A Chosen Emptiness--March 31, 2021

 

A Chosen Emptiness--March 31, 2021

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who... emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness." [Philippians 2:7]

Maybe "empty" isn't bad.  Maybe "empty" is sometimes what grace looks like... what love looks like... what blessedness looks like.

I know that sounds like blasphemy in a culture like ours, whose altars are all-you-can-eat buffets and whose unofficial religious devotion is to binge-watching tv shows on streaming services.  I know the idea that "More is better" is ingrained into our thinking from our earliest years of life--even if the "more" we are fussing over isn't something we particularly want... just to make sure we get a share of whatever it is. (That's why the old one-liner complaining about a restaurant works:  "The food there is terrible--and the portions are so small!"  We have a way of wanting more, even of mediocre stuff, because we are told we are suppose to want it.)

On top of that, we are told that real power, real strength, and real success in life look like "more."  The people with more name-recognition, more social media followers, more money, more influence, and more toys are the Big Deals in life, right?  And on the world stage, the countries with more money, more weapons, and more resources (and who keep all those things for themselves, of course, because Me-and-My-Group-First is taken as gospel!) are deemed the "winners," while we are taught all sorts of ways of patronizing and looking down on everybody else--they are "the Third World," or "undeveloped countries" or "all those poor countries" or "banana republics" or "failed states," or whatever the language of the day is.  The conventional wisdom the day is that more is better, fullness is a sign of success, and emptying, losing, or giving away what you have is all terrible foolishness.

But Christians are taught--by looking at Jesus Christ himself--to see the world very differently; in fact, we are people learning to see all of that as upside-down and backwards.  And as Jesus turns our vision right-side up again, we discover God's greatest power is in exactly what the world calls weakness.

That's what makes the image so jarring in this verse from Philippians, when Paul says that Jesus "emptied himself." This is the same Jesus who, in the previous verse, Paul insistently described as "equal with God."  That Jesus.  The very embodiment of God-with-Us.  This same One, with all the power, wisdom, glory, might, and infiniteness of being that comes with being God, empties himself in the human body of a barefoot homeless rabbi living under the boots of an occupying empire.  In the language of the conventional wisdom, God becomes a "nobody" in Jesus.  And Paul doesn't blush when he makes that claim.  He doesn't think this was a bad choice or a wrong idea on God's part--but rather, that it is exactly how God's power truly works.

That means, among other things, that "more" isn't necessarily "better." It means that "full" isn't necessarily the goal in life--after all, Paul says, God's goal wasn't "a feeling of personal fulfillment," but rather the choice to be emptied of that fullness for the sake of redeeming us.  It means God is done (or maybe, more accurately, never wasted any time in even starting) with the quest for "more," or or "fullness."  God's deepest self, expressed in Jesus, looks like the choice of emptiness, for the sake of gathering us all in.  

So many of the little choices we face every day boil down to the decision to fill me-and-me-alone versus seeking the good of others.  Do I tip generously or save those extra few bucks so I can buy a snack later for myself from a convenience store, where no tipping will be involved?  Do I spend my time listening and talking with a friend in crisis, or am I keeping all my time for my own social calendar?  Do I scowl at the thought of using my precious resources to help pay for someone seeking refuge to escape a disaster in their home country, or do I allow the possibility that such generosity might be the holiest thing I can do in life?  Am I more invested in my own quest for "fullness" that I miss out on the possibility that the best possible way to use my life might call me to having empty hands?  I know, I know--it means something like a complete reinvention of our values, and an overturning of what the world around us tells us is good or successful.  Lots of folks over the last two thousand years have just decided that sounds like too much work, or that it is easier to stick with the world's obsession with "more," but here from the beginning, the Scriptures have been telling us that God's way, God's choice, is not about endless consumption or acquisition, but about chosen emptying... for the sake of love.

What are things in your and my life that we might be led to let go of, or to stop chasing after, or to surrender and give away, for the sake of letting Christ-like love fill our deepest selves?  In other words, what might our chosen emptiness look like on this day... and how might it actually lead to being full of the presence of the living God, who is our deepest joy all along?

Lord Jesus, help us to empty ourselves of all we've been chasing after, so that we might be full of your love.