In some translations of John, Jesus said that he came to give life to the fullest, other translations word it as life abundantly. This might conjure up images of joy, butterflies, rainbows, and riches. But that’s only one side of the story.

A now-deceased friend of mine who spent 40 years as a church musician in a non-liturgical church, lamented on how everything was just “terrific, terrific, terrific.” They didn’t have penitential seasons of Advent or Lent. Every Sunday had to be upbeat and joyful. No Good Friday, no passion, no pain, no silence, no brokenness, just “heavenly” music – streets of gold, and mansions on the hilltop, flanked by the pearly gates. And then what?

Our anthem this morning, by American composer Harold Friedell, is a gem. It’s weary and sad. It sighs and weeps, and it says things aren’t just “terrific, terrific, terrific.” Friedell uses minor tonality and lamenting rhythms in a downtrodden aesthetic. Jesus was weary and sad and broken and pale, but that’s not the whole story. That’s not the fullness of life, but the partiality of life. How can “everything” be terrific? If your version of the afterlife is that you’ll stand at the throne of God, looking up and singing “Hallelujah” forever, your voice will tire, and you’ll get a crick in your neck.  

The fullness of life includes the dimension of discomfort. Birth is uncomfortable, right? I can’t speak from experience, but my mother told me I was quite “the pain” as a 9-pound baby. But the pain justifies joy. And what I think Jesus was trying to say to us is that life is cyclic more than anything, and that fullness also means emptiness. It’s not just one way. Pain justifies pleasure and vice versa.  

The word parable, creative stories that Jesus used to teach wisdom, is like the word parabola. A parabola is a curve which is mirror-symmetrical and approximately U-shaped. Para-, from the Greek means beside; next to, or nearby. So, if we live in a paradox, which includes both full and empty, all opposing forces are essentially alike. If God is for us, who can be against us?  

Burial and planting are synonymous. Going from tomb to womb is a cycle that Paul calls dying to self, daily. The “self” is the false notion that God is absent – even in darkness, pain, and loneliness. Then, you can see how glorious death is to be, as it says in the end of the anthem. Death leads to new birth, an ongoing cycle of Truth.

Yes, things are terrific, terrific, terrific, but not just so. Implicitly, things are terrible, terrible, terrible. They go together, fully inextricable. It’s hard to understand because you might think “I’m only human.” Can things be only terrific? Can you be only human? The fullness of life is realizing who you are fully, which includes more than your flesh. You can’t be only human any more than life is just birth or just death or just terrific. The last verse of the anthem turns it around and unifies polarization with the underlying truth of love. In the fullness of life, love includes both sides of the equation. When you realize who you are, the illusion of two becomes one. In a parabola, the mirror symmetry mysteriously unifies itself in what the mind sees as “polarizing.” Just human? How can you justify only one part of the story? Soli Deo Gloria!