John 10:1-10
April 26, 2026
I have a pair of pajama bottoms that
were my dad’s. They’re getting very old, very worn, and they are too big for
me. I should get rid of them. I was looking at them the other day and thought,
“I should get rid of these.” But they were some of the pajamas that he wore
when he went into nursing care for the last time, so there is a label in them
that says William Busse. And even though they are wearing out, and could be at
risk of falling apart spontaneously, I folded them up and put them back into
the dresser because I just couldn’t bear to get rid of them. Even though I know
that they are just pj’s, they were my dad’s pjs and I just can’t bear to get
rid of them yet. So, I’m going to hang onto them for a while longer.
Despite what I just told you about
my dad’s pj’s, I can be pretty ruthless when it comes to clearing things out. If
I buy new clothes, I get rid of some old ones. If I have things I never use,
they have got to go. Too much clutter overwhelms me and I feel like I am constantly
surrounded by it, so, I am always trying to clear it, decrease it, and minimize
it – whatever I can do. But what stops me in these efforts are the sentimental
things: my dad’s pajama bottoms, my kids’ favorite books from when they were
little, and my favorite wooden spoon of my mom’s which has gotten warped. I
don’t like clutter, and there are times when I think I should embrace a
minimalist lifestyle, but then there are these sentimental things that I just
can’t get rid of. I have sentimentality in abundance.
Before they died, my parents did
their best to downsize. They got rid of furniture, dishes, clothes, so many
things they accumulated over almost 70 years of marriage. But the remainder of
my mom’s things are still filling up my brother’s house, and although I have
taken as much of her stuff as I can, I know there is more that we could get rid
of. Like my parents, whenever I embark on a move, I try to downsize. When we
moved from Oklahoma to Tennessee, I got rid of stuff. I donated things. I sold
some things. I did the same when we moved from Spring Hill to Columbia. I
donated things. I sold some things. But we still have an abundance of stuff. And
I know that as quickly as I get rid of old stuff, new stuff will come along to
take its place. It’s just a lot of stuff.
Why do we have such a preponderance
of stuff? Is it because we live in a consumer driven society? Is it because we
are bombarded with messages that stuff will make us happy? Is it because we
fear scarcity? One concrete way of dealing with that fear, the fear that we
just don’t have enough, is by having stuff. And our abundance of stuff is not
just a problem for us. It’s a problem for the planet. With all the stuff we
accumulate, we also throw a great deal of stuff away. Landfills are
overflowing. Garbage rides the current of the oceans. With the multitude of
stuff we accumulate in our daily lives, it is easy to become confused with what
abundance is and what abundance is not. This is true especially considering the
words we hear from Jesus in the last verse of our passage from John’s gospel.
“I came that they may have life and
have it abundantly.”
Jesus was an itinerant
prophet-preacher with no permanent address. He warned his would-be followers
that if they wanted to follow him they must understand that while even animals
have places of their own to rest, he did not. If they followed him, they would
need to be prepared for that reality. So, when Jesus speaks of giving abundant
life, I doubt he was talking about a life that had a plethora of possessions. Although
let’s be honest, the prosperity gospel is alive and well in our culture. There
are plenty of preachers, big name preachers, who offer the message of the
prosperity gospel week after week. If you just believe hard enough, if you just
cling to your Bible tightly enough, you will be blessed with plenty. Though
that plenty is not always specified, the underlying message of the prosperity
gospel is that plenty is an abundance of the material. Nice houses, nice cars,
nice stuff equals nice lives.
But I don’t think that’s what Jesus
is referring to when he speaks of abundance. To get to the heart of abundance
as Jesus preached it, we must look back to chapter 9, to the story that
precedes this one. It is the story we read in Lent; the story of the man born
blind.
A man is born blind. Jesus heals him
then leaves the scene. While Jesus is absent, the man is repeatedly
interrogated by the religious authorities. You would think that when someone is
healed of his life-long blindness, there would be rejoicing and celebration.
Yet instead of joy, the people only feel fear. So the result of this miraculous
healing, this giving of sight, is that the man is cast out of the synagogue. He
is cast out of the community.
Jesus tells the religious
authorities that just because they can physically see doesn’t mean that they
can see the holy in their midst. They may have sight, but they are still blind.
He follows these words with the words we read in this passage. In verse 7,
Jesus says,
“Very truly, I tell you, I am the
gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the
sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.”
I am the gate. This Sunday in
Eastertide is commonly known as Good Shepherd Sunday, but in these verses,
Jesus doesn’t talk about being the shepherd. Jesus talks about being the gate. In
the ancient Near East, a sheepfold could be a communal enclosure—stone walls
with a single gate, a single opening—where multiple flocks stayed overnight. A
doorkeeper or gatekeeper would guard the entrance. In the morning, each
shepherd would come, call his sheep, and lead them out. Sheep are not guided by
force so much as by trust. They learn a voice. They remember the person the
voice belongs to. They follow that person.
Jesus
is telling those would listen that he is the gate, the entrance to green
pastures. He is the gate and the shepherd. The sheep who know him hear his
voice and with trust follow through the gate. Jesus is the gate and it is
through him that we are led to abundant life. Jesus is the gate. So, if we want
abundant life, if we want salvation, we must go through the gate.
None
of this is surprising. I doubt that the idea that salvation comes through Jesus
is news to any of us. But I think the question that is begged from this passage
is what does this abundant life look like? What does salvation look like? When
Jesus said that he came so that we might have life and have it abundantly, to
what and when was he referring?
Let’s
go back to the story of the man born blind. Do we think his salvation came only
after he died? Do we think that he finally experienced abundance when he left
this life and went to the next? Or did salvation come to him in the form of
sight? Think about it. He went from a life of darkness, a life of begging just
to survive, to a life of sight! Would there be anything more abundant, more
salvific for a person born blind at that time to receive sight? With sight came
the ability to provide for himself, to envision – no pun intended – a new way
of living and being. With the giving of sight, that man was given a life he had
never had before. He was given an abundance of new life! He was given sight.
That was his salvation.
It
seems to me that this abundant life, even salvation, is not something that is
reserved for a future existence. Jesus came to give abundant life now. This is
not a promise of prosperity. It is not about stuff. It is about abundance. It
is about salvation in the here and now. If Jesus meets us where we are, then
maybe salvation does as well. If we are lost, then salvation comes in being
found. If we are hopeless, then salvation comes when we realize that reasons to
be hopeful abound. Jesus came so that we might have abundant lives, saved lives
right now.
But
do we live lives that are abundant? Do we believe that salvation is ours in the
moment? Are we living lives that are filled with an abundance of joy, hope, and
love? Are we living abundant lives where we share that abundance with others?
Because if we are looking at abundance through the lens of Jesus, then we know
that abundance is not stuff that can be accumulated. Abundance is about celebrating
that we have enough at our table, then making a bigger table so we can share
with others. Abundance is about picking up our cloths and washing the feet of
the least of these. Abundance is about knocking down fences and recognizing
that every other child of God is our neighbor.
Are
we living those abundant lives? Or are we living small lives? Do we live more
out of a fear of scarcity, a fear of being without rather than trusting that we
will have enough? I think trust is the key. Trust is at the heart of living an abundant
life. If we don’t trust that we will have enough to live, to survive, than it
is downright hard to be abundantly generous. If we don’t trust that we are
worthy of love, then loving others abundantly is impossible. Without trust we
cannot hope. Without trust we cannot fully love. Without trust we cannot fully
live. Living an expansive, hopeful, loving, joyful, abundant life requires
trust.
There
is a beautiful scene in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Toula,
the main character, is sitting on her bed looking unhappy. She is about to be
married to the man she loves, but this man is an exenno – a stranger, a
non-Greek. Her mother comes in and asks her what is wrong, and Toula asks her
mother if her impending marriage is hurting her father. Her mother tells Toula
a story about her young life in Greece.
In
my village there were many wars. There were many occupiers and they all left a
mess. Her mother would tell her that they were lucky, lucky to be alive. But
she would think, lucky? How is it lucky when people tell us where we can live
and what we can eat? But when she saw Toula and her sister and brother, she knew
why they came to America. They came to America so that they could live. She
told Toula, “I gave you life so you could live it.”
I
gave you life so you could live it.
Jesus
is the gate to abundant life. But an abundant life is not about perfection or
something we can only see in the far distance. Abundant life is a full life –
full of joy and full of love and full of the wonder and the messiness that
comes with being human. An abundant life is a life that grows bigger not
smaller, that trusts thoroughly not cowers in fear. An abundant life is what
God created us for, what Jesus lived and died and rose again for, and it is what
the Holy Spirit beckons us toward. So let us trust enough to go through that
gate. Let’s trust the voice of Jesus calling us. Let’s go through that gate to
abundance.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment