OWL Scripture Reflection November 2024: Abundantly

By Rev. Amy Johnson
UCC Minster for Sexuality Education & Justice

¹⁰I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
~John 10:10 NRSVUE

Jesus tells us that he came so that we may have abundant life. Not so that we can live in fear and trepidation, but so that we can live fully into who we are and do that with abundance. Abundance of faith. Abundance of community. Abundance of love and care.

The work of comprehensive sexuality education in our faith communities creates pathways to abundant life. It is the work of us coming together in community to understand about the beauty and diversity of all kinds of bodies. Bodies that are different sizes and colors. Bodies that are able to do different things in different ways. None better or worse than another—an abundance of bodies in community together.

We come together to learn about abundant types of relationships and to learn how to be in relationship with one another in healthy, life-giving, abundant ways.

We come together to understand the abundance of scientific information that helps keep us safer and more informed. We come together to practice communicating with one another when it’s awkward and challenging and important all at once.

We come together to learn about and understand identities different from our own, cultures different from our own, lived experiences different from our own—because all of these are abundant in our faith communities and in our world.

Jesus told many stories like the one in which this piece of scripture resides, and he did so to help us understand relationships and faith and what is really important to pay attention to. Jesus did not admonish a woman for pouring out her extremely valuable perfumed oil on him—he responded with generosity of spirit. He acquiesced and shifted to a generous healing when the Syrophoenician woman reminded him that even the lowliest deserved crumbs. He created an abundance of community by sharing meals with people other had been taught to fear. He helped people understand they weren’t any better than the woman who they came to stone. He came that we might learn more about the abundant worthiness of humanity and be in community with one another.

An Our Whole Lives ministry is important, now more than ever. May you be inspired to create communities full of all that Our Whole Lives has to offer, so that we all may have life, and have it abundantly.