Saturday, November 7, 2020            (today’s lectionary)
Empty vessel
Growing up, we butchered a cow when the freezer was empty and filled it up again. Mom spent hours most every day in her garden, and she canned beans and beets, tomatoes and corn. She pasteurized milk and for years she made butter. My experience with hunger is limited, to say the least. Even when later I had the privilege of fasting, I shook off the experience within a day or so. Food was everywhere.
Like most animals, our chickens are always hungry. When I step outside they run from every corner of the yard and look up at me, hoping. When I do throw them scraps, they swallow them faster than I can catch my breath. Our dog Bear was just the same. But both our eight chickens and every dog I’ve ever known also knew how to wait, without resentment, until the food arrives.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. My God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
I’m not “entitled” to this privilege, but neither should I be anxious about receiving it. My sweet animals friends are watchful, but they rarely seem anxious. They present themselves, look up into my eyes, and wait.
Abraham Maslow in 1943 described a hierarchy of needs which still applies. When we’ve satisfied our physical and security needs, we begin to notice our needs for relationship and self-esteem. Many of us are right there, but as the Scriptures say over and over, the only good way to enter human relationship is through God’s love. What Jesus called the two greatest commandments go hand in hand.
I can do all this through him who strengthens me.
In his book Surrender to Love, David Benner declares that “the more perfect the love, the more it forces us to encounter our own fear.” Well, that fear might be of myself even more than God, because I know how inadequate I am as a vessel. How can I receive God’s unlimited love, when I even protect myself from finite love?
I can do better. I can come as best I can to this encounter with Perfect Love without defense or secret. To receive all the love I can hold, I must arrive completely naked and ready to suffer. My willingness to walk right in, set right down with Jesus and then wait without defense, that’s what God wants. Of course I’m afraid. That’s why after I sit down he tells me every time, “Do not be afraid, David. I love you.”
I think this might be Paul’s “secret of being content in all circumstances.”
Your gifts are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord and gives to the poor, who is gracious and lends, who conducts his affairs with justice. He shall not be moved. His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth.
I’m not entitled to all this blessing, but God gives it to me anyway. Why? Maybe because as Jesus explains, I’m trying to be understand and appreciate “true wealth,” which mostly only makes sense when I’m emptied of the other kind.
If you are not trustworthy in small things, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you property of your own? No one can serve two masters.
For me this is a hard teaching, because, well, I’ve never been hungry. What I’ve come to understand is that God’s love buffers me from suffering, and all the more when the suffering is great. There is no rose garden here for Pollyanna Dave, but like Paul said about death, the thorns no longer sting.
(Philippians 4, Psalm 112, 2 Corinthians 8, Luke 16)
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