What Is Life?

"What Is Life?"
Philippians 1:20-26


What is life?  It's one of those age-old philosophical questions, along with, "What is truth?", or "What is beauty?"   The philosophers wanted to know not only the answer to this question to figure out who they were, but also, "How can I prove I exist?"  Our perceptions can fool us, the philosophers taught.  What if we are only a person someone is dreaming about, and as long as that person keeps dreaming, we will continue to exist?  But once they wake up, we will disappear.   Those are the kinds of things the ancient philosophers thought about.

How do we define what it means to be alive?  There are all kinds of answers to that question.  For example, part of what it means to be alive is the time you are alive.  From the time you were conceived to the time you die, that's what life is.  Life is partly your biological time--that space of time between conception and death.

But is that it?  Just time.  Philip James Bailey has written a poem that says no to that question.
We live in deeds, not years;
in thoughts and breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
He most lives
Who thinks most,
feels the noblest,
acts the best.

Maybe life is what you accumulate.  Even though this is certainly part of the answer to, "What is life?", it must not be too important of an answer to the question.  Of all the funerals I've given, I've never had a family ask me to list, at the funeral, all the stuff the person owned.  And I've never seen a hearse pulling a u-haul trailer.

Or, maybe life isn't all the stuff one accumulates, but the pursuit of accumulation of stuff.  Life is what we do to get all the stuff we have when we die, that is now useless to us.  After we die, our kids will have a sale, getting rid of our accumulated stuff, so that somebody else can own it and put it with all their stuff.  Or, our kids will back in a dumpster and throw it all away, wondering why we accumulated all that stuff.

Maybe life is our occupation, our job, our hobbies, our work.   Life is what we do from 8 to 5.  Life is the thing we do to earn our keep, to get money.  The sad part about this is that if life is our work, and, as statistics tell us, a majority of people don't like their jobs, then what a waste of life.

Some say that life is the development of all our relationships.  At funerals, if I read an obituary of some kind, I will list those who preceded the person in death, and those who have survived the person's death.  They are the family relationships that the person has created.  It doesn't mean those were good relationships--but they were relationships nonetheless.  Is the definition of life our relationships, the people we know, the people we have taken the time to interact with, the people we were sociable with?

And some will tell you that life is what you make of yourself.  Life is the person you become through all the choices you make about who you are.  Life is about people-making.  If you go to the library or bookstore, or browse the Amazon Kindle books and look in the self-help sections, there are so many such books.  The reason there are so many self-help books is because people are constantly trying to figure out who the are, or figure out how they can be somebody else.

Rabbi Zoisa was talking with a group of his followers--young Rabbi wannabes.  One of them asked Zoisa what he was most afraid of about dying.  Zoisa said to the little huddle of young men, "When I stand before the Almighty, the one question I'm afraid of most is not, 'Why weren't you Moses?' or 'Why weren't you Elijah?'  No, the more fearful question the Almighty would ask me is, 'Why weren't you Zoisa!?'"  That's the question some say life is all about--why weren't you, you?  Who are you, exactly?  Life is about finding the answers to those questions.  Hopefully you'll find out before you die.

These are just a few answers that people may give to the question, "What is life?"  There are so many more answers to that question.  Most are inadequate.  The question is a huge one, and most of us are content with small answers.

One day, the great artist Michelangelo came into the studio of the equally great artist Raphael.  He looked at one of Raphael's drawings.  Then Michelangelo took a piece of chalk and wrote across the drawing, "amplius," which means, "greater" or "larger."  He felt Raphael's drawing was too cramped and narrow--too small.

In a similar way, God may be looking upon your life, and knowing what is possible in you, what you are capable of, God writes over your lives, "amplius."  Greater!  Larger!  More!

For Paul, this greater, this larger, this more has only to do with Christ.  "For what is life?" he writes.  His answer to his own question:  "To me, it is Christ."  But what does that mean--that life is Christ?  Paul explains himself fairly thoroughly with some well placed phrases.

First he says that life is Christ, so "...that I shall never fail my duty..."  The old Russian army had a tradition that when a sentinel had been posted, he could be relieved or withdrawn from duty only by the officer who posted him, or by the Czar himself.

During WWI there was a story about a Russian soldier who was posted as a sentinel in a dangerous war zone.  The officer who posted this soldier was killed in battle.  The sentry refused to leave his post until an order came from the Czar himself.

That's the kind of dedication Paul is talking about in never failing his duty when Christ is his life.  Paul knew he had been placed in duty by Christ himself.  He came under fire a lot, as we discovered in our Men's Bible Study about the life of Paul.  Sadly, he came under fire not only by those who were opposed to Christ, but also by other leaders in the church who were never too sure about Paul.  But Christ was so much of Paul's life, that there was no way he was going to give up his position.  Not until Christ himself relieved Paul.

Secondly, Paul says that Christ is life, and because of that, "I shall be full of courage,” he wrote.  In the book, Alice In Wonderland, Alice meets up with a lobster.  Of the lobster, she says:
When the sands are all dry, he is happy as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the shark;
But when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

In our study of Paul, we almost lost count of how many times he had been beaten, or stoned, or caused a riot for preaching Christ.  How many times he was whipped, or thrown in jail, or shipwrecked, all for proclaiming that Christ was his life.  It made us wonder what we faced that takes that kind of courage, simply because for us, Christ is life.

Thirdly, Paul wrote that Christ was his life in order "...to add to your progress."  Because Christ is his life, Paul is able to help and mentor other Christians at Philippi so they could make progress in their lives.

The word, "progress" in the Greek language Paul wrote from, literally means to blaze a trail where there is no trail.  So it means a lot more than just making progress.  It means cutting a path through life.  It means to always be going forward and never backward.  Life lessons may be learned by looking backward, but life itself is always lived forward.

Of all the forms of travel, all of them can go in reverse except one.  Railroads, cars, busses, bicycles can all go backwards.  The only one that can't is an airplane.  It can only travel by going onward and upward.  We've talked a lot lately, in terms of our church’s mission and ministry, that people like to be on a bus that's going someplace.  Maybe we should use an airplane instead of a bus.  Paul is making sure the people he is mentoring are on a plane going somewhere--going forward.  Because the problem is, if you try to fly backwards in a plane, or refuse to go forward once you're up in the air, you're going down.  To make Christ your life means making progress, blazing a trail, always going forward and never coming to a stop.

And the next thing Paul says in describing what it means to have Christ as his life means being a leader that other believers are proud of.  I heard about a minister who was officiating at the funeral of a war veteran.  The dead man's military friends wanted to have a part in the service at the funeral chapel.  The Pastor led them down to the flag draped casket.  They stood at attention for a solemn moment of remembrance, then marched out through a side door.  Except the side door opened into a storage closet.  In full view of the rest of the mourners, the small military procession had to beat a confused and disorderly retreat.

It's important, as leaders--especially in the church--to know where you are going in your faith, and where the church should be going.  The church has been infamous for being led by misguided leaders straight into a dead end closet.

I remember a Farside cartoon that showed a bloodhound leading a posse through the woods.  The men had guns and all of their faces were anxiously pointing at the bloodhound who was out in the lead.  But the dog was thinking to himself, "I can't smell a darned thing."  If the leader doesn't know where he or she is going, everyone else is going in the same misguided direction.  The only way to avoid that, says Paul, is to make sure your life is Christ.

And the last, and maybe surprising description to Paul's statement, "Life is Christ," is dying in Christ.  "I want very much to leave this life and be with Christ," he wrote.  What that statement tells me is that if his life were to end the day he wrote the letter to the Philippian Christians, he would have died fulfilled.  His life was well spent.

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote,
As for me, the hour has come for me to be sacrificed; the time is here for me to leave this life.  I have done my best in the race, I have run the full distance, I have kept the faith.  And now the prize of victory is waiting for me, the crown of righteousness which The Lord, the righteous Judge will give me on that Day...  (2 Timothy 4:6-8a)
In trying to figure out an answer to the question, "What is life?" I like how Paul answered.  Instead of just saying there has to be a spiritual dimension to your answer to this question, as if your spirituality is just a small piece of the pie, Paul said, "No, it's ALL Christ."  Christ isn't just a part of what life is.  Christ is the whole of what life is.  Unless you get that right, none of it will make sense, and nothing will be fulfilling in life, nor will life really have a great sense of purpose to it.

Life is Christ.