April 30, 2023

Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

That is the goal. That is the purpose. To have life and to have it abundantly. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, what exactly does it mean?

You may have seen in your travels a church bearing some variation of the name “Abundant Life.” It is a reference to this declaration by Jesus, but what are we to take away from it? How are we to plan our day so that our lives might be abundant?

One possibility is to look to our first reading from the Book of Acts. We hear a description of how the disciples and the new followers of Jesus are living in community: All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

Not a lot of detail. But the description provides a dramatic comparison against what their lives would have been like outside of this community.

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple…

This gathering at the temple was perhaps out of character with the rest of the Judeans. It showed a greater sense of religious fervor and a greater dedication to the requirements of the religious life. They were at the Temple, so this was not yet a new religion, but one that had taken on new characteristics. The early disciples and these new followers were firmly in the Jewish tradition.

[T]hey broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

This may sound like a description of a communion service, the holy Eucharist. And it may have been that, but it was probably not just that. In this time period, there was something called the agape meal, literally a love feast, a religious gathering that did not distinguish between worship and celebration, prayer and a communal meal. You prayed and probably sang together. You praised God and fed all those who might join you in doing so. It was not church stuff and then coffee hour, as if there was a simple line between spiritual and social.

And let us not forget this line: All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

The community of Jesus’ followers soon after his death had a sense of the common good and common purpose. They would exist together in an interwoven structure. In a sense, it was like an expanded family, with everyone looking out for the others. If we are to understand what Jesus meant by abundant life, we must also try to understand what sort of life he and his followers tried to live. And in many ways, it was as unrecognizable to those around them as it is unrecognizable to us thousands of years later.

Well, for us in the present, perhaps not unrecognizable. Maybe surprising. Maybe even unsettling. Maybe looking quite a bit like a social and political arrangement that runs against our more capitalistic American sensibilities. A community in which we are responsible for caring for one another seems like a system that values social obligations far more than it values individual rights or personal prosperity. And that sort of community does not normally exist in our modern world, any more than it existed in Jesus’ time.

The people of Judea were controlled by the Roman Empire, which only became an empire a few decades before Jesus was born. It was a time of great social and economic inequality. About ten percent of the people lived lives of ease and plenty. Most of the other ninety percent toiled in the fields as subsistence farmers paying taxes to aristocratic landowners. A few of the disciples were fishermen like Peter or craftsmen like Jesus.

By the way, Jesus is described as the son of the carpenter Joseph and so he was likely in the same trade. But the Greek word used to describe this role is “tekton” which can also be translated as “laborer.” Jesus could have been a skilled craftsman or he could have been a day laborer moving from task to task. With all that in mind, Jesus and the disciples were likely poor. They might not have always had enough to eat from day to day. And they certainly did not have excess time to hang around at the Temple. It would have been a time of hard living.

When we consider the idea that Jesus wanted his people to live abundant lives, we might be inclined to imagine them through our modern understanding of those words. It might sound a bit socialistic, everyone owning everything in common and distributing it as others were in need. Anything resembling modern socialism however did not exist and neither did anything approximating modern capitalism. Kings and emperors held a lot of power and most people were controlled by that power in some manner.

To live more abundantly seems to be a good goal, if otherwise sounding quite basic. But in a time when life was quite precarious, to be able to live life at all was no small matter. And to live without concern for one’s daily bread was a great blessing. To be a part of a community in which everyone was fed, in which their needs would be met, was something extraordinary.

One of the challenges of reading the Bible is to understand it in context. To understand what Jesus meant in the moment and how we might interpret those lessons in another time and place. When we are told that Jesus wants his followers to live life abundantly, we need to know what he meant then and what his words should mean now. In the year 40, around the time Jesus likely died, the instruction to live life abundantly would have been challenging.

In fact, human beings came together in larger communities in order to make life easier by allowing coordinated action. We could grow food and protect it from being taken by outsiders. We could help raise children in a group and help care for elders who had given their lives to a community of people. That is not to say that people would have found the idea of communal living unusual. But it would have been more restricted. Restricted to family, restricted to clan, restricted to tribe. But it was not open to anyone or everyone.

And so, the change sought by Jesus was an expansion of an existing sense of commitment. We will care for one another like we are family. People would be called brothers and sisters and they would be expected to act like they were brothers and sisters. Like any siblings, that might have involved moments of disagreement, but the overarching concern for each other would have been the hallmark of the relationship.

To live life abundantly meant to live better than before, to live with shared purpose and concerns. To join together to make a better life in community than as individuals. To live and to be together.

What about now? Thousands of years later, we have new words to describe this sort of communal living. We have new ideas about what a good life includes and what we are expected to do for one another. Those words and ideas generally guide us away from what Jesus meant when he said live life abundantly. And instead, they guide us toward different notions of life and abundance.

In the United States two thousand years later, our understanding of life is not the same. Our sense of abundance, or more specifically wealth, is unrecognizably different. That does not mean Jesus’ teachings have no modern purpose, but that we must do a little translation to appreciate them now and put in some work to adjust ourselves to their meaning. These lessons are extremely relevant to our time of enormous inequities.

Let’s start with a few modern statistics. In 2019, the bottom fifty percent of Americans owned about two percent of the nation’s wealth. That is 50% owning 2%. The top ten percent owned seventy-two percent. Again 10% owned 72%. Those percentages are out of balance and they are likely even more so today.

That does not mean that the ten percenters did anything illegal. Not at all. I would also note that the Roman Empire did nothing illegal when it seized control of Judea. When it tore down the Temple. When it scattered the people of Israel. Nothing illegal at all because they decided what was legal. And in our day and age, just like in the Roman Empire, it is the top ten percent who decide what is legal.

That by the way is not my opinion. Social scientists studying policy making in the U.S. have determined that the passage of any new law has little to do with how many Americans support it compared with how much money is behind it. The preferences of ordinary citizens have almost no effect upon such legislation, except when those preferences coincide with those of the wealthy. And strangely enough, the wealthy rarely vote against their economic interests.

But there are differences from ancient times, to be certain. In a modern American context, we do not often think about whether we will live or die, eat or starve from day to day or from week to week. And yet, ten percent of Americans face food insecurity at some point during the average year.

What does that mean, to be food insecure? They do not have access to food for various reasons. Sometimes it is persistent poverty. Sometimes it is seasonal income. Sometimes it is an inability to stretch a dollar, like at the end of the month. Perhaps they are living a life, but they are surely not living life abundantly.

Which leads me to a question: have any of you ever been hungry? Not did you miss lunch. Not whether you ever worried about money. But was there ever a time in your life when you did not have enough to eat? Or perhaps you were making a choice between paying the rent and buying groceries? Was there ever a time like that?

I must confess that there was never a time in my life when I did not have food. There were moments when it was unclear if the math was going to work out that month, that every bill would get paid on time.

And that was as a person with a college degree. That was as a person who had options, even if I found those options distasteful. Asking family for help. Moving back home. Unpleasant choices about personal pride are still choices. But sometimes you do not have even those.

When Jesus was teaching his disciples about setting up their community, notice how open the boundaries were. Pretty much anyone could enter into the fellowship of disciples. And once inside, they would be a part of that community dedicated to abundant life. Life without worry about material needs, or at least less worry as needs were spread across the wider group. You might not be wealthy, but you would not go hungry.

I do not have statistics about income inequality two thousand years ago in the Roman Empire, but I am guessing that banding together helped. That breaking bread and eating as a community made a drachma go farther. Jesus wanted his followers to be like this, to work together as brothers and sisters, to care for those in need both within and without.

Every few weeks, I get a call. It is from someone looking for help. It is not from someone I know, not from someone within the church community. They wonder if I can help with their rent. Pay one of their bills. Get them a gift card to a local grocery store. And I tell them that there is nothing I can do. Because there isn’t. We do not have anything set up to help them.

And I will also point out that some of these calls are from people who do not seem to be in need of anything. How do I know that? Because they occasionally call a second time with an entirely different story. In a word filled with scams, it is perhaps understandable that some level of suspicion will color our judgment of a situation.

Over the years, I have had people walk into the church asking for help and sometimes I would give out of my own pocket and other times I would say there was nothing I could do. The difference has to do with my own instincts about whether to believe someone or, honestly, if they put in a lot of effort and I admired their chutzpah. But is that really how I should be responding to the call of Jesus?

I wish there was more that I could do, that we could do. I wish there was a better way of helping those in need. I realize that when Jesus said sell everything that you own, give it away to the poor, and follow me, that his message is not going to take me far convincing others in 21^st century America. So, I am aiming a little lower.

We as a community are generous to various social organizations and local nonprofits. We help fund food pantries, support after school programs, and emergency funding resources. I do not mean to ignore those accomplishments and I do not mean to detract from their meaningful impacts. And yet I would like for us to think for a moment about what it would mean to take Jesus seriously. To consider what it would look like for us to be reaching out more into the surrounding communities. I would quickly admit that the neighborhood of Chestnut Hill is not in need of a soup kitchen. But that does not mean there is not more that we could do a few miles east in the City of Boston.

Because somewhere in that city, a child is hungry. Somewhere in that city, a family is homeless. Somewhere in that city, someone is not living an abundant life. They are more likely living lives of worry and anxiety.

And I wonder. I wonder how we might help take away some of that worry and anxiety. I wonder how we might help resolve their hunger or homelessness. I wonder how we might help on our own as a congregation or in partnership with others. I sit here and wonder.

We here at First Church arguably live life abundantly. What would it look like to share some of that abundance? How might we open ourselves to the meaning and the message of Jesus Christ, our teacher and our redeemer? The meaning and the message of living life abundantly for ourselves and abundantly with others?

I do not have an answer for you today, but I will leave you all with a question that frequently pops into my mind. What should we do?

Amen.