Waste Not? Want Not?

Waste not, want not. So says the eighteenth-century aphorism.

Implied is a warning against the desperation of neediness. Presupposed is a sense of scarcity and a fear that there won’t be enough. Many of our families and our church institutions have lived by this adage for multiple generations.

What does Jesus have to say about wasting or wanting?

On Palm Sunday, we listen to the story of his Passion (Mark 14:1-72), beginning at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper. A woman enters with an alabaster jar full of costly nard, breaks the jar, and pours the contents over his head.

Her extravagance elicits outrage from several of the guests “Why this waste of perfumed oil? It could have been sold for more than 300 denarii! The money could have been given to the poor!”

They make a fair point. One denarius was the daily wage for a laborer. Multiplied by 300, we’re talking about somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 by today’s standards.

Yet Jesus praises the woman for lavishing this gift upon him. The poor will always be with us. Jesus will not. She has anointed him for his burial, and her good deed is to be remembered throughout the generations.

In Jesus’ view, there is a time and a place to be “wasteful” – especially when it comes to showing honor and delight to those we love. If we are dominated by a fear-based frugality, then our message to others easily becomes, “Let me calculate how much you are worth,” or “I don’t think you matter that much.”

What about “wanting”? What does Jesus have to say?  Actually, quite a lot!

When the crowds gather to hear his preaching, he begins with the Beatitudes. He invites us to experience true and unshakable blessedness by embracing poverty of spirit, mourning, and meekness. He invites us to feel the ache of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It is in the depths of our needing that we are most capable of receiving.

Jesus did not merely teach us to need and depend and receive. He modeled receptivity, as did Mary and Joseph. They went in want. They lacked basic shelter as Mary’s pregnancy came to term. They fled into Egypt as immigrants, without knowing how their necessities would be met. Jesus spent thirty of his thirty-three years in relative obscurity, engaging (it seems) in far more receptivity than sacrificial giving. Nor did he stop allowing himself to need and to receive during his brief public ministry. He willingly received kindness and care from others. Even when his “hour” came and he said a free and wholehearted “yes” to sacrificing everything, he lodged in Bethany with his good friends.

“Waste not, want not” contains a small amount of wisdom, but ultimately dehumanizes. It teaches us to be terrified of going in want, of needing, of depending, of receiving – in stark contrast to the teaching and example of Jesus.

Can we be curious about where this attitude comes from?

I see it as a survivor mentality, including an inner vow (“I will never go in want again!”). Doing what it takes to survive is great in a desperate situation. If you’re stranded on a ship for months, “waste not, want not” is an outstanding motto. But when that survivor mentality becomes enfleshed in everyday life, it becomes a burden.

I think of my childhood, and pleasant-enough visits to my great grandmother on my stepdad’s side. The house was, shall we say, “cozy.” Stuff piled everywhere. Like so many, she was a survivor of the Great Depression, determined never to go in need again. When she passed, my stepdad and his sisters spent many hours cleaning out the clutter. He joked about the piles of used paper cups from McDonald’s. You just don’t know when you might need them again. Waste not, want not.

He joked, but he lived by the same mentality. Shortly after her death, he needed to move his tools out of her garage. So, we tore down our one-stall garage and built a five-stall. He cleverly salvaged the old door, turning it into a back entrance.

The new garage was huge, but we never parked cars in it.

It was way too full of stuff. Some of the things (his tools) were quite valuable.  Much of it was, well, less valuable. When my stepdad passed in 2010, my sister and I spent a few days toiling to clear out the garage. We didn’t find any paper cups, but we sure got rid of stuff. It was a great moment of triumph when we announced to our mom that she could start parking her car there.

As we cleared out the junk, I made trip after trip to the curb. I discovered the power of another proverb, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Between trips to the curb, all had magically disappeared – into someone else’s five-stall garage, apparently?

Cluttered garages and homes can be joked about – and we’ve all seen them. They range from mildly annoying to utterly disgusting and dangerous. The deeper question here is around the survivor vow that gets taken amidst heartache: Never again!

Never what, exactly? That’s the problem with vows made out of fear. Over time, they cut us off from really great things: in this case, from the capacity to receive and give love in healthy community, to flourish, and to experience abundance together.

Survivor vows are not merely individual – they entrench themselves in the collective: families, churches, schools, entire dioceses. Many of our institutions are darkened by a cloud of fearful protectiveness – and then lament that membership is so low. In one of my previous parishes, I repeatedly turned on lights that others had shut off. I was expecting first-time guests, and (with sensitivity) expecting them to be nervous. I felt like it would be kind to have them enter a warm and inviting space, rather than snake their way around dark corners. There were some in the parish who couldn’t handle such extravagance, whispered about my wastefulness, and shut the lights back off the moment I wasn’t looking.

More recently, I heard about “Plategate.” A priest friend was hosting with pizza after Masses in his church. He had the gall to use the paper plates stored by some of the church ladies. They made a point of hiding those before the next Mass. So he purchased his own plates. They proceeded to hide those. I imagine there are hundreds of priests nationwide who have their own versions of “Plategate” as they try to invite renewal in their churches.

Fear is a normal human emotion. But when fear of that happening again takes over and hops into the driver’s seat, we stifle the capacity to receive, to grow, and to bear fruit. We wind up embodying the parable of the talents, living like the fearful servant who buries his gift in the ground (Matthew 25:14-30). We cut off all vulnerability and risk, and in the process stifle any real growth or fruitfulness for the sake of the Kingdom. That choking off affects not just us, but all of our relationships.

Our God is not a God of scarcity but of abundance. When we allow ourselves to be secure in his love, we can feel confident and creative. We can collaborate and innovate. We can go beyond the math of adding or subtracting, and discover the power of multiplication – something Jesus often talked about and did.

Our God is first and foremost a God of relationship. God is an eternal communion of persons. Jesus is eternally “from the Father.” Who he is and what he has are the fruit of receiving. He desires to share the same abundance with us. He invites us to become truly blessed precisely by learning how to desire, to want, and to need.

During Holy Week, we will ponder just how much Jesus embraced our human condition of wanting and needing. I invite each of us to be curious about the ways we resist that level of vulnerability, and how he might be inviting us to conversion.

Hoarding vs. Hope

Advent is a season of hope. During these darkest days of year, we watch and wait.

In our human experience of suffering, we abide and keep a sober vigil. In moments of powerlessness, frustration, anguish, agony, or grief, we cry out for a redeemer and savior. We feel the depths of our emptiness and need, and we hope. We feel the ache acutely and cry out with heartfelt longing, Come, Lord Jesus!!

That’s the ideal, anyway. But let’s face it, hoarding can feel safer and easier than hoping.

At the mention of “hoarding,” we immediately visualize particular people, places, or things. I’m not talking about the medically diagnosable condition of hoarding. I am using the word in a broader, all-inclusive sense.

Most of us are hoarders in one way or another. It’s something we do to protect ourselves against feeling powerless, or against feeling grief. It gives us a sense of power. It props up the illusion of being in control.

Sometimes we hoard physical objects. We cling to what we no longer need; we clutter our living space. Throwing things away means feeling grief and loss. It is a death, and we don’t want to die. Keeping an open and inviting living space feels naked and vulnerable. We don’t like feeling powerless.

But we also hoard by cluttering our schedules with unnecessary commitments. We feel less like a failure because of the things we say “yes” to – even though we inwardly resent all the things we “have to” do. We avoid the pain of conflict and live with the clutter and chaos of too many commitments.

We hoard by only tackling the tasks we feel confident about, while repeatedly avoiding the ones that would risk failure or expose our weakness. We may even push those undesirable tasks onto others, shifting the blame onto them, or criticizing the failure of their valiant attempts.

We hoard when we hold onto comfort and ease, resisting needed changes. We want our churches to feel familiar to us, to be our own little nest. First-time visitors may feel uncertain, ashamed, or intimidated. We wouldn’t know, because we talk to the same familiar people, ignoring what others are needing or feeling.

We hoard when we suffer in silence rather than humbly reaching out for help and risking rejection. We cling to others, expecting them to meet our needs without actually asking. We do things for them in “service,” calculating that now they have to give us something in return. If I am entitled, then no one can reject me, right? In all these behaviors, we might even style ourselves a “martyr,” but the real martyrdom is happening in the people around us who have to put up with our behaviors!

We hoard with our addictive behaviors. We soothe ourselves with our screens, with our sugar, or perhaps even with impulsive cleaning and organizing – which may seem the opposite of hoarding. But it depends on why we are doing it. Is it a kindness to self and others, or is it avoiding and numbing what I don’t want to face or feel?

We hoard when we surround ourselves with busyness, noise, or talking. We resist silence and stillness. We cannot stand to slow down and actually feel our loneliness, our grief, or our anger. We would rather pretend they are not there.

But then how can we hope?

Every human heart holds the capacity to hope. As Augustine of Hippo said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Within each of us is an insatiable desire, an intense longing for the living God. But will we allow ourselves to feel it?

Hope can really hurt. To hope is to desire and not yet possess. That means that hope will include suffering. Hope will include grief. Hope will include vulnerability, even feeling powerless. We don’t like those experiences. And we hate to wait!

Thankfully, God is a good Father who delights in us as his children. He sees our struggles and loves us as we are. He knows our tendency to hoard; he gazes lovingly at us even as we repeatedly and relentlessly protect ourselves against him. We are so often like the dog hiding his head under the blanket. God smiles, and calls us by name.

Yet God honors our freedom. He desires us to desire him. He will not force or coerce. Like a lover, he pursues and woos us. He gently prods us, inviting us to admit how naked, blind, and miserable we actually are (cf. Revelation 3:14-20). We desperately need Jesus, but we do not like to feel the depths of our need.

Jesus’ coming brings true comfort, lasting peace, and abundant joy. Even in this world, he helps us to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. He blesses us with an abundance of love. Our hoarding hearts keep crying out, “It won’t be enough!!” and Jesus keeps assuring us, “My grace is enough for you; my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Will we surrender our supposed control? Will we set aside our pseudo-comforts? Will we allow ourselves to grieve and mourn? Will we remember that we have here no lasting city, that we are pilgrims passing through? Will we abide in hope?

Come, Lord Jesus!!

en_USEnglish
en_USEnglish