“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
I think it very likely that when Jesus said that, he was deliberately echoing a phrase in the twenty-third Psalm, the one that begins:
“The Lord is my shepherd”
The phrase I think that he had in mind was this one:
“…my cup overflows.”
The Greek word that St John uses, which is translated into English as “abundantly” is itself an accurate translation of the Hebrew word in the Psalm. Both literally mean “brimming over” or “full to overflowing”.
For sheep, abundant life is fairly easy to achieve. Plentiful pasture during the day and a place safe from predators at night and during lambing time is all that they need. In Jesus’ time that meant a sheepfold and He describes in today’s Gospel how, in those days, sheepfolds had gates and gatekeepers. In the Highlands and Islands, where the winter climate is far more hostile, something more substantial is required. I remember that there was much quiet laughter in Shetland when a couple from the English Midlands, new to the islands and new to crofting, installed a polytunnel in anticipation of the lambing season. The first significant storm of that winter saw the polytunnel take off and depart in the general direction of Norway and it had to be replaced by a barn. There’s a useful metaphor there, of which more in a moment.
Sheep are easily made content, but for us humans, abundant life is more challenging, more complex and yet the Gospel promise is that it is to be found in relationship with Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.
If you spend any time on social media, you’re likely to come across someone claiming that they are “living their best life”. What that usually means is that they are doing exactly what they want to do, whether it’s sunning themselves on a distant beach, enjoying exotic food and drink in a restaurant or simple chillaxing in the garden. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things but that’s not what is meant by having life abundantly. Young people are, I understand, beginning to grasp that. There’s a social media app that is increasingly popular with Generation Z. It’s called Be Real. If you subscribe to it you are prompted, once a day, to post an unedited photo either of yourself or your surroundings. You have only two minutes in which to do it, and you don’t know from day to day when that two-minute slot will occur. It sounds like an attempt, albeit it a somewhat clunky attempt, at a greater authenticity than other social media platforms encourage, an attempt to post and so acknowledge the significance of a slice of reality rather than a contrived image or a piece of self-advertisement.
I have no intention of signing up for Be Real, but hearing about it made me wonder what sort of things I would have had to post in the last week or so. As some of you know, we have recently moved. Any random two minutes during the last week might have caught me unpacking boxes, dusting and hoovering in our previous home to get ready for the decorator’s arrival or scratching my head because I couldn’t remember in which cupboard in our new kitchen I had put the chopping boards. Life has been busy and that has prompted some theological reflection on how all the busy-ness of life can be part of the abundant living that Jesus the Good Shepherd offers to those who follow Him.
The answer to that question is to be found in the Rule of St Benedict. Benedictine monks and nuns have a routine of formal prayer in church and also a routine of work. For them the work is also prayerful. Prayer pervades every aspect of their lives. That’s a recognition of something we so easily forget – that God is wherever we are, and that God in Christ is always inviting us to come closer.
We are invited to work in partnership with God, and that’s an invitation to be Be Real in God. When the Psalmist says
“…my cup overflows”
that abundance is the result of a partnership between God’s generosity in creation and human work – cups overflow both because of the goodness of God’s creation and human work - planting, tending the vines, harvesting the grapes and making the wine.
The Benedictine monks and nuns for whom work is also prayer live very structured lives. That may not be our calling, yet our commitment to regular worship, to this fellowship, to private prayer and to Bible reading can provide the structure we need, not the kind of flimsy structure that blows away in the first crisis like that polytunnel in Shetland but something more solid and reliable – the sheepfold of Christ the Good Shepherd who offers security and nourishment and encourages us to venture out and to share the possibility of abundant life in Him.