Empty Yourself and Be Filled

Confronting the Beatitudes

Matthew 5:1-12

5 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ² And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

⁵ “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

⁸ “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

⁹ “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

¹⁰ “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

[Photo by TAN Erica on Unsplash]

Today we have the part of Matthew’s Gospel account called the Beatitudes which is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This famous passage has fascinated people since it was first preached and so you can imagine that there are many different approaches used to interpret this text.

Because when we hear Jesus say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” or “blessed are those that mourn” it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Especially when you consider that some translations tell us that these people are “happy.” Now I don’t know about you, but I am not happy when I am spiritually destitute or when I am mourning!

This has led people to interpret these blessings as those that you will receive after your life on earth is finished. Which kind of goes along with the Christian idea that this life contains suffering and the next life does not. But I would like to consider an alternative: what if Jesus meant these blessings to apply to our life on earth, to the HERE AND NOW.

This thought exercise helps me to develop my “theology of suffering.” We all have our theology of suffering; it’s the story we tell ourselves to answer the question of why a loving God allows us to experience pain and distress. I could say the pursuit of the answer to this conundrum is what drives me to study the Bible so stridently and it may be that this BURNING QUESTION lies close to the heart of humankind’s quest to understand God.

For me, I can always count on Paul to put things into perspective, his words poignant and logical, speak directly to my soul. My theology of suffering relies heavily on this passage from his letter to the Romans: “we also BOAST in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

This, to me, means that suffering is NOT a bad thing because it changes you for the better.

And another piece that informs me that suffering may not be all bad is the example of our Lord Jesus, “who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

A lot has been made of the humility of Jesus, who is the son of God. It’s hard to be HUMBLE when you are DIVINE – and yet Jesus accomplished this. Humility is a kind of self-emptying (kenosis), a process of emptying YOURSELF of YOURSELF.

The more you empty yourself, you allow that negative space of your life to be filled by God’s blessings. And I know that goes against our cultural programming of “It’s my life and I’m gonna live it.” But don’t worry about that - that’s just your ego talking.

The more you can remove the stuff of YOURSELF, dig into the core of your being, the more empty space you create, the more blessings you can receive.

The empty bowl

I keep an empty bowl in my office. And it’s SO HARD not to put something in the bowl, it’s EMPTY! It needs FILLING! And I could put something in there! It could be USEFUL, but the bowl stays empty in order to remind ME to remain empty so that I can be filled - NOT by what I think is good, but by what GOD thinks is good.

Empty space, versus full

Remember that you have to breathe OUT , empty your lungs, in order for NEW life, new air, with fresh oxygen to come into your body and give you strength to live.

Realize too that music is defined by both silence and sound and art is defined by white space, or negative space as well as the color on the canvas.

The art of listening is also tied to humility. If you don’t ever stop talking, you can’t listen, if you don’t stay still, you will never receive God’s wisdom.

As the Dalai Lama said “When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something NEW.”

Not thinking you are so important that you always HAVE to speak, realizing that others might have something just as valuable as what you have to offer – that’s humility and that’s the art of listening.

Levels of listening

It may surprise you to know that there are different levels of listening. The lowest level of listening comes from a place of fullness, when you have no space for hearing another’s opinion because you already KNOW everything you need to know, your mind is made up so what is the point of hearing someone else’s point of view – that’s called ignoring. The next level, if you have cleared out just a little space from your ego to grant them the courtesy of occasionally grunting “uh-huh” or “okay,” is called pretend listening. The next step is called selective listening, that’s when you only hear when they mention your name or something else that interests you.

I hope you are getting the picture that this is NOT where you want to be.

I’m sure Jesus never PRETENDED to listen to someone. If you want to follow Jesus through the way of humility you will have to do better than that. The next three levels of listening are categorized as ACTIVE listening – THIS is where you want to be.

The first level of active listening is called attentive – that’s when your brain is actually registering every word that the other person is saying. You know, if someone is doing you the GREAT HONOR of spending their time in discourse with you the LEAST you can do is give them your undivided attention. None of us have UNLIMITED time on this earth and so whenever someone decides you are worth their time, remember that you are blessed.

If you can push your own consideration and worries aside and enter into another’s pain, FEEL it as they feel it and let it affect you as if it is happening to you, that is called empathetic listening. The final, and deepest, level of listening is when the Spirit of God gets involved. We all wish to have every conversation to attain to this level but it requires the ability of ALL parties to empty themselves enough to leave room for the Spirit to move.

The more you empty yourself out, the deeper you dig in and shovel all that excess stuff out, that would be how you could have the deepest level of listening, the one which allows you to connect with people on a spiritual level. If you are so full of yourself, that you are talking all the time in a group of people, that’s you expressing yourself and if you are filling up the whole space, with you, that’s saying I’m the most important person in this room and I’m going to let you know about it.

In a group what should happen, is EACH PERSON should be able to express themselves and, in the middle, when all of those ideas meet, something new is born. It’s like watercolors, when different colors mix – they create a new color.

That’s the way it is in GROUP DYNAMICS, so if it works the way it should where everyone adds a piece to the new creation then it truly is something new and it’s not all about one person.

I have been in a lot of groups and what usually happens is there are one or two people who are so FULL OF THEMSELVES - that’s why we say that, they are so full of THEMSELVES, that it spills out into the room and takes over the whole group. There’s usually one or two people like that and then the rest of the people don’t say ANYTHING or they offer little pieces, little dots. And so, the group collaboration is mostly composed of one person’s ideas, the leader, the strongest personality with highlights added by others. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to work, it’s meant to be a NEW thing. That means a blending of all the different people in the group so that they create something NEW so it’s not only one or two people but it’s about everyone and everyone has contributed something and it’s a new thing. That’s when the magic happens.

The same way with your relationship with God.

With God when you empty yourself, when you realize you’re not the most important person in the room and you humble yourself, that’s when you will be filled with all the good things of God and become a new creation.

Then we have these Beatitudes.

And this all seems so contrary to our common sense, right? If I’m going to live my BEST life, I’m going to have to fight for MYSELF, I am going to have to put myself out there, I have to stand up for myself, I have to SECURE THE BLESSINGS for myself, because who else is going to do it? That is our culture’s mindset, that is what we are told, that’s COMMON wisdom, we should go out and we have to fight for ourselves and we have stand up for ourselves and we have to SECURE our own blessings.

But THAT’S not what the GOSPEL says! I mean God comes in and says something TOTALLY DIFFERENT than our common sense tells us. But God has Wisdom, wisdom from the dawn of time, from BEFORE the dawn of time, Wisdom with a capital W.

It’s like what happened with some friends of mine. The other day their house burned down which is a horrible thing, something you would NEVER want to happen but now people are reaching out with their love and donating clothes and things, the church is taking up a special offering for them, the school is putting on a fundraiser and I heard there’s even a fund at the bank started for them. They are in NEED and so people are responding to that need, would they ever have known this expanse of love if they hadn’t suffered this tragedy?

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

But Jesus also says, “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.” But that’s not the way it works! The meek don’t get ANYTHING, people just run all over them – they never get anything – people just take it from them.

But what if “inherit the earth” isn’t talking about material things?

Materialism

While reading the text from 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 this week one phrase caught my eye, “God chose…things that are not, to abolish things that are.” It’s amazing how different things pop out to you as you are reading. I never noticed THAT before but this time it caught my eye. Now this is interesting to me because I am fascinated with how the material world is influenced by “things unseen.” With the gospel call to prioritize faith over sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) ringing in my ears I take these things very seriously.

Materialism is putting value into the things that ARE – those things that are seen and measured, the things we can SEE, the things we can TOUCH. The things that “are not,” are the things we CANNOT see, things unseen. God is one of those things.

The beatitudes emphasize things that the world does not value, guarantees blessings on the kinds of people who are not valued in this world.

And this is totally contrary, but this is a COMMON THEME throughout the Bible, everything is different than we think it is. So, we have our WORLDLY wisdom, we have our common sense, or the way we know things to be and then here’s God telling us something totally different.

And so the question is, which WAY are you going to follow? Are you going to follow the way of the world, or are you going to follow the Way of Christ? That’s the question. That’s what it comes down to - every sermon, every Sunday, every day of your life is confronting you with this question. Do I believe what the world tells me or do I believe in God?

Prayer

Loving and Merciful God, we hear the words of Jesus and sometimes they clash with our received wisdom. Open our eyes to the truth. Help us to see as you see, help us to be who you would have us be. Help us to empty ourselves so that we may be filled with your blessings. We rely so much on our own strength that is hard to learn to surrender our will to you. Teach us the way of humility, show us the blessings that could be ours if only we lower ourselves to our knees in adoration. AMEN