Acts 2:42-47 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
1 Peter 2:19-25 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit what found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
John 10:1-10 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “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. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
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I love the last verse of this Gospel reading. I rely on it for times of joy and sorrow, discernment and encouragement. Abundant life. The mission of Jesus summed up, right there. Jesus did not come that we might feel guilty for killing him with our sin. He did not come so that we might all look and sound the same. He did not come that we might be able to tell the difference between ‘the saved’ and ‘the heathen.’ He came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. As scripture says in Matthew’s Gospel “you shall know them by their fruit” - if abundant life isn’t there, maybe the tree isn’t rightly rooted in Christ. Maybe if abundant life isn’t the fruit of our labor we’re listening to the thief and the bandit and not to the shepherd.
I’ve just come from a week of abundant life among friends old and new at a conference bookended by two days in Chicago on my old campus. It was a very life-giving gathering, a holy enriching time, full to overflowing with both memory and possibility. We shared Eucharist, remembered our baptism, prayed with one another, sang and studied and walked the road together for a short while, all of us in different places before we had gathered. Some of our conference have been in parish ministry since before the ELCA policies allowed for full inclusion, and have had to struggle for the denomination to allow them to pastor the people who called them knowing who they are. Others are still in seminary, looking forward with hope and excitement to get to where I’ve gotten, and after being in that category of people for so long it still feels surreal that I’ve finally landed here among you all, so blessed to be here and learn together with you how we do this ministry thing. We all shared at that conference abundant life - both the joy and the sorrow, the excitement and the disappointment, the comfort and the discomfort.
Because abundant life is not simply joy and celebration. To be open to joy is to be open to sorrow. To be alive to excitement is to be vulnerable to pain. Abundant life is in that way a bit like today’s secular holiday - Mother’s Day. It is set aside to be a day of joy and celebration for all. For many it is a very happy holiday. But for many it is a day of shame and struggle and sadness. Infertility, abuse, mourning the death of a mother, loss of children to early death or to runaways, all these conflicting pains come up today, too. What must Nigerian mothers be feeling these days, I wonder, as their daughters have been kidnapped from school and still remain lost, maybe sold into forced marriages, maybe into prostitution.
But the life of Jesus holds all of our lives together - the comfort and the pain, the security and the confusion. When we are all called to the same flock by the same shepherd, we share all things in common. No matter how distance separates us. We carry each other in our prayers, in the Psalms and the liturgy and the lectionary and our daily living. One flock, one body, one community. As the people in the first church gathering shared together everything they had, that means they carried each other. It wasn’t just that they gave away what money they made selling their possessions for the sake of the community, they shared resurrection life, which meant being honest about where they had died. With glad and generous hearts they found a welcome in the shepherd’s flock and fold, and God added to their number every day those who were being saved.
Saved from what, I wonder? Saved from eternal damnation? I don’t think so. I think they were being actively saved from the constraints of their guilt and anxiety. Saved from the fears of not having anywhere to call home. Saved from the shame of not living up to expectations. Saved from the pressures to look and behave according to class and race and gender. All the people shared what they had, the rich and the poor, which meant that everyone was valued, everyone mattered, everyone had something to share. How many times have you felt not good enough to contribute to something? How many times have you convinced yourself your idea wasn’t good enough, or you didn’t have the skill to sing or paint or dance or follow your dream or even dream in the first place? But we have such amazing gifts among us that Christ alive has freed us to share. Evan played saxophone for us at Easter and it was the first time he’d ever played in front of anyone! Hank is working on fixing up a broken car. Doris is helping me learn how to pick hymns we can actually sing since we like so much to sing - and it seems that might be an uphill battle, but I’m learning with your help. We may have been taught to place different value judgments on different gifts, but they are all gifts for the whole, just as your very selves are all gifts for this whole community. Your sorrow and your joy. Your struggle and your celebration.
This is where abundant life is found among us, when we are able to be fully alive together, in trust and faith that God’s love is big enough for all. This is why we have historically talked about the church as “Mother church.” In the perfect ideal sense of the word, the Spirit gives birth to faith in this community, nurtures and protects, challenges and grows us, all of us in the same family but just as diverse and differently skilled as siblings. For example, I have no idea how my kid sister and I are related. She is so much awesomer. But somehow we have the same parents. The same genetic line. And we drive our parents crazy in different ways, too. The thing that most connected us, though, was our dinners. Every night until we kids got jobs, the four of us, Mom and Dad and Margaret and I, sometimes a friend or two from school, sat down together at the supper table to share a meal and talk about our day.
It feels very weird not to have that now, especially as I am the same age my mother was when I was born. It feels very weird, but at the same time it hasn’t really changed, because this Table hasn’t changed. Mother church is fed by the Body of Christ when we gather for worship, sort of like my growing-up family supper grounded us each night. Just like we’ve been fed and nourished in the faith since the first days, when “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
People of God, Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly. It is why he lived the way he lived. It is why he restored communities, welcoming the outcast, giving sight to the blind, embracing the leper, calling all of us our of isolation and into a deeper sharing of our selves. It is why he let us kill him and still came back to us to carry us into a life more wide open than we could yet imagine. It is why the Spirit lives and moves among us in these days. We will not always be comfortable in the flock of Mother church, following the voice of our shepherd, traveling through the gate into open pastures not so clearly defined, but as 1 Peter reminds us, “he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
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