Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 17, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I imagine you’ve all seen the bumper stickers: "Where Will You Spend Eternity?" And: "If you think there is no hell, you’d better be right." They tell us something about what popular Christianity among us has become. Let me ask you all something: How many of you grew up believing that Christianity is mostly about whether you go to heaven or to hell when you die? How many of you grew up thinking that whether you went to heaven or to hell when you die depended on whether or not you believed in Jesus? And how many of you grew up thinking that believing in Jesus meant believing certain facts about Jesus to be true-that he was the Son of God, that he died for our sins, that he is your personal savior? All of this is evidence of one key fact about popular Christianity in America today. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, which is primarily about peace and justice in this life has come to be almost exclusively about believing the right things now so that you can go to heaven when you die.

Most people today both inside the church and outside the church believe that being a Christian means believing certain facts to be true so that you can go to heaven to be with Jesus when you die. Well I’m here to tell you this morning that that is not what the Christian faith properly understood is primarily about. At the very least it’s not all that it is about, not when the faith is understood Biblically, understood the way Jesus intended his message to be understood. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is above all about life not about death. It is chiefly about life here and now and not there and then. It is about how we live, not primarily about what happens when we die.

And a most surprising thing is that among the Biblical texts that tell us most powerfully that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about this life is the Gospel of John. That’s surprising because most of the texts that get cited to show that Christian faith is about going to heaven when you die are from John. They are all the passages about eternal or everlasting life; and the Gospel of John is full of passages that use those terms. According to the New Strong’s Concordance of the King James Version of the Bible the phrases "eternal life" and "life eternal" appear rarely in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, but they appear nine times in John, and the phrase "everlasting life," also rare in the other Gospels (it doesn’t appear at all in Mark) occurs eight times in John. The common reading of these references in Christianity today (and not just today but throughout most of Christian history) is that they refer to life in heaven when we die; but here’s the surprising thing. They don’t! Or at least they don’t primarily; and it is the Gospel of John itself that, among other texts, tells us that they don’t.

The central text on the issue in John is the last line of our Gospel lesson this morning. There, after a rather confusing sort of semi-parable about sheep and gates-gates, not goats-John has Jesus say: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." Giving us abundant life is for John the whole reason for Jesus’ life, ministry, and death. Now I grant you that this passage says "life" and not "eternal life," but that doesn’t change my point. Scholars believe that John means the same thing by "life" here as he means by "eternal life" elsewhere in his Gospel. The New Jerusalem Bible, for example, has a note after the word "life" in our passage that simply says "Eternal life." Clearly those scholars see the words life here and eternal life elsewhere in the Gospel as equivalents.

And John himself suggests the same thing. Mostly John doesn’t say what he means by eternal life; but in one passage, late in the Gospel, he does. He’s been using the term all along without defining it. Then, the very last time he uses it, he tells us what it means. At Chapter 17, verse 3, John has Jesus say in a prayer to God the Father: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Not "that they may spend eternity in heaven with you" or "with me," but that they, that we, might know the one true God. Know God now, not later. Know God here, in this life, not in some other life. The only definition John ever gives us for eternal life is that it is about something that happens for us in this life, not in some other one. Jesus came that we might have life abundantly here and now, and that means that we might know God and know Christ to the fullest. It’s about this life, not the next one.

Before we take a closer look at what that might mean for us, I think we need to ask briefly how Christianity came to be understood as being so much about the next life rather than this one. I think there are a couple of reasons, one of them pastoral and appropriate and one of them political and inappropriate. The appropriate, pastoral reason is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about our life with God beyond this life too. The Gospel’s emphasis on this life isn’t exclusive. It has promises for the hereafter too. John’s Jesus also says, for example, that he goes to prepare a place for us. John 14:2 When life is hard, when we lose a loved one or are facing our own deaths, we need that assurance. Using the Gospel to give those who need it-and we all do-the assurance that God’s love for us does not end when we die is Biblical, pastoral, and completely appropriate. Please don’t take anything I say here today as denying that divine truth.

The other reason, and historically I think the more important one, why the Gospel has come to be seen as so exclusively about the afterlife is less benign. It is political and, I think, perverse. That’s not to say that preachers who preach the Gospel that way are consciously being political. However, historically speaking, the transformation of the Gospel from being primarily about this life to being primarily about the next life coincides with the establishment of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire and its continuation as the legal or de facto established faith of every other empire that arose in the West after Rome right up to our own day. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of God’s Kingdom of peace and justice for all people, when it retains its this-worldly focus, is profoundly subversive of Empire. This is a truth that some parts of Christianity are beginning to recover. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God in this life makes a lousy servant of Empire and indeed is radically incompatible with it. The only way the Gospel of Jesus Christ can live comfortably with Empire, and certainly the only way that it can be a prop for Empire, is to shift its focus from this world to the next, and that’s precisely what happened.

Which is why our theme scripture today is so important. It is the line in John that most makes it clear that even John, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, is not talking primarily about our going to heaven when we die but about our lives here and now. Jesus came that we might have life, and not merely an afterlife, and have it abundantly. Empire doesn’t like to hear that, but it is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. It is first and foremost about the kind of life that is available to us in this life.

The Gospel, and specifically out text today, is Jesus’ promise to us that we can have not just life but abundant life, and we don’t have to wait for it; and it is indeed very good news. To understand how Jesus’ promise of abundant life is good news we have to take a look at what exactly "abundant" life means. To make sure that "abundant" is the right word, I looked up the Greek original, and indeed it appears that "abundant" is the correct translation, so what does "abundant" mean? According to my dictionary it means "very plentiful; more than sufficient; ample." As a second definition the dictionary gives "rich," specifically rich in something. So the abundant life is life that is more than mere life. It is life that is full, rich (but of course we mean here spiritually rich, not necessarily rich in material things). It is life and not mere living. It is life with meaning, joy, creativity, and passion. Some translations translate our key verse as "life to the full," and although "abundantly" is apparently a better translation of the Greek, abundant life truly is life to the full. It is really living not merely going through the motions day after day. It is indeed life that is very plentiful. It is not a life of drudgery. It is not a life of guilt and shame about who we are, although our Christian tradition sure forgets that one a lot. It is not a life deprived of pleasures, even pleasures of the flesh. Those pleasures, lived responsibly and in love, are part of the abundant life too. Full, complete, joyous life. That is God’s promise to us in Jesus Christ.

Well, OK; but how does Jesus make that kind of life available to us exactly? John’s definition of eternal life as knowing God and Jesus Christ Whom God sent gives us the answer. Jesus makes that kind of life available to us because in him we know God. In Jesus we learn that God is a God of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. We learn that God is a God of justice and of peace; and in Jesus we learn that God calls us to that kind of life. God calls us to lives of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, justice, and peace; that’s just another way of saying that God calls us to the abundant life. In Jesus we see that abundant life lived in this world; and because in Jesus we see the model of humanity the way God intends it to be, we see that when we live that way we become the humans that God intends us to be. Put another way, we become whole. We overcome all alienation from God, from others, and from ourselves. We become our true selves. Then, out of our true selves discovered in our knowledge of God in Jesus Christ we live lives committed to God’s people, God’s creation, and God’s intention for that creation.

That is the abundant life, and if we could only live it, even just a little bit, we would discover the joy, the hope, and the peace that only living in accordance with the will of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ can give. We would live lives that are indeed rich, not necessarily in material things but in the true spiritual riches of life with God. That is Jesus’ offer to us. Let’s take Him up on it. Amen.