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April 13, 2008- RCL Year A, 4 Easter

“Abundant Life”

The Rev. Mark Byers

 

For about four years, during and after seminary, I taught nursery school, part time during the school year, full time over the summers. I worked with a wonderful woman who had been teaching in the school, which was on the seminary campus, for 35 years. There are different ways to think about human development, but one thing that Bonnie taught me, and that I believe, is to encourage children to play with toys that open up their imaginations. We see, more and more, toys that tie in to movies and books, that speak, sing songs, dance, and otherwise allow kids to replicate the stories that they’ve seen in those movies and books. As a father, I have to ask myself this question: Does this build up my children?

 

It’s funny, because we don’t always think about it, but that’s ultimately what it means to be a parent. Jessi and I aren’t primarily recreation providers, but guides through childhood to responsible adulthood. Life is, in the nature of things, often fun, exciting, and entertaining, but that’s not its purpose. I talked a little bit about this last week: as a Christian, I look at where God wants me to go, and at what my story is now and has been, and I try to help God shape me into someone who can be a useful character within this story. It helps that God gives us all the gifts necessary to live like that.

 

Likewise, as a parent, my role is to ensure that my daughters grow up able to live as responsible, well-adjusted, Godly women. Can I guarantee this? No. But that’s my job, and Jessi’s job, as a parent.

 

So we try to consider what comes into our house, and not just whether it is “moral,” but how it will, or will not, build up our children. Bonnie, the teacher I worked with, used to say that things like blocks, clay, paint, and crayons, help build children up. They let the child exercise imagination, create stories, learn to control their muscles, all sorts of things. Likewise, dancing, singing, and playing music, or learning numbers and letters and basic puzzles, with other kids and grown-ups, these things build kids up, in ways that far exceed videos or the internet. Or so I believe, and so I act. We don’t wall them off from the world around them, but we limit the kids’ access to things that we think are less healthy, for much the same reasons that we don’t allow them to subsist on candy and cookies.

 

Strangely enough, I am not primarily talking about child-rearing this morning, although I’m trying to build an analogy that will help with what I do want to talk about. I titled this sermon “abundant life,” because that’s what Christ tells us, ultimately, he came to bring us. Not entertainment. Not happiness. Not any number of other things that you would THINK are human purposes, based on the types of choices people typically make these days. When I scan the titles on the lifestyle magazines in the checkout line of the supermarket, I’m forced to conclude that a good many of us are focused on weight loss, better sex, and the story lines of television shows or the personal lives of celebrities.

 

The reason I wanted to talk a little bit about toys and parenthood above is this: I think that God forms disciples through scripture the way that Bonnie taught kids. A kid might ask for the “Toy du Jour,” but Bonnie offered them their own brain, imaginations, and a lot of different opportunities to develop them.

 

Some churches seem to be trying to find the latest toy. They try and reduce scripture to a set of rules to live by, and enforce compliance by cajoling, or by holding up heaven or hell as the end consequence of our choices now. But the church is not simply an evangelistic pyramid scheme. We’re not simply trying to get people saved and then warehouse them until they die and, hopefully, go to heaven. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

 

You have life. Is it abundant? Is it overflowing with the Spirit of God? Are your relationships rich? Do you own your things, or do your things own you? Are you living now in such a way, with such people, that are pleased to give thanks to God for your life? Does life now taste good, with the promise of even richer things to come? Or does it seem as if you’re just getting by, and you sure hope heaven’s a step up from the Valley? I’m asking, because I don’t think we’d all answer the same way. On different days, we might feel quite differently. What kind of things would build you up best to have that kind of life? A guidebook? Ten things you can do today to have a spicier life tomorrow? Do these things sound like ways to get to abundant life, the sort of overflowing spirit-filled life I was talking about before?

 

"Let me set this before you as plainly as I can. If a person climbs over or through the fence of a sheep pen instead of going through the gate, you know he's up to no good—a sheep rustler! The shepherd walks right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice. They won't follow a stranger's voice but will scatter because they aren't used to the sound of it."

 

Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about. So he tried again. "I'll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of them. But the sheep didn't listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” [The Message]

 

I want to suggest that a lot of the ways that we’ve formed, while they might not be harmful or immoral, have not built us up as strongly as they might have. We tend to engage with scripture with the idea that we can reduce the story to just one pithy saying, and that’s what’s important. But that doesn’t really fit the bible, does it? It certainly doesn’t fit with Jesus. Can you imagine if Jesus just came to give us the ten tips for a spicier spiritual life?

 

Jesus told the disciples this story about the sheep pen, the gate, the thieves, etc., and instead of nodding their heads at the end, they don’t know what the heck he’s talking about. Like kids. There are a lot of ways to parent, right? But if, every time our children don’t understand something or face a challenge, we fix things for them, or do their homework, or give them easy, entertaining toys… If we structure their childhood so that it’s easy, so that they’re never frustrated and forced to exceed their present abilities…? Does that help create wise, strong, capable kids?

 

Jesus loves parables and challenging statements the way Bonnie used to love blocks and paints. This Gospel doesn’t just restate in the second part what came before; it builds upon it. And likewise, Jesus doesn’t go back and say, “All right, I see that was too hard for you to get. Let me make this simple. Don’t follow other people besides me. They’re bad.”

 

He could have done that. He could have come right out in every instance and said, “Do it THIS WAY!!!” But part of being a good parent, of trying to raise your children into responsible, kind, Godly adults, is letting them work on things, telling them stories that they have to struggle with, giving them paradoxes to work out to help them shape their view of reality. I’m less concerned today with what this parable means than that you understand that the stories we’re telling to one another are more than simply obscure fables, with a moral at the end.

 

Look at the new Christians in the Acts reading today, the community that formed after Jesus had ascended to heaven.

 

They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

 

Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met.

 

They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved. [Acts, from The Message]

 

This is a community formed of people who heard stories about Jesus Christ’s life and ministry, about what God promises to the faithful, about the long history of God’s people and where it is heading. And they did, as a matter of routine, the things that we find most difficult: they were generous to others, taking no more for their sustenance than they needed. They prayed regularly, gathered together for worship and to enjoy each other’s company, and in their midst, wondrous things happened. Because they were ready for joy and wonder. Because they desired joy and wonder and abundance, rather than wealth, or power, or fame, or ten spicy secrets to liven up their spiritual lives. Just as Jesus prepared the apostles, so the apostles prepared the new church: by giving them those things that would build them up, and avoiding those things that would not. Abundant life comes not from an endless variety of life experience, but by learning to value those things that create abundance and remaining faithful to the one who shows them to us.

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