I was just making small talk, asking the kind of questions you ask when you have finished commenting about the weather and you are scared to discuss politics or religion. I asked him, “Have you lived here all your life?” Quick as a flash came back his answer, “Not yet. Not yet I haven’t.”
Oh, all right. You caught me. Of course he had not yet lived all his life anywhere. He expected a few more years. But his little joke reminded me just how we treat the precious gift of life. We have been given life; but do we stay alive all our lives? Do we live our lives to the full? Or is it more like they sing in Fiddler on the Roof, “Sunrise, sunset; Swiftly fly the years, One season following another, Laden with happiness and tears.” Just one season following another? Isn’t there more than that?
I want to be alive, fully alive, all my life, until its end. I want more than swiftly flying years, dwindling down to nothing. I want to be alive all my life. Zest and passion and vitality life long. Can we find that?
Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Jesus came to give us life, and not just barely hanging on, but abundant life. Alive all our lives kind of life. Plenty of life. Our Creator is not a God who pinches pennies; our God wants to give us ample, full, prodigious life. Our Maker wants us to have supercalifragilisticexpicalidocious life! “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Zest and passion and vitality life long. Can we find that?
What does it mean to have abundant life? Let’s explore some possibilities. Let’s turn this over in our minds several different ways.
I
Abundant life might mean a life filled with activity. A life with plenty to do. A life that is never boring. If you have abundant life, you never run out of things to do and you never fall short of interesting pursuits. Is that what Jesus wants to give us? Abundant life, active and busy?
I have a running “To Do” list on my computer, and every time I think of something I need to do for my family, my house, this church, the Baptist Foundation, the seminary, whatever, I add it to that list. Every now and then I get to take one off and mark it as finished. The trouble is the list keeps on getting longer and longer. So is my life a list of tasks to be done, jobs to be completed? Is my abundant life having so much to do that I can persuade myself I am somebody? I heard someone say once that she had so many things on her “To Do” list that if it is true that God gives you the time you need to do all the things you are supposed to do, then she would have to live two hundred years! Now is that abundant life? Doing, doing, doing? Staying busy with agenda? Marching forward and giving yourself to all kinds of important tasks?
Except that in the Bible there is an emphasis on, “Be still and know that [He is] God.” Be still. Doesn’t the Bible also tell us that the Lord is not in the earthquake, the wind, or the fire, but in the still small voice? In that same Bible there is also something about waiting for the Lord.
It may just be that hurry-up busy-ness is not all that abundant. It might even be unhealthy. You know the slightly revised nursery rhyme, don’t you? “Mary had a little lamb, it would have been a sheep; but it became a Baptist and died for lack of sleep.”
No, you see, merely staying busy becomes a mask. Behind all that frantic activity there is nothing else. It’s just sound and fury, signifying nothing. There is more to the abundant life than merely staying busy. What else might there be?
II
What about longevity? What about a lengthy life? Is that the abundant life? Living many years and experiencing many things? I expect all of us want that. I have yet to hear anybody seriously say that he or she hoped to have a short life. You may talk about heaven and the golden streets, but I don’t see anybody rushing toward those pearly gates. At Takoma Park one Sunday I was preaching out of the Book of Revelation and ended my message with the same flourish that John spoke, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” But one of my parishioners hurried over to me after the service and said, “Now, brother pastor, let’s not be rushing things. I’m not quite ready for that.” We want long life. But is that the abundant life?
Oh, just think of all that you could experience if you live many years! I do want to see my three little grandchildren grow up and graduate and establish their own families; they don’t know it yet, but I am going to officiate at their weddings! I have already informed Takoma Park church that I will preach at their 100th anniversary in 1919, when I am 81 years old, if somebody will help me up the steps to the pulpit! I’d like to live to be a hundred, that is, assuming that Social Security and Medicare are still funded! Long life sounds like abundance. So is that the abundant life Jesus came to give?
Well, when I read my Bible, I find some interesting things. I find mention of grandpa Methuselah, of whom it was said that he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died. And he died. Yes, and he did what now? What exactly did he accomplish? Nothing worth recording, evidently. He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and thump – he died. Long life is not necessarily abundant, is it?
No, it is not the length of our lives that measures abundance. Mozart composed his marvelous music in a life cut short at thirty-six, and his was an abundant life. Dr. King lived but forty-six years, as we have commemorated this week, and his was an abundant life. And the Bible reports that Jesus of Nazareth lived but three and thirty years on this planet, but who can doubt that His was an abundant life? There is something more than length of years. What else might there be?
III
If the abundant life is not activity and it’s not length, then maybe the abundant life is one of wealth and comfort. That’s what we often mean when we talk about abundance, isn’t it? To have wealth and to have enough to enjoy good things and to do more than just get by. Abundance might mean having plenty of everything that makes life pleasant – food and housing and clothing and a nice car and a good supply of creature comforts. If you are scraping by on pennies, material abundance sounds very inviting indeed.
When I graduated from seminary, I filled out a form that the school made available to churches and agencies that were looking for ministers. That form asked us to write down what salary we needed. Well, that word “needed” sort of strung me out. I didn’t want to go so high that a church would say, “We can’t afford that greedy guy.” But I didn’t want to go so low that my wife and the child we were expecting would starve. And so I hit a happy medium and wrote down that I “needed” $4,800. Now that’s per year, not per month. Remember that that year was 1963. Soon I got an offer to take a campus ministry position with the Kentucky Baptist Convention; I told Margaret I had a job offer, and she, being the practical one in the family, asked, “How much will it pay?” Pastor Search Committee, take note: spouses always want to know that! With fear and trembling I called the man who was to be my supervisor and asked him; and when told my wife, “It pays $5,520,” we both whooped and hollered and ate an extra can of pinto beans that night! Abundance! We thought we had it!
But you know what happened? The more we had, the more we spent. The more we earned, the more we thought we needed. The more we took in, the more we felt deprived. Not happy, but deprived. Because the more we had the more we wanted. And the more we wanted the more we spent or even borrowed. And the more we spent or borrowed the more we felt stress. And on and on and on, until it didn’t feel like abundance at all. It felt like a small death every time the bills arrived.
And we became more and more aware of what the Bible tells us, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses.” We found out, you see, that we did not possess our things; they possessed us. And so, so far from it being life-giving to have material abundance, I can tell you that it really is true – Bible again – that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”
It’s good to be comfortable. It’s fine to have resources. God does not require us to be poverty-stricken. But having things is still not the abundant life. There has to be something more.
IV
So let’s see; let’s take inventory. We have supposed that maybe if you are going to stay alive all your life, if you are going to have an abundant life, it will be about staying busy; but we found that mere activity can be hollow and unhealthy. We imagined that longevity, length of life, is abundance; but we discovered that a lot of empty years are just that, empty, and not abundance. And then we looked at our bank accounts, our homes, and our stuff, and hoped to find vitality in those things, but learned how much of a trap all that can be. What else is there? What will keep us alive all our lives? What is the abundant life that Jesus came to give? We’re still looking for it.
How about having friends? Being sociable. It’s good to have friends and to be loved and respected by others. It’s important to connect, and if, in fact, we can’t do that, we’ll dry up into depression.
I remember a pastor who served in a church not far from here, but resigned after only a few months. I asked him what went wrong and why he would quit so soon. He said, “When my wife walked down the streets of our little Mississippi town, everybody knew that she was the wife of the pastor of the First Baptist Church, and they greeted her with respect. Here, in this area, they don’t know that, they don’t care to know that, and if they did, it wouldn’t gain her any respect.” That dear lady needed an abundance of social support; I hope she got it when they went back south, where there are more Baptists than there are people!
But we do need friends. We do need a rich fellowship around us. We are social creatures, through and through. But when the tough times come, fair-weather friends desert us and close friends struggle to know how to help us. When the tough times come, good friends though they be, they have their own lives to lead and they are limited, and cannot give us all we need. Jesus experienced that as He approached the Cross; His three closest companions couldn’t do anything but sleep while He went through His agony. And of His other friends, one betrayed Him, another denied Him, and a third doubted Him. No, life has to be more than an abundance of friends, for friends are fragile and will fail.
So where are we, then? I want to stay alive all my life. I want to live it to the end full of zest and vitality and passion. I want to claim Jesus’ promise that He came to give abundant life, plenty of life. Where will it come from? If it’s not staying busy or living long years, where is it? If it’s not plenty of stuff or a crowd of friends, what is it?
V
The clue is found in all that Jesus says when He promises abundant life. The clue is in what Jesus says about Himself.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; but I lay it down of my own accord.”
Brothers and sisters, abundant life comes from giving your life away! Abundant life comes from caring so much for others that you will offer your very life for them. Abundant life is the life you lay down, as Jesus did, for others, and you do it freely, without compulsion. You do it not because you are forced to or even because you think it will make you happy. You give yourself for others simply because they need you. Time and talents, treasure and truth; it is all ours to give away, for others.
And the wonder of it is that in giving life away we find it coming to us in abundance. The wonder and the joy of it is that the more life we spend, the more vitality we receive. The wonder, the joy, and the glory of the abundant life is that you can never run out of it, for, as Jesus did, you lay it down in order to take it up again. The more you serve the needs of others, the more satisfaction comes to you, though you are not looking for it. The more you listen to the pain of the downtrodden, the more you understand being blessed. And the more you labor for hope for those who are distressed, the more you know that Jesus Christ is your heart’s home, from whom you will never be removed.
So you want to stay alive all your life? None of this faltering before the finish? None of this bedraggled boredom before the body goes out of business? Do you want the abundant life that the Lord promises? It is not in activity, nor in longevity. It is not in prosperity nor in congeniality. It is in generosity. It is in living as Jesus lived, laying down His life for us.
L’chaim! To life! L’chaim! To life in all its richness! To life in all its glory! To life given away, for the sake of others.
Do you remember the prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi? “Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”
“Have you lived here all your life?” Not yet. Not yet we haven’t. But we do know how to stay alive all our lives. And we do know from whom abundant life comes. L’chaim! To life! To life in Christ!
