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April 13, 2008 |
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Academy of Christian Formation
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The Gate to Life in its Fullest John 10:1-10 Dr. Dennis L. Johnson Baptist Temple, Charleston, West Virginia In today’s gospel story, we hear Jesus tell us clearly what is his purpose and mission: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (10:10), or that they may have life in its fullest.[1] I like the way our Baptist forbearer Edgar Goodspeed at the University of Chicago Divinity School, translated it back in 1923: I have come to let them have life, and to let them have it in abundance.[2] But what does he mean by “life’? Just what is this “life” Jesus wants us to have in abundance? Some would have us believe it is only about life in heaven after we die. Others would tell us Jesus is speaking about life here and now as social liberation and nothing to do with heaven. Both sides fragment the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ and are far too limited in their vision of the life into which Jesus says he is the gate and opens the way. There are two New Testament words for “life.” The word for “life” we hear Jesus use is not the word for biological, created, mortal life. He’s not speaking of abundant life as greater physical energy and vitality, or increased number of days and years. Rather, he uses a different word that means life that is spiritual and uncreated, which is God’s life, eternal life. Not “eternal” in the sense of an endless number of years, but eternal as the life that flows from God, the Eternal. Jesus, the Gate for the sheep and the Good Shepherd of the sheep, brings into our lives the very life of God, abundant life, the “more-than-mortal” life. Heaven after death is one part of this abundant life, not the whole of it. And daily existence before death is another part of abundant life, as well. The abundant life Jesus Christ brings into our lives is a full, new, daily life we receive from God. Through the gate that is Jesus Christ, God’s life opens to us and through the gate of Christ we sheep can enter and experience this radical new life. Life, life and more life! This is why he came. This is his mission--that all may have life in its fullest, which encompasses here and now as well as hereafter. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” There are, of course, says Jesus, those who are not about giving life. Some people are thieves and robbers. And he wasn’t talking about only his day, but also about our day. Thieves, as John Shea says, are people who steal by deceit and craft. Robbers are people who steal by violence. Either way and through many methods, in the name of power or greed, the thieves and robbers of life are those who take things away from people. Dignity or rights or life itself. They are those who leave people less than they had. Less joy, less promise, less trust, less understood, less appreciated. Thieves leave our hungry and thirsty souls less satisfied and our inner emptiness with less than nothing. They come not that we may receive life to its fullest, but to “steal, kill and destroy.” They deprive people of whatever resources they have. The thieves and robbers are people who diminish others, who deplete human beings of meaningful, purposeful, God-intended human existence personally and in community. They are the exploiters and oppressors and abusers of people. By craft or deceit or violence, they rob people of being less than fully human and fully alive and life in its fullest as Christ came to give and all receive. They are merchants of death rather than servants of life. Right after saying this, Jesus shifts from calling himself the Gate for the sheep to enter and receive God’s life, and calls himself “the Good Shepherd.” And unlike thieves and robbers who steal and destroy and leave people less than they had, the True, Good Shepherd leaves people with MORE than when they were found. He leaves people with more life, more faith, more hope, more love, more compassion, more flourishing, more wholeness, more delight, more care and concern, more peace and more devotion to being instruments of peace, more “restoreth my soul” and “cup overfloweth,” more just and more passionate for justice, more merciful and more committed to mercy, more self-less and sharing, more courage to practice in our lives what we sing with our lips, more of everything that makes up life abundant, life in its fullest. Thieves and robbers leave people diminished and with less. The Good Shepherd leaves people with more of life in its fullest and abundance. How is the Good Shepherd able to do this? How is it possible? Because the true Shepherd knows the sheep by name, unlike the stranger who doesn’t care at all. Jesus is the caring Shepherd who knows our names and knows what we need--life, abundant life--and comes that we may have it--life in its fullest here and hereafter. We find ourselves as his sheep loved and led by him. He walks ahead of us as our Shepherd, bringing us to pasture. He leads us to places where we can find food to nourish us in life at its fullest as our lives and beings are fed and transformed in relationship with God. He doesn’t leave us confined and limited to the sheepfold as we are. He leads us to green pastures where we can be fed and nourished and grow. Cared for and connected to the Good Shepherd, we receive daily a new and abundant and transforming life from God. And changing and transforming us is what God intends for us. As C. S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, God’s plan and desire is to make each of us and all people into “a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright, stainless mirror that reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.”[3] These are words that we would do well to have read over our lives every morning of every day as we are immersed in abundant life of divine love and power from God through Christ, the Gate and Good Shepherd. Richard Foster is one of today’s most popular and respected writers on the Christian life and spiritual growth. He helps us understand better this spiritual, abundant life, the purpose for which God gives it to us daily, and the outcome it will bring when God gets his way. Foster wrote: the daring goal of the Christian life is an ever-deeper re-formation of our inner personality so that it reflects more and more the glory and goodness of God; an ever more radiant conformity to the life and faith and desires and habits of Jesus; an utter transformation of our creatureliness into whole and perfect daughters and sons of God. You see, this…(abundant) life that comes from God and is the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, is a character-transforming life. It does not leave us where we are but changes us as we progress from faith to faith…from the faith we have to the faith we have yet to receive, and from strength to strength and from glory to glory…God does not wait until death to initiate this process of complete transformation. It begins now, and God can and will do far more here and now than we can possibly imagine.[4] “I have come that they may have life,” says our living Lord and Good Shepherd, “and have it abundantly.” And through this life we receive daily from God, we are saved and transformed into Christ’s likeness from one degree of glory to another. Don’t settle for less than life and do not give others the power over you to rob you of life. Every day may you enter step by step this life of God through the gate that is Jesus Christ. He has come to let you have life and to let you have it in abundance. Follow him as the Gate to life in |