John 10:1-10
I spent some significant time on the internet this week investigating what abundant life in Christ looks like. I found an incredible array of diverse opinions. On the one hand, there was the site of Kenneth Copeland Ministries. The headline was “God Has Created a Wealth-Generating System That Cannot Fail!” And the first line in the material was, “Money answers everything,” which is a quote of Ecclesiastes 10:19. The writer went on to say, “Money is an essential thing in this life, so to desire money is not selfish – it’s necessary.” Then he gave three reasons why God wants us to have money. First, to fund Kingdom work. “To ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel’ takes money!” Second, to provide well for our households. And third, to subdue the earth. The writer explains this by stating, “To have dominion on the earth, we should be controlling most of the resources. For example, if you don’t like the immorality posted on the billboard outside your office, here is the answer: Own the billboard. If the magazines in the store are offensive: Own the magazines. That’s how you subdue the earth.” I guess that’s an option if you happen to be rich. Of course, many of the proponents of this “prosperity gospel” are quite wealthy. I think of Joel Osteen, who is worth over $50 million personally.
Prosperity theology teaches that Christians are entitled to well-being, which is interpreted as physical health and economic prosperity. Wealth is seen as the blessing of God. This theology developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely within the Pentecostal movement. By the 1940s and 1950s this theology became connected with teachings of deliverance and faith healing. Oral Roberts began teaching prosperity theology in 1947, saying that donors would be rewarded “sevenfold” for what they gave, receiving money from unexpected sources. He even offered to return any donation that did not lead to some unexpected payment.
During the 1960s prosperity theology took to the airwaves through televangelists. Oral Roberts was among the first to get involved, with a syndicated weekly program that became the most watched religious show in the country. In the 1980s, we had Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who became very popular until Jim Bakker was implicated in a scandal. Following that, the Trinity Broadcasting Network emerged, with Benny Hinn becoming nationally known.
The prosperity gospel movement has continued into the 21st century. A 2006 poll conducted by Time magazine reported that 17% of Christians in America said they identified with this movement. And 31% say that if you give your money to God, then God will bless you with more money. And a whopping 61% believe that God wants people to be prosperous. By 2006, three of the four largest congregations in the United States taught prosperity theology. Joel Osteen spread this theology outside Pentecostalism through his books. Another prominent pastor who embraces this theology is T. D. Jakes.
Prosperity churches strongly emphasize giving, and in particular tithing. Leaders often claim that a specific blessing can be given in return for money being donated to their ministries. One pastor claimed that you could receive 100 times what you donated to his ministry if you simply held up your hands as you prayed and made the donation. While tithing is a Biblical principal, I don’t remember anywhere God promising that we would get back 100 times what we offered to him.
There are many Bible verses that prosperity theology uses to defend or advocate for its position. One of them is John 10:10: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” That may sound like we will receive material abundance through our faith in Christ. But the word translated here as “abundant,” is the Greek word perisson, which means “exceedingly, very highly, beyond measure, more.” It is probably better translated as “full.” The New International Version (NIV) says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” The Common English Bible (CEB) translates the verse, “I have come that they could have life – indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest.” And The Message paraphrase has Jesus say, “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”
Clearly, this points to something other than material wealth. Abundant life is about a certain quality of life, not a quantity of material blessings or money. And I think that Jesus describes what he meant by abundant life in the preceding verses. Let’s take a look.
First, Jesus describes the life of believers in terms of their relationship to him. And the best analogy that he could think of was the relationship between a shepherd and his sheep. The sheep are known to the shepherd; in fact he knows his sheep by name. What does it mean to you to think about Jesus knowing your name? Jesus knows you personally. With all the billions of people on this earth, and the billions of billions of people who lived on this earth in the past, Jesus knows you by name. That is an overwhelming thought to me. I can hardly remember the names of the people in my own little circle of life: relatives near and far, parishioners, friends, doctors, colleagues, hairdressers, people I serve on committees with, the car repair guy, the man who mows my lawn. And yet Jesus can pick me out of the crowd. I am important to Jesus. I matter to Jesus. That is more than wonderful; it’s absolutely amazing.
Think about what it means when someone calls you by name. As a little kid, I remember my mother saying my name in a soothing voice when I was upset or afraid. “Elisabeth, there’s nothing to worry about. You’re safe.” And I remember her calling my name, my full name, when I was about to be in serious trouble. “Elisabeth Ruth Smith, you get in here right now!” What comes to your mind when you think of hearing your name being spoken by a parent, a spouse, a friend, a sibling? To be known is something we all crave, and to realize that we are known and loved by Jesus can get us through every up and down that this life brings us.
Second, the text says that the sheep know the voice of the shepherd and they trust him enough to follow where he leads. We are disciples of Jesus; we are followers. And we are willing to go where Jesus leads, because we recognize the sound of his voice. Now, I have never heard an audible voice speak to me that I believe to be Jesus. But I have heard Jesus speak to me in prayer, through reading a book or a passage or scripture, through something that someone else says to me, even through music or nature. I have known the voice of Jesus intuitively and felt his call on my life deeply and urgently. And I have had many parishioners talk to me about how Jesus speaks to them. We are not put on this earth and left to figure life out on our own, or to make our own way in the world. We are given a companion, a friend, a fellow traveler, who leads us in the way we should go, if we will just listen to him.
There have been points in my life when I have known which direction I should take. One of those times was in the late 1990s when I was still serving churches in South Carolina. I had a series of horrible appointments that just did not work well for me or for the congregations. I was frustrated with the appointment process and a system that felt rigged. But I wasn’t sure what else I could or should do. I prayed about it. I talked to friends. I sought help from a counselor. I looked at all kinds of options. But the voice I kept hearing urged me to move to another part of the country where things might be different. Eventually that led to my moving to Massachusetts in 2002 to take an appointment in Pepperell and Townsend. It was an incredibly scary and hard thing to do, to pack up and move someplace where I didn’t know anybody, a thousand miles from friends and family and familiar places. But it was, in so many ways, one of the best decisions I have ever made and has led to contentment, joy, and fulfillment in all areas of my life.
And, finally, the abundant life that Jesus describes is a life of salvation. Jesus uses a new analogy to talk about his relationship to us: he is like the gate in the sheep-pen, and whoever enters through that gate will be saved. Modern progressive congregations don’t talk about being saved all that often. We shy away from those who knock on our doors and ask, “Are you saved?” The term has been used and abused and misused so often that we aren’t even sure we know what it means any more.
But the basic idea is this: Human beings are in the grip of sinfulness. We – like the apostle Paul – don’t do the things we know we should and we do do the things we know we shouldn’t. We can’t seem to help ourselves; it’s in our nature. And for those who are caught in this cycle of sin, there is no way to be in right relationship with God. And we were created to be in relationship with God. So God made a way for us to get out of the grip of sin. Jesus died to pay the price for our sins, and those who believe in him are saved. We don’t have to earn our way into heaven; we just have to confess our sin, repent – or turn away and do better, and accept the free gift of God’s grace. Because of that salvation, we know that we have eternal life that will be spent first on this earth, and then in heaven.
This is not all that abundant life means, but I think it’s a pretty good start towards understanding what it means to have life to the full through Jesus the Shepherd. And like Eugene Peterson paraphrased in The Message, we know that we have “real and eternal life, more and better life than [we] ever dreamed of.”
