Hollow or Full?

There are conditioned problems, such as loss of job, recovering from a tornado, or bad relationships...problems which can be solved by altering the conditions that brought them about.

Thus we can try for a new job, rebuild a house or business, try to establish a better relationship, etc.

But there is another sort of problem, unconditioned ones, brought about by the very nature of our lives as human beings living under the threat of death.

These problems are not fixable by band-aides of any sort.

Unconditioned problems need unconditioned answers.

The confusion arises when we try to give conditioned answers to unconditioned problems.

To the question “What is the meaning of life?” one cannot respond “You need to go and get an X-ray.?”

Taking care of one's health is a much needed activity, but it does not answer the question about the meaning of life.

The lessons this day are all dealing with those deep-down, unconditioned questions about our status as persons and the ways in which God is determined to make sense of them all.

Notice that I didn't say how we make sense of them, but rather, how God makes sense of them, and how he lets us in on that sense of things.

What started me thinking about this was a line from Richard Hoeffler where he says that without this sense of things being given from outside of us, not only is our life empty and meaningless, but we are empty within ourselves, hollow people, only a shell of what we should be.

Hollow people...what a stark image.

Hollow people...like a hollow tree, ready to be brought down by a storm.

Hollow people...we know some, and perhaps each of us has felt that way at one time or another.

The Hollow Men is the title of a poem by T. S. Eliot that begins this way:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men, leaning together,

Headpiece stuffed with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when we whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom

Remember us – if at all- not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As he hollow men

The stuffed men.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom.

Hollow people, scarecrows that breathe but do not live.

It is a grim picture, but oh, so true.

It is true first of all on a purely human level.

There is a story told about Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who lived in a 58-room mansion on Fifth Avenue in NYC.

One day she wrote to a friend: “Yesterday I was so lonely.

I spent the entire day alone in the house.”

While she was writing, there were a total of 17 servants active and busily at work in the house while she was complaining about being alone.

We need to explore one step deeper than this kind of loneliness, however.

We need to speak of the kind of loneliness which recognizes that to be human is to be a profoundly lonely creature,

aware of many things which we are not,

aware of the badly damaged relationships with the God who has made us.

The scientists and philosophers try so hard, but they fail to make the connections.

Toward the end of his long life, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell lamented that he had not been able to find any substantial truth, despite all of his years of hard thinking.

He had not found God, or “Truth” with a capital “T”.

Nor will we.

The hollow people.

The only way in which this hollowness is filled,

the only way that meaning is grasped, is by a gift from God in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the first lesson today we hear how Paul tried to get this across to the well-educated ones in Athens.

These people were well-skilled in the disciplines of thinking and argumentation.

They were very religious.

They made statues and worshiped all sorts of gods, to cover all of the possibilities they could imagine.

Just in case they had left out anyone, they made a statue to the “unknown god.”

Very thorough, very human!

They were hedging their bets.

They were not sure that they had any final word from their gods of stone and wood...no word that they were sure would endure, and thus the statue to the god we would name “Whatever.”

Paul seizes this and says that what they have not been able to comprehend, what they had not been able to hope, has already happened.

There has been a word spoken which shall endure,

one which has all the conditions answered, all the barriers crossed, to which there will be no exceptions.

This is the word which the philosophers of ancient times and still today search in vain.

This is the final word about the worth and value of each person, and all of life.

When God says in Jesus, “I will come to you.” and “the Spirit of truth dwells with you.”, something is different in the world, something basic has changed.

Finally we have an unconditioned answer to our unconditioned questions.

Finally we have an answer with no strings attached, nothing that ends with the line: ...;”now this is yours, except that you have to....” (fill in the blank.)

Only the one who has lived through it all and has conquered everything can say a word that will matter for ever.

So when Jesus says something, it is a word which should command our immediate and full attention.

We are not empty people who are breathing but not sure why.

we are not busy here at church and throughout the community just because we can't think of anything else to do.

we are busy because the needs of our neighbors are real...the list of earthquake, fire, flood and tornado- stricken areas seems to grow longer every day, (and we had our own tornado scare the other day!);

and we are also busy because a true and lasting hope has been planted in us.

The Spirit of the Lord will be with us, the Word says.

This Spirit will be present at all times.

The Holy Spirit of the Lord God will be with us not only at the good times, the easy times, but also at the difficult times, the angry times, and the times that we are frightened or ill at ease.

Now we know this Spirit only in part, but when God brings his creating activity to a close, he will be fully known.

The hollow people, the straw people, have no effective voice, do they?

The scarecrow can only sadly flap about in the breeze, being moved by the wind which they cannot see or understand.

For us, God, says, things are to be different.

There is hope, just a bit of understanding, and there is confidence that God will do as he promises with us.

Even when we feel worthless, even when we are overwhelmed by terrible things such as the tornado in Missouri this week, God in his love will not let us go.

What a joy and wonder!

Where once we were empty tossed about by circumstances and conditions, now we are full of a living hope that is ready to spill out in what we say and do.

And it has been that way ever since Jesus' resurrection.

It is because of that hope that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was able to minister to his jailers as well as his fellow prisoners.

It is because of that hope that it is regularly the church people who are first on the scene to help when disasters strike most anywhere.

It is because of that hope that we bother to assist in difficult circumstances through Family Promise or a dozen other ways.

It is because of that hope that we can take the risk of starting a truly significant conversation with a friend or neighbor about one of those unconditioned questions.

It is because of that hope that we can tackle one of the conditioned questions too; we may not have the time or energy to travel to Missouri or one of the other disaster sites, but we may be able to give a contribution to “Domestic Disaster Response”

It is because of that hope that we are not hollow people, breathing but not living.

Instead, we are invited to recognize God's gifts that fill us, and the Holy Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ that enlivens us and makes us ready to give conditioned answers to conditioned questions in our various situations, and to propose unconditioned answers to unconditioned questions about meaning and purpose.

It sounds big, and important, ...and it is!

And we are bid to do it...

...In the name of Christ Jesus. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.