I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly
I remember listening to a sermon preached in the Easter season a few years ago which began by quoting the words of Mark Twain after his obituary was mistakenly printed in the New York Journal:
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
As a way of introducing the Easter message it seemed rather trivialising, although I can’t remember much of what the preacher went on to say. But in reflecting on today’s Gospel and the famous saying of Jesus with which it ends, I wondered whether this witticism might not be better employed if it were inverted to say:
Reports that we are alive are greatly exaggerated.
Jesus’ words about having life abundantly make a shocking universal claim. They seem to imply that it would be an exaggeration to say that people whose lives are not lived in relation to Jesus Christ (however we understand that) are actually alive, in the fullest sense of that word.
That’s a fundamentally big claim, and a very difficult idea to get to grips with using the categories now available to us for thinking about human life. We tend, understandably, to view life and death in rather stark biological terms. Your body is either operational or not. You are alive or dead and there’s nothing in between, or extra to that. But then if we do come on to talk about the nature of life as a lived experience, we would probably use the language of “quality”. We might say that someone “enjoys a good quality of life” and that probably means that that person is materially comfortable, that they are in reasonable physical health and that they can exercise a good degree of choice in relation to their “way of life”.
So is this kind of “good quality of life” how we are to understand Jesus’ words about having “life in abundance”? And that isn’t a hypothetical question because this is precisely how millions of Christians do understand these words in the various forms of the “prosperity gospel” that are so popular around the world, including in Britain today. Live your life in a way that’s faithful to God and you will have a good quality of life in the sense that you will be successful on the terms in which our society defines success – material comfort, physical health, and the exercise of choices.
Well, if we understand the verse in that way, then the preceding verses which talk about sheep in a flock might be a bit troubling, because this image doesn’t sit easily at all with our view of success. Sheep follow the crowd, sheep all look the same, sheep (as this passage makes very clear) do as they are told. Those things are all the opposite of how we define success today where being better, being different, standing out from the crowd is what success is often seen to be all about. Our contemporary celebrity culture is not one that readily views the analogy of the flock of sheep as one appropriate to abundant living! And there are plenty of people around who will argue that religious faith does stifle our individuality and turns us into automaton sheep-like people who aren’t allowed to think for ourselves.
Well of course, I don’t believe that, and I think it’s pushing Jesus’ use of this analogy too far. Essentially, this strangle parabolic language of the sheep and the sheepfold seems to turn around the basic truth that human beings will always follow some kind of leadership. And the question therefore is who the sheep are following? and who is the one who will lead them to safety? – who will lead them into life? In Jesus’ teaching, the gift of abundant life is received in precisely this: following the voice of the one who gives life.
So what does this mean and how might it be different to a life that is less fully alive? Well it seems to me to be to do with making fundamental connections. The Shepherd, as Psalm 23 reminds us, is the Lord, Yahweh, the Creator of all that exists and his voice is the Word that runs through creation and is the very source of creation: “God said, let there be light…”. To listen to the Shepherd’s voice and to know his voice to is therefore to be deeply in tune with the whole of Creation and our place within it. It is fundamentally to make the connection between our lives and the life of God who created us.
And it was this ministry of connection, atonement (at-one-ment) as we have come to call it, that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection has brought about since he is the very voice of God, the Word spoken from the mouth of God, incarnate as one like a Son of Man. The cosmic voice that made the light at the beginning of time has, in Jesus become the Light that enlightens every human being.
So having life in abundance is living life in a profoundly connected way – connected with the Word that is the source of all things, and so connected to the rest of Creation in a relationship of responsibility and care, not the domination and control against which we all struggle.
There was a fascinating book published last week called Conversations on Religion, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury has been interviewed about the difference that he thinks faith makes in life. He talks about what it might mean to live “life in abundance” and what kind of freedom and liberation that might bring.
And as an illustration he talks, perhaps surprisingly, about a woman called Etty Hillesum. He says:
She died in Auschwitz when she was 27. She was a dutch Jew, who left behind a great bundle of journals and papers which were all published a few years ago. And, I don’t know why, or what it is about her, but I can read those and say: “Yes, this is life in abundance”… And it’s very strange, she says at one point: “I’ve always said I don’t believe in God, but here I am kneeling. I’m not quite sure what I’m kneeling to, but I just know that I’ve got to go down on my knees”. And later, just as she’s about to go off on the transports to Auschwitz, she says: “Somebody’s got to take responsibility for God and I suppose it’s got to be me.” To be there, at the centre of that, to feel, to love, have faith, and decide to take responsibility for that. I think it’s that phrase that sums up [life in abundance].
Here is someone who in the most desolate of human experiences, hears the voice of God, recognises it, and not only finds that fundamental connection within herself, but also takes responsibility for allowing others to find the connection – to bring life in abundance to those around her.
So it seems that good quality of life, or success as we have come to define it, are pretty irrelevant to the kind of abundant living Jesus talks about. Or perhaps we might even say that those of us who are lucky enough (in one sense) to benefit from a high quality of life, need to work even harder to clear the spaces in our lives where we can hear the voice of our shepherd calling us to life. Because, in fact, the kind of world we get caught up in does itself, ironically, foster something of the sheep mentality – far more, in my opinion, than a good religious community does. We do so easily get swept along in the flock by the superficial busy-ness and pressures of life; in our desire to be special and different we do in fact pursue the same things as everyone else; and in our desire to go our own way, we do end up following the dominant voices of ambition and success and consumption.
So let’s make space and make time to hear the voice of the Shepherd calling us to live life, not to a better quality, but more abundantly by fostering that primary connection with God. Let’s do that in our worship together, in our reading of Scripture and in our receiving of the sacrament, and lets do it in our encounter with others as we live as the fellowship of the Church.
Let’s be people of whom others will say, “They are truly alive, and that’s no exaggeration”.