“As having nothing
and yet possessing everything.”
This is how Paul concludes
the series of paradoxes
by which he describes to the Corinthians
his ministry as God’s servant,
an “ambassador for Christ”
entreating them to be reconciled to God.
Having lost all to afflictions, hardships, calamities,
beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, sleepless nights, and hunger,
he is the possessor of purity,
knowledge, patience, kindness,
holiness of spirit, genuine love,
truthful speech, and the power of God.
and yet possessing everything.”
This is how Paul concludes
the series of paradoxes
by which he describes to the Corinthians
his ministry as God’s servant,
an “ambassador for Christ”
entreating them to be reconciled to God.
Having lost all to afflictions, hardships, calamities,
beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, sleepless nights, and hunger,
he is the possessor of purity,
knowledge, patience, kindness,
holiness of spirit, genuine love,
truthful speech, and the power of God.
What about us?
Can our lives as Christ’s servants
be described as having nothing
and yet possessing everything?
There is, of course, a problem.
The problem is that we have lots of stuff.
Indeed, we might say that we have everything
yet possess nothing;
because we ourselves are possessed
by all the stuff we have.
And we are possessed by the stuff we have
because we don’t realize that in having this stuff
we don’t really possess anything,
much less everything.
For the stuff we have is dust
and to dust it shall return.
Many, many years ago,
when I was a college student,
I lived in the home of a professor
who, whenever he acquired something new,
liked to joke that the worship of stuff
was his true religion:
he was, he said, a “stuffist.”
He was actually a Quaker,
and a pretty serious one,
but he was self-aware enough to realize
that he was sometimes more driven
by his desire to collect art and music and books
than he was by his spiritual convictions.
Of course, there is nothing wrong
with art and music and books,
except that, measured against
the scale of cosmic history—
not to mention eternity—
they last only an instant.
They are made from dust
and to dust they shall return.
Even if we had everything,
we would still possess nothing,
because time inexorably
pulls our stuff from our grasp.
But we like to hide from ourselves
this fact about the stuff we have.
We like to hide this fact from ourselves
because what is true of our stuff
is also true of us.
We are dust
and to dust we shall return.
On NASA’s astrobiology website,
in a lesson plan on matter
for first and second graders,
the punchline is the declaration,
“We’re all made of the stuff from stars!”—
complete with an enthusiastic
exclamation point
at the end.
True.
As Joni Mitchell sang years ago,
“we are stardust, we are golden.”
But despite enthusiastic punctuation
or beautiful melodies,
such declarations cannot quite conjure away
the nagging voice that reminds us
that, as impressive as they may be—
and, make no mistake,
stars are extremely impressive—
they will go cold, or flare out.
And the stars’ fate is our fate:
we too, as impressive as we may be,
as much stuff as we may acquire,
will go cold,
or flare out.
Jesus says, “where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.”
It’s a basic principle of the Hebrew Prophets
that you become like what you worship.
If you worship dead idols,
then you yourself become spiritually dead.
If you hold as your treasure those things
that moth and rust consume
then you too will be consumed,
will return to the dust.
But you don’t need to wait for death
for this to happen.
We feel even in our present life the effects
of joining our hearts to earthly treasure,
as we try to convince ourselves
that we can possess our stuff securely
if only we can grasp it tightly enough,
if only we can keep at bay anyone
who might take it from our grasp.
So we draw boundaries around ourselves,
and around our families and nations,
borders secure enough to keep our stuff safe
and to keep out the moth and the rust,
the needy neighbor and the threatening stranger.
And locked within those borders
we live in an isolation that is already
a kind of death of the spirit,
the loneliness of oblivion.
As Pope Leo said
in his homily this morning in Rome:
“Today...we perceive
in the ashes imposed on us
the weight of a world that is ablaze,
of entire cities destroyed by war.
This is also reflected in the ashes
of international law
and justice among peoples,
the ashes of entire ecosystems
and harmony among peoples,
the ashes of critical thinking
and ancient local wisdom,
the ashes of that sense of the sacred
that dwells in every creature.”
And so the Church gives us
this season of Lent
to remind us of the truth
that we have nothing,
and to give us the hope
that we can possess everything.
The Church tells us the truth:
of yourself you have nothing
that will not pass away;
of yourself you are nothing
that will not pass away;
of yourself you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
But this bad news is simply
the prelude to the good news:
if you worship not the dead stuff of idols
but worship instead the living God,
then you will live as God lives;
if you seek not
corruptible treasure on earth
but the reign of God and his righteousness,
then you will have treasure in heaven.
If you can learn to see that,
however much stuff you own,
you actually have nothing,
then you can possess everything,
in this life and in the life to come.
this season of Lent
to remind us of the truth
that we have nothing,
and to give us the hope
that we can possess everything.
The Church tells us the truth:
of yourself you have nothing
that will not pass away;
of yourself you are nothing
that will not pass away;
of yourself you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
But this bad news is simply
the prelude to the good news:
if you worship not the dead stuff of idols
but worship instead the living God,
then you will live as God lives;
if you seek not
corruptible treasure on earth
but the reign of God and his righteousness,
then you will have treasure in heaven.
If you can learn to see that,
however much stuff you own,
you actually have nothing,
then you can possess everything,
in this life and in the life to come.
We might think of the traditional Lenten practices
of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
as the path we follow in coming to this realization.
We must pray,
not in the performative way
that Jesus condemns,
but as a way of entering into
what St. Catherine of Siena calls
“the cell of self-knowledge”:
the knowledge that God is the one who is
and we are the ones who are not,
the knowledge that we are simply nothingness
that God has loved into existence,
and that separated from that love
we will fall back into nothingness.
We must pray in order to know God,
and so know ourselves as beloved dust.
We must fast,
not in the ostentatious way
that Jesus condemns,
but as a way of moving
the self-knowledge we gain in prayer
out of our hearts and into our flesh,
of feeling in our bones that we are dust
and of cultivating in a practical way
a detachment from the stuff
that possesses us,
and which demands our constant service
to protect it from moth and rust,
from needy neighbors and threatening strangers.
We must fast in order to erase
the protective borders we draw
not only between ourselves and other people,
but between ourselves and God.
We must give alms,
not in the self-congratulatory way
that Jesus condemns,
but in the freedom and joy that are found
from knowing ourselves to be dust
that is held in life by love divine,
from possessing that life so securely
that we can tear down the borders we erect
to secure our stuff.
We must give alms as the outward and visible sign
of the inward and spiritual grace
of being called by God to be ambassadors of Christ
in whom we have been reconciled.
Let us pray that God will use this season
to draw us more closely to God and to each other,
to help us to know that we are beloved dust,
so that we who have nothing
might possess everything,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
to draw us more closely to God and to each other,
to help us to know that we are beloved dust,
so that we who have nothing
might possess everything,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
