John
10:7-18
This morning we conclude our series of messages
Having A Heart Like Jesus, as we
study what it means to have An Abundant
Life.
Our Scripture reading is John 10:7-18 —
7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell
you, I am the gate for the sheep.
8 All who have come before me are thieves and
robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be
saved. They will come in and go
out, and find pasture.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and
destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays
down his life for the sheep.
12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not
own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs
away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.
13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and
cares nothing for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my
sheep know me—
15 just as the Father knows me and I know the
Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep
pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall
be one flock and one shepherd.
17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down
my life—only to take it up again.
18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my
own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
This command I received from my Father.”
Listen to verse 10 again –
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and
destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.
What
does it mean to have an abundant life?
In the 80s and 90s, Robin Leach
became famous with his TV show Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous. Each
episode took us into the lives of the fabulously wealthy. Admittedly, it was hard not to be a bit
envious, watching Leach stroll the sprawling grounds of mansions and riding in
luxury cars. His signature line at
sign-off, champagne wishes and caviar
dreams, was a final reminder of what constituted an abundant life. Surely, if one wanted an example of
abundance, that was it.
The desire of Jesus, as we find in
this week’s Scripture reading, is that his followers live an abundant
life. But to Jesus, abundance has
a far different meaning from that presented by Robin Leach.
In Luke 12:15 Jesus reminds us that
one’s life does not consist in the
abundance of his possessions.
An abundant life, to Jesus, means more than what we can accumulate as we
move through life.
The Greek language has two words
for life.
One is bios, which is the root
of our word biology. This definition of life is obvious – it
is our physical lives and its attendant needs for things such as food, water,
and shelter – the biological type of life. This word, interestingly, is used only sparingly in the New
Testament. As much as the New Testament
speaks of life, it rarely is speaking about the biological life.
The Greek word that is most often used in the New Testament is zoe, which is the kind of life that
relates to our spiritual selves; it is life that relates to the heart and soul,
and not just the physical aspects of life.
When Jesus speaks of life, and having an abundant
life, he is not speaking of bios
life, but zoe life. This is a life that is about quality,
not quantity. It’s not about how
much a person can accumulate. It
is a life that has to do with fulfillment, but not the kind of fulfillment that
comes from large houses and big bank accounts.
C. S.
Lewis, described the difference between these two types of life as being
similar to the difference between a statue and a man. A man who changed from having bios to
zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from
being a carved statue to being a real man. That’s a very dramatic
difference.
The two types of life are, indeed, very
different from one another, and we live in a culture that seems obsessed with
the bios kind of life more than it is the zoe kind of life. If you put the two kinds of life on a
scale the bios – the physical life – would often outweigh the zoe
– the spiritual life. We do,
though, see some glimmers of the recognition of the spiritual side of
life. In the midst of all the
emphasis on the physical needs of life and the accumulations of life we become
aware of the spiritual side of life when we recognize the call to love other
people and when we see expressions of love. We recognize the spiritual side of life when we are in the
midst of a moment that causes us to say this is what life is really all
about. Though our hearts often
pull us in the direction of accumulations and an emphasis on the physical side
of life, our heart will often remind us there is much more to life and will
begin to pull us back to the spiritual.
The audience to whom Jesus spoke of an abundant
life could not comprehend of an abundant life such as the type found in our
materialistic, consumer culture.
His audience was filled with people who struggled to eke out their daily
existence. They certainly saw a
few people who had great wealth, but they had no hope of attaining such a
lifestyle. Jesus was not giving
them a vision for how they could attain a better standard of living. Jesus was not selling a first-century
version of the American Dream. He
was not promising a life that would be rich in money and wealth, and his
listeners did not hear him as doing so.
They knew instinctively that Jesus was speaking of something far deeper.
Jesus was offering a life that
provided fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and love regardless of one’s economic
or social standing. It was a
message that reminded his listeners, who were under the iron-fisted rule of
Rome, that they could live in freedom regardless of their political
circumstances. It was a message
that promised that regardless of how tenuous and fragile life might be, life
could be full and meaningful, and life would continue after one drew their last
breath of bios life.
It is harder, I believe, to get that message
through in our culture. Living as
we do, in a time of great prosperity (yes, in spite of all the economic
challenges there is still a great deal of prosperity, certainly in comparison
to the time of Jesus) there are millions of people who continue to chase the
dream of having more and more.
They strive to earn more, to possess more, and in the process neglect
their spiritual selves. In the
midst of material wealth we are mired in spiritual poverty.
The message of Jesus was one of running counter
to the cultural pull of seeking after only a biological life, the bios
life – seeking only the comforts of life, the possessions of life, the
attainments of life, and moving to the spiritual life, which is willing to let
go of those measures of life as what matters most.
This is why Jesus uses the image of himself as
the shepherd and his people as his sheep.
It is the presentation of a way of life that runs counter to a kind of
life that, in the end, turns out to not only be an illusion, but can also be a
destructive way of life.
If, for instance, we work only for the
attainments in life, what does that do to our relationships? How many marriages have suffered
because so much time has gone into work and so little into the relationship? How many parent/child relationships
have suffered because of neglect born from too much time spent on things that
do not nurture that relationship?
And what does all that striving do to our souls? Jesus is trying to bring to us a
perspective that will make us think about this contrast of two different ways
of living. It is not a rejection
of earning a living and caring for our families and ourselves but is, rather, a
reminder of the very real danger of losing our souls in the search for attainment
and accumulation. It is not
withdrawing from life but embracing life at its most important.
Sometimes, we need a readjustment of our
perspectives, a reminder that there is more to life than just biological
life. Over the course of ministry
I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral homes. I’ve spent time with individuals and
families and in the face of suffering and that is always a reminder that there
is more to life than what we can accumulate and accomplish. If you want an adjustment to life go
visit in a nursing home or a funeral home. But I’ve also learned how quickly we can forget those
lessons. I’ve stood in those
places and thought to myself I cannot forget what matters most in life,
and not long after I get in my car and start down the road those stark
reminders are already slipping away from me.
We have enough of the bios kind of
abundance; we have, very often, a superabundance. We have all the stuff we need. Drive around a neighborhood in the spring – if spring ever
gets here – when people have their garage doors open and look at the amount of
stuff that’s piled up.
But in spite of all of the abundance what is it
that is so often missing? It is a
sense of security, a sense of purpose, a sense of hope – things that are
intangible and spiritual. Those
are the elements of the zoe kind of life, the abundant life of which
Jesus speaks.
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