A few years ago, a woman was in New York City on a Sunday morning and went to Riverside Church to hear William Sloan Coffin preach. When Coffin walked into the pulpit, he leaned over it and said, “Here we are again to talk about what is really going on in your soul and in mine.” That’s what I felt like we did last week as we learned how to put down the backpack of guilt and find ways to seek forgiveness in an out of control world. It was the beginning of a conversation about what was going on in your soul and in mine. And today, we have more baggage to let go of. We must put down what might be the biggest and heaviest bag of them all.
You see, this piece of luggage… according to Max Lucado, who I quoted last week and wrote a book about traveling light… this piece of luggage is a prison. He says, “Come with me to the most populated prison in the world. The facility has more inmates than bunks. More prisoners than plates. More residents than resources. Come with me to the world’s most oppressive prison. Just ask the inmates; they will tell you. They are overworked and underfed. Their walls are bare and bunks are hard. No prison is so populated, no prison so oppressive, and, what’s more no prison is so permanent. Most inmates never leave. They never escape. They never get released. They serve a life sentence in this overcrowded, under provisioned facility. The name of the prison? You’ll see it over the entrance. Rainbowed over the gate are four cast-iron letters that spell out its name: W-A-N-T. The prison of want.”
That’s a pretty heavy image, I think. But it portrays this piece of luggage, WANT, as something that is difficult to put down. It is something that we want perched on our shoulders and placed on our backs. Because we think it won’t be there forever. We think we can get rid of it if we just get that one thing, one more thing to solve all of our problems, if we get something bigger, faster, prettier, easier, thinner. No, it isn’t that much, just that one thing to make us happier – that one phone, that one house, that one car, that one job, that one partner. If we wait and get that one thing then we will be free of the prison and the bag of want won’t be as heavy as it feels right now.
Lucado goes on, “Are you in prison? You are if you feel better when you have more and worse when you have less. You are if joy is one delivery away, one transfer away, one award away, or one makeover away. If your happiness comes from something you deposit, drive, drink, or digest, then face it – you are in prison, the prison of want.” And what Lucado says about want helped me to remember all of the scripture verses in the Gospel of Luke that we have been reading on Sunday mornings and studying on Wednesday nights. Jesus was pretty clear about what weighs us down in life, the baggage of want we carry that keeps us from following him. Do you remember when he confronted the rich young ruler? This rich young ruler knew the law and knew how to please God. He only had one more thing he had to do. He had to sell everything he owned and give it to the poor. Once that one thing was done, he could follow Jesus unapologetically. But do you remember what that man did? He did nothing. He couldn’t put down the bag of want. He hung his head and went away disappointed.
We need to remember, as we clink our tin cups on the steel bars of our prisons of want, what Jesus taught us about the resources, stuff, and riches that we have. The stuff we own and have collected and have worked hard to get, all of that stuff, that stuff really isn’t ours. It’s God’s. And not only is it God’s, but we can’t take it with us when we die. When one of the wealthiest men in history, John D. Rockefeller, died, his accountant was asked, “How much did John D. leave?” The accountant’s reply? “All of it.” The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, “Naked a person comes from their mother’s womb, and as they come, so they depart.”
And not only can we not take things with us when we die, but all of that stuff, it’s also not you. Who we are has nothing to do with the things we own and the excess baggage that we carry. Who we are has nothing to do with the car we drive or the job title on our business cards. God knows our hearts and sees us for who we truly are not based on what we possess. As we look closely at ourselves and our hearts, maybe we see that the bag of want is weighing us down and is keeping us from fully following Jesus.
But you know what, Jesus understands. I think Jesus carried around the heavy bag of want too. That might be scandalous to presume, but I think he did. And he wanted for things to be different in his life. I’m sure he wanted to change the world, save the world, without having to die. If Jesus was truly the Word made flesh, then I’m sure his flesh was scared about dying, scared of the slapping of the whip and the pounding of the nails. And so, Jesus took his bag of want and hiked into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray and seek God’s will for his life because he knew his baggage was getting in the way. “Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”
Here’s what the Gospel of Luke says:
Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” [Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.] When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.”
Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, as he went off to pray and left his three closest friends sleeping nearby, wanted the cup of death to be taken from him. It seems that Jesus wanted another way and was imprisoned in the agony of God’s will – remember that he prayed so hard he sweated blood? Jesus had wants and wishes that needed to be laid at the feet of God. Jesus needed to be free of the baggage of want and to embrace the emptiness of being released from his prison. Jesus was on his way to the cross and yet, in Gethsemane, he embraced emptiness. Jesus embraced the cup given to him and accepted suffering and death, in turn, emptying himself out for our salvation.
Henri Nouwen said, “Thus the cup which Jesus was willing to drink, and which he drank until it was completely empty, became the cup of salvation. In the garden of Gethsemane, the garden of fear, Jesus’ heart cried out with the psalmist: ‘No human being can be relied on… I shall take up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.’ Drinking the cup of salvation means emptying the cup of sorrow and joy so that God can fill it with pure life.”[1]
But I wonder if that scares us? I wonder if we are still imprisoned by that one thing that we think will make us happy, but actually hinders our life. “I will be happy when… I am healed, I am promoted, I have more money, I find the right partner, I look a certain way.” What do we have loaded in our backpack of want that keeps us from following Jesus fully and from traveling light? Because, like Jesus at Gethsemane, it is time to seek God’s will and to pray that God’s will be done. And sure, like Jesus, we might ask for another path to open up and for the cup of wrath, of pride, or fear, of death, be taken from us. But, ultimately, when we empty ourselves of want, we will find fullness of love and fullness of purpose and fullness of passion. By traveling light, we become full of life.
In the writings of the prophet Isaiah, God said that God’s word would not return empty. Jesus was the incarnate Word of God, and he did not return to God empty. No, Jesus was full of the resurrection. Jesus was full of life. Jesus was full of justice. Jesus was full of love for all of humanity. Jesus knew that the mission into which he was being called would empty himself on that hill on Golgotha but would send him back to God full with the hope of the world. That was the purpose of Gethsemane. Gethsemane reminds us to empty ourselves this Lenten season.
And so, we must pass through a season of emptiness in order to find fulfillment. Is that something we are willing to do? It isn’t happiness and things being perfect that tells us who we are, it is suffering. Suffering, loneliness, heartache, show us who we are, and whose we are, and what we are willing to learn and endure. It is impossible to find resurrection and victory unless there is a cup of suffering to drink and a Gethsemane to pass through. There will be pain in the world that you will pass through. There will be suffering in the world that you will pass through. There will be heartache in the world that you will pass through. But drink that cup, church. Drink that cup. It is only by pressing grapes that we have very good wine. It is only by crushing olives that we have the beneficial oil. It is only be squeezing ourselves in suffering that we can be vessels ready to overflow in service to the Lord.
The following is from the poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, entitled “Gethsemane”:
Down shadowy lanes, across strange streams
Bridged over by our broken dreams;
Behind the misty caps of years,
Beyond the great salt fount of tears,
The garden lies. Strive as you may,
You cannot miss it in your way.
All paths that have been, or shall be,
Pass somewhere through Gethsemane.
All those who journey, soon or late,
Must pass within the garden’s gate;
Must kneel alone in darkness there,
And battle with some fierce despair.
God pity those who cannot say,
‘Not mine but thine,’ who only pray,
‘Let this cup pass,’ and cannot see
The purpose in Gethsemane.
Fellow prisoners, maybe we need to pass through Gethsemane this Lenten season. Maybe we have to be content with our broken and battered lives, praying that we can do the hard work of setting down the baggage of want and emptying ourselves. You see, Lent invites us to empty ourselves of all of the things that hinder our relationship with God. Lent invites us to empty out the negative self-talk, the animosity, and the fear, all the attitudes and actions that keep us from being full in the spirit and full of joy. Lent asks us to pray that the things we want to make our lives perfect will transform us into a desire for God and God’s people.
And so, I wonder if God is inviting us this Lenten season to empty ourselves of the baggage of want so that we might be filled with the power and purposes and passions of God. And then, when we are full with the salvation and love of God, we might overflow God’s salvation and love to the world.
Can you hear it? Can you hear the heavy bags of want hitting the floor and the cup of contentment, prayer, and purpose sloshing along the sides and overflowing? Can you hear it? Can you hear the clanking of the prison cell doors being unlocked? Can you hear the jail doors swinging open? Can you hear it?
Amen.
[1] Henri Nouwen, “Can You Drink the Cup?” p.89.