Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
I have come to give life and to give it to the full,” Jesus said (John 10:10). These words occur in the midst of Jesus’ description of himself as the good shepherd, whose care of the sheep overflows through his own putting his life on the line to protect his sheep from wolves and thieves. His picture opens the floodgates so that we can glimpse his overflowing self-sacrificial love as he lays down his life for those whom he knows as his own.
The gospels depict Jesus as a man of modest means and modest manners but a man whose life was filled with overflow. He himself experienced overflow particularly as life came to an end, an overflow of the burden of the sins of all of us, heaped on him to the breaking point. Certainly, the Roman system of executing justice provided an overflow of the cruelest of physical and mental punishments. The cup of his suffering overflowed with pain and blood and gore. But the overflowing of earthly goods or earthly power and success had eluded him; in fact, he had not sought them.
Before he drank the cup of God’s wrath, he had not lived in anything approaching extravagance. Foxes, he noted, had holes that they could call home, and birds had their cozy nests, but he had no address which he could call his own (Matt. 8:20). His disciples were reduced to munching on grain taken off the stalk (Matt. 12:1). Nonetheless, he brought the lives of others to overflow, to saturation with the goodness of God’s love.
He specialized in providing the abundance of blessings to fill the lives of others. Just in the middle of real need, Jesus came to the rescue, when the newlyweds needed more wine (John 2:1-10) and when the disciples were about to sink to a watery grave (Matt 14:22-33); the waves threatened to overflow the boat, but Jesus’ power prevailed in keeping it afloat. When lepers longed for healing and the blind longed for sight, Jesus poured out the abundance of his mercy and restored them to the kind of life for which they had been yearning. They had been leading a way of life as outcasts with pain and misery that must have seemed empty of every joy and pleasure they had once enjoyed. They could not imagine that life would become better. And then they experienced the flood of Christ’s goodness and power to heal (Luke 17:11-19, Mark 10:46-52).
“Empty” is the way many people describe their lives, and that in the midst of a society that enjoys more good “things” and offers more ways to seek happiness in daily life than have been enjoyed by practically all other human beings in the history of the world. That has resulted in our society’s setting high standards for a life of overflow, mostly in the accumulation of things we possess, whether tangible, such as electronic gadgets of all kinds or automobiles of the best kind (whatever that may be), or intangible, the next form of leisure or the prestige of certain achievements. Our problem with emptiness or meaninglessness lies in trying to find fullness and meaning in things, our toys, our possessions, or in our efforts and achievements instead of in God’s generous giving of things, achievements, and life itself. Things provide a certain kind of fullness. Computers provide an abundance of information; a host of media sources provide more music than we can hear in a day and Netflix more films than we can see in a year, perhaps a lifetime. A promotion at work offers not only power of a sort but service in satisfying new responsibilities. Sports and a host of other extra-curricular activities give our children chances not only to enhance their own young lives but also to give their proud parents the overwhelming satisfaction of vicarious achievement that fulfills their dreams. But at the end none of these “happy endings” or “final, decisive solutions” seems to be enough, truly satisfying. The empty feeling creeps back. The dreams become passé, the solutions become obsolete, they become damaged goods.
The fact is, when our lives are weighed in the balance, we come up with less than that which justifies the world’s investment in us, to say nothing of that which reveals an identity that matches the one God wants for us. In such a situation we tend to concentrate on what we do not have rather than what God has given us. We cannot see past that which we lack, that for which we long. We focus on some illusion that we imagine will fill our emptiness and satisfy the void and vacuum that persuade us that we have little or nothing. Precisely in this situation, naked, helpless, foul, we are drawn to Christ’s cross, where he, naked, helpless, and fouled by the sins of all sinners he had taken possession of, hangs as the only one to whom we can cling.
When we realize that our glasses are not half or quarter full but actually overflowing, life becomes joyful and our energies are ignited. Life becomes an opportunity rather than a void. Christ’s overflow of mercy changes us when our orientation turns in trust to the open hand of our Lord, holes and all.
Luther’s translation of Matthew 12:34, “whose heart is full, his mouth overflows.” When Christ’s goodness fills our hearts, our thinking, and our feeling, then we cannot but let words and deeds of goodness flow into the lives of those around us.
From what we thought to be nothing but meager scraps emerge endless resources for meeting the needy where they are and sharing the respect and love, the kindness and attention that Jesus has given us with them. Life takes on a new luster when our Creator’s overflow of goodness and mercy sweeps us into the lives of others and enables us to bring his goodness and mercy to them. His overflow of blessing flows over and through our lives to bring the experience of his overflow to the world.