Today is the 4th Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, and our Scripture readings are Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, and John 10:1-10. This sermon explores how we as church are called to live an abundant life following Jesus together.
Also, this was my final sermon before my son, Jonah, was born during the first week of May. After his birth, I appreciated the opportunity to take eight weeks of parental leave while Christin, Jonah, Micah and I adjusted to our new normal as a family of four!
Not knowing when Jonah would make his arrival, I elected to adapt a previous sermon for this week, so this sermon is mostly the same as my Good Shepherd Sunday sermon on this text from May 7, 2017. Thanks again to Bishop Michael Rinehart of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod for his reflection on Acts 2:42.
Here’s the worship livestream from Living Hope and sermon audio from Christ the King.
Powered by RedCircle
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Jesus our Good Shepherd. Amen
What’s your favorite Bible verse? Usually when I ask people that, the two most common responses are John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The other one common answer is the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd” that we just read together. Both of those are wonderful, beautiful passages of Scripture, and they’re great to remember.
This morning, I want to suggest a third one for you to remember. It’s the punchline to our Gospel reading today, the second half of John 10:10.
Read it with me: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
If you ever wonder why Jesus came, this is the answer. Jesus came to give abundant life.
Now, one part of that abundant life has to do with after you die. Jesus came to give us eternal life in heaven. I think we know that part pretty well.
This is the hope we cling to at funerals; this is the hope we celebrate at Easter. As Christ has been raised, we too shall be raised to new life.
It’s the last image of Psalm 23: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.” Jesus came to die for our sins so we could live forever in heaven.
That’s important. It’s at the heart of our faith. Because God so loved the world enough to come and die for it, the gates of heaven are opened wide.
But that’s not all Jesus is saying. Being saved by Jesus is not only about having your sins forgiven so you can go to heaven.
We don’t have to wait until we die! Jesus calls us to live an abundant life right here in this world! We are forgiven, we are set free, we are released to live and serve and love abundantly.
The challenge is that we sometimes get confused about what “abundant life” means. When you picture a life of abundance, what do you see?
When I hear abundance, I picture a really bad skit from when I worked at summer camp involving dancing hot dog buns.
Get it? “A bun dance?” That’s probably just me though.
But what is abundance? Often we think abundant life means having more stuff, like a nicer car, a bigger house, a boat, a cabin, a better computer or bigger television, whatever. More stuff. I’m not saying those are necessarily bad—although they can be—but they’re not the abundant life Jesus is talking about. Fortunately, our readings give us better pictures of the abundant life God wants for us.
First, there’s the picture in John, of the good shepherd who knows the sheep by name. The sheep know the shepherd’s voice. Jesus the good shepherd leads the sheep, guiding and protecting them.
Abundant life starts with knowing the voice of the good shepherd, recognizing God guiding and protecting us.
Psalm 23 uses the same image. For a sheep, the picture of heaven must be grazing in an abundant, lush, green field, with a clear, still creek there to drink from, and the shepherd keeping watch, guiding, protecting.
When the Lord is our shepherd, we can trust that whatever happens, nothing can separate us from God’s love. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, even in the darkest valleys of life, God is walking on the journey with us, watching, comforting us.
Knowing God is on our side allows us to live a life of freedom, free from worrying about needing to have all the answers figured out, free from worrying about what could happen in the future.
Another common image of abundance throughout the Old Testament is a feast. When things are going well, when life is good and you want to celebrate, you gather around a table and eat. We still do it today, right? We have birthday meals, holiday feasts.
The prophet Isaiah describes “The Lord of hosts [making] for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” Abundance looks like a table where there is plenty for all, and all are welcome.
Later in Psalm 23, there is a table prepared with abundant food, prepared by the Lord, the shepherd. Anointing the head with oil is another image of abundance and blessing. Same for a cup overflowing with good drink. God’s presence is refreshing.
Moving on from Psalm 23, another image of abundant life is the church. Again, sometimes we get that mixed up. I catch myself saying things like we need money to put in new doors in the church, or I hope you come this week to church.
The church is not a building or a place. In fact, any time I say “church” and mean the building, feel free to correct me.
The church is a group of people, you and I, gathered together. The church is God’s people—the flock of sheep, not the pasture.
In the reading from Acts 2, Luke describes the church by listing what it does. He lists four things. Read with me the first sentence from that Acts 2 reading. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
First, there’s the apostle’s teaching. Our life as Christians depends on good teaching, knowing the story of our faith. To figure out how God wants us to live, we need to know what God says.
The Church is rooted in God’s story. We need to read and study God’s word, because that’s where we find our story. We find our place in the tradition passed down to us by the apostles.
Second, they devoted themselves to fellowship. Fellowship here is more than just time drinking coffee and eating snacks after service. It’s more than just being social and friendly.
Obviously, a church should be friendly, but as Pastor Tim Brown writes, “The church is not a social club. There are plenty of social clubs in the world, and many of them are quite lovely and full of wonderful people!
But the church is not that kind of space. Within the community of the church we don’t just gather together to chit chat, but we gather together for mutual sharing and support. The ancient disciples were able to sacrifice so much for the sake of the other because they were able to rely on one another for their needs. They shared ‘all things in common.’
The ancient church was the kind of space where you were able to be generous of heart, mind, and possession because you were sharing life with others who would watch out for you. The church is not a social club, it’s a sacred fellowship where Christ is at the center and no one is left on the margins.”
Fellowship means participating in one another’s lives. It’s showing up for each other, genuinely celebrating and grieving together. Sometimes it means tolerating each other, bearing with one another.
The abundant life God calls us to is not meant to be lived alone. Sheep get stressed when they’re separated from their flock. We’re meant to live as a community, with all the goodness and ugliness and brokenness and restoration that implies.
Third, the breaking of the bread. On one level, this is a continuation of fellowship. It’s eating together, gathering around a table and talking together, interacting with each other. Most of Jesus’ ministry took place around shared meals.
On another level, it’s the sacred meal the church eats together, holy communion. The tiny piece of bread and the little sip of wine we’ll take in a few minutes is just a taste, a sneak preview of the feast to come. This is the feast where God gathers all people, all God’s sheep, from throughout time and space to join together in Christ’s body. As we heard last week, Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread.
Fourth, Luke says the people of God devote themselves to prayer. This isn’t just saying the Lord’s Prayer at the end of a meeting, or a blessing before a meal. It’s a life of prayer, a life of talking with God and listening for God, knowing God’s voice.
It’s bringing every concern that weighs us down, bringing everything we carry to God. I hope you pray for this church, this community.
The abundant life Jesus calls us to is not about having more stuff. It’s not even about doing the right things.
It’s about living with purpose, following our shepherd. We gather as church, in community, listening to the apostle’s teachings, spending time in fellowship, breaking bread and praying together, so that we can learn to recognize the shepherd’s voice, so that our Good Shepherd can lead us into abundant life.
Maybe abundant life looks like more generosity, providing for one another’s needs, distributing what we have to all as any have need, as Luke describes. Believing there’s enough for everyone, choosing abundance over scarcity.
Maybe it looks like showing up for each other, calling to check on your neighbors.
Maybe it looks like people texting me to say we can call them in the middle of the night if there’s an emergency.
Perhaps abundance looks like knowing each other’s names, and listening to each other’s stories, believing we’re on this journey of faith and life together, led by our Good Shepherd.
May you be blessed to live the abundant life to which the Good Shepherd calls you. Amen.