“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

It is one of the most beloved promises in John’s Gospel.

It is also one of the most easily misunderstood.

Abundant life.

The words sound generous, full, and inviting.

And yet in a culture like ours, it is almost impossible to hear “abundance” without translating it into more: more comfort, security, success, choices, money, travel, possessions, control.

Even when we resist the crudest forms of the prosperity gospel, the equation still works on us.

Abundance becomes affluence.

Blessing becomes having enough and then some.

Life abundant becomes life protected from inconvenience, padded by resources, and measured by visible success.

But that is not what Jesus says.

Jesus does not say, “I came that a few may have more.”

Jesus says, “I came that they may have life.”

And then he shows us what that life looks like: a shepherd who knows the sheep by name; a gate that protects them from harm; a way in and a way out; pasture where they may be fed; a voice they can trust.

Abundant life, in John 10, is not luxury, excess, or affluence baptized with religious language. It is life sheltered, sustained, and shared.

That matters always.

But it matters especially this week, as Earth Day has come and gone again, and as we continue to live in the shadow of climate change.

Because one of the great spiritual crises of our age is that we have mistaken abundance for extraction.

We have been told, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly, that the good life depends on taking more from the earth than the earth can bear.

We have been told that the economy is healthy only when it grows without limit, even if forests disappear, waters are poisoned, species vanish, and the poorest communities suffer first and worst.

We have lived inside a false gospel of abundance: abundance as accumulation, domination, and endless appetite.

And then Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

In its original setting, this passage comes right after Jesus heals the man born blind. Jesus has just restored sight to a man who had been pushed to the margins, a man who had lived exposed, dependent, and isolated.

And when the religious authorities expel him from the community, Jesus goes and finds him.

Jesus does not simply heal the man and leave him alone.

Jesus gives him sight, yes, but also belonging.

So, when Jesus speaks of sheep, shepherds, gates, thieves, and pasture, he is showing us the difference between leadership that protects life and leadership that discards it.

The religious leaders in John 9 had before them a man whose life had been transformed, but they could not rejoice.

They expelled the very person they should have welcomed.

Jesus, by contrast, seeks him out.

That is the difference between the thief and the shepherd.

The thief uses power to take.

The shepherd uses power to tend.

The thief treats the flock as a resource.

The shepherd treats the flock as beloved.

And perhaps that is the question Earth Day asks the church: Have we treated creation as a flock to be tended, or as a resource to be consumed?

Have we listened for the voice of the Shepherd in the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor?

Or have we allowed other voices to train our desires?

There are many voices.

There is the voice that says, “You deserve this.”

There is the voice that says, “This is just how the world works.”

There is the voice that says, “Technology will save us, so nothing really has to change.”

There is the voice that says, “The market knows best.”

There is the voice that says, “The future will pay the bill.”

But the sheep know the shepherd’s voice.

And the shepherd’s voice does not sound like theft dressed up as progress, or destruction renamed as growth, or comfort purchased at the expense of the vulnerable.

It calls us toward pasture: toward a life where all may be fed and sheltered, all may belong, and all creation may flourish.

Notice that Jesus says the sheep “come in and go out and find pasture.”

The gate is not a prison.

It is not there to lock the sheep away from the world.

It protects life and opens onto nourishment.

It creates the conditions for freedom.

That is a very different kind of abundance from the one our culture usually offers. Consumer abundance says freedom means unlimited choice.

Gospel abundance says freedom means being released from what destroys us. Consumer abundance says the world exists to satisfy our desires.

Gospel abundance says our desires must be healed so that the world may live. Consumer abundance says security comes from having more than enough for oneself.

Gospel abundance says security comes from belonging to one another, and to God, in a community of mutual care.

Many of us know this, at least intellectually.

This is a congregation that cares deeply about justice.

Many of us recycle, donate, vote, volunteer, write letters, attend forums, support good causes, and worry about the world our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will inherit.

We do not need to be convinced that climate change is real or that creation care matters.

But perhaps we do need Jesus to press a deeper question.

Not only: What do we believe about climate change?

Or What policies do we support?

But: What kind of abundance do we trust?

Because the false gospel of affluence is not only out there in corporations and governments and industries.

It is also in us.

It lives in our habits, our fears, our comforts, our assumptions about what we need in order to feel safe.

And this is not said to shame us. Shame rarely leads to transformation.

It usually leads either to denial or despair.

Jesus does not shame the sheep.

He calls them.

He calls them by name.

The voice of Jesus is not the voice of contempt.

It is not the voice that says, “You are terrible people because you have benefited from systems that harm the earth.”

Nor is it the voice that says, “Nothing can be done.”

The voice of Jesus is the voice that tells the truth and still leads us toward life.

It is the voice that says there is enough and there is another way to live.

The Christian response to climate change cannot be only anxiety, though God knows there is much to be anxious about.

It cannot be only guilt, though repentance has its place.

It cannot be only activism, though action is essential.

At its heart, Christian creation care is an act of discipleship.

It is learning to recognize the Shepherd’s voice amid the noise of thieves and bandits.

And in our time, the thief often comes disguised as inevitability.

The thief says that poor communities must breathe polluted air so others can have cheap energy, that island nations may disappear beneath rising seas because the powerful will not change quickly enough, that future generations can inherit the consequences of present convenience, that species may vanish, forests may burn, oceans may warm, and still we must keep consuming, extracting, and pretending there is no gate, no Shepherd, no moral boundary, no holy limit.

And against that, Jesus offers abundant life.

Not a cramped or joyless life.

Not a life of mere austerity or scolding.

Abundant life.

For abundant life is clean air and safe water.

It is soil that can grow food, children who can play outside safely, elders protected in heat waves, farmworkers shielded from dangerous temperatures, coastal communities not sacrificed to rising seas, species allowed to praise God by being what God created them to be.

It is enough for all, not excess for a few.

And for those of us who are affluent by global standards, abundant life may look like discovering that enough is not deprivation.

Enough is liberation.

There is a strange mercy in limits.

The Sabbath is a limit, and it gives life.

The manna in the wilderness came with limits: gather enough for the day, do not hoard, trust that God will provide again tomorrow.

The pasture in John 10 is not a private estate for one sheep’s endless appetite.

It is shared pasture.

It is life together.

That may be one of the most countercultural things the church can say: abundance is not having no limits.

Abundance is living within the limits of love.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

That promise is not only for human beings, though it includes us. John’s Gospel begins with creation: “In the beginning was the Word.”

All things came into being through him.

The Word made flesh is not indifferent to the world the Word made.

The Shepherd who calls the sheep by name is also the One through whom every bird, stream, field, forest, creature, and coastline came into being.

To follow this Shepherd, then, is to join his work of life.

For some of us, that may mean renewed advocacy.

For others, changed habits.

For others, allowing our imaginations to be converted from more to enough, from ownership to stewardship, from consumption to communion.

And perhaps for all of us, it means asking, with unusual honesty: What is stealing life now?

What is killing joy, destroying communities, and robbing creation of its future?

And where is the Shepherd calling us to stand, to speak, to change, to protect, to be present?

And the good news is that Jesus does not call us into this work alone.

He calls us as sheep who know his voice.

He goes ahead of us.

He is the gate and the way.

He is the shepherd and the pasture’s promise.

He is the life he gives.

So let us refuse the false abundance that steals, kills, and destroys.

Let us refuse the anxious myth that we need endless more in order to be safe.

Let us listen instead for the voice that calls us by name, and leads us toward shared pasture, gathers the cast out, protects the vulnerable, feeds the hungry, and teaches the affluent the grace of enough.

Because abundant life is not affluence.

Abundant life is the world as God intends it: tended, shared, restored, beloved.

And by the mercy of the Good Shepherd, there is still pasture ahead. Amen.