I
remember as if it were yesterday, fifteen years ago, my first Fall in
West Virginia. It was Thanksgiving Day, American Thanksgiving that
is. Open season on deer happens the week of Thanksgiving down there.
I had a friend from seminary up and we decided we were going to do a
10-mile run. I thought maybe we’d take a forestry service road up a
ridge about 4 miles and then drop down to the Greenbrier River and
the rail trail that runs alongside it and come on back to town. Well,
we got up on top of the mountain and started to hear gun shots and
that’s when it occurred to me that we were out in the woods during
deer season in West Virginia wearing white shirts and…no orange.
But, I thought we’d be okay as long as we talked loudly so that we
didn’t sound like white-tailed deer. All was well until we came
upon the little tent city up on top that mountain. That and the gun
shots had me thinking this just might be somebody’s still and this
might be my last day. Moonshine and deer hunting are a lethal
combination. So, I figured I’d better go see if anybody was home
and let them know we were there. As I walked up to the tents in my
shorts and white shirt I was greeted by a man whom I later found out
was Mr. Buck Turner—Pocahontas County’s self-professed biggest
liar as well as probably its most helpful man. Buck didn’t say
anything at first. He just give me this look of “You’re not from
around here, are you?” It was obvious that he thought my friend and
I had to be the two dumbest human beings alive to be wearing white
t-shirts and shorts out in the woods in the first week of hunting
season in West Virginia. In a conversation a few years later Buck
confirmed to me that's exactly what he was thinking.
“You’re
not from around here, are you?” If I had to sum up what it is like
to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I think that phrase just about does
it. We’re not from around here. As Paul writes, our citizenship is
in the heavenlies and from there we expect a saviour, Christ Jesus,
to return to transform us and all the creation to fully reflect the
glory of the Triune God of grace and this waiting, though
transformative now, has implications for how we live our lives until
then. It should open our eyes a bit that humiliation is the word that
Paul uses to describe our life as it is now in Chirst Jesus. For, we
are to pattern our lives after the way of the cross, after Jesus way
of laying down his life for love of others and that is humiliating by
the standards of the world.
This way
of the cross does not fit in the world we live in, especially today.
Self-fulfillment seems to be the goal of Western Culture. We admire
those who say they are happy and who have the courage to make their
own happiness their goal and pursue it even if it means not being at
the top of the food chain. For example, when someone decides to
change their career to what they want to do to make them happy even
if it means less money, we applaud them. If someone does that and
gets rich, you better believe there’s book tour in it. It used to
be that moving up the ladder was the way to go. Now it’s simply a
matter of finding the ladder that makes us most happy. People are
also getting more spiritual today in the hopes that they will feel
more fulfilled and happy. We’ve realized that there is more to life
than just the god we’ve made of our consumeristic bellies. But,
even this spiritual seeking at times can be at odds with the cross.
I’ve come across many a disillusioned Christian wanting to live in
the fullness of the Spirit, raptured in God’s love in a life where
nothing but blessing is supposed to abound only to find that this
so-called fulfillment does not show up quite in the way they want it
to. They get disillusioned because they are not getting what they
want out of the Trinity as far as fulfillment goes. The way of the
cross calls us to learn to be fulfilled simply with participating in
communion with and in the loving communion of God the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Letting go of the things of this world to find the
life that is hidden with Christ Jesus within the life of the Trinity
Christ can be quite disillusioning at times.
In all
honesty and I don't think that it's depression talking (though it is
mid-February in Owen Sound, Onatario), the last time I checked my
self doesn’t know how to be fulfilled no matter what I do with it.
All I can do is take Jesus' suggestion to take up my cross and follow
and see what happens from there. The way of the cross requires us to
seek what our Lord says is our fulfillment which is himself given to
us in the Holy Spirit who leads us to live as Jesus did and does.
Therefore, I don’t think self-fulfillment is an attainable
possibility in this life. Those who claim they’ve found it I think
have more or less isolated themselves mentally, emotionally, and
physically from the real world. Disengaged with the world and
themselves.
Jesus
does not call us to fulfill our lives. He calls us to lay them down
and serve one another in love and humility and this entails dying to
this quest for self-fulfillment. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German
martyr, wrote in his book The Cost of Discipleship as the Nazi Party
was rising to power in Germany, "when Christ calls a man he bids
him come and die." In place of self-fulfillment Jesus promises
that he himself will be our fullness and he will be with us and in
him we will find rest, joy, contentment, and peace and to that I
would add primarily in our relationships with him and with others.
Jesus' kingdom of which we are now citizens is present most
powerfully in the relationships we have that are founded upon him and
lived out according to his cross. Our rest is in the rest we share
with others in him. Our joy and contentment are in the joy and
contentment we share with others in him. Our peace is in the peace we
have with others in him. Thus, any taste of fulfillment we are going
to find in this life is not going to be found in “me and my
fulfillment”. Rather, we find it in the communion of love we share
with one another through serving one another, building one another
up, sharing our lives with one another - in him.
If there
is anything that I have thus far learned in life worth noting it is
that in this way of humiliation there is a transformation wrought in
us by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ imparting to us the love of
the Father through the communion of the Holy Spirit that we share
with the Trinity and one another. Fulfillment in life as much as we
can experience it is most fully present when we take the risk of
friendship rooted in the compassionate servitude that Jesus calls us
to. The secret is that we do not seek our own self-fulfillment, but
rather serve others as Christ leads them to their own fulfillment in
him.
Paul
presents himself as someone worth taking a look at when talking about
what it is to have a fulfilling life in Christ. I would like to read
to you from Philippians some of the passages where Paul talks about
what motivates him. Paul was a devout man who sought more than
anything else to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. He
was a good example of someone who strove to be the best he could but
found that the best he could be in a career of a Pharisee actually
hurt people and indeed paled in comparison to Christ and his cross
and so he left it all behind. He writes in chapter 3: “But whatever
gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count
everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ ... that I
may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his
sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may
attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already
obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my
own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not
consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting
what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ
Jesus.”
Paul
paints a picture of life being a forward moving progression of
getting to know Jesus Christ mainly through suffering with him for
love of others and therein discovering what it is to live with Christ
in his resurrection which is the miraculous power of self-emptying
love. For his pursuit of Christ Paul spent a good many days in prison
and being beaten for his faith. Nevertheless, no matter his situation
he learned to be content. He writes: “I have learned, in whatever
state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to
abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of
facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in
him who strengthens me.”
Paul knew
that everyday he had in this world was a gift and that Christ Jesus
would give him the strength to live it to its fullest for and in
Jesus Christ. It did not matter to Paul whether he had plenty or
rather he was in need. He knew the Trinity loved him and he wanted
nothing more than that. Paul was a saint worth imitating. I invite
you to give it a try and you just may find the life you’re looking
for. Amen.
