Sermon 2/3/08
Abundance: The Good Life - John 10:1-10
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Today we come to the third and final week when we focus on stewardship in our congregation. What are we willing to give? Why do we give it? What is asked of us by God? We’ve been using the theme of Abundance to help us think about giving. I wanted us to refocus our thoughts about giving, so that we don’t feel like we’re starting from behind, but from ahead. We are richly blessed with abundance. What our stewardship campaign is about is wondering how we’ll use that abundance. I have to admit to you that it was easy for me to choose this them because in doing so I get to preach on my very favorite verse in the whole Bible, found in the last part of the last verse in today’s reading: Jesus says, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”
This has been my favorite verse since I ‘discovered’ it when I was 15 years old. It was summer, and I’d just said goodbye to the exchange student from Italy my family hosted for the month. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, that things wouldn’t be as good the rest of the summer. I wanted to just get the summer over with and at least get back to school so I’d have something to do. I’ve kept a journal pretty regularly since I was in fifth grade, and so I recently reread my entries from this time in my life. After a couple ‘down’ entries, I wrote this: “Sometimes you can have a day when nothing happens, but your life dramatically changes. Well for me, these few days have been [like that . . . Since that journal entry yesterday, I’ve been trying (trying) to experience life more fully than I have been. I’m going by my new motto, “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” I think that may be my favorite verse in the whole Bible. I want to breathe more, taste more, feel more, see more, do more, hear more, touch more than ever before. I don’t want any time to pass by me wasted . . . live for today. Not yesterday or tomorrow either . . . I’m savoring the events of today. I think I’ve honestly learned something here. Maybe I’ve honestly changed . . .”
Over a decade later since I wrote that entry, I still struggle with this vision of abundance I think God wants for us. But it’s still my favorite Bible verse, still I think the promise Jesus shares with us: abundant life.
But what about the other nine verses leading up to this one? What is Jesus talking about? What gets him on the topic of sheep and shepherds? The tenth verse about abundant life is the heart of the passage – but what’s the context? What’s the framework? Right before our text for today, Jesus had healed a man born blind, and restored his sight. But the Pharisees weren’t pleased with the healing – they wanted to know how the man was healed, what Jesus did to perform the healing, all the details and specifics, as if it made a difference. At the bottom of their questions, they wanted to know how Jesus claimed the authority to perform such a healing. Jesus essentially tells them that though they may be able to see, where it counts, the Pharisees are blind.
It is then that Jesus shares a vivid metaphor full of images of sheep, shepherds, gates, gatekeepers, and pastures. It all sounds very lovely until you try to work your way through the metaphor. We are the sheep. Jesus is the shepherd. But Jesus is also the gate. And there are thieves and bandits - who are they? And who is the gatekeeper? Commentators and preachers point out that clearly Jesus did not heed the well-known rule that you should not mix your metaphors! No wonder his audience did not understand what he was talking about! The message that Jesus tries to convey is not immediately clear - the metaphor is several layers thick, and every time you read it, you find something you hadn't noticed before, or some word catches your ear like it hadn't before. Like Jesus' promise of abundant life, his words too are full, overflowing with meanings for us to discover.
I had always assumed that the gate in Jesus' metaphor represented the entry to eternal life, the gate of salvation. If Jesus called himself the gate, I assumed that Jesus was trying to say that sheep could only come into the fold through him, that people could only come into eternal life through him. I was struck, then, in reading the text over, that leading the sheep into safe-haven of the gated area was only one part of the shepherd's responsibilities. In fact, Jesus talks more about how the shepherd leads the sheep out of the safe place into places of pasture. "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He goes ahead of them and the sheep follow." The sheep, Jesus says, come in and go out and find pasture. They move between the place of safety and new places where they can eat and wander, under the guidance of the shepherd.
The gated area does not represent eternal life, and Jesus' function is not to keep unwanted sheep from getting in! In fact, Jesus' aim is to get the sheep out of the gated area, out of the safe places and into places where abundant life can be experienced. He calls the sheep out to pasture. In Jesus' time, the sheep of many villagers were kept together in one gated area. When a shepherd came to lead his sheep out, he would have a unique call, so that his sheep would know who he was and follow behind him. The shepherd calls his sheep by name and leads them out. Jesus promises us abundant life, but we must leave the gated area to take part in it.
How often are we willing to leave the safety of the pasture in order to follow Jesus? Sometimes, I think we play it pretty safe as people who call ourselves Christians. When was the last time you took a risk because of your faith? When was the last time your belief in God, your commitment to Christ, caused you to do something that stretched you beyond your comfort zone, brought you into places you wouldn’t normally go, or made you do something you wouldn’t do otherwise? Jesus says if we know him, we’ll be able to follow him when he leads us out to the pasture, where God’s abundance awaits us. Do we want the abundance? Or are we ready to trick ourselves into thinking life inside the sheepfold is all we really need?
A look around our world today will tell us that we’re probably mostly trying to pretend like we can find the green pastures and abundant life Jesus talks about right from inside the sheepfold. We’re very comfortable with the idea of abundance. Americans like everything that has to do with a lot! Maybe you’ve heard of this little scenario: If the world were made up of exactly 100 people, but still divided the same way, this would be our scenario: 57 people would be Asian, 21 European, and 15 North and South American. 52 female, 48 male. 70 are non-white, 30 are white, 70 are non-Christian, 30 are Christian. And here’s where it gets interesting: Six of the hundred would control 59 percent of the entire world's wealth and all six of them would come from the United States. 80 of the 100 live in sub-standard housing, mostly those outside the US. 70 cannot read, mostly from outside the US. 50 would suffer from malnutrition. Only one would have a college education. Only one would have a computer. Or here’s another way to look at it: Perhaps you are familiar with the ecological footprint quiz you can take online. It helps you figure out how much of the earth’s resources you use, and how many earths we’d need if everyone lived like we did. Well, if everyone in the world lived like the average American, we’d need 5.4 planets to have enough room for all our cars, all our houses, all our stuff, and all the energy we use per person. We’re good at abundance. But is this the abundance Jesus offer to us?
We have an abundance of other things too in the US: higher than the rest of the world rates of stress, anxiety, depression, and mental health concerns. Higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer. We make more money, but we worker longer hours, and spend more time travelling, and less time with our families. We have more items meant for our convenience, and we’re busier than ever. Again, I wonder, is this the abundance that God wants for us? The prophet Isaiah wondered this too, and wrote, in one of my other favorite Bible verses: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Jesus promises us living bread, and the water of life that leaves us never thirsty. He promises us abundance. But still, we try to insist on getting God’s abundance in our own way, on our own terms. I know you here are familiar with C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, some of my very favorite books. The sixth book in the Chronicles is called The Magician’s Nephew, and this book is a book of beginnings, telling about how Narnia was created. If you read the book, you will find it full of stories that sound similar to stories you might have heard from someplace in the Bible. In one chapter, you’ll find a scene with a boy named Diggory, seeking an apple from a tree in the center of the garden. The garden is gated, and a sign on the gate reads, “Come in by the gold gates or not at all, Take of my fruit for others or forbear, For those who steal or those who climb my wall Shall find their heart's desire and find despair.” Diggory knows that the apple will save the life of his mother who is dying back home in London. But you’ll also find in the garden, a witch named Jadis, who climbs over the garden gate and takes and eats a fruit for herself, hoping it will give her eternal life. Diggory plans to give the apple to his mother, but the witch, having eaten herself, urges the child to also eat his apple. “You simpleton!” she says. “Do you know what that fruit is? I will tell you. It is the apple of youth, the apple of life. I know, for I have tasted it; and I feel already such changes in myself that I know I shall never grow old or die. Eat it, Boy, eat it.” But Aslan, the Christ-figure in the books, knows that the witch will not have the kind of eternal life she wanted. “That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way,” he says, “The fruit is good, but [the eaters] loathe it ever after . . . All get what they want; they do not always like it." We can take from the vineyard of blessings that God spreads before us. But God has a better way, a much better way, where we receive as a gift what God wants to give us. We’ve become confused – we see the abundance the God offers – but we act as though we have to steal it, take it, gobble it up, rather than understanding that the abundant life God offers is a gift that can only be given by God, that can only be received as a gift by us.
What kind of abundance does God want for us? My older brother is an excellent writer. I love writing, and I think I’m a good writer – but my brother has a way with words that I’ve admired since I was little and he would win the creative writing contest every year. Last year, just before his son Sam was born, he wrote about wanting to make some changes in his life. He said, “I've figured out that, though I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, my best guide is greed. I feel greedier now than I've ever been before. I want as much as I can get. But I want, I'm greedy for, the things that actually satisfy. Alan Watts has said that we're all screwed up in our desires and our sense of self that it's as if we're sitting in fine restaurants demanding to eat the menu.
I'm tired of eating menus. I'm tired of having no good answer to an old, powerful question: "Why do we spend our money for that which is not bread and our labor for that which does not satisfy?" Enough is enough . . . I don't know all the details yet, but I know a little.
I know that what I'm looking for has something to do with standing in the kitchen, taking my time to chop vegetables I've pulled from my own garden or bought from someone whose name I know, preparing a meal slowly and lovingly, eating it with my family or my friends, enjoying their conversation. I know it has not much to do with throwing a frozen dinner in the microwave to "save time" and mindlessly shoveling it down while I stare at the television screen.
I know it has something to do with being in the outdoors, strumming my guitar, taking the time to really be with my wife, writing the stories that have been kicking around in my head for years, working with my hands, wrestling with my dog, listening to older, wiser people share their life stories. I know it has very little to do with accumulating piles of cheap plastic [things] at the mall, working longer hours to "get ahead," piling garbage on the edge of the street every Sunday night.
I know it has something to do with the son I'll meet any day now, with taking the time to be the father I can be, if I let myself, if I let go of the nonsense that could hold me back. Something to do with quiet, with actually listening from time to time for the voice of God . . . (1)
Jesus wants for us this kind of abundance – a life with enough space in it to let God fill us up to overflowing with God’s love. And Jesus wants to lead us – not just leave us where we are in the safe sheepfold, a cheap imitation of the green pastures nearby – Jesus wants us to trust, risk, and follow. Jesus offers abundant life – not necessarily a rich life, an easy life, a safe life, a predictable life, an admired life – but the true good life. As we close our stewardship campaign, we’re caught up in this mystery – to have this abundant life, all we need to do is give up our own life, our own control, to God. To save ourselves, we have to lose ourselves to God’s plan. To live in Christ, we die to ourselves. To be lifted up, we’re brought low. To have it all, we give it up. And in our giving, God promises we’ll receive beyond what we can imagine.
Today we celebrate the communion meal together. Calling it a meal might strike us as odd: our meal consists of a bit of bread and a dab of juice. How is this a meal, a feast, we wonder? But Jesus tells us this is the best meal we have ever tasted: When Jesus feeds the five thousand, he tells them, "do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life . . . the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to this world. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." To the woman at the well, Jesus says that he can give us living water to drink. "Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." To us, Jesus says, "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly."
What kind of life are you working for? What voice, whose voice, are you following? The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. Jesus came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Amen.
(1) http://jockeystreet.blogspot.com/2007/05/utah-part-3.html