Posts Tagged: the fullness of God

“In Praise of Emptiness”

On May 12, 2019 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

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A good friend put me on to a wonderful (and free!) online resource by Richard Rohr.  You can read today’s meditation (May 12, 2019) at: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwCgfvctSpSWpqGVVcTLTPJTlbX.

In this piece, Rohr speaks of the emptiness of God.  The piece is fairly short and well written.  You should read it!  I won’t try to summarize it, but it has set me to thinking.

Being empty is not usually considered a good thing by most of us, most of the time.  However, what if it is better than we usually are inclined to think?  Sometimes, when “we’ve got nothin’,” that is precisely when good things happen.  Fullness generally isn’t very receptive.  Emptiness can be.

Notice that I said that emptiness can be receptive.  Sometimes it isn’t.  If I am empty, but I’m hiding or denying my emptiness, then I really am empty.  And my emptiness becomes a wasteland where nothing can grow for long, including me.  I become death itself.

But emptiness recognized and admitted is like a garden waiting to be planted.  We just need to be careful that we are planting good, life-affirming things in that empty garden.

Perhaps that is, at least in part, what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6, English Standard Version).  The tense of the Greek verbs translated “hunger” and “thirst” are in the present tense, which suggests ongoing, repetitive actions.  Apparently, we are blessed if we have a continual hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Note that it is not emptiness itself that is blessed, it is emptiness in search of righteousness.

But what does “righteousness” mean here?  Many of us in the Protestant tradition tend to think that every time the word “righteousness” occurs in the New Testament, it means “God’s righteousness, which was purchased at the cross for us by God’s Son, Jesus Christ.”  Such an understanding of righteousness does seem to be taught in parts of the New Testament—especially in Paul’s letters.

However, while I believe this is true, it is not the entire truth.  Righteousness also refers to a proper relationship with God that results in proper behavior.  Pennington defines righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount as follows: “In sum, I define ‘righteousness’ in Matthew as whole-person behavior that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming kingdom.”[1]

Returning to God’s emptiness for a moment, I must confess that I had never thought of God as being empty.  Quite the contrary: I had always thought of God as full, indeed, as fullness itself.

But God certainly gives.  And God gives fully.  Therefore, there is a sense in which God is always emptying himself.

Always full, and always empty!  That’s what God is and does.  That is what we also are called to be and to do.

[1] Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 91.

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