribly crucified. The Jesus of John's Gospel knows the cold cruelty of this life. Later in the Gospel (chapters 14 and 15), Jesus warns the disciples that they will suffer for their faith. But, he also promises the Comforter to assist them in negotiating their way through the peril. When Jesus looked at the Palestinian countryside, while he may have seen sheep and green pastures, he also saw the hunger, disease, and oppression. And in the middle of all this, Jesus spoke of life, abundant life. Abundant life may not mean what we first suspect. Life is a rich term for John, who uses it in reference to Jesus at least 25 times. Life is the beginning and the end of John's concerns; it is the first and last thing he writes about. Jesus, who is John's Logos, is the source of all life in the universe (1:1-4). The ultimate purpose of John's account of the Gospel is that people believe in Christ and that, "believing, you may have life in his name" (20:31). For John, life in Christ means living in fellowship with him and the One who sent him. Though he occasionally makes reference to eternal life, principally John is concerned that believers live ethical lives. When Jesus declares that he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly, he could not have meant that he intends to make life comfortable and plushy for all of us. Surely Jesus meant 2

3 that he came to offer life amid the harshness and cruelty of this life as we sometimes experience it. The abundant life is not a life that guarantees perpetual health or constant comfort. C. S. Lewis knew that the abundant life did not equate with a comfortable life: "The Christian religion... does not begin in comfort; it begins in... dismay... In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth - only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, p. 39.) Certainly, life in the church is not all rosy and "heavenly" as Barbara Brown Taylor notes of her parish days when she wrote: Church people came to see me during the week about all the R-rated things that were going on in their lives - not only family violence, extramarital affairs, and the abuse they suffered for being gay or lesbian, but also religious questions they would not dream of raising with other Christians. In some cases, the questions concerned what they could no longer believe about God. In others, the problem was some very real experience that did not fit with any of their beliefs - a burning bush where no respectable burning bush should have been, for instance. (Barbara Brown Taylor, "Way Beyond Belief," in Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-one Writers Speak About Writing and Their Faith, Edited by Jennifer L. Holberg, Eerdmans, 2006, p. 8.) Having this promised "abundant life" is to be in such close relationship with the living Christ that, whatever reality we face, we are determined to walk the way of Christ, to be obedient to Christ in walking the way of love. For St. Augustine, to live an abundant life meant to be filled with God: The life of a good Christian is an experience of an ever deepening desire for God... Let us desire, my brothers and sisters, for we are to be filled... This is the pattern of our life, an experience of being expanded by desire. But we are expanded by our desire for God only insofar as we have 3

4 severed our various yearnings of love of this world... Imagine that God wants to fill you with honey. If you are already full of vinegar where is the honey to go? That is why what was in the vessel must not only be poured out, but the container itself be washed, cleansed and scoured. It may be hard work, but it is necessary in order to make it fit to house something else, whatever it may be. Whether we call it honey or gold or wine is immaterial because the reality we are describing cannot be named, and whatever we want to say is summed up in one word: God. And when we have said 'God,' what have we said? That one syllable is the distillation of all we hope for. Whatever is in our power to say must in reality be less than God. So, let us stretch ourselves, reaching out to God so that when he comes he may indeed fill us. (Augustine of Hippo, ) Did God become human in order to make our lives more comfortable? No, says writer Debra Rienstra: God did not undertake a magnificent condescension simply to make the world somehow cozier than it already was. God entered the world in order to repair it.... The incarnation demands that we regard the suffering in the world with utmost seriousness. God created human beings with freedom and responsibility; and we have used it to hurt one another, neglect one another, and harm the earth. Christians refuse to define suffering and evil as simply a matter of wrong thinking, primitive impulses, an illusion, or anything else that we can fix by adjusting our thoughts or trying harder. What is wrong with this world is quite real; and we carry the dignity and shame of responsibility for it, as individuals and as the human race. The conditions human beings have created in the world and in our own hearts are so terrible, Christians believe, that we cannot repair them on our own. God must come and do it for us. (Debra Rienstra, So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005, p. 35.) The abundant life is not having more, but, as the first Christians learned (Acts 2:45-47), sometimes it's making do with what you have so that you have more to share with others. It means to 4

5 limit how much we acquire for ourselves so that we can be more abundant in our mercy to others. The abundant life is built on generosity of heart and joy in seeing new life spring up where there appeared only to be death. We must not simply equate "abundant life" with "eternal life" in some distant future. Certainly, Jesus promises this, as John's Gospel says so often. The hope we have in Christ now leans forward toward that time and place where our visions of a blessed eternity have their fulfillment. But, even if abundant life is eternal, it begins now, here in this harsh, sometimes dreary and painful life. What some of the other Gospels depict as a future hope, John's Gospel portrays as now. Jesus moved through this life, in all its occasional harshness and pain and reached out, rebuked the evil, ministered to the pain, made bread in the desert, and gave people a sign, a foretaste, of the abundant life of eternity. And I think he calls each of us to do the same. To live as those who know the truth about the ultimate destiny of the world, as those who are sent to remind others of their sacred worth and their ultimate destiny too, is to live Jesus' promised "abundant life." Thanks be to God! Amen. 5