Running on Empty

Psalm 145:1-7, Philippians 2:1-13

            There are many ways to describe what emptiness means.   What first comes to your mind?

            We all have to address the ever present “E,” the one on our vehicle dashboards.   The one constantly guzzling everything we feed it and at significant cost.  This empty is fueled by fear … fear that it’ll run out and that our schedule, and perhaps even our lives, will be in jeopardy.   This emptiness is a very practical matter that can usually be managed very well.

            Somewhat related, of course, is the sensation that our stomach is empty.   Hunger is certainly an empty feeling.   It indicates that our bodies need to be refueled.  If done so in a healthy, high grade way, this emptiness can be held off for a long while.   If filled with cheap, low grade fuel … then there is very little lasting benefit.

            At home, Stefanie and I now use a refillable K-cup to reduce household and world waste.   But this means each time we go to brew, we need to empty the soggy coffee grounds into a small container we keep next to the Keurig.   This then gets dumped outside where it participates in natural organic processes.   Emptiness, in this case, means making room for the next daily grind, while also taking seriously our part in the stewardship of God’s good creation.  

            Google has a wonderful software application called Skymap.  You open it, hold your phone up to sky at night and it reveals in graphic form all of the constellations and planets right above and all around you.   It’s been tremendous fun to use.   Yet even though so much gets identified, I always notice all of the unknowable empty space.   I wouldn’t want it all filled up.  This emptiness is inviting.  It’s mysterious and stirs my imagination.  It reminds me that we’re all an important but really miniscule part of an eternally deep reality. 

            Depending on my mood, though, some nights the emptiness of night sky can cause me to feel a bit lost and alone.    That’s another kind of emptiness we experience, isn’t it?   The emotional kind that causes us to feel hollow and isolated.  Even the loving, abiding presence of God can seem in a much different galaxy during such times.  

             This is what I think most folks would consider “spiritual emptiness.”  It’s an emptiness that gnaws at our soul, hungry for a truly substantial and life-sustaining feast of faith.   It’s the emptiness that gives us great grief as it yearns to be made completely whole.   

            I’m talking about the kinds of emptiness because it is at the epicenter of this morning’s passage from Philippians.  Not just the center, the epicenter, as in where everything shifts and triggers seismic waves of sacred truth all across the landscape of our Christian faith.             What makes this teaching about emptiness most powerful is that it’s about filling up by emptying out.   Only by emptying out can we have the energy needed to go out fill up the world with the love of Jesus Christ.

            If this sounds confusing, it’s because in our culture we mostly understand fulfillment as something we develop by and for ourselves.  We develop our character, our abilities, our achievements.    We value the constant striving to fulfill our dreams.    If managed well, this is healthy.   If managed poorly, however, it can make us sinfully fat with personal pride.   Self-fulfillment becomes our god.    And this god ultimately fails us because it runs strongly on the stale gasoline and junk food of fear, distrust, anger, apathy, and prejudice.

            The Apostle Paul knew how destructive this kind of fulfillment was to the mission of the Church.   And running on it was especially damaging to the church in ancient Philippi.  This was a congregation in the city founded by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great.   He had done so around 368 B.C. because he believed there was “no more strategic site in all of Europe” with its “chain of hills” which divided Europe from Asia, east from west.    The city was settled in a dip between these hills, and so it had command of the roadways.   It is said that the powerful future of the Roman Empire was decided after Marc Antony won a decisive victory in Philippi.[i] 

            The Apostle Paul fully knew the strategic importance of Philippi to spreading the victorious message of the Gospel far and wide.   Acts 16 tells of Paul’s establishing the congregation there by helping our Lord open the hearts of three different people of three different nationalities and three different grades of society.   Church diversity and inclusivity was a hallmark from the start. 

            He was in a Roman prison when he wrote the letter we know as Philippians.   It’s a letter of thanksgiving and of encouragement for the external trials that congregation was living through.  It’s also a letter that addresses some significant conflict within the congregation.

            Now let’s imagine ourselves in Paul’s leadership shoes.  You are writing while languishing in prison under the reign of Emperor Nero, awaiting what historical evidence suggests was a beheading.   Talk about a horrifyingly empty situation to be in.    What words would you have offered to help keep the church running well?   To faithfully refill and refuel the Body of Christ as conflict worked hard to empty it of hope, love, peace and unity?  

            It was not a time for fast food and low-grade fuel!   Not a time for self-help catch phrases and self-improvement strategies.   It wasn’t time to waste precious energy by empowering his brothers and sisters in the faith to take up arms against the Romans or cast out church members with whom there was tension.

             It was time to fill any and all emptiness threatening the heart of the faithful community with just one thing – the example of Jesus.             And what life-sustaining strength did Jesus demonstrate as he was being put to death by world power?   He emptied interest in himself and deprived himself of his power so that he could minister to the needs of others and fulfill the divine plan of salvation.   

            In that prison cell, deeply concerned for his Philippian friends, Paul lived for Christ by running on empty.  He emptied himself of his pride, selfish ambition, thoughts of self-advancement.  He emptied himself of his fears.   In doing so, he was then able to fill up on the trust, energy, joy and passion for justice that comes from humbly looking after the welfare of the whole community of God’s children just as Jesus had modeled.   This is the “love that burns with the desire for the flourishing of others, a love whose joy can be made complete only when all are included.”[ii]    Paul exhorted his friends to have the mind and love of Christ by cultivating the bonds of unity for the greater good … especially in the midst of unholy worldly oppression.   His joy would be complete, he would die a happy man, if they would run on empty too.  This is the ultimately indestructible joy of living in and for the Lord.

            Across the years of your life, in what ways have you run on empty for the sake of filling and unifying the world with the love of Jesus?       How has this been modeled throughout the life of Fairmount Presbyterian Church?   

            What needs emptying in your heart and mind today so you can live a more faithfully fulfilling life in the global company of Christ?  

             Is there a person in your life that is a role model for how emptiness, from a Christian perspective, is filled with love for God and for one another?

            I ask these questions as I run on empty here at the end of this sermon …   Amen.

           

           

                       

           

                       

           

           

                         

           

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[i] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 3

[ii] William Greenway, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4

Is It Right for You to Be Angry?

Ephesians 4:25-32; Jonah 3:10-4:11

            Which is worse for your well-being – holding in your anger until you can’t help but unleash it or having it swell up in a sudden outburst?  Either way, according to a psychology report, anger is an emotion that “eats away at your cardiovascular system, your gut and hijacks your nervous system, often obliterating the capacity for clear thinking.”[i]  And just because it gets vented through your emotional house one way or another doesn’t mean it’s been completely remediated.   For most all of us, it comes down to the fact that we need to develop a strategy for managing this particularly powerful emotion.  

Let me stress that word need.    A recent USA TODAY study reports that the number of Americans who feel angry and irritable is 60%.  This is up from 50% just two years ago.  Unemployment or being overworked were given as one reason.   A quiet erosion of trust when dealing with people is another.    And a 2012 Harvard study revealed that two-thirds of American teens admit to having anger attacks with violent, destructive outcomes.[ii]

It’s not just for our personal well-being then, we all need to have a healthy anger management strategy for the common good as well.    This strategy will identify when, where and with whom it is appropriate, safe, and constructive to let loose our irritations and smoldering wrath.    It will also help us to understand that there are ways to be assertive without being aggressive, vulnerable without being violent, expressive without being destructive. 

Has the way you express anger changed through the years?   Have you shifted from eating it to frequently expelling it or from frequently expelling it to eating it?   Or have you found safe places and people to be around that help you accept the inevitability of anger in your life while helping you to keep it in healthy check?   

I know that I surely have.   Sometimes this has meant paying a therapist while at other times it’s meant disciplining myself to take deep breaths and know when to step away from a volatile situation.   What’s made the biggest difference, however, is feeling it is safe to speak to God about anger through both wounded whispers and straight up yelling from my heart.    I find the healthiest anger management strategy is one born of faith.

A lot of people, though, and this may be you, aren’t comfortable being angry at God, feeling God has disappointed or betrayed them.   This always a real toughie to get through.    Worse, even, then feeling this way towards a parent or a child.    We can still feel terribly ashamed when we angrily fail to love God, our neighbors, and let’s face it, ourselves.  

What do you believe about how God responds to any and all anger?  From God’s perspective, is it really ever ok, or even right, to be angry?

The story of Jonah offers great insight.   The passage we read and heard a few minutes ago is less known then this prophet’s literally gut wrenching adventure with a great fish.   It is, however, no less important.  I’d argue it’s even more so and certainly more relatable.   It speaks to Jonah being angry at God…not because God had betrayed him, but just for being God.  

Jonah fully understood who God is.   Specifically, that God is gracious and merciful to all of God’s children, abounding in steadfast love.   God had called on him to go and let the people of the sizeable city of Ninevah know this good news too.    Jonah knew that if the Ninevites took his prophetic words to heart by repenting, they would be saved from them the wicked consequences of not knowing the God of Israel.    

But Jonah also knew how much he hated these people.   Ninevah was at time the flourishing capitol of the Assyrian Empire, the empire that had conquered Israel and sent the Israelites into captivity.  For some fifty years, Ninevah, with its historically ruthless and warlike people, had been the largest city in the world.  

Jonah’s enmity for this enemy pulsed through him as a wrathful adrenalin rush.   He wanted these terrorists obliterated.  He wanted this to be by the hand of God, for God had called them out on their wickedness.    He wanted victory for Israel.   That God was willing to give this horrible oppressor a second chance, to be merciful to them, to love them despite their wickedness… this was quite incomprehensible.  It was unjust.   It’s not exactly hard to question why Jonah ran away from what God wanted him to do.  He had more hurtful hate than mercy in his heart.

But after Jonah’s literally gut wrenching adventure with a big fish, after God had cared enough to save him from his disobedience, Jonah finally did as God had summoned him to do.   And wouldn’t you know?  Ninevah listened!  Ninevah repented!  Ninevah turned in trust to God!  Its king threw off his royal robe, put on a burlap sack and sat down in the dirt!   Seeing this, God’s wrath against their wickedness subsided.

  The story ends awesomely, right?   The people are saved.    Jonah becomes something of a hero.    So then why did he turn to God and start seething?   Why was he furious at God?   Why did he yell, “I knew this was going to happen!” and pronounce that because God didn’t kill them he might as well have God kill him?   Oh, the dumb things we can say when we are angry.   Like a wise counselor, God simply replies to this by saying, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 

The question is less about right and wrong, and more about Jonah’s well-being.   A better way to translate Jonah 4:4 from the Hebrew language is to have God saying, “Is your anger about my mercy a good thing?”   And God could well have gone on the say, “Is your give me justice or give me death decree making you well?  Is it helping my will?  And have you forgotten all about the undeserved mercy I showed you by saving you from your disobedience?   Did you happen to notice that the pagans on that ship acted more like me than you did?  That the Ninevites, who had previously not known of me, also were more obedient?   Have you learned nothing about my patience and persistent love for all my children?”

            Jonah responded to the question by once again trying to flee from God.    God doesn’t give up on him.  God continued to teach him about mercy through a lively object lesson involving a shade-providing plant.   When this dies as suddenly as it had sprung up, God asks, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?”  Unrelentingly negative and eaten up by anger, Jonah says, “Yes, angry enough to die.”   

            And that’s Jonah’s final word.  

            God’s final word, however, makes it clear that it is far more important to be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left.

            Through the years, I’ve heard a lot of folks complain that the God we meet in the Old Testament is full of unmitigated wrath.   There are many troublesome passages to support this that, over time, each of us should study and theologically excavate.  But today, in Jonah’s story, despite ominous warnings to the Ninevites, we only meet the God of great mercy.   Not only mercy for those who truly were enemies, but also for the prophet who was supposed to rejoice that more of God’s children had turned away from wickedness and toward their true home.  

            What do we learn, then, from Jonah’s story?  What’s our take away? 

 We learn that whether we hold in our anger or unleash our anger, it’s never more consuming than God’s compassion.   

It can compel us to run away, be we will never be lost to God.   

It can propel us into disobedience, but it will not repel us from God’s mercy. 

We learn not to judge and hate others as outsiders and enemies when our very own thoughts and actions hypocritically go against the love of God we profess, pray about and praise.   

We learn that it can be the most unexpected voices speaking for God that prove to be the most prophetic and positive for the sake of God’s amazingly gracious mercy. 

We learn it’s okay to be angry with God, but it won’t be pleasing or make a tough situation you are in any better.   

May we all instead faithfully “put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” before each day’s sun goes down.  May we do so in order to awake ever more ready to and “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven” us.

And all God’s people said, AMEN.                 

             

           

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[i]http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200308/the-downside-anger

[ii] Eric Metaxas, "Angry America," Break Point Commentaries (12-10-13)