Fourth Sunday of Easter
“I came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” Jn. 10:10
“Stuff.”
The famous comedian, George Carlin, used to do a routine called “Stuff” – referring to all the possessions we accumulate and cling to so dearly. You can watch it for yourselves on YouTube.
Here are some things Carlin said about “stuff”:
“The whole meaning of life is trying to find a place for our stuff. That’s what your house is – a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. You then have to buy a bigger house because you’ve run out of room for all your stuff, and you have to have more space for more stuff.”
Carlin’s point, of course, is how addicted we can become to our possessions. It’s the age-old question of:
“Do you own your stuff or does your stuff own you?”
The reality is that we live surrounded by “stuff.” Everywhere we go, we pass numerous stores, all selling “stuff.” We have storage facilities that rent places to store our “stuff.” Media, from TV to Internet to newspapers to magazines, is filled with advertisements explaining why we need to buy more “stuff.”
In stark contrast to all this fascination with “stuff,” today’s gospel from John ends with these striking words:
“I came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
And just what does Jesus mean by “abundantly”? Is he referring to the acquisition of more “stuff,” more possessions, more gadgets?
Quite the contrary. Jesus is really talking about our openness to receiving a gift, a grace. And the grace he’s offering us is the willingness to abandon the passion put into acquiring more and more for ourselves, and to instead follow him on the journey that leads to filling the hole in our souls, that hollow place within us that keeps wanting more “stuff.”
Jesus is talking today about that way-down-deep emptiness in our lives – an emptiness that all the “stuff” in the world just does not seem to fill up. He’s talking about our fundamental need to feel our lives are truly about something far richer and deeper than the “stuff” we so crave.
Ultimately, Jesus is talking about developing an “abundance mentality,” a way of thinking and acting that says: “There is enough for everyone, more than enough food, love … everything.”
When we live with this mind-set, we begin to see the miracle: what we give away multiplies to the point of having plenty left over.
“Abundance mentality” is the opposite of a “scarcity mentality” that holds back, refuses to share, and keeps strictly for ourselves.
Today in our country, we are faced with “abundances” different from the abundance of “stuff” – the abundance of inequality, the abundance of poverty, the abundance of mental health crises, the abundance of job loss, the abundance of homelessness, the abundance of violence.
Particularly during this time of responding to the COVID-19 virus, even with effective strategies of social distancing, tens of thousands of Americans could die in this pandemic. These next weeks and months will be demanding in ways that are hard to fathom.
But, as one reporter put it, ultimately “life will return to our cities and our homes. The doors will open, and we will leave our homes. We will meet again. We will greet our friends face to face at long last. Children will attend class with their teachers. Sidewalks and stores and churches will fill. Remnants of the crisis – a box of nitrile gloves, a bag of makeshift masks, containers of drying Clorox wipes – will be tucked away, out of sight and out of mind. But we will long remember what, and who, we lost.”
These difficult times can serve as a spiritual reminder – a reminder that further emphasizes the colossal need for social service agencies, food banks and organizations that assist with housing, utilities, transportation costs, homelessness and the horrifying pain of poverty.
In a recent article in the New Yorker magazine, entitled “A Radical Faith: The Life and Legacy of Dorothy Day,” the author writes that, as the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day is seriously considered being officially named a Saint by the Catholic Church.
Dorothy was a woman who believed deeply that what is most needed in the world is not a violent revolution but rather “a revolution of the heart.” And it is a revolution of the heart that Jesus himself asks of us not only in today’s Gospel but also throughout his ministry.
As the author of the article about Day’s life puts it, “Even before the coronavirus devastated our economy and added millions to the unemployment rolls, half a million Americans were homeless, twenty-seven million lacked health insurance, thirty-eight million lived in poverty, and forty million relied on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”
The same author then suggests that Dorothy would be more than embarrassed by all the talk of her potential sainthood. He insists instead that she would forcefully demand that we all “Stop talking about me and start talking about the poor.”
Hopefully these difficult times we now live in will highlight the significance of the mushrooming need for assistance as people who made donations in the past now come seeking aid for themselves! Almost one in six people in the United States now live in poverty. It would be hard to guess how serious an increase this present situation will ultimately end up being.
Perhaps this crisis will help us see more clearly how a mentality of “scarcity”, of fearing we will never get enough “stuff,” should not be the empty goal now ruling our lives. Perhaps this present crisis instead will help us see more clearly that all our “stuff” can so easily be taken away, so easily lost, so easily vanished.
This is the one thing Jesus helps us understand in today’s gospel and throughout his entire ministry:
True abundance comes not from what we possess, but from how deeply we love, how generously we share.
Do you own your “stuff” or does your “stuff” own you?
Today Jesus sends each of us an invitation:
Spend less time acquiring more “stuff” and more time developing a mind-set of abundance – an abundance mentality.
“I came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
