Fully Alive

Fourth Sunday of Easter/Mother’s Day

I Peter 2:19-25

John 10-1-11a

How many of you live on a farm?  Just for clarification, having a dog doesn't count.  How many of you raise sheep?

Our reading today is about sheep and shepherds.  That already sounds a little far from the world where we live – a world where most of us no longer live on a farm, don’t raise sheep, don’t eat much mutton, and don’t knit garments from the wool we’ve sheared. 

But at the end of the reading Jesus says something that cuts right to the heart of where we are today, on this spring Sunday, near the end of the school year, Mother’s Day, the fourth Sunday of the Easter Season.  Jesus says that he comes to us that “we may have life, and have it to the full” (v. 10).

So the question before each of us personally and all of us together is simple but powerful: Do you have life to the full?  Do you live with life abundant?  Are you fully alive?

There is a famous saying by a second-century bishop and theologian in (present day) France named Irenaeus that I want to set before us.  It’s one of those sayings that sounds simple, but it may take a life-time of reflection to come to grips with its full meaning.  Here’s what Irenaeus says:

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

There is a way of only being half alive, of being dead or numb while going through life.  One of my favorite bands, The National, has a song titled “Half awake.”  How do you know if you’re not fully alive?  Most of us numb ourselves in some way - by the use of drugs and alcohol, by immersing ourselves in social media, by being a busybody and trafficking in gossip, by living vicariously through our children, shopping, golfing, watching TV. 

You deaden yourself and live beneath your best self by engaging in anything petty and distracting that is used to block a full engagement with life, and a full expression of who you’ve been created to be.  What Jesus offers to us is a path forward into a different kind of life. 

But we need to back up for a minute and try to make some sense of all this talk about shepherds, sheep, sheep pens, and bandits.

Maybe it will help to imagine the scene that Jesus’ listeners would have had in mind.  In traditional agrarian societies, near the farmhouse there would be an enclosure for the sheep.  It was probably enclosed by a rock wall, perhaps with thorn bushes along the top to prevent thieves from climbing the wall.  There would be a gate to the enclosure that could be locked, to make theft more difficult. 

You might be thinking that this is a lot of trouble for a few sheep.  But these sheep are a valuable commodity.  They were a major source of meat and milk and clothing, and a way for families to barter with neighbors for other necessary goods.  So no wonder that sheep stealing was a common practice.  It was just as prevalent as the theft of credit card numbers is today, and just as damaging to a family’s livelihood.

If the sheepfold was large – often the enclosures would hold the sheep of several different families - you would hire someone to serve as the gatekeeper.  This person stood watch by the gate during the night to prevent theft.  Obviously the hired hand watching the gate knows the difference between the shepherd charged with caring for the sheep and thieves who come to steal them. 

And I understand that where the sheep of several families were mingled, the shepherd knows which belong to him, and can call them by name.  And these sheep know the sound of their shepherd’s voice.  He can call them out if he needs to separate his sheep from the rest of the flock.

OK, so that’s today’s primer on ancient sheep farming 101.  You will receive a license upon leaving today and are fully prepared to start your own sheep farm.  If you want to knit me a sweater, I wear a large.

With that background picture of sheep, shepherds, sheep pens, gates, and thieves, we can now begin to listen for the voice of Jesus speaking to us about something that is right at the buzzing center of who we are – how to be fully alive.  Jesus invites us to experience him in two ways, as Shepherd and as Gate.

Jesus relates to us as a shepherd.  He is a certain kind of shepherd – the kind that is really good at his job.  He is focused totally on the well being of the sheep.  He is near them, caring for them, nurturing them to full growth and development, seeking their welfare at every turn. 

And one of the privileges of being a part of Jesus’ flock is knowing the sound of his voice.  Most of us have to sort through hundreds of different voices each day.  We scroll through Facebook posts and Twitter feeds, blogs and websites, news shows, newspapers.  We spend time with teachers, bosses, colleagues, friends and neighbors.  We are exposed to all kinds of commercials and advertisements everywhere we go. 

So to know the voice of our Good Shepherd means that we can identify and pay attention to the voice of Jesus in the midst of all else we’re hearing.  And this is really a matter of life and death, because much of what we hear comes from thieves and robbers – those who seek to harm us or cut us off from our fullest possibilities.

There is no way to know the sound of his voice without the repeated rhythms of listening.  It’s a habit and a way of life.  We hear the voice of Christ primarily through Scripture and sermon, but once we have learned to hear its sound there, we will begin to hear it elsewhere too – in conversation and in the beauty of nature.  But that’s why we gather for worship every week.  We’re not putting in our time to keep our badge.  We’re not coming here when we’re in the mood or when it happens to work out.  We’re here because our ability to live life to the full depends on learning to hear the guiding voice of Christ in our lives.

But Jesus also relates to us as the gate to the sheep pen.

Now this may be a little jarring.  We’ve just tried to get our heads and hearts around one metaphor – Jesus as the “good shepherd” – and now Jesus is off and running with a different metaphor – “I am the gate.” 

If Jane Campbell the English teacher were grading this essay, she might suggest that Jesus needed an editor or at least one more draft.  You can’t mix your metaphors.  If you get people leaning one direction then jerk them in a different direction, they’ll have trouble staying with you.  And yet this was the point of Jesus’ way of teaching – offering a variety of rich images that invites wonder and curiosity but also keeps his listeners slightly off balance, leaning in to hear more.

By picturing himself as the gate to the sheep pen, Jesus calls our attention to the way he opens a new life for us, invites us in with the rest of the flock, and provides for our safety and well-being.  He’s the door that swings open so that we can go in and out, finding pasture and water.  He provides the conditions and the environment for the sheep to flourish as sheep.  He gives us all we need to be fully alive.

What does it mean to be fully alive?  It means to be fully yourself.  It means you’ve been freed from trying to be someone else.  It means you live without fear – yes, there are real threats from wolves and thieves, but those things don’t hold you in their grip.  Your own death does not hold spell over you because even that it is in God’s hands.

To be fully alive means that there is space in your life for others, because you are not nervously filling the time with frantic efforts to achieve and perform and prove your worth.  It means you live with an easy, relaxed freedom.  You wake into every day with trust that you are deeply loved by God, forgiven and included in God’s family because Jesus died for you and was raised from the dead.  It means that you can undertake daily tasks and obligations with a simple joy.  And it means that you never stop growing and unfolding as a person.  You are always deepening in your baptism, becoming ever more yourself – a person gifted by the Spirit for a life of good work, kindness, and generosity. 

The truth is, it’s God’s will for you in Jesus Christ to be fully lit, fully animated, and fully energized.  The glory of God is a human being fully alive.