Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
A Picture of Abundant Life
by
Margaret D. McGee
Delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Port Townsend,
Washington, on April 13, 2008
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10
Jesus said, “I came that they may have
life, and have it abundantly.”
The word “abundant” means plentiful, and
it goes back to the Latin for overflow, bringing to mind
images of waterfalls and cornucopias, and also less peaceful
images, like a river overflowing its banks.
Images of enough, and more than
enough.
When Jesus said, “I came that they may
have life, and have it abundantly,” what did he mean? What does
abundant life look like? How does it come to us?
For a picture of abundant life in
Christian community, you could hardly beat this morning’s
reading from the Acts of 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 … they
broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous
hearts …”
Sounds like bliss. In fact, a passage like
this can sound almost too good, painting a picture of community
life that seems hardly possible in today’s world, a picture I
can hardly hope to witness myself.
The passage escapes that problem, however,
in being set amidst all those other acts recorded in the early
church.
This morning’s reading describes an infant
community that grew rapidly immediately after the coming of the
Spirit to the apostles at Pentecost. Just before this morning’s
verses, it says that three thousand new converts were baptized
in a single day, after a rousing sermon by Peter. So when our
reading starts out, “Those who had been baptized devoted
themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,” it’s
referring to those three thousand folks.
Imagine what it would be like here today
at St. Paul’s, if three thousand new converts had joined up
yesterday. Kaboom—we’re a mega-church.
Overflowing. It would be exciting, right? And different. Way
different. Wonderful. At times stressful, even disturbing to
us—and to the larger community. (I mean, the zoning issues
alone…)
In fact, it’s made clear again and again
in Acts that, in the course of preaching the good news of Jesus
Christ and converting thousands, Peter and Stephen, Paul,
Barnabas, and the other leaders in the early church disturbed
people both inside and outside the Christian community.
Disturbed some people so much, riots broke out in the streets.
Trouble followed them wherever they went,
and they went everywhere. A person could be arrested,
beaten—even stoned—just for standing too close to these guys.
It’s a picture of the raging river overflowing its banks.
And yet the very same book that sets down
the mass conversions, riots, arrests, and beatings—that very
same writer—also records the picture of community life we heard
this morning, as though it’s all part of the same story.
A community that comes together in
teaching and listening to the gospel—the good news of Jesus
Christ. A community that comes together in fellowship and
communion, in the breaking of bread, and in prayer.
A community like this one here today, as
I’ve witnessed myself.
We know that those early converts included
folks from all walks of life, rich and poor, Jew and Greek. In
the love of Christ, they discovered that old divisions of class
and race no longer held force, and that they could all be
together without fear or favor.
Filled with God’s Spirit, their values
changed, and their valuables were not what they used to be. They
found themselves more attached to God and each other than they
were to their material possessions, sharing what they had for
the good of all. And in the process, freeing themselves and
their neighbors from the fear of want.
“They broke bread … and ate their food
with glad and generous hearts.”
In the midst of troubled events and
fearful times, they cared for each other.
And this I can hope to witness myself,
because I have witnessed it, in this place, with my own eyes and
ears.
In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus
describes the one relationship at the heart of this community,
and how that relationship brings abundant life. He describes the
relationship between himself and each of his disciples—between
himself and each of us.
Using the metaphor of a good shepherd,
Jesus describes a relationship of true intimacy. He says that
the shepherd “calls his own sheep by name and
leads them out.” A name is a mark of identity. Especially in
the Bible, a person’s name is a reflection of that person’s
essential nature. The shepherd knows his sheep and calls
them by name.
Jesus says that the sheep “will not
follow a stranger .. because they do not know the voice of
strangers.”
Who is a stranger? I want to take a minute
to give some background to what Jesus is saying here, because
he’s using the word “stranger” in a particular context. The
stranger he’s talking isn’t necessarily someone you never met
before. In fact, it could be someone quite close, even someone
who’s known you all your life, as the events that lead up to
this moment show.
Just before our passage today, Jesus heals
a beggar who was born blind. After this man regains his sight,
some of his own neighbors hardly recognize him. They knew him
only as the blind beggar, so they think this fellow with sight
must be somebody else—someone who just looks like the
blind beggar. And the temple leaders, once they hear the man’s
story and see that he has sight, they doubt that
he was ever blind in the first place.
Up to now, it’s as if this man’s blindness
has acted like a mask hiding his true, whole self from everyone
around him—an old mask that Jesus sees right through. In their
encounter, it falls away, and suddenly, this man is a stranger
to anyone who’s ever known him.
Yet he knows that what has happened is
good, that his life just got better. He says himself, “One
thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He
turns away from his neighbors and the temple authorities, people
who, it turns out, didn’t know him very well at all. They are
the strangers that Jesus refers to here. He follows Jesus
instead, the shepherd who called him by name.
In explaining how this relationship works,
Jesus identifies himself as both the good shepherd and the gate,
the way in and out of the sheep pen, saying that whoever enters
by him “will be saved, and will come in and go out and find
pasture.”
In some of the best-loved words of
scripture, our psalm this morning describes this intimate
relationship from the other side, from the standpoint of the one
who is saved.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not
be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside still waters.
He revives my soul” (which
can also be translated, my life, or my
life spirit) “and guides me along right pathways for
his Name’s sake.” (in other words, for the sake of who
God is, for the sake of God’s own essential nature.)
Though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me.
Here’s good news that comes to us from the
psalm, from Peter, from very first Christian congregation, from
this congregation here present, and from the gospel of Jesus
Christ:
Our God sees through to the heart, in a
relationship that saves, and makes us whole.
In the love of God, nothing of this
world—not where we came from, our family, or possessions—not
even our old, old masks, some of them put in place on the day we
were born—nothing has the force to separate us from God,
and from each other, and from life itself.
Jesus says, I came that they may have
life, and have it abundantly.
In this morning’s collect, we prayed, “O
God, whose son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant
that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by
name, and follow where he leads…”
Amen.
For another picture of abundant life, see
Margaret's Bench.
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