LIVING THE ABUNDANT LIFE

April 7, 1991
Morning Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
First Presbyterian Church, Denton, Texas

Scripture
John i0:1-10

“TY came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."
-John 10:10b {NRSV)

It is something of an understatement to say that I am pleased to be
here. JI appreciate your graciousness and hospitality and genefosity in
allowing me to preside at the Baptism of my grandson.

That is very risky business because grandparents are usually nearly
out-of-control. We have been known to talk endlessly about our grand-
children even when nobody is listening, show pictures at the slightest
provocation... even become a little testy when another grandparent intrudes
with pictures and stories ~ in our territory. There are three grandparents
on the staff of Fourth Presbyterian Church - and we jive in a kind of
uneasy peace... until one of us sees them and comes home with a new batch
of pictures, and then it starts all over again.

So thank you for indulging that and thank you for being the church for
Cameron and Caitlin...

That is what you promised earlier... and it's an important part of
what happens at a Presbyterian Baptism...

Kathy asked essentially - will you be the Church for Cameron... and
you said you would.

And everytime I ask that question I think abont my own Baptism and

that in the congregation that day were men and women who said yes - and
made good on the promise.

One I remember fondly was Mrs. Evans who taught Senior High boys and
then trailed us ~- with love ~ in college - service...

You are Cameron's godparents - his sponsers - and E'm giad for what I
already know about you that he has you for his family of faith...

kK XK #

"I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

"Is there life after death?" That might seem to be the fundamental

religious question. In fact, it might appear to be the fundamental human
question.

But for Jesus of Nazareth, there was a prior question, a much more
important one - .

Is there life before death? It really is what we want to know, We
may define it differentiy but deep in the heart of each one of us is a

profound desire - a hope ~ to live our lives fully, completely, abundantly,
if you will.

In the play and the movie, "Shirley Valentine," the question ‘is asked
with humor, but also poignancy.

The play is not about religion in any traditional sense, but as is
the case with much good theater, the thematic material is absolutely
religious, particularly if we are listening to Jesus on the topic of
Abundant Life. Shirley Valentine is a middle-aged British housewife,
mother of two young adults, takes care of her working husband, has a plass
of wine or two alone in her kitchen as she prepares the evening meal, and
in the absence of anyone else, talks to the wall.

She asks: “What happened? Did something happen or was it just that
nothin happened? They pot married, they made a home, they had kids and
brought them up. And somewhere along the line the boy called Joe turned
into 'Him,' and Shirley Valentine turned into this and what I can't
remember is what day or week or month it was when it stopped being good."

A friend invites Shirley to accompany her on a holiday trip to
Greece, It is unthinkable that she should do something so bold, exciting,
without her husband who, it appears, is incapable - or unwilling - ta boil
an egg. She does it, an act of courageous self-affirmation, a reaching for
her dreams, although she never does tell her husband. The sweetest part of
her dream is to sit one day by the sea, sipping wine in a land where the
grapes are grown and it is there, alene, on the veranda of a Greek tavern,

that she reflects so poignantly... in a way I thought was commentary on
John 10,

"I mean for weeks, I'd had this picture of myself, sittin here,
drinkin wine by the sea: I even knew how I was gonna feel. But when I got
to it, it wasn't a bit like that. Because when J got to it, I didn't feel
at all lovely and serene. I felt pretty daft actually. A bit stupid and
awfully, awfully old.- What I kept thinkin was how I'd lived such a little
life. An one way or another even that would be over soon... (the
importance of this motif was evidenced by handkerchiefs materializing in
the audience) I thought to myself, my life has been a crime really - a
crime against God, because I didn't live it fully. I'd allowed myself to
live this little life when inside me there was so much. $o much more that
IT could have lived a bigger life with - but it had al] gone unused and now
it never would be. Why - why do I get all this life, when it can't be
used? Why - why do I get... all these feelins and dreams an hopes if they

can't ever be used? That's where Shirley Valentine disappeared to. She
got lost in all this unused life,"

Jesus said, "I came that they might have life, and have it
abundantly.” And that moment in "Shirley Valentine” reminded me that
Christianity is about living the abundant life, now, in this world, within
the perimeters of history. That the promise and hope of the Gospel is
about Jove more powerful than death, an eternal Jove. But the focus - the
place of impact, the essence of the aet of God's becoming incarnate in the
man Jesus, is the way that shapes, melds, colors, deepens, recreates,
converts and fills up to the very brim this life I am now in the process of
living.

I learned that personally from a friend, as often happens; from a
friend who had challenged me. Her name was Mary. She called on Monday
morning. "There's something you do not know about me," she said. "I have
cancer, I've had the surgery and the treatments. -I feel all right. It's
gone... but there are no guarantees. I may live six months or twenty
years. But whatever I have left I intend to live it. I used to be shy,
reticent, kept my opinions to myself. No more. When I care about
something I say it, You see, there is nothing in this life that scares me
any more.” ,

On the morning I received that call IT sat at my desk a long time
thinking about how much of life we let slip through our fingers simply
because we are afraid to live it; how much love we carry around in our
hearts unexpressed because we never got around to it, or were afraid of the
vulnerability which occurs every time we say "I Inve you"; how much passion
for great causes we carry in our hearts because we never took the time to
pursne it, or were afraid of what our friends might think, or how our
career would be affected; how many hopes and dreams. we hide in our hearts,
putting them off for some safely vague future when we'll be free enough or
comfortable enough or secure enough to give them a try.

Shirley Valentine reminded me again of samething I learned personally
from that telephone conversation, and have learned from over and over
again, namely that in spite of what Jesus said on the topic, Christianity
generally is not regarded as a resource for living abundantly. In fact, it
is often part of the problem: "Te be religious" is assumed to be limited,
a bracketing of life, a turning away from life. The simple truth is that
what traditional religion there is in the Bible is not portrayed very
positively, Throughout the four Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John,
religion is one of the burdens of life with which people must contend.
Religious people, Seribes and Pharisees, are the villains in the story. In
the Fourth Gospel, Jesus enhances human life wherever he goes, and the
religious people object. Jesus makes water into wine to keep a wedding
party gaing, restores sight, heals the lame, is characterized by John as
living water and bread of life. In fact, Jesus restores and enhances the
gift of life dramatically all the while, without ceasing. There is a
steady, consistent, objection by the religious authorities: "Yes, it's
nice that the man can walk but it's the Sabbath... she's a sinner... all
these people are unclean, so, untidy... and they don't go to church, or
keep the Sabbath,” :

3

The simple, uncomfortable reality of the New Testament is that
religion is one of the reasons people are prevented from living abundantly.
Throughout the New Testament, bat particularly in the Fourth Gospel, the
story is a kind of on-again, off-again, running argument between Jesus and
religion which increases in intensity until it comes to the crucifixion
which, particularly as John tells it, was a skillfully engineered religious
scheme.

Religion in the New Testament often appears life~limiting, life-
denying, a grim, tight-lipped, scowling affair, a maze of rules and taws
and restrictions and requirements, Religion leaves people like sheep
without a shepherd, said Jesus. Or, rather, sheep with a thief imitating a
shepherd. And that, more than anything else, seems to have made him angry.
Angry enough to pick up a whip and drive the purveyors of this kind of
life-limiting religion out of the temple. Angry enough to look them in the
eye and tej] them they are like the thief who pretends to be a shepherd and
leads the sheep to their demise. In contrast, he says, "I came that they
may have life, and have it abundantly."

Part of the challenge is that religion, the very context in which we
are gathered this morning, has a way of becoming a deterrent to abundant
living: that instead of enhancing life, religion often hems it in, limits
and restrains it under a mountain of rituals, rules, and customs.

But another challenge is a culjtural context in which there are plenty
of available and enormously attractive definitions of abundance.

American cniture in the past decade decided that the abundant life
was abundant in the goods and gadgets of consumerism. In an article on
"Baby Boomers" in the Tribune, Jane Ciabattari. wrote, “If the Depression
attitude was 'You can't have everything,' and the post-war expansionist
period created a shared credo, 'You can have everything,’ the 1980s taught
us ‘You should have everything.'"

We bought into that... We spent ourselves and our country into a
black hole of debt that our children’s children will have to pay back. We
watched that mentality express itself in a junk bond empire whose sole
product was to make a few fabulously wealthy, shaking to the very core
savings and loan institutions, and adding to our bill - now dué - sums of
money beyond our wildest imagination. We even watched it emerge again in
religion as the televangelists promised that God really wants us to have it
all, wants us to be comfortable materially, that God will bless those who
give generously, that a contribution is actually an investment which will
turn a tidy profit, and the money poured in.

Sometime in the late 1980s it began to change. Now the polisters and
the sociologists and the artists are telling us there is a hunger of the
spirit. <A "yearning," Walter Bruggemann calls it. People come to church,
says Bruggemann, after you penetrate beneath all the superficialities of
custom and social expectations, because they yearn - we yearn ~ for
abundant life.

Well, if living the abundant life does not mean having everything you
want, furnishing your life with discounted Crate & Barrel accouterments,

what does it mean? What is it that the Scribes and Pharisees are missing?

What does Shirley Valentine need to find herself - to start living her life
again?

It is not "neat stuff.” It is not simply the excitement of sex, she
discovers, although that is very nice. It is not even living forever in
the dream, sipping wine beside the sea,

What Shirley Valentine needs - what we all need - is the gift of
abundant life... for that is what it is; not a prize to be earned, but a
gift to be received. What we all need is good news «+ Gospel. And that,
the Christian faith proclaims boldly but carefully, is what we have been
given... carefully because Gospel is not another list of religious rules.

Gospe] is good news that the Shepherd is not a thief. The Shepherd
is good. The Shepherd is God's son - who loves us; who lived for us and
whose own life demonstrates what abundant life is, if we will but look at
it.

The components of abundant life, I would propose to you, are three:

One - Living the Abundant Life becomes possible when you know you are
Joved; when you know the Iove of another human being which affirms your
very being, accepts you as you are, and will be for you and with you
tomorrow come what may; and in the absence of that other, which is the way
it is for some of us all of the time and all of us some of the time —- to
know that in Jesus Christ, the creator God loves you like that.

Two - Abundant Living begins to happen when you know yourself to be
loved, enjoy yourself as loved, feel free and secure and good enough about
yourself te risk loving back: that human being who loves you for starters,
the church, or city, or political party, or social cause which is in your
heart: when love makes a lover of you and you begin to live for others,
giving instead of receiving, serving instead of being served.

Phat is our secret. Abundant living begins when we live out of our
lave.

Three ~ The lesson 1 learned from Mary: living the abundant life
begins when we know there is nothing we need to fear. Last week this
chureh and churches all over the world were ful] of people who needed to
hear that in spite of the reality of suffering and tragedy in the world
eloquently symbolized by the crucifixion of God's son, and in spite of the
reality of death - the death of dear ones, their own deaths ultimately ~
there is no reason to fear. Churches are full on Easter Sunday,
understandably, because without that affirmation, there is a hollowness to
every proposed abundance of life. But in its wisdom, the ancient Christian
church came to call it the Season of Eastertide; not just one day, but an
entire season of the calendar: Easter, when the abundance of the earth
itself is evident once again... a whole season upon which to build the rest
of the year, out of which to live the rest of life... a season which begins
on the first day of the week in the early light of dawn at an empty tomb
and spreads outward to all] the world and forward to al] the time ahead.

A season to remind you that the shepherd is good: he knows your
Name...

A season to remind you that you are loved with a love stronger than
death,

A season to remind you that you are free to love others, this world,
your neighbors who need you, God who made you - with all the passion in you
and all the possibility and hope.

A season to remind you that yeu are safe. There is nothing to fear.

"J came," he said, "that you might have life, and have it
abundantly."

Amen,