Easter 4B
April 26, 2015
John 10:10b-18
Alleluia!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
 |
| Karl and our family at our wedding |
This
week has not been an easy one for the Rehbaum family. Michael and I had both
been sick for days, and just as we were starting to round a corner toward
health, we got the call that Michael’s father, who has been battling cancer for
five long years, passed away Saturday morning. By that evening we had packed up
our sick selves and whatever clothes were closest in reach, and flown to
Florida to be with family and to remember and give thanks for the life of Karl.
As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, these times are draining and
difficult, even as they are full of love and laughter and beauty as we remember
together the life of someone loved so dearly.
Perhaps
this is the reason I was drawn this week not only to the words and images of
Christ as the Good Shepherd – words in the 23rd Psalm (which, of
course, we sang at the funeral this week) as well as from John’s Gospel – but
also the verse immediately preceding Jesus’ declaration of himself as the Good
Shepherd. You probably noticed I added that to our reading today: “I came that
they may have life, and have it abundantly.” That verse actually closes the
previous section of John’s Gospel, but I think it powerfully sets up the
concept of Christ as the Good Shepherd. And it certainly spoke to me
You
may wonder: how could I be so focused on abundant life when we have just
watched someone we love continually decline from cancer? Perhaps it is because
this is an image that repeatedly finds new meaning for me in the various
situations I have encountered in life, and this week has been no exception. The
question this week was: how is abundant life experienced in the midst of death?
I can tell you a bit: It sounds like loved ones gathering and sharing stories,
stories that have shaped who they are and their view of God and of the world.
It feels like the only grandchild of the deceased, moving around in a belly and
reminding us of new life, even in the midst of grief. It looks like a church
full of people there to remember a dear friend. It smells like so much food,
enjoyed amongst loved ones who have traveled great distances to be together. It
tastes like bread and wine, shared with all the communion of saints from every
time and place, all around the table of a God who promises and shows us again
and again that He is a God who will lay down His life for his friends, in order
that He might be there to take it up again for us, through us, and in us.
Christ came that we may have life, and have it abundantly, in our most joyful
times as well as the most difficult times of our lives. He came that we may
have life, and have it abundantly.
To
me, this is God’s most powerful testament of love to us: to show us again and
again what life looks like, even in the midst of grief and sadness. Such sad
times can make us feel depleted and empty – not at all like the image of a cup
running over that we get from today’s Psalm. We often feel like empty cups. We
feel that life is anything but abundant, that all around us is scarcity. All
around us is the need for more: more
rest, more time, more power, more control. All we see is lack.
But
abundance, the abundance that God promises us, is not like that. Abundance is a
way of life that is ruled by gratitude and the recognition of the many gifts
God provides for us, physically and spiritually. Abundance is the possibility
of knowing plenty in the midst of want, of seeing and experiencing life in the
midst of death. One of my favorite moments this week was when Michael and
For
obvious reasons, I have been considering all of this in context of losing my
father-in-law, but our ability or inability to see and know abundance extends
beyond these major life events; it happens every day. Sometimes, recognizing
abundance is easy, but there are so many things that keep us from noticing that
abundant life God promises, that take our mind off of abundance and put it on
scarcity, on need, on longing, on dissatisfaction. So my question for all of us
today is: what is it that keeps us from having the abundant life that God
intends for us?
A
few years back I watched a talk by Brené Brown, a researcher and storyteller, who
studies shame and unworthiness, and this week I have been reading one of her books on the same topic. Though I know it seems a strange choice for this
particular week, it was actually exactly what I needed. In the book she talks
about how shame and unworthiness are feelings that keep us from living what she
calls “Wholehearted” lives. Or to use Jesus’ language, they keep us from
experiencing abundant life. Shame is the belief that not only do I not have enough, but that “I am not enough” – that whatever I am,
whatever I have to offer, it is not enough. This in turn leads to a sense of
unworthiness, a sense that because I am not enough, I am not worthy of love or
goodness. What Brown discovered in her research on shame, though, and what ties
so well into our Gospel reading today, is this key point: those who have a
sense of love and belonging, who are able to get above the shame that holds us captive,
actually believe that they are worthy of love and belonging. So those
who believe that about themselves, who believe they are worthy of love and
belonging, do not experience the potent disconnectedness of shame, but rather are
able to live happier, more Wholehearted lives.
Or,
to use the words of Jesus, those who understand that they are worthy of love
are able to have life and have it abundantly. And here we see the connection
between these words and Jesus’ description of himself as the Good Shepherd.
There are so many things that get in the way of us experiencing Wholehearted, abundant
life: shame, yes, but also loss, infidelity, depression, illness, hunger,
unkind words, violence, injustice. Any one of those things can cause us to
doubt our worthiness, any one of those things can cause us to see ourselves as
unworthy of love, even God’s love. And God knows that. And that is why God sent
us Jesus, who laid down his life for us to show us that in the midst of all
those struggles we face, and whether we feel worthy or not, God loves us. Four
times in today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says that!
·
The good
shepherd lays down his life for the sheep – so that they will know
how much I love them, and have life abundantly.
·
I lay down
my life for the sheep – so that they will know that they are worthy of
love, and have life abundantly.
love, and have life abundantly.
·
I lay down
my life in order to take it up again – so that my sheep will know that I
will never leave them, that they are worthy of my continuous and unconditional
love, and they will have life abundantly.
·
No one
takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord – so that
they will know that my love is true, that I choose to love them this much, that
they are worth this much love… and so that they will have life and have it
abundantly.
You
see? We need not be made smaller and lesser by the shame the world piles on us,
or that
What
a comfort this is in times of grief and loss. Grief can carry with it all kinds
of doubts and baggage and guilt and distress. It can so easily push us into an
attitude of scarcity and not enough, even the belief that not only do we not have enough, but in fact that we aren’t
enough. But friends, it isn’t true. We are
enough. We are so enough that Christ has vowed to be our Good Shepherd, who
lays down his very life for us so that we would know abundant life. We are so
loved that, even though we don’t always behave in a way that is deserving of
that love, God chooses to love us anyway, providing us with so many ways to
experience abundant life. We are so enveloped in God’s grace, that nothing,
nothing can keep us in the land of scarcity – abundant life will always win.
Let
us pray… God our Good Shepherd, you want
so much for us to know your love that you will go to any length to show us your
abundant life. Give us hearts to know your abundance, so that we will see it
even where scarcity tries to win. Help us to believe that you came so that we
would have life, and have it abundantly. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
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