The Gift of Emptiness
SCRIPTURE TEXT: Mark 15:22-38
Rev. Monte Marshall
Well, it’s the second Sunday of Lent and once again we’re seeking the Gifts of the Dark Wood. Pastor Eric Elnes is our guide. We’ve taken our theme from the title of his book, Gifts of the Dark Wood. Pastor Elnes himself has taken the image of the Dark Wood from a work by Dante Alighieri entitled The Divine Comedy, and used it as a metaphor to speak of those human experiences that often terrify us—experiences such as failure, emptiness and uncertainty.
In these experiences of the Dark Wood, Elnes suggests that we find our place in the world. He helps us to recognize “the fierce beauty and astonishing blessing that exists within [the Dark Wood].” He maintains that the Dark Wood is a place of “spiritual awakening”—a place where we meet God and discover our true selves— “not in the absence of struggle, but deep in the heart of it.”1
According to Eric Elnes, gifts are to be found in the Dark Wood. Today, we seek the gift of emptiness. PRAYER.
When I think of emptiness, I think of the crucified Jesus. In Mark’s gospel, we’re at “the place called Golgotha,” the “Skull Place.” Jesus is crucified in the company of two outlaws. He’s mockingly labeled, “King of the Jews.” He’s been abandoned by his friends. His executioners gamble over his garments. His adversaries taunt him. Even the two outlaws insult him. He appears an abject failure and an utter disappointment. The story symbolically shrouds the earth in darkness. These narrative features paint a word-picture of a horrendous, external reality in which Jesus suffers.
But Mark’s story also touches on an interior reality. In the depths of his own soul, the crucified Jesus arrives at a moment of profound emptiness: “At three [in the afternoon], Jesus cried out with a loud shout, ‘Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani,’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” This gut-wrenching question is a quotation from Psalm 22—a psalm of lament.
Eric Elnes finds in the cross “one of the greatest symbols of the Dark Wood gift of emptiness.”2 In fact, the emptiness associated with the cross in the gospel story is so intense that even Jesus can’t find God.
But as Elnes reminds us, “the Cross is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a new one. Why? Not because Jesus found God as he stared from the Cross into the vast emptiness of the heavens, but because from within this Great Emptiness God found Jesus. The message could not be more profound: If you yearn to find God, get empty! Let God find you.”3
And of course, in the gospel story, God finds the body of Jesus emptied of life—in a tomb devoid of life. So how does God respond? God fills the emptiness with life and all of a sudden, we see it—the great paradox that holds all of this together: “within great emptiness resides great fullness.”4 Emptiness, therefore, is a gift of the Dark Wood.
Eric Elnes has reached this conclusion from his own life experience. He writes: “Years ago, I made a list of my proudest achievements in life. Looking over the list, I was struck by the realization that nearly everything on my list was directly or indirectly the result of some failure, loss, or disappointment that forced me to look at my situation differently and produced a creative result. What I experienced as loss in hindsight proved to be the loss of an old way of life that was in the process of giving way to something new. Many times when my expectations had been disappointed and I felt like God was furthest from me, God had actually drawn closest but had approached from a direction I wasn’t expecting. What I experienced as emptiness often was an emptying of old patterns of behavior or thought that prepared me to see that the direction I was heading was no longer working. A new direction was revealed that would yield more promising results.”5
Parker Palmer, the author of this morning’s contemporary reading, received the gift of emptiness within the Dark Wood. He entered the Dark Wood through his experience of depression: “In that deadly darkness,” he writes, “the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough tenacious soul.” Palmer describes “soul” as being “Like a wild animal…tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places.”
In commenting upon Parker Palmer’s story, Eric Elnes is quick to note that the Dark Wood was not his depression. Depression was his entry point into the Dark Wood, but it was not the Dark Wood itself. Instead, “The Dark Wood, in Palmer’s experience, was a beautiful, mysterious place where he discovered a wild and powerful presence within himself (soul), which was itself connected to an even more wild, powerful presence (God’s Spirit).”6 To put it another way, Parker Palmer touched upon the paradox that holds all of this together: “within great emptiness resides great fullness.” 7
Emptiness has also been a part of my life experience in the Dark Wood. I have shared with you before the story of my struggles to follow Jesus in a life a deepening discipleship. I’ve wrestled with God for forty years in an effort to move beyond my fears and into a life of discipleship that, at least in my mind, is more authentic and consistent with what I understand to be the reign of God. But in the ways that are most meaningful to me, I’ve failed, and I’m still failing. This has resulted in a persistent, nagging emptiness in my life that I’ve not been able to fully shake.
This emptiness showed up in a prayer journal entry I wrote over twenty years ago. On January 18, 1993, as I was meditating on Psalm 22—the psalm that begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?—this is what I wrote: “I have cried desperately for help, but still it does not come. Have I not cried persistently enough, O God? Have I not been desperate enough? Help me! Have I discerned your will for me correctly? Help me! Is it my fearful disobedience that’s in the way? Help me! I am sad, discouraged, indifferent, angry, empty. Help me! So much of what I do in my life is because I have too, not because I want to. I’m tired of this. . .. The passion has dissipated. . .. In so many ways, I’ve given up and given in. Help me!”
I remember well that sense of emptiness. In varying degrees, it’s still with me and I suspect that it will stay with me until I give up my resistance, become cooperative with God’s Spirit, and fully embrace the life that God intends for me.
Even so, within the Dark Wood, I’m learning to live within the tension of that paradox: “within great emptiness resides great fullness.”8 I understand what Eric Elnes means when he writes: “At our place of greatest despair over ourselves and our abilities, we discover a Presence who loves us beyond our imagining, who chooses relationship over perfection…. How can we not stand in awe-struck reverence before [this] Presence who clearly sees our imperfections, our brokenness and guilt—indeed, our emptiness—yet chooses to be in relationship with us nonetheless? Standing in this place is the beginning of all wisdom, and all true understanding. What we thought would be the place of our greatest emptiness and fullest negation proves to be the safest and most beautiful spot in the world in which to stand.”9 I can honestly say that I’ve experienced this “Presence” over and over again, within the emptiness. I would not be standing here today, doing what I’m doing, if this had not been the case!
So dear friends, I thank God this morning that emptiness is a gift of the Dark Wood. How about you?
A Time for Reflection
8:45 - Each week we will take time to reflect, accompanied by music. This week, we focus on how the things that fill us—like ego, fear of being unloved, worry of not measuring up—need to be emptied so that we might live. Using the piece of paper inserted into your bulletin, name something that you need to let go of, that needs to die in order that you can live more fully, and write it down. When you come forward for communion later in the service, bring the piece of paper to the cross nearest your serving station, and drop it in the bowl as a sign of self-emptying.
11:00 - Each week we will take time to reflect, accompanied by music. This week, we focus on how the things that fill us—like ego, fear of being unloved, worry of not measuring up—need to be emptied so that we might live. Using the piece of paper inserted into your bulletin, name something that you need to let go of, that needs to die in order that you can live more fully, and write it down. Then bring the paper forward to one of the crosses and bowls that have been placed before us, and leave the paper at the cross as a sign of self-emptying.