The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

"Emptiness"

The Rev. David Frazelle

The apostle Paul writes in today’s letter to the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself.”

In 2004, I spent 5 months hiking the Appalachian Trail. And I spent more than three of those months terrified of emptiness. Specifically, I was scared of the emptiness of spending an entire evening, night and subsequent morning totally alone in the woods. With no one around for me to entertain or impress, with no one around for me to please, with no one nearby to affirm me or even to see me, I was afraid that I would simply cease to exist. I was afraid that I would disintegrate into the outer darkness where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I was afraid of emptiness.

And so I managed - through a combination of luck and a willingness to speed up or slow down in order to find company – I managed to hike from northern Maine to the middle of Virginia without spending a single continuous period of 24 hours all alone. At that point, over three months into my hike, I said to myself, “Self, this is ridiculous. A 24-hour solo time needs to be part of this trip, if for no other reason than that you’re afraid of it and have been trying so hard to avoid it.”

And so the next night I hiked until dusk to a point 2 and ½ miles from the nearest water source and likely camp site; and I set up camp in a random place on a ridgeline. After stuffing my face with four servings of macaroni and cheese mixed with two cans of tuna and several servings of olive oil (followed by handfuls of mixed nuts and a Hershey’s with almonds for dessert), I just sat there at the edge of my tarp and consented to the emptiness around me and to the emptiness inside me, and waited to see what would happen.

I have never had a night more pregnant with the presence of God than that night. I have never been in a place more radiant with the light of God than that place. I have never been more filled with the awareness of God than in that empty acre of woods. Emptiness and fullness came together in the same place in time.

Emptiness is at the deepest core of Christian life. Emptiness is at the heart of who Jesus was in his earthly life and death. And emptiness is at the core of how we participate in his death and risen life. St. Paul writes, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself.” Paul goes on to describe how Jesus emptied himself, and how God filled Jesus with the power of his resurrection.

Christian Tradition hallows two ways of following Christ in the way of self-emptying. One way is active self-emptying in service to others. This active self-emptying finds its pattern in Jesus’ habits of healing, feeding, footwashing, forgiving, and serving whomever he met in his itinerant ministry. The second way of following Christ in the way of self-emptying does not involve activity, but rather a restful and receptive emptiness before God. This way of emptiness finds its pattern in Jesus’ withdrawal to the desert to fast and pray alone, and in Christ’s frequent retreats from active ministry in order to be alone in prayer on a mountain or in a garden.

For Christians, both kinds of emptiness – active self-emptying in service and receptive self-emptying before God in prayer – both kinds of emptiness work together to lead us in the way of the cross towards the fullness of ultimate union with God.

I want to end by returning to this second way of silent, receptive emptiness, because it is more neglected and unknown in our day and time than the other, more active mode. Thomas Merton describes the way of receptive, prayerful emptiness perhaps better than anyone else. In one passage, he writes, “. . . there is a higher kind of listening, which is . . . a general emptiness that waits to realize the fullness of the message of God within its own apparent void. In other words, the true [person of prayer] is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but [the one] who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light.” This is the kind of emptiness that I simultaneously longed for and feared on the Appalachian Trail. This emptiness was both the reason I went and the thing I ran away from.

There are many ways of practicing this kind of self-emptying. I have one friend, who lives with a large family, who rises from bed before anyone else in the house in order to have a few minutes alone with God. I know a parishioner who takes time at the end of each day to pray spontaneously and cathartically in a kind of open-ended conversation with God. I know a man who comes home from long days at an intense job to an empty house; and rather than turning on the television and pouring a drink to fill the void, he sits down to pray silently and offers the void to God. I know people who read Scripture slowly and reflectively as a means of listening more deeply to God. And I know that anyone in the Centering Prayer group could tell you about Centering Prayer as a way of cultivating emptiness before God.

It is not the particular method that matters, but finding some way that works for you to be open, receptive and empty before God. My hunch is that for many of us, our active ministries in our places of work and in our homes are already well-established, and that we are already emptying ourselves in active or even hyper-active ways. For some people, another thing to do is the last thing in the world they need and the last thing God needs from them. If this is true for you, I encourage you to consider giving up some piece of some activity and using the time to go apart and do nothing. Consider wasting time with God. Consider stealing some small amount of time to be open and empty before God with a spiritual practice that works for you. No one around you will reward you for it, but God will take whatever emptiness you offer and fill it with his presence in ways you could never ask for or even imagine. Thanks be to God for this invitation that goes out to every Christian in all times and places: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself.”