Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

“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.”

To have life and to have it abundantly. That is what Jesus promises those who follow him. Abundant life. That desire has brought people closer to Jesus and in other cases to seriously misapprehend what abundance looks like. There is a line of thinking that that abundance we are promised is an abundance of material goods and financial wealth. And a concern about material means isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our society is in many cases built on our individual needs being met by our individual resources and actions. Our food and shelter is often tied to individual resources. Our health care is individually or family provided. Knowing with certainty that our material needs will be met is an abundance that many around the world and in our own communities don’t experience regularly.

But there has sometimes been some “scope creep” when we think of abundance. We move from our material needs to greater and greater accumulation of things. Our abundance is compared to the abundance of others and we feel we need more than our neighbor. In our craving for a material-based abundance, we turn our ears and our hearts to those who promise us an easy path. We turn our ears and our hearts to those who would reward and celebrate our individual focuses at the expense of the health and vitality of the community.

We see an example of this radical vision of community in the lesson from Acts. It’s an image of pooled resources, needs met, fellowship shared, and prayers offered. The early church was marked by this radical community and care of others. All of which was lead and inspired by following Jesus.

Jesus warns of those would try to lead the sheep, leads his followers, astray. Jesus uses metaphor to says that the sheep will recognize only his voice and only follow him. He says that there have been others who came before who have tried to lead the sheep astray. In the Gospel, he hear directly from Jesus. We have the immediacy of hearing directly from Jesus. In Acts we see the communities that developed in the immediate response to Jesus’s teaching and ministry and in response to his resurrection. The shepherd’s voice was still there and the echoes still strong. Following the path was perhaps a little easier.

But we today are a couple of millennia removed from that voice. The echoes softer.

I’m sure Jesus was thinking ahead about his followers in the future. The ones for whom the immediacy was gone and it was the echoes that remained. He tells his followers that the only way to salvation and to abundant life is through him. He is warning those gathered at his feet and those of us who are listening now that there isn’t a shortcut. That there is no work around to the system. In this parable he also cautions us to not be led astray and to listen only to the voice of the shepherd. 

And here is where careful discernment is needed about the voice we hear and follow. And a place where a misapprehension of abundant life can lead us astray. We have to be cautious of the voices that equate materials wealth with the abundant life we have been promised. We have to be careful about the voices that equate power with abundant life. There are a significant number of voices in our culture that tell us that the accumulation of wealth and power is a sign of cultural and even divine favor. Humans can and have been led to make choices that they think will gain them wealth and power. That will set them apart, set them above their fellow humans. That wealth and power will be the marker of their favored status. It is a belief that is based on hierarchy and competition, on winners and losers, on us versus them. We all want to be seen and we all want to be loved. That very real desire is not necessarily a bad thing. We were created through love and to be loved. We just have to be discerning of the voices and cultural influences that tell us exactly how we can experience that abundant life.

And that discernment can be led by our hearts. Proof of the love that we have been shown, of our favor, that is based on material wealth, on status, on hierarchy feels precarious. It feels a bit conditional. It’s a favor that is built on our individual anxiety. It is built on a scarcity mindset grounded in fear. In this world we are not the beloved sheep in the fold with a shepherd that knows each of us. 

Contrast that with the feeling we have when we hear and recite Psalm 23. Right away we hear The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want. We hear immediately that all will be provided. Imagine our lives, all of our lives, if we could live in this assurance. Imagine our lives built on that sure foundation. How would our individual lives look. What might our world look like? The rest of the psalm is beautiful poetry describing our lives as led and as held by our Creator. The psalm uses some material needs as metaphor, but what we see more of is descriptions of the care of our lives and our souls. Psalm 23 is almost the exact opposite of an image of an abundant life built on material wealth and power. Psalm 23 feels like a huge exhale. An exhale that releases tension and worry and anxiety. An exhale that releases the death grip we have on the things we need to, that we feel we have to control. To lean deeply into the comfort and security that the Creator gives us. It is by listening with our heart, feeling that deep exhale of comfort and homecoming, of feeling that deep, deep inner peace and calm that we know we are hearing the echoes of Jesus’s voice and call down to us.

I want to be careful and clear about something I said just a moment ago. I wanted us to imagine a world—our world where we sit here today—if we all lived in the assurance of the Creator’s role in our lives. And with that hearing and following Jesus’s path to our salvation. Care must be taken so we don’t come to believe that our path to salvation is the only path to salvation. Care must be taken so that we don’t come to believe that our path to salvation is the best. And we must be especially careful that we don’t force our path to salvation onto others.

We are people of faith, we are Christians in a beautifully diverse country in an even more beautifully diverse world. I think that that diversity is all part of God’s plan for our world. But we are walking a particular path, listening for a particular voice down through our Christian lives. And then we are to model the very best of it.

Jesus’s followers that we hear about in Acts were being models of who they were called to be and the community they were to create. A community built on care and not just for those in your family or your immediate circle. A community of generosity. A community built on shared prayer. In those early years of the first millennia, that was a radical way of being. It is probably a radical way of being even today. Those early followers of Jesus were striving to live their best lives modeling the ministry of Jesus. And the work of their individual lives spilled out into the community and the world around them.

And perhaps that is how we honor, build on, and thrive in beautiful diversity of our world. By bringing the best models of our lives as followers of Jesus into our communities. To lead with care and generosity and a spirit of community. But followers of Jesus don’t have an exclusive hold on lives built on generosity, care of community, and lives of prayer. And I think we are a better world for that. And this way of being is not even exclusive to people of faith as evidenced by our fellow humans who are agnostic or atheist but like us share a deep care and concern for those around them.

In the beautiful diversity of our world, my prayer is that we as followers of Jesus allow our abundant lives—lives of grace, of salvation, of God’s love—to overflow into our communities. To be examples of radical hospitality and radical community. That our example, along with the examples of those in our diverse world, will bring a world of peace and wholeness.