Clutter

What's up with the clutter, and where does it come from?

I mean, that's a solid question, right?  It's a solid question to ask, because it seems to plague us no matter where we are, or what we do.  We seem to have a perpetual problem with this, no matter who we are or where we're from.  And the problem with clutter is that it is things of no importance, no value, that takes over and monopolizes.  Clutter is the stuff that we voluntarily bring into our lives that takes up space, spills over the bounds that we'd set for it, and takes over. 

But the thing about clutter is that it, as said before, takes over.  It's of no value, and it gets in the way.  None of us want it, it doesn't improve anyone's life, so why is it so ubiquitous, and why oh why does it take over so harshly?  Well, these are the things we bring in, the things that we have around, that we genuinely believe are going to be of value someday.  We can't toss them out because we spent money on them, or because they may come in handy later, or because we can't just waste them.    It becomes such an issue that we are going to face, the notion that we have added a million little pieces to our lives that don't help, that don't make anything better, and that actually get in the way of us doing what we want. 

It's the lack of value that makes things into clutter.  Countertops consumed by papers, basements swarming with broken toys, bedrooms crammed with clothes that either don't fit or are out of style, this is the life that we are choosing day by day, and something that we may want to be rid of, but to do so, the first thing to confront is the person who brought all that into your home. 

Yes, the clutter is what we bring in ourselves.  We fill our houses full of tat, we cram them full of gubbins, and there's nobody else who brings that in for us.  So given that that's the case, what do we want to do about it?  Well, step one is to admit that you have a problem, as you must do with all problems.  And in this circumstance, we turn, as we often do, to St. Paul, who writes to us in his holy Epistle to the Philippians:

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake, I have suffered the loss of 

all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

and be found in him.

...One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Whatever you may think of Paul, you must admit that he has this together.  He has worked out how to cut through the spiritual clutter that he's had clogging him up for a long time.  Who was Paul, after all? A Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews, from the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, someone who had invested himself in the Hebrew ethos for a long time, and had advanced quite far in it.  However, as tends to be the case, the mark of a bright person, a smart person, a wise person, is that they can admit when they are wrong, and can make better choices in the future.

Sometimes, the best way forward is the way back.  Sometimes the best way to advance is to distance yourself from and to get rid of what has led you to this state.  Sometimes, the best way to have what you want is to get rid of what you don't.  Think of the physical clutter, and think of the kind of space it occupies in your home.  You brought it in, and you don't want it, and it stands between you and what you do want.  So why not just, you know, get rid of it?

That's what the Pharisees in the Gospel reading found so hard to do, they found it so impossible to distance themselves from their bad decisions, their ignoring of God and his messengers for so long.  You've heard people say 'I'm spiritual but not religious?' Well, these guys were religious but not spirirtual!  They were so religious that they had forgotten about God altogether, had blotted Him from their minds, and were just plain not that interested in Him, so focused were they on their own righteousness.  Every time a prophet would come from God, that prophet would have a message for the people to return to the Lord their God, to repent, to rend their hearts and not their garments, and the good people of the Old Testament would reject that message, and turn their backs on the man who would dare to tell them that they weren't perfect.  They resisted, rejected, and insisted that they were doing a great job, and don't worry about it.  And they'd added so much spiritual clutter to their lives that there was no space for God in their hearts.  And clutter it was, too.  Their own self-righteousness, their own self-worth, the layers and layers that they'd added for themselves over every surface, making sure that there was no space to be found for the Lord their God.

Jesus comes to strip the clutter away.  All that stuff that you think and believe makes you fantastic, all that stuff that you have sticking around that you sincerely believe makes you great and wonderful, all that is clutter.  It's worthless.  It is, as Paul says, rubbish.  It gets in the way. And the more of it you accumulate, the less space there is for anything else.  But the great thing about the season of Lent is that the focus on what is important sharpens.  Gone is the decor, gone is the clutter, gone is any sign of what may get in the way, and instead, all we see is the cross of Christ, looming large, and hovering over everything we do.  The Cross of Christ that, at the end, is what really matters. 

Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians that he resolved to know nothing while he was with them except Christ and him crucified.  If you will, this time, this lenten period is our time for spiritual spring cleaning, to refocus ourselves, to refine that vision, to focus on what is important, to dispense with all the rest of the spiritual clutter that we have going on, and to focus on the cross of Christ, where the work of redemption is done.  All that other stuff, it's rubbish.  Let Jesus sweep it away.  And as Lent continues, we rest not on our own righteousness, our own worthiness, our own clutter that we've added for all this time, we recognize that our hope, our salvation, rests purely on the cross of Christ.  We know nothing else save Christ and him crucified. 

The current trend in decluttering is minimalism, that is, the less you have, the less there is to clean.  In our spiritual lives, occasionally, it's good to get some minimalism in there too.  To know nothing but Christ, and him crucified.