“Life Abundant” - Easter 4

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

John 10:10

Abundant life. Not quite a description of our reality that springs to mind in these times of pandemic. Lock-down. Locked church. Isolation. Spatial distancing. Stay at home. Save lives. Tracing App. This is the language that has been shaping our world over recent weeks. Our movements are restricted, even monitored. We are encouraged not to go out or travel other than for the essentials. Fear, anxiety, boredom, frustration, anger, might be better descriptors of current life than abundance.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, famously wrote that: “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Without delving into the problems of logic that Wittgenstein was grappling with, there is perhaps a face-value truth in these words for today. Why should “abundant life” be an oxymoron in these weeks and months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot escape the limits a highly contagious virus places on our day-to-day reality. But our language, our thought patterns, our inner life of prayer and worship, profoundly shape and define the limits of our world in this forced isolation.

Today’s gospel passage is usually titled “Jesus the Good Shepherd.” And, indeed, in verse 11 of chapter 10, John’s Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd.” But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and in fact today’s gospel ends at verse 10. There is no mention of Jesus as Good Shepherd in this opening to the chapter. A better title for this section might be “Jesus the Gate.”

Our Lord has just healed the man born blind in the previous chapter, which triggered an official investigation into his behaviour by the Pharisees. Unlike any good Torah-abiding healer, he undertook a miracle on the Sabbath. And then, in the ensuing argument, he accuses the religious leaders of blindness.

“Very truly, I tell you,” slamming the point home, “anyone who does not enter the sheep-fold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

The metaphor of shepherd was a powerful one to the first-century Jewish hearers of John’s gospel. King David, the ruler who truly united the disparate tribes of Israel, was the youngest son “keeping the sheep” when he was called and anointed by the prophet Samuel. The Psalms resonate with this regal-pastoral imagery (Ps 80:1-2): “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth … stir up your might, and come to save us!” “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures” (Ps 23:1-2) The prophets, in time of exile, point to a time when the promised Messiah will come to restore the people of Israel: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep” (Isaiah 40:11).

“You are not shepherds, you are not true leaders of the people of Israel,” Jesus is saying in this parable. “You call yourselves leaders, but you are thieves and bandits; in it for yourselves; using religion to rob the people. You jump over the wall at night with devious motives. You are no shepherd.”

“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep” (v.2) “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate” (v.7).

In lock-down, in our isolation, it is good news indeed that there is a gate; a gate that will keep us safe at night; a gate that will allow us to leave the sheep pen and roam freely under the protection of our shepherd-leaders during the day. Our Lord is that gate; a gate that enables life in abundance even in the midst of pandemic.

Two poems in closing. Firstly Michael Leunig’s “How to Get There” which accompanies his cartoon “The Garden Gate.”

Go to the end of the path until you get to the gate.

Go through the gate and head straight out towards the horizon.

Keep going towards the horizon.

Sit down and have a rest every now and again,

But keep on going, just keep on with it.

Keep on going as far as you can.

That’s how you get there.

And secondly, Victoria Safford’s “The Gates of Hope.”

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—

Not the prudent gates of Optimism,

Which are somewhat narrower.

Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;

Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,

Which creak on shrill and angry hinges

(People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)

Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of

“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”

But a different, sometimes lonely place,

The place of truth-telling,

About your own soul first of all and its condition.

The place of resistance and defiance,

The piece of ground from which you see the world

Both as it is and as it could be

As it will be;

The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,

But the joy of the struggle.

And we stand there, beckoning and calling,

Telling people what we are seeing

Asking people what they see.