Westworth United Church July 25, 2010.
Rev. J. Clark Saunders Colossians 2:6-19
A Full Life
Have you ever noticed how, when someone dies at an advanced age, people will say, “Well, he lived a long, full life”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, “Well, he lived a long, empty life.” Though I suppose in some cases it’s true. Just because a life was long, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was full. One person’s short life might be fuller than another person’s long life.
And what do we mean by “a full life” anyway? The term “full” is often used in relation to quantity. When my gas tank is full there isn’t room in it for any more gas. When a bus is full there isn’t room in it for any more people. When we say, “I’m full”, it usually means we couldn’t eat another bite. And whether we think of the glass as being half empty or half full we can picture a liquid in it that fills 50% of the available space.
And when people talk of someone living a full life they are sometimes thinking in terms of quantity. They mean that this person’s life was event-full. Their time was filled with activities, or their calendar was full of engagements, or their years were full of experiences. They did so many things, there was hardly time for anything more. They were always busy, never idle. They didn’t waste a minute.
Or perhaps some of us think of a full life as one that is full of achievement and all the stuff that goes with it. This person advanced in her chosen field and made a name for herself. This person was a success in life and acquired the material goods and the kind of lifestyle that tells the world that they “made it”. The abundance of their possessions, the busyness of their days: things like these can speak of a life that — in one sense, at least — is full: full in the sense of quantity.
But, of course, none of this may tell us much about the quality of a person’s life. Which reminds me that sometimes we speak of fullness in a way that suggests quality. When we use the term “full” metaphorically, we can sense a certain quality about it, can’t we? Like when we say, “My heart is full.” Or when we say, “He’s just filled with bitterness.” Or when Gilbert and Sullivan’s Three Little Maids from School declare themselves to be “filled to the brim with girlish glee.”
I once heard of a man whose name was Robin Fullalove. Isn’t that a wonderful name? It would be a name to live up to, certainly. But being full of love is not about fullness in the sense of quantity any more than having a full heart or being filled with an emotion or a feeling is about quantity. These are not things that can be measured. They are about fullness as a quality.
And that, I think, is the way to think about a full life. Fullness of life – or the kind of fullness of life that really matters – is a life that is full of certain qualities. And what would those qualities be?
Well, in his Letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul gives us some ideas about that. And these ideas are linked to what he has to say about our relationship to Jesus and Jesus’ relationship to God. In the first chapter of this letter, Paul says of Jesus, “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” And in the passage we heard today from the second chapter, he says, “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and [he adds] you have come to fullness in him.”
So what do we have here? It’s kind of like a mathematical formula. Paul is telling his readers – and that includes us – that we are full of Jesus and that Jesus is full of God. Therefore, I think we could say, we are full of God.
And what does that mean? Well, at the very least I think it means that we are spiritual beings. A full life is one that has a spiritual quality to it, a life that somehow affirms its spiritual nature. Life is more than the material world and the physical reality we perceive with our senses.
It is more than what we own, more than our earthly span, more than “one damn thing after another and then you die.”
The biblical scholar, Marcus Borg, talks about what he calls “the more”. And that’s it, isn’t it? Whatever else spirituality is about, it is about our sense that there is more – more to life than meets the eye. And we cannot have a really full life unless we embrace our own spiritual nature and explore it and live into it. We will not reach our potential, we will not ful-fill our purpose in life unless we do that.
But Paul has a couple of more specific things to add to this quality of spirituality. He describes his readers as being “rooted and built up in [Christ] and established in the faith.” A full life is one that is rooted in faith, he is saying. It isn’t just about being spiritual in a general sense; it is about having faith in God, faith in the God we see revealed in Jesus.
Now faith is a word that can be defined in many ways. But one thing that it usually suggests is a relationship. Whether I have faith in my doctor, or faith in you, or faith in God, there is a relationship at work here, isn’t there. And so if faith is one mark, one quality of a full life, it is a quality that suggests that our lives come to fullness in trusting, life-giving relationships. And while any relationship can be valuable, the most fulfilling one of all is our relationship with God.
So a full life is a faith-full life, a life that includes a relationship with God. But Paul further refines the notion of spirituality when he exhorts his readers to abound in thanksgiving. A full life is not just faith-full; it is also thank-full. And thanksgiving is also a word that has to do with relationships, isn’t? Again, whether I’m expressing gratitude to another person for something they have done or something they have given me, or whether I am expressing gratitude to God, that act of saying thank you strengthens my relationship with the one I am thanking. As an expression of our spirituality, offering thanks is a way of acknowledging what we owe to a gracious and loving God. And a thankful heart is another sign of a full life.
And could I add one more thing that makes for a full life? What about making a positive difference in the world? Some people’s ideas about a full life revolve around acquiring things, accumulating possessions and awards and recognition. But if we are thinking of fullness as a quality, then surely a full life is more likely to reveal itself in what we give than in what we get. Certainly our most enduring and significant legacy will not be the things we itemize in our will, but the qualities that have affected other lives for good.
Think back over your life and ask yourself, “Where have I made a positive difference? What lives have I influenced in ways that made those lives better? What situations did I leave better than I found them?” The world can all us failures, we can leave little of this world’s goods to those who come after us, we can fall short when it comes to what society considers achievement, but our lives can still be full. And paradoxically it is the degree of our willingness to empty ourselves that will indicate just how full our lives have been.
Paul himself explores this paradox in another of his letters – the Letter to the Philippians – when he quotes an early Christian hymn that says of Jesus that he “emptied himself … and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Jesus emptied himself, Paul says. And yet, can any life have been fuller? Can any life have been more full of the things that really make for fullness of life? And can any life be a more reliable guide for us as we see the way that
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