Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
"We know love by this, that the [Son of God] laid down his life for us––and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." (1 John 3:16)
"The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." (John 10:11b)
What a pairing of verses we have for us today––a call to a life of ministry and service to the people of God in which we deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Christ, as the Gospel of Matthew says. On these verses, together with the framing from Matthew, rests an entire history of what it means to be like Christ––self-sacrificial, putting others needs before our own, turning away from our selves, suffering so that others may live. The meaning of being a Christian, right?
The thing is, as much as we love this idea that to be a Christian is to live a life of self-sacrifice, there is something insidious about it actually manifests in our world. We know that historically, this idea has been used to keep certain groups of people in servitude and slavery to others––literal slaves have been told that as Christians they must sacrifice themselves for their masters, wives have been told they must sacrifice their physical safety and lay down their lives for their husbands, victims of clergy abuse have been told that they must sacrifice their well-being for the good of the whole church community. And so we feel caught between this millennia-long belief that we are called to sacrifice our lives for others and the millennia-long experience that sacrificing our lives for others has caused unnecessary pain and suffering.
Episcopalian theologian, Jay Johnson, in his book Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness, helps us to think differently, by unmasking this "theological commitment to sacrifice" as a "zero-sum game." (Johnson, 122.) As he reveals, "that game only perpetuates the mistaken portrait of life's blessings as scarce commodities." In other words, proclaiming that I must lay down my life for you, or that you must lay down your life for me, implies that life is a limited commodity. That there is not enough to go around, and so I must give up some of mine for you, or you must give up some of yours for me.
But this is a lie. There is more than enough life for each of us, and what's more, there is an abundance of life for the entire community. An overabundance, actually. There is more than enough. None of us need go empty-handed when it comes to the life that Christ has brought to us. "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly," Jesus says a few verses before our Gospel pericope begins for today. Jesus does not say, I came that some of them may have life. Jesus did not lay down his life for us to share and distribute evenly amongst ourselves, with some giving up bits of their lives so others can have a bit more. The Gospel of John says that Christ came for all––all the sheep, even the ones not of this flock. The life Jesus gives us is not in short supply. It is not a restricted commodity that we must hoard or trade. We are not called to lay down our lives so that our siblings might have some instead.
So what, then, is meant in this idea that we sacrifice ourselves for others? Because we are also not called to live lives of self-indulgence at the expense of others. Luther rightly says that at times, when we are curved in on ourselves, that we sin against one another.
In looking at the text from 1 John, New Testament scholar Janette Ok point out that that the phrase "lay down our lives," followed by the reference to having "the world's goods" in verse 17, resonates with the words in Philippians 2:4, "let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of other." (Ok, Working Preacher, April 18 2024.) Ok proposes that this is not about laying down our actual lives, or sacrificing our mental or emotional well-being, but that it is about not requiring that others sacrifice themselves--or their mental or emotional well-being--for us. It is about sharing what we have with one another rather than hoarding it for ourselves. It is about thinking of ourselves as existing and following Christ within a community, rather than as individuals.
Jay Johnson also emphasizes the importance of framing all of this within the life of a community rather than the individual life. Johnson points to Paul's words in Romans 12:1 that we be a "living sacrifice," where the call is not to stifle our own lives for the sake of others, so that we die inside, but to live in such a way that the whole community benefits. Johnson puts it this way, "Christians sacrifice whatever thwarts the thriving of the whole body, from which all the members draw life." (Johnson, 122.)
Johnson is saying something really important here that we need to expand. Your self-sacrifice does not benefit the community. Because you are part of the community. If you are struggling, if you are overwhelmed, if you are denying yourself to the point of exhaustion, you are not giving life to the community because you are a part of the community. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:26, "If one members suffers, all suffer together with it." If you are suffering, I suffer with you. Giving up your life for this community does not give me more life. This is not a zero-sum game. Life is not a limited commodity that we trade. If you are exhausted, the community is affected, because if you suffer, all suffer together, because we are one in Christ.
So what does this living sacrifice for the good of the community of which we are a part look like? Mary Streufert, a Lutheran theologian, talks about this using the analogy of pregnancy. In her work, Maternal Sacrifice as a Hermeneutics of the Cross, she suggests that the kind of sacrifice Christians are called to is the kind of sacrifice a pregnant person makes for their fetus. Being pregnant, and I say this having been pregnant twice, is a sacrifice. There are certain things I had to give up when I was pregnant because they would harm my fetus. I had to give up sushi. I had to give up alcohol. I had to give up coffee. I had to give up staying out late and spending time with my friends, because my fetus needed me to sleep. I had to give up indulging in ice-cream so that I wouldn't get gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. I had to give up unhealthy and sometimes harmful ways of living so that when my babies were born, they would have life, and have it abundantly. Because if they did not have life abundantly, neither would I.
But, I could not literally sacrifice my life. Because then my babies would die. They required me to live so that they, in turn, could have life.
This is a model of laying down our lives for others that Christ is calling us to. To lay down those harmful and unhealthy ways of living that inhibit the life of the communities to which we belong. Not to destroy ourselves, which damages the community. But to live in ways that help us to thrive and share our abundant lives with the community, so that it also might live abundantly. Not to give up and give away our abundant lives to others, but to share it. Because there is no limit to the abundance of the Christ-life. The life of Christ is not a restricted commodity––it is supra-abundant, limitless.
Now I'm going to speak some truth here. This community, this STU community of professors and students and staff is exhausted. We are coming to the end of the school year, and we are working exceptionally hard at bringing life to this new STU "thing." But we are in danger of [killing] ourselves as we birth this new life. And if one of us runs ourselves into the ground, the whole community suffers. And this is not what our Scriptures verses today are calling us to do. Dear students, dear colleagues, dear co-workers, Christ came that you may have life, and have it abundantly. You are one of the sheep of this flock whom Jesus has come for. You are part of that whole body. You are part of that community to whom Jesus has given life. You do not stand outside of the body, or outside of the community. You are not excluded from the gift of life and thriving and abundance. And more to the point, you are not called to exclude yourself from that. You. Are. Not. Called. To. Kill. Yourself. For. The. Community.
The summer after my first year in seminary, I did an intensive CPE unit. I was in Philadelphia, and my site was a downtown hospital. I was assigned to the Neonatal ICU, the Cardiac/Respiratory ICU, and regular shifts in the Emergency Department which, being in downtown Philly, saw a lot of gunshot wounds. In twelve weeks, I encountered seven deaths, including a woman who died in childbirth. And I opened myself to that suffering, I laid down my emotional well-being for those to whom I was ministering, and I descended into a dark cave that in hindsight, was my first episode of clinical depression.
What helped me in that time, was going to one of my professors, Dr. Gordon Lathrop, and sharing with him what was happening and the suffering I was experiencing. And Dr. Lathrop looked at me and he said, "Only Christ was called to die on the cross for others. And you are not Christ."
Lay down your lives for others means laying down any self-sacrificial behaviour that will, as it causes you to suffer, cause the whole community to suffer. Instead, take up the life that Christ has given you, so that we all might live. Take up the abundance of grace and love that God gives to you so that we all might together experience that grace and love. Embrace the abundant resurrection life that we celebrate in this Easter season and share it with those around you, so that together, we might all live abundantly the life Christ has given us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
