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It happened my first Fall in ministry in West Virginia. I remember like it was yester…no, almost 28 years ago. 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 back to town. Well, we got up on top of the mountain and started to hear gunshots and that’s when it occurred to me, “Duh, we’re 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 so that we didn’t sound like white-tailed deer.
All was well until we came upon the little tent city up on top of 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 gave 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 dumbest two 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 was 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, 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 await a saviour, Christ Jesus, to return to transform us and all the creation to fully reflect the glory of God and this waiting, though transformative now, has implications for how we live our lives until then. Humiliation is the word that Paul uses to describe our life now. 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.
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. Just to give you a definition, self-fulfillment is attaining a joy that comes from fulfilling your ambitions, dreams, desires, or goals through utilizing those abilities or talents you most enjoy. The end goals usually involve wealth, health, meaningful relationships, meaningful work, a peaceful family life, etc. Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, carries pretty much the same definition but is quite more baser in its pursuits. The problem with self-fulfillment is that it requires others to yield to "me" and "my" pursuit of what fulfills "me" and this gets problematic in that those who seek self-fulfillment will without fail leave a wake full of hurt and confused people.
People are also getting more spiritual today in the hopes that they will feel more fulfilled. 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 be upon them only to find that 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 God as far as fulfillment goes.
The way of the cross stands earnestly opposed to this self-fulfillment approach to life even when it is spiritual. You know, 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’ invitation to follow him by taking up the cross of serving others in unconditional love and see what happens from there. True fulfillment requires us to seek what God says is our fulfillment which is himself given to us in the Holy Spirit who leads us to live as Jesus did and does. I really don’t think self-fulfillment is an attainable possibility in this life.
To make matters even bleaker, Jesus doesn’t 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. 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. The rest that we so desire 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. Any taste of fulfillment we are going to find in this life is not going to be found in “me and my fulfillment”. We find it in our fulfillment, the communion of love we share with one another through serving one another.
If there is anything that I have thus far learned in life worth noting it is that in this way of humiliation fulfillment, as much as we can experience it, is most fully present when we take the risk of friendship rooted in serving others. The secret is that we do not seek our own self-fulfillment, but rather serve others as Jesus leads them to fulfillment. It’s what wells up in us as we let Jesus work through us to help others find 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 Pharisaic Jew 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 mainly through suffering with Jesus for love and service of others and in doing that, discovering what it is to live with Jesus in his resurrection which is the miraculous power of self-emptying love. In his own pursuit of Christ, Paul spent a good many days, indeed years, in prison and being beaten for his faith, cold, hungry, isolated. 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 would give him the strength to live it to its fullest for Christ. It did not matter to Paul whether he had plenty or rather he was in need. He knew his God 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.
