SOULS UNDER CONSTRUCTION SERMON SERIES:

Let the Living Begin

John 10:1-10

Pastor Robyn Hogue May 26, 2013 Skyline Presbyterian Church

We are finishing up our sermon series that I call Souls Under Construction: Building Lives that Really Matter. Today we are looking at Jesus’ idea of what it means to be really living.

The college faculty gathered for their weekly meeting. A professor of archeology brought with him a lamp recently unearthed in the Middle East. It was reported to contain a genie, who, when the lamp was rubbed would appear and grant one wish.

A professor of philosophy was particularly intrigued. He grabbed the lamp and rubbed it vigorously. Suddenly a genie appeared and made him an offer. He could choose one of three rewards: wealth, wisdom, or beauty. Without hesitating, the philosophy professor selected wisdom. “Done!” said the genie and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

All the other faculty members turned toward the professor, who sat surrounded by a halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispered, “Say something. What wise insight do you now have?”

The professor, much wiser now, sighs and says, “I should have taken the money.”

John’s Gospel contains one of the best-known sayings of Jesus. It is exceedingly well known, but often sadly misunderstood. This saying is the second half of John 10:10 and is best known in its King James translation. Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”

This is the favorite verse of scripture for many modern Christians, for they read it as an endorsement of an extravagant lifestyle. They equate the abundant life to living in the lap of luxury. They listen enthusiastically to the pitch of the TV evangelist living in the multi-million dollar home who declares, “God wants His people to have nice things!” Certainly the TV evangelist lives up to the creed. Many of them live opulent lifestyles.

I’m not going to be hypocritical. I like nice things. My guess is that you like nice things. All God’s children like nice things. Does that mean, therefore, that we can use this verse from John’s gospel to baptize rampant materialism? No, it does not. In our culture we are apt to confuse the “abundant life” that Jesus taught with what is often referred to in our culture as the “good life.” The good life consists of things. Someone once saw an epitaph on a headstone that read like this: “She died of things.” The next headstone said, “He died providing things for her.”

Did you know that there are more malls than high schools in American today? What does that say about what we value? As one commentator has put it, “We have defined ourselves by what we have and what we use, not by who we are and the kind of people we might become.” (Don Foran in his speech “The Pursuit of Happiness”) We are going after what our culture calls the good life, which means lots of cool stuff and lots of time to enjoy it.

Church, don’t confuse the good life with the abundant life that Christ promised. There is nothing wrong with having stuff. But things can’t ultimately satisfy your deepest needs. Only the abundant life can do that. So often this phrase is taken out of context to justify a materialistic lifestyle.

In John’s gospel, we are sheep herded into a pen for the night. Being compared to sheep isn’t very complimentary, but it is probably a good description of our human condition. The point is, of course, that we have a Shepherd--One who looks after us and protects us. And there are some powerful insights in this scripture about abundant living.

Let’s begin here: The person who has abundant life recognizes Jesus’ voice. John writes, “The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.” The key to abundant life is not the accumulation of many things. The key to abundant life is to recognize the voice of Jesus in your life. It is to know you are walking in the light of His revelation. It is to live as Christ would have you live.

That’s where we begin, by listening to His voice. We show love for Christ by how we treat each other. Not only by how we treat those closest to us, but by how we treat all people, those we like and those we dislike; those of whom we approve and those of whom we do not; the neighbor and the complete stranger.

One day Max Lucado stopped in a convenience store to get a newspaper. He noticed that the owner of the store had tears in his eyes and kept looking out the window. He asked what was going on.

The store owner said, “Do you see that bus bench over there? There’s a woman who comes there every day around this time. She sits there for about an hour, knitting and waiting. Buses come and go, but she never gets on one and no one ever gets off for her to meet. The other day, I carried her a cup of coffee and sat with her for a while.

“Her only son lives a long way away. She last saw him two years ago, when he boarded one of the buses right there. He is married now, and she has never met her daughter‑in‑law or seen their new child. She told me, ‘It helps to come here and wait. I pray for them as I knit little things for the baby, and I imagine them in their tiny apartment, saving money to come home. I can’t wait to see them.’”

The reason the owner was looking out the window at that particular moment was that the three of them--the son, his wife and their small child--were just getting off the bus. The look on the woman’s face when this small family fell into her arms was one of pure joy. And this joy only increased when she looked into the face of her grandchild for the first time. The store owner commented, “I’ll never forget that look as long as I live.”

The next day Lucado returned to the convenience store. The owner was again behind the counter. Before the store owner could say or do anything, the customer said, “You sent her son the money for the bus tickets, didn’t you?”

The store owner looked back with eyes full of love and a smile and replied, “Yes, I sent the money.” Then he repeated his statement from the day before, “I’ll never forget that look as long as I live.” This man had discovered a measure of the abundant life.

Do you understand that following in the footsteps of Jesus means living a life for others? It is a paradox. The more selfishly we live our lives, the less satisfaction we feel about our lives. The more we are open to others, the better we feel about ourselves. The person who lives life abundantly hears Christ’s voice and walks in Christ’s footsteps, performing acts of love as Christ performed acts of love. But there is one thing more to say about the abundant life. The person who has abundant life gratefully accepts what Christ has done. Abundant living is more than simply being a do-gooder. Abundant living is life lived out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. Abundant living is not something we are able to do on our own. Abundant living is a gift, a gift of grace.

John Schmidt tells the story of a young boy who lives in Zimbabwe. This young man’s name is Musumdiwa, and he was rescued by a church mission called the Love More House. Listen as this young African boy describes his life:

“My life was never very good. Even my name Musumdiwa means ‘unwanted child’. When I was two weeks old my mother dumped me in a stack of old tires. The police picked me up and took me to my grandmother and when she gave me back to my mother, she dumped me again. This time wrapping me in rags and leaving me in a beer hall. No one ever really wanted me except my grandmother and she was too poor to buy enough food or pay for my school fees. After I ended up on the streets, some people at church told me about Love More House and they asked me to come here. I am going to finish school and become a soccer player and later maybe I will have a job in a bank. Inside my head I asked God to help me reach my goals, to help me in school and with soccer and especially to help me forgive others and not join in conflict. Some day I think that God will give me another name, Amon. It will mean ‘someone good’.”

Musumdiwa is working hard to reach his goals, for he, too, would like to have the good life. But he knows there is more. Thanks to the Love More House, this young man knows there is the abundant life, and even with his limited opportunities he knows that this abundant life cannot be earned. It comes as a gift from God. He prays that God will give him a new name, Amon, “Someone Good.”

I hope God gives you and me new names—names such as “Someone Good,” “Kindhearted,” “Generous,” “Neighborly,” and even “Christ-like”. I hope we understand that there is more than just the good life. There is the abundant life. We are souls under construction and we can build lives that really matter. We can hear Christ’s voice and we walk in Christ’s steps.