[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #546, Lent 3, 3/11/07

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Lent 3, March 11, 2007

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
I Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

THE EMPTY TANK

Human hunger runs deep.  We are the only creatures with eating 
disorders.  We eat right past full because "full" doesn't mean 
fulfilled.  Everything we do runs to excess because the fill-gauge is 
attached to another tank, not the one we are filling.  Isaiah promises 
food, but the way he talks about food tells us that it will fill the 
other tank, the one that is always registering empty.  The Psalmist 
talks about the soul thirsting and the flesh fainting not for water and 
food but for God.  Fill the first tank as one may, the other remains 
empty.  Paul reminds the Corinthians that the confusion between 
hungers, between empty tanks,has led to the demise of God's people in 
the past and can bring his readers down too.  Jesus shocks us with the 
idea that God might be hungry too, hungry for repentance, our 
repentance, (hungry, if only for our sakes).

Our country is populated with top leaders who apparently try to fill 
their insatiable tanks at the public pump.  Is this a threat to their 
service to the country, or is it just the nature of business and 
politics?  If I am right about the gauge actually being connected to 
another tank, one that doesn't get fed regardless of how full the first 
tank becomes, then it is a problem in proportion to their power.  Who 
knows what the "empty" reading will require at the expense of the 
country?  Wise decisions are made on a full tank; the other tank, that 
is. I used to operate as if the church could and should fill my other 
tank, but found that the response to my sermons could never be 
enthusiastic enough, worship attendance never high enough and finances 
never secure enough for that.  I have concluded that the church, though 
important to my sense of well being, can never fill that other tank.  I 
will never be the pastor I am called to be until I repent of such 
expectations and let God fill that tank.  Unless I do, I will always 
feel empty and anxious as a pastoral.

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no 
money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and 
without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not 
bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"  (Isaiah 55:1-2)

This tank lies buried within us reading "empty" while we feed the 
obvious tank full to overflowing.  Only repentance can uncover the 
access to this buried tank.  Only with the recognition that we are 
dependent on God to fill it will it ever be filled.  We have hidden its 
opening beneath heaps of denial.  Determined to fill ourselves, we have 
obscured the only prospect for being truly full.  But, the gage, ever 
connected to the other tank, continually registers "empty" despite 
every effort.

What is a "full tank" to a person killed in the service of worship, or 
one hit by a falling tower?  What is this warning: " ... unless you 
repent, you will all perish just as they did."?   Jesus seems to blur 
the cause and effect relationship between sin and disaster.  Then he 
connects the two again with his warning.  Disaster finally arrives for 
voracious, empty people.  The two attract each other.  Likewise, 
disaster can reach out and include those who repent, those who open 
themselves to God's filling, but their death is not the same disaster.  
They die in the Lord and to the Lord.  Death ends our ability to fill 
ourselves, but it doesn't change God's ability to fill us.


May these thoughts strengthen you.

An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor
(an e-mail service)

[See Web Page address below for a Children’s Message coordinated with 
these lections.]

http://www.webspawner.com/users/ChildPage/

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