Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:6). Seldom can we speak of goodness and mercy/love that will abide with us through life. Why is that? Regardless of culture, Christians can’t proclaim to other people that they are sure that goodness and love will be with them every day of their lives. It is because of the immensity of the challenges and struggles in life, and in the complexity of contemporary life, we are not sure of anything. Because of the lack of a happy and blissful future, Christians are prone to resign to whatever fortune or luck will befall on them (Bahala na ang kapalaran ko).

Culturally speaking Filipinos are very religious and even to the point having unquestioning attitude with whatever is religious. This kind of religious life is a great challenge to all of us especially when we talk about God in Christ in our Shepherd. In Psalm in 23 as in John 10:1-10, God in Christ is the Shepherd who watches over the sheep in the fold. More specifically Jesus tells people that he is the gate for the sheep. A very unique imagery for one who is also considered the good shepherd.

Jenee Woodard tells about the biblical shepherd: Shepherds had a hard life, since they faced all of the hardships of the hostile landscape through which they herded their sheep. Being with the flock, they faced all of the dangers and difficulties that the flock faced, and they were just as vulnerable -- to heat in the day, to cold at night, and to human and animal predators at all times. They slept with their flocks on nights when there were few enough predators for them to sleep at all; they were seen as poor prospects as husbands and fathers, since they had to leave their families alone and vulnerable at night as well.

That's the kind of life Jesus lives for and with us. Jesus journeys with the most vulnerable, and takes on all of their vulnerability. He knows what it's like to be out in the cold. He knows what he's saying when he calls people to leave their homes and villages, and even their families, since he had done the same himself. He knows what it's like to have people think that you're crazy or irresponsible because of what you leave behind and let go of, because people said the same things about him.

And he knows something else, too: this crazy life he lived, and calls us to live, is abundant life (John 14:10). It's THE abundant life, to be precise.How could that be? Jesus of all people knows the risks and the hardships, the cost of the life he's leading. But Jesus is the shepherd, and he knows that as hard as it can be to follow the shepherd, it's much better than being prey for the others, thieves and bandits.

Raymund Schwager has this to say about abundant life: This passage be a companion to the John 10:1-10 conclusion of receiving life more abundantly? Life lived in mimetic rivalry is one in which the basic experience is that of scarcity. In that well-used Girardian example of the children fighting over one toy in the midst of a room full of toys, the children experience that toy they are fighting over as scarce. In the midst of what is actually an abundance, their basic experience is that of scarcity.

New community in Christ begins to melt away the mimetic rivalry such that we can truly begin to experience the abundance that has been there all the time. Christ the Lamb of God who lays down his life for us, only to receive it graciously back from God, is the gate to entering a new life in community, one that operates out of such grace. It is a life of sharing with others the abundance of the Creator which has been here all the time ... except that our being trapped in mimetic rivalry made us blind to it.