Sermon — April 30, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I just finished re-reading the 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s really is one of the best books I’ve ever read; if I were as popular as Oprah (and I’m not sure why I’m not), it would be sold in supermarket checkout aisles with a little “Greg’s Book Club” sticker on it. The book opens with the thirty-something-year-old protagonist, Count Alexander Rostov, standing before a special tribunal in the days shortly after the Russian Revolution, charged with the crime of being an aristocrat. The Count had written a revolutionary poem in his college days before the Great War, and so the court is merciful, and instead of sentencing him to death for his noble birth, he’s sentenced to house arrest for life. He’s moved out of his grand apartment in the luxurious Hotel Metropol into a tiny room in the attic, and told that he may live, for now, but if he ever sets foot outside the hotel, he’ll be shot on sight.
The novel follows Count Rostov across three decades spent in the hotel, as the young and idle man becomes an older and more mature one. He turns his aristocratic knowledge of etiquette and fine food and wine into a career as the hotel’s head waiter. He befriends a young girl named Nina, who lives in the hotel, and who shows him all its secret doors and passageways. In his late forties, this once-careless bachelor begins to raise the young child of a friend who’s disappeared into the gulag archipelago, and the story follows them over the years as she grows into a remarkable young woman and he grows into a true father.
Toward the end of the book, in the Soviet 1950s, the Count is talking with his dear friend, Anna, who’s reading a copy of the American LIFE Magazine. He says to her, “You sound as if you dreamed of living in America.” “Everyone dreams of living in America,” she replies. “Half of the inhabitants of Europe would move there tomorrow just for the conveniences.” “Conveniences!” he says. “What conveniences?” And she flips through the magazine, showing dozens of photos of what appears to be “the same woman in a different dress smiling before some newfangled contraption. ‘Dishwashing machines. Clothes-washing machines. Vacuum cleaners. Toasters. Televisions!”
The count thinks for a few minutes. “‘I’ll tell you what is convenient,’ he [says] after a moment. ‘To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
“I came that they may have life,” Jesus says, “and have it abundantly.” And I can’t help but think that that’s an interesting choice of words.
Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples that he came so that we would live easily. Peter acknowledges as much in the epistle this morning, when he reminds the disciples that they will endure pain, that they will suffer unjustly; and that this is not a sign of God’s disfavor. In fact it’s quite the opposite: in a world that’s not quite right, we’ll sometimes need to suffer for what is right. (1 Peter 2:19-21) So Jesus doesn’t say that we will live conveniently. He doesn’t say that we will live comfortably. He says he came so that we would live life abundantly.
“Abundant life” isn’t “easy life” or “comfortable life” or “convenient life.” It’s not breakfast on a tray, or a carriage at your command. It’s life’s abundance, its fullness, that Jesus identifies, and to me, it’s an ambivalent turn of phrase. It reminds me of the equally-ambivalent imagery of the Twenty-Third Psalm: a cup so full of good wine that it runneth over soundeth like a very good thing, after all, until you’re the one responsible for cleaning the tablecloth onto which it hath overflowed. Life sometimes feels abundant, all right, and that’s the problem: there’s just so darn much in it.
But the abundance Jesus is talking about isn’t an abundance of things to be done. The “abundant life” is not the “busy life,” the one in which we just keep piling things on as we try our best to love God and our neighbor, to be good friends and good neighbors and to volunteer for the church and to advocate for a more just world; perhaps to be good parents and good employees and to find some quiet time alone for prayer.
In the “abundant life,” it’s not our schedules or our bank accounts that overflow. It’s our hearts. It’s a simple life, a community life, a life of relationships of love. It’s not a life that’s defined by adding things on our to-do lists, but by paring them down. The Book of Acts tells us that Jesus’ earliest disciples reorganized their lives, actually changed the way they were living, so that they could devote themselves “to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42) They decided to spend the time they had on the things that mattered most: reflecting on Jesus’ teachings and the stories told about him by the apostles; spending time in fellowship with one another, loving and caring for one another; being together in worship or over a meal. They took what they had and shared it with one another, to each one according to their need, so that the conveniences of a few might not drown out the necessities of all. (2:44-45) They chose to live as if they were members of one family, one household, as if their lives truly depended on one another. And this was where they found abundance: not in the depth or intensity of their own prayer, but in the strength of the community of prayer; not in the protection of their own wealth, but in the way they could share it with one another; not as isolated individuals, but as members of a community, whose fates were really bound up with one another. To share in celebrating other people’s joy, and to share in feeling other people’s pain, that’s what makes for an abundant life, a life full of more than one person alone could ever live.
Jesus doesn’t promise us a luxurious life, as if his blessings would guarantee our prosperity or fortune or luck; we know that’s not the case. He doesn’t promise us an easy life, as if God is a heavenly snowplow parent, clearing the difficulties out of our way. Jesus the Good Shepherd invites us to enter through his gate, and to become another sheep in his flock. He invites us to take the risk of an abundant life, a life so full of love for one another that it just might break our hearts.
We can’t control the circumstances in which we live, any more than the imaginary Count Rostov could when he stood before that Soviet court. But we can control the way we choose to live, whatever the circumstances; and if we choose to love, we too may find that in the end, all the hassles, all the pains, all the inconveniences that make our cups sometimes feel like they runneth over, are the very things that turn out to have mattered us to most.