Fullness and Emptiness
Luke 6.17-26
Epiphany 6C; February 16, 2025
In some species of ants, there is a specialized class of worker ants called repletes or honey ants. These ants act as “living larders,” [“Honey Pot Ants,” Wikipedia; 2-15-2025] storing excess food in their own bodies. As workers return with food, they regurgitate it into these honey ants, whose abdomens become so swollen that they resemble balloons on the verge of popping. These honey ants have no job other than to store food and distribute it to other ants when there is a shortage. They never leave their chamber, much less the nest.
Episcopal priest Robert Dannals learned about these honey ants a few years ago while watching a nature program on TV. He was equally fascinated and disturbed. He found himself reflecting on their existence from a human point of view, which, it should be said, the ants almost surely do not share. Dannals wrote:
[The honey ants] were filled to overflowing, condemned to being endlessly stuffed, eternally immobilized by the very weight of their awesome fullness. I kept wondering if they were at least dimly aware that, for them, this is all there is, has ever been, and ever will be. The [honey]ants never see daylight; they never know anything except getting full, the kind of fullness that is actually empty. [“Fullness and Emptiness,” Lectionary Sermon Series, 187, emphasis added; Dannals calls them “cow” ants]
Perhaps this idea of “a fullness that is actually emptiness” can help us understand the Beatitudes that Jesus articulates at the beginning of his Sermon on the Plain. Jesus is once again taking expectations and upending them, taking people’s normal and accepted world view and flipping it on its head. This time, he is standing not high above the people, but down among them, among the sicknesses and the unclean spirits and the poverty and want that afflict the people, and all of them are trying to touch him as he heals and teaches. And he turns to his disciples and tells them, and anyone else in earshot, ‘Blessed are you who are poor,” you who are hungry and repentant and outcast and scoffed at and hated. God counts you as citizens of the Kingdom and will fill your empty stomachs and cause joy to well up in your repentant hearts. “But woe to you who are rich,” those of you who are wealthy, comfortable, powerful, secure, who see nothing for which you need to repent. Though you may seem joyful now, one day you shall mourn for you will find yourself on the outside of God’s Kingdom.
This was mind-boggling for the disciples and the crowd. It was common then, as it is now, to think of material wealth and physical and emotional well-being as signs of God’s favor. Those who were poor, who were suffering, who were hungry, had clearly not found favor with God. Perhaps they had upset God somehow, and now God was punishing or simply ignoring them. Many in Jesus’ audience likely would have said, just as many today would say, that the poor and destitute deserve their plight for foolishness, or laziness, or poor decisions, while the rich and well-off have earned their blessings through hard work and good character—and that is why they are so blessed.
But in yet another example the Gospel of Luke’s motif of “the great reversal,” Jesus overturns the conventional wisdom and dismantles the popular understanding. He declares to his listeners an “upside-down Kingdom.” The poor he insists, have not been rejected by God. Their plight is not the result of divine disfavor. In fact, it is contrary to the will of God. Jesus congratulates the poor, the hungry, and those who weep, whether because of their suffering or because of their repentance, and insists that God looks upon them with love and mercy and that the time is coming when God will intervene on their behalf. “Poverty, hunger and sorrow,” reflects commentator Nancy Koester, “are not God’s final will;” [Koester, Journeying through Lent with Luke: Daily Meditations, p. 18] they are not good things, and God does not cause them but works against them seeking to help the poor, hungry and weeping. Indeed, God’s character and actions seem to be the polar opposite of common human expectations. Think of how the Psalmists declare that God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of the widow; one who lifts up those who are bowed down and a protector of the immigrants/strangers. [Ps 68.5 & 146.8-9] Recall too God’s promise in Revelation 21 that when the new heaven and earth are established there will be an end to death and mourning and crying and pain will be no more. [Rev 21.4]
So, God does not will poverty, hunger, rejection and suffering. In fact, God has a deep and special concern for those who are so afflicted. The late theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez has observed, “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God’s agapeic love.” [quoted in R. Allen Culpepper, “Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, p. 145]
With this active, generous, creative Divine love in mind, UCC pastor Ed Horstmann suggests that, “Underneath these words [of blessing, Jesus] is saying [to the poor and rejected people], You are beloved. The world may not see you that way, but I do. And I will treat you accordingly.” [Ed Horstmann, “In the Lectionary: Feb. 16, Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany: Luke 6.17-26,” The Christian Century, February 2025, Vol. 142, No. 2, p. 26]
So, we see that blessedness is not so much about what you have got; it’s about who you know and how you know them. Blessedness is about the quality of relationships you’re in. To be blessed is to be in a “positive” or “favorable” [“Blessed,” Anchor Bible Dictionary] relationship with the one who blesses. Specifically in our scripture, blessedness is determined by being in a favorable relationship with God whose presence, love and care are embodied in Jesus. Yes, there are benefits to being in such a relationship, but it is the relationship, not the benefits, which is the important thing. Benefits are merely a result of the relationship.
I think this is why the poor—by which Luke means all who are economically deprived, powerless or outcast—are blessed. Unencumbered by great wealth or social status, the poor are more likely to be aware of their physical and spiritual need for God. Their emptiness makes them more likely to be open to the grace of God, who is deeply concerned with their plight and merciful to all regardless of status or merit. This may help explain why, back in college when I went to Managua, Nicaragua on a mission trip, I saw such an abundance of joy in the people gathered in a little church with a dirt floor in a terribly impoverished barrio. The people had nothing to rely on but God, nothing to disguise their need, nothing else with which to try and fill that God-shaped hole which we all have in our heart. [Baron F. von Hugel] They had experienced God’s love and knew a joy which no possessions or human flattery can bring. In spite of their physical poverty, they were spiritually rich. In the midst of their emptiness, their hearts were full. They were truly blessed.
But the rich, the successful, the respected and well-to-do, Jesus warns that they are not in such a blessed relationship, not because God does not desire it, but because they have cut themselves off from God and placed their trust elsewhere. In the words of Jeremiah, they have placed their “trust in mere mortals and make flesh their strength, [thus, their] hearts turn away from the Lord.” [17.5]
They trust in money, possessions, security, degrees, power and influence, but not in God. They seek joy and meaning in the latest technology, a home in the right neighborhood, climbing the corporate ladder, wearing the latest fashions, and owning the right type of car, instead of seeking joy by knowing and serving God and loving their neighbors. All too often they are quite happy with the status quo, because, they are afraid of losing what they have. Or they think they are doing very well, thank you very much, and thus have no desire to hear any talk about a Kingdom of God or even an imperfect earthly facsimile in which there is fair housing, equal access to medical care, fair and sufficient wages, “three meals a day for [everyone’s] bodies, education and culture for [all] their minds, and dignity, equality and justice for their spirits.” [MLK, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech]
There is something insidious about our human desire for wealth which takes over our lives and cuts us off from God and our fellow humans. Our lust to acquire money and power, and our fierce desire to keep it once we’ve got it, cuts us off from the God’s transforming power, from the Spirit’s efforts to sanctify us, to make us holy. As Paul Tillich once observed, “The Woes are promised today to all of us who are well off, respected, and secure, not simply because we have such security and respect, but because it inevitably binds us, with an almost irresistible power, to this eon, to things as they are.” [Shaking the Foundations, 26-27]
Thus, we are caught up in ourselves, concerned with our own “getting and spending,” [Wordsworth, “The World Is too Much with Us”] and unable to receive God’s love or to love God and other people as we should. To paraphrase Wordsworth, because the world is too much with us—because we have become focused on material things and society’s definitions of success and happiness—we have given our hearts away to things that can’t truly satisfy. It is “a sorid boon:” our joy is temporary and our sense of meaning and purpose is illusory. Our fullness is in fact a profound emptiness. We, like the honey ants, are stuck—spiritually immobilized by the very weight of our own fullness, and thus cut off from the life of true joy and deep meaning. For, what we have failed to realize, is that the opposite of poverty is not wealth or property or power or security. The opposite of poverty is community: [Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, Fortress Press: 1997, p. 109 and more recently The Spirit of Hope: Theology for a World in Peril, WJK, 2019, p. 10] the community of love for which God has made us, the community of compassion to which Christ calls us, the community of justice and thriving for which the Holy Spirit empowers and inspires us to work.
It is difficult to overcome our society’s addiction to wealth and possession, to move beyond the all too human desires for security, power and acceptance. But there is hope, for “with God, all things are possible.” [Matt. 19.26; Luke 18.27] Remember Zacchaeus? [Luke 19.1-10] He was a rich and dishonest tax collector. But then he had an encounter with Jesus. Jesus invited himself over for dinner and Zacchaeus was transformed! He voluntarily declared that he would give half of his possessions to the poor and repay with interest anyone he had cheated. In Jesus, he encountered God and was freed from his addiction to wealth. He discovered that his fullness was actually emptiness and that true fullness is found in the love of God and in compassion for and community with others.
Some of you, no doubt, recall the story of Millard Fuller. Fuller was a success in business and had become incredibly wealthy, but his absorption with work and wealth was destroying his marriage. When his wife Linda came to him in November of 1965 and told him she was leaving, he was shocked. He had been too busy, too distracted to realize their relationship was unraveling. Hoping to find a way to reconcile, Millard and Linda set off on a trip to Florida. They never got there. You see, on the way they stopped to visit friends who had moved to Baptist minister Clarence Jordan’s Koinonia Farm, a community inspired by the picture of the early church found in Acts chapters 2 & 4. Millard was introduced to Jordan, and it proved to be a life changing relationship. Jordan diagnosed Fuller as a “money-ac,” a money addict. When Fuller spoke of the great weight he felt upon his chest, Jordan told him, “a million dollars can weigh awfully heavy on a man.” Through Bible study, worship, prayer, participation in the community and interaction with Jordan, Fuller was cured of his addiction to money. He and Linda dedicated themselves to a life of Christian service, which meant giving up the high paying job and learning to live on less as he sought to love God and neighbor more. Eventually, this led him to found Habitat for Humanity. Fuller went from being a “money-ac,” to helping poor persons around the globe have adequate, livable housing. [based on James Howell’s telling of the story in Servants,Misfits and Martyrs, 48-49]
At a Habitat rally in Cookesville, TN some years ago, Fuller declared that he had derived far greater fulfillment from working alongside poor folks to build houses than he ever got from making millions of dollars. He then said, “The happiest, most satisfied and most fulfilled people I know are concerned about something bigger than themselves.” [Martin Thielen, “What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?” A Guide to What Matters Most, p. 102] By God’s grace, Millard Fuller and moved from the fullness of wealth that is actually profound emptiness, to the fullness of heart that comes when we empty ourselves by giving and serving out of love for God and other people.
This is the Good News of Jesus’ paradoxical, befuddling Beatitudes and Woes: God is at work on behalf of those of us who are poor and suffering and weeping so that, even now, we may know the fullness and the joy of God’s Kingdom. And God is able to redeem and transform those of us who have placed our trust in money or possessions or reputation or human power. God can give even us that blessed fullness that is love and community so that we may be “like a tree planted by water,” nurtured by the stream of God’s grace and goodness and bearing the fruit of love in our lives. Amen.