Emptiness and Abundance
Fifth Sunday in Lent
I just recently became acquainted with the art of a Franco-Italian sculptor named Bruno Catalano. After exploring what Catalano is able to do with bronze, I can safely say that I’ve never seen anything quite like his works. Particularly compelling are the thirty or so pieces displayed in a recent exhibition called “The Travelers.” Like most of Catalano’s work, these sculptures are as much about how they engage empty space as how they fill that space. While the technical skill involved in creating these fascinating works is intriguing, ultimately these sculptures are less about what we see when we look at them and more about what we don’t see. As one reviewer describes the collection, “Each bronze sculpture is characterized by the incompleteness of the central part of their bodies.” Catalano himself asserts that these pieces “reflect the relationship between completeness and emptiness that has distinguished the large part of the last century.”
To put it most simply, the people Catalano depicts, while recognizably human, are empty. They seem to be disappearing before our eyes, swallowed up by the world around them. Furthermore, each of these thirty sculpted characters holds a piece of luggage, demonstrating that they are, as the title of the collection indicates, travelers. When viewed through this lens—the traveling, the baggage they carry—the emptiness of these figures reflects back to us and reveals to us our own condition. With visual irony, these works communicate to us the reality that we can’t escape, the reality that the more we accumulate, the more we carry, the more we try to lug around as we make our way through this world, the emptier we feel.
Emptiness, as Catalano asserts both in his bronze works and in his reflection on them, is so much a part of our human condition, perhaps especially but by no means exclusively within the modern world. There are so many reasons why emptiness might afflict us. Some of us have been traumatized by past events, memories of suffering that eat away at us from the inside until we feel less than human, or at least less than whole. For others, regrets about what we have done to others, the ways we have hurt those around us, either through our action or our inaction, take a toll. We dwell on these regrets without truly confessing them or confronting them, in ways that hollow us out. Maybe it’s empty pursuits of pleasure or power, our ambitions and strivings for what we think will fulfill us but ultimately frustrate and disappoint, that create and sustain this emptiness within us. Whatever the reason, this burden of emptiness paradoxically and painfully weighs us down.
Into this emptiness, the word of God speaks, through his prophets and apostles, in ways that challenge us to confront our condition and also to make room for God to heal us. Both Isaiah and the Psalmist speak of a God who restores and renews, a God who, in the face of our failings, in the aftermath of failed conquests and extinguished ambitions, even in the wake of crushing defeat and exile, does a new thing. A God who makes a way, who makes a way in the wilderness for springs to bubble up, to fill us, to give us life and to restore our joy. And God who forms us for himself, shaping us in his image, filling up our emptiness and replacing it with the richness of his mercies, a God who fills our mouths with laughter and fits our tongues with shouts of joy, that we might return from our exile and emptiness, our arms filled with sheaves of an abundant harvest.
This must have been something like what Paul felt as he wrote to the Philippians, when he reckoned with the emptiness of his former life and contrasted it with the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. All of the accolades and accomplishments he thought would fill him up are rubbish when compared to knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, becoming like Jesus in his death so that he might embrace the abundance of life that Jesus makes possible.
When we turn to the Gospel, likewise, we see God at work to fill up what is empty, not just to adequacy but to overflowing and abundance. When we encounter Mary the sister of Lazarus in John chapter 11, just after her brother has died, she is a hollow shell of herself. As Jesus draws near, her sister Martha gets up to meet him, but Mary, presumably overwhelmed by her grief, can’t bring herself to leave the house until Jesus specifically asks for her. And when she, and the others in the house with her go out to see Jesus at the tomb, what they witness there changes everything. Through Jesus, the Messiah, the resurrection and the life, God does a new thing. He brings Lazarus out of the tomb. He turns the mourning of those gathered there into dancing. He turns their weeping into shouts of joy. He fills the emptiness of their grief with the abundance of his powerful grace.
When God fills us up, we are free to pour out what we have been given—in service, in worship, in love. Just as the abundance described by Isaiah or the Psalmist results in songs of joy, jubilant tributes to what God has done, Mary’s actions in John chapter 12 also come from a place of joy, of overwhelming, loving gratitude. In the face of Judas Iscariot’s protests, Jesus is quick to defend Mary, pointing to the significance of her display, a significance that can only be understood by those who understand what it is to be empty and what it is to be filled by the loving hand of a God who pours his abundant and lavish mercies, his resurrection power, even, into our lives.
Image Credit: My Modern Met
