Emptiness Breeds Hope
Judges 13:2-7, 24-25
Luke 1:5-25
Ancient peoples valued childbearing as a sign of fruitfulness and blessing. People devoted themselves to gods and goddesses of fertility to assure abundant crops, many children, and plentiful resources.
While the Hebrew people did not have deities who oversaw fertility, they were continually tempted to give homage to the fertility gods and goddesses of other nations. Infertility, in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, was a state of dishonor.
In fact, the prevalent theological understanding in both testaments took an extreme view of childlessness. Having no children signaled God's curse and was seen as God's punishment for something the woman or a family member had done. To live a life of barrenness was a harsh sentence that meant ostracism and reduced standing in the community.
Yet, scripture also contains a rich history of women in Israel who were barren for long periods of time before God intervened to give them children (Sarah, Hannah, among others). In many instances, these children became important leaders in Israel.
Today's Old and New Testament readings tell two of these stories.
Judges 13 tells the story of Samson, born to Manoah and his wife who had been childless. "Barren" typically describes a woman like Mrs. Manoah in scripture. Her womb was empty, in other words. But God intervened and gave them Samson, a child they specially dedicated to God as a Nazirite. Samson would grow to become an Israelite hero.
Luke tells the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah, childless and advanced in years. Luke is careful to line out for his readers that both Elizabeth and Zechariah remained faithful to God despite their "empty" condition -- which their community likely viewed as God's curse -- even while they continued living in hope.
God's intervention in Elizabeth and Zechariah leads to the birth of John the Baptist, who we have met already this Advent.
The stories stand against the notion that childlessness is curse, and against a fated understanding of life's unfolding. God is in control of history . . . not just the world's history, but also the history of you and me. We are not subject to the whims of human initiative or efforts to control life by means that make sense to us.
The stories also suggest that God values emptiness, and the rest of scripture validates this truth. The one who is empty lives in hope, open to God's filling. About this hope that arises from emptiness, Thomas Merton said:
Supernatural hope is the virtue that strips us of all things in order to give us possession of all things. We do not hope for what we have. Therefore, to live in hope is to live in poverty, having nothing. And yet, if we abandon ourselves to the economy of Divine Providence, we have everything we hope for.
[Merton, No Man Is an Island, pp. 14-15]
For Reflection:
Reflect on some way you feel empty today. In what way are you "barren"? Perhaps you are barren of energy . . . empty of creativity . . . drained of love . . . peace is gone . . . missing the company of a person who is far away.
Today's meditation suggests that emptiness is the beginning of hope. Our poverty feeds hope in God and prepares us inwardly to receive the whatever-may-come of God without controlling what the whatever-may-come looks like.
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