Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023 – Acts 2:14A, 36-41; 1 Peter 2:20B-25; John 10:1-10

“Abbondanza!” Anybody remember “Abbondanza!”? I don’t think so. Oh, yes, there we go. It was a commercial slogan for Mama Leone’s Restaurant in Manhattan. Mama Leone’s, for decades, was a tourist destination in midtown Manhattan. It’s not that they had the best Italian food around. As a matter of fact, there are several restaurants right here in little old Sullivan County that make better Italian food than Mama Leone made. But the key to her success, the reason why it was a draw, was because of the way it was presented. It was served family style, in big heaping bowls and platters overflowing. It was very attractive to look at, very inviting. And Mama herself would wander around the dining room all the time, chatting up the patrons. So, people loved to go to Mama Leone’s because it was an experience. It was an experience of the Italian word “abbondanza,” which is only weakly translated by the English word abundance. It’s something much more than that. Much richer and fuller than that.

And that’s the word that our Gospel ended with today, in its adverb form. “They may have life and have it more abundantly.” It sounds like Jesus is talking about something that has become a very corrupt version of the New Testament, call the Prosperity Gospel. There are preachers here and there who say, “If you do good, you’ll do well. You’ll make money and have a very comfortable life.” That’s a real corruption of Jesus’ teaching. So, what was Jesus talking about?

I looked up both the original Greek word and its Latin translation. And it’s hard to pin down exactly what those words mean. It’s something like richness or fullness. But I think maybe closer is fulsomeness. A certain completeness about things that comes from what? Jesus says it comes from Him.  I have come to make your life fulsome, more complete somehow. What does He mean by that? Well, one of the ways of looking at it is saying that He came to restore and enrich the vertical dimension of life - Me and God – so that we can feel God’s presence more deeply and feel freer to speak to Him in our hearts. But there’s also a horizontal dimension. Our relationship with other people becomes more just, more charitable, and more loving. And It’s an interesting thing about those two dimensions, because they feed off each other. In order to be just, charitable and loving toward other people, very often we need God’s help in a big way, because they are not lovable in themselves. But very often it is our attempts to be more just and charitable in our relationships with one another that leads us back to God and opens up relationship to God.

But there is a problem with that. And the problem is in what Jesus talked about earlier in the Gospel, gatekeeping. Gatekeeping has become a big issue in our society of late. It’s the issue behind the issue behind what books could be in schools, what books could be in libraries, what to do about TikTok. All those flashpoints in our civic lives today really come down to gatekeeping. As a matter of fact, I just googled “gatekeeper,” just to see if I could find something. The very first thing that came up was a movie. It’s a movie in several episodes. Four of the episodes are titled this way: “No Strategy, Just Tactics,” “Forget About Morality,” “One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter,” and “Victory Is to See You Suffer.” That’s our understanding, these days, about gatekeeping.

But, if you look at it in a different way, all of us, at sometime in our life, are gatekeepers. Anyone who is or was a parent, you are or were a gatekeeper. Anyone in law enforcement is a gatekeeper. Anyone in the health professions is a gatekeeper. Anyone in education is a gatekeeper. Anyone who works in media is a gatekeeper. You can almost always describe what you do and who you are as being a gatekeeper. And. for us, that means several different things.

Gatekeepers keep stuff out to protect who is inside. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is gatekeepers open up the gates so that good stuff from outside can flow in and so that people can go out and have a richer experience of living. The problem with the task of gatekeeping is that all of us were made by God. His original plan for what human beings would be is that we would be strong, loving, and wise. But original sin tainted that human instinct. We still tend to want to be that way, but we can easily be sidetracked by all sorts of things that are very unloving, very unwise, and very weak. And so, what we need, in order to be good gatekeepers, is that horizontal-vertical dimension that I talked about.  We need to have God in our lives so that we can try to be more loving and caring and just. But we need to try to be more just and loving and wise in order to open up relationship with God. 

That’s why this story comes where it does in John’s Gospel. You know, because we read things just in little bits and pieces, you don’t realize the layout. Just before Jesus begins His Good Shepherd speech, there’s an episode where He heals a blind man. And the blind man goes to the Pharisees with his good news that he’s healed, and the Pharisees make a big issue of it. So, finally, Jesus finds the blind man back in the crowd, and He says to the blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The blind man, who is happy to see Jesus, says, “Well, who is he, that I may believe in him?” And Jesus says, “I am He. The one speaking with you.” And he runs back to the Pharisees again and the Pharisees throw him out. They basically excommunicate him from Judaism because he likes Jesus. And Jesus finds some of the Pharisees and He says to them, “Listen. The problem with you guys is you think you know everything.  If you were blind, like this poor man, was that would not be your fault. But, because you claim to have insight, your sin remains.” That’s the connection that brings us to Jesus talking about what it means to be a good gatekeeper and a good shepherd. 

The secret for you and me is maybe something you should hang on a wall plaque, on your refrigerator, or make a cushion out of it. One word.  “Abbondanza!”