A Guitar Full of Paper Clips--October 13, 2020

A Guitar Full of Paper-Clips--October 13, 2020

"As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides everything for our enjoyment. They are to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life." [1 Timothy 6:17-19]

Imagine something absurd with me for a moment. Imagine I get my acoustic guitar out, and I notice it's hollow on the inside, and I think to myself, "I know--that would be a great place to store stuff!" And so I start cramming that guitar full of whatever small possessions I can find: pencils and pens, sticky notes, tissues yanked from the box, thumbtacks and paper clips. And laughing in triumph, I think to myself, "Look at all this stuff I have amassed for myself--and nobody can take it from me, because I've squirreled it all away here in the soundbox of my guitar!"

And you would think, watching this scene unfold, "What an absolute moron that Steve is!"

You would be right. Stuffing your guitar full of paper-clips is an act of monumental buffoonery, because it makes both the paper-clips and the guitar unusable. Now, none of it is going to work rightly, because I have tried to hoard what is not meant to be hoarded, and I have filled what was meant to be kept empty.

Take a look at that sentence again:  none of my possessions would be useful in this scene, because I would have hoarded what is not meant to be hoarded, and filled what was meant to be empty.  

I'm not sure we are trained to think in those terms, honestly.  I'm not sure we are taught that it is not always a good idea to amass more and more for myself. We have even less instruction in the possibility that some things in life are meant to be held empty.  Instead, we are told over and over that the way to "win" in life is to acquire and accumulate, endlessly hungry and never satisfied. And we are told that it is nonsense to build your life around giving toward others rather than holding on to as much for yourself as possible. We have been raised in a system that told us you were the winner at life if you stuff your guitar full of office supplies, and then of course we are then set up to teach our children to do the same with theirs.  Trouble is, we end up with a deathly silence instead of music, because we have all ruined our instruments packing them full of things we have hoarded.  And then we wonder why we are joyless and full of strife in our communities, convinced that we should be happy because we've got lots of "stuff" and confused because we're not.

I want to suggest that the New Testament has been telling us all along why we are so out of sorts.  The letter we call First Timothy says it plain as day:  the life that "really is" life is not a matter of acquisition, but of self-giving.  And when we get it backwards (like so many voices around us are actively training us to do), we end up ruining the good things entrusted to us by hoarding what is meant to be shared, and filling what is meant to remain empty.  We end up with guitars that won't play, and paper-clips we can't actually use because were too obsessed with keeping them all.  We end up less than fully alive.

So when the pastoral voice in these verses says that those who are rich in the present world are to be generous and share their possessions, it is for the good of both the giver and the receiver.  Those who receive get enough to eat and to feed their kids--they are brought to life.  And those who give have their guitars emptied out a little, which is exactly what their instruments need in order to be able to make music the way they were meant to.  The goal is for everyone to be resurrected from our different kinds of deathliness.  And maybe one of the epiphanies we are each waiting to have is the realization that each of our well-being is connected to the other's: those who are drowning in possessions, dying of affluenza, need to be brought to life by giving away what was never meant to be hoarded forever.  And those who are dying of hunger, drowning in the world's indifference, need to be brought to life by receiving the gifts God intended us all to share anyway.  When I share what I have with you, I honor you and regard you as worthy, as accepted, as companion.  And when I receive from you what you would share, I honor you and regard you as well--because sometimes what the would-be giver needs is the opportunity to give.  In that endless circle of sharing, we are all made more fully alive--we each pull each other a little out of the grave.  And maybe, just maybe, we get a glimpse of what God's own life is like in the Triune loop-de-loops of self-giving between the Persons we have come to call Father, Son, and Spirit.  Endless giving, endless receiving, endless honoring of one another in the flow.  That sounds, quite honestly, divine.

Perhaps we would do well on a day like today to hush those voices inside us that want to immediately react to a passage like this by saying, "No one can make me give what's mine to somebody else who doesn't deserve it!  It's mine!  They didn't earn it!  That's not the American way!" and instead to listen to what the apostle has to say here.  After all, whether it is or isn't "the American way" to hoard or to share isn't really the issue at hand.  We're not promised that "the American way" will love us into resurrection.  We're not told that anybody's flag will give us the life that really is life.  Instead, we are told here by the apostle that the same God who gives generously to all of us has made us to share in that generosity with one another, because that is the point of life itself.

We are told, in other words, that it is high time for us to empty out our guitars of the paper-clips we have been hoarding in there, both so that the office supplies can be used as they were meant to, but also so that we can strum along with the music of God at last.

Today, may your paper-clips be accessible and ready to be used, and may your guitar be empty enough to play a tune for everybody around.

Lord God, empty us where we need to be empty, and allow both us to share what you have entrusted to us and to receive what you have sent others across our path to give.