IN HIS sermon on the mount, Jesus asks, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6.25) The question is rhetorical. Of course life is more than food and clothing. When I was still at school, I read this in King Lear:
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.
But I did not understand it then as I do now. Then, those were words of powerful, pity, but their macrocosmic significance was as yet unfocused. Lear’s revelation swept away the clutter of possessions and trappings of status, showing the person beneath the persona — king and beggar in common humanity.
What has triggered this reflection? The last verse of Sunday’s Gospel. If Jesus has come to bring life, and more, abundant life, we need to know what such a life looks like, and how to live it. Rather than “abundantly”, I would translate, “to the utmost” or “in all its fullness”.
What drives many of us, much of the time, is a desire for possessing. Some people achieve this through status in their employment, which leads to wealth. Some find it in relationships, whether for good (in a like-minded company of friends, or family) or bad (in the form of coercive control).
But possessing can make us anxious (“What if I lose it all?”). It can even become an end in itself. I was also at school when I first read Silas Marner, and was saddened by the weaver’s miserable half-life, counting gold. But I remembered that his misery was rooted in a trust misplaced, and idealism betrayed. Like an addict, Silas thought money made him feel safe when really it created the anxiety that it fed on. Gold was his prison, not his safe stronghold.
The love of stuff can lead to addiction, debt, even murder. A stuff-filled life cannot be what Jesus means by “life in all its fullness”. There is a sketch of that fullest form of life in Acts 4, in which people share what they have, and distribute to those in need. But, two thousand years on, Luke’s ideal has yet to be fully realised in the company of God’s pilgrim people. And how many of us would truly welcome it, if it were? As with the hearers of Jesus’ sermon, I imagine a range of reactions, from “It’s all right for him to say that — he has no responsibilities” to “That will be my life, starting today.”
Later, Lear said to a beggar, in words that I can still type from memory, “Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked [two-legged] animal as thou art.” He began to see how we cling to any fragment of stuff which we can, to reassure ourselves that we exist and matter. It turned out that Lear could not shed the burdens of kingship while keeping the status. As long as property and status are our way of evaluating ourselves, and seeking affirmation from others, we shall go on cutting ourselves off from “life in all its fullness”.
Perhaps heroic sacrifice is required to secure our freedom from the lure of stuff. That Christians can be really good at: “All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to his blood.” In 1 Peter, it is shown that Christ’s sacrifice is to be a model for us — but not by means of self-starvation, self-flagellation, self-hatred. We have been freed from sin for a simple purpose: to live a life of righteousness.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus promises to be for us a door (or gate). As an image, it does not have the historical power of the vine (the new Israel) or the emotional appeal of the Good Shepherd (the nurturing protector). But it shows us a way between the world of stuff and the Kingdom of God. The door opens to let us out of prison into light and freedom. The door closes to keep us safe from harm, from that roaring lion who “walketh about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5.8).
The message of all three readings is a message about who we are called to be. What we learn from them is that stuff cannot protect us. Neither can it liberate us. Christ, on the other hand, does both.