The theme for the observance of Interdenominational Youth Week this year is “Filling the Emptiness.” Throughout America this Sunday morning, young people in all our various Protestant churches are turning their attention and focusing their thoughts on this topic: “Filling the Emptiness.”

Does it seem strange to you that our high school boys and girls in this blessed land of ours would choose or have chosen for them this slogan — “Filling the Emptiness”? America — where our children have an overabundance of food every day though 3/4ths of the rest of the young people in the world go to bed hungry every night — “Filling the Emptiness”? America — where every boy and girl has the opportunity of as much education as he will take in though throughout the rest of the world, including even Great Britain, the number one priority of need is for more adequate educational opportunities for a larger number of the population — “Filling the Emptiness”? America — where planned, wholesome, leisure time activities are offered in such an abundance by home and school and church and community to our young people that the youth of America have not enough time to take it all in — “Filling the Emptiness”? I say, does it not seem strange that our young people are choosing for their theme this year — “Filling the Emptiness”? What emptiness? Where?

And yet, Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy says: “Talk with any man, rich or poor, successful or a failure, prominent or unknown, young or old, and you will not be long in doubt as to the chief threat of our time. It is emptiness.” What emptiness?

There is a very small parable of Jesus that is ever so timely for such a people as we, pondering the interdenominational slogan for Youth Week, “Filling the Emptiness.”

An evil spirit was driven out of the personality house where he had been living. The place was swept and cleaned after his eviction, but left empty. The evil spirit wandered about looking for some new person he might spook and chanced to pass by the old residence. When he found it still unoccupied and all tidied up, he went and found seven other evil spirits more loathsome than himself, and with them entered into the empty personality house. And, said Jesus, the last state of the man was worse than the first. What does the parable of the empty house mean?

Jesus is affirming first of all that human nature, like the world of physical nature, abhors a vacuum. Emptiness cannot long be preserved anywhere. A house left empty will not remain empty. Spiders spin cobwebs in the corners. Rats and mice invade the basement and scamper across the rafters. So a human life exorcized of an evil habit, or swept clean of filthy thoughts, or its unworthy relationships evicted, is in a dangerous state so long as it remains empty.

These human personalities of ours are houses that must be — yea, will be, inhabited by some tenant or another. If a more desirable one is not invited in, a less desirable one will take up his residence whether or not. We are such creatures as must be committed to something. Our nature abhors a vacuum.

“Nobody thinks, nobody cares,” cries Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s book Look Back in Anger. “There aren’t any good, brave causes left. If the big bang does come, and we all get killed off, it’ll just be for the Brave-New-Nothing-Very Much-Thank You.”

And, yet, in the same world in which Jimmy Porter looks back in anger and cries out in the evil tempered emptiness of his uncommitted soul — in this very contemporary world of ours, I heard someone say about the skillful, concerned care her loved one was receiving at the hands of a physician — “From him I have learned a new dimension in dedication.”

But there is a second significant thing Jesus is saying to us in this mite of a parable. He is saying a negative religion is not enough. The church people of Jesus’ day were for the most part zealous in observing the prohibitions of their religious code. “Do not break the Sabbath. Do not fail to perform ceremonial washings of hands and dishes before eating. Do not fail to tithe. Do not associate with unbelievers. Do not do this. Do not do that.”

“The Pharisees who questioned (and criticized) Jesus had cast out the gross sins, but they left life empty of any loyalty beyond themselves. The house of Israel’s religious life was swept and cleansed but left empty. So seven other devils arrived such as pride, money-greed, self-righteousness, and contempt for ‘lesser breeds without the law.’” (George Buttrick in Interpreters Bible)

One of the saddest things that can happen to anyone, especially a young person, is to catch religion in the negative case. It makes one haughty and pious, and separates him from those of his own age whom he considers less righteous than himself and whom he might have helped.

“The famous battle of St. Vincent, fought between Britain and Spain in 1797, would have been won by the Spanish if it had not been for a young British naval officer named Nelson. Seeing that the gap in the Spanish line would be closed before the leading vessels in the British line could arrive to prevent it, he turned his own ship out of the line and sped into the fast closing opening. This maneuver was entirely unorthodox and would have subjected Nelson to a court martial if it had failed. But he dared to risk everything rather than play safe. It is the great forward thrust that wins the victory, and not the negative impulse which prefers security. Amazingly little gets accomplished by negative virtue.” (G. Kennedy, The Parables — p. 40)

Finally, I think Jesus is saying to us in this two sentence parable of the Empty House and this is so pertinent for us as we search for the meaning of our slogan for Interdenominational Youth Week — “Filling the Emptiness”:  I think He is saying: “Any personality which is filled, even to seven times its fullness with something which does not rightfully belong there, is still empty, haunted, spooked. There are all sorts of fillings with which human nature stuffs itself — which never satisfy. They are not the rightful tenants. They do not belong there.”

No matter how many buckets full of pie meringue a hungry man eats, he is still not satisfied. The aching emptiness of his hunger remains. Our human emptiness is filled by God indeed, the whole testimony of the Bible makes it clear that ultimately there is no substitute for Him. He only is the rightful tenant of the House of Man’s Soul.

The cure for the vacuity and emptiness of contemporary living can never be found in just another new thrill for leisure time activity, nor a more worthwhile reading list, nor the cultivation of companions who really think, nor participation in artistic creations.

The filling of the human emptiness must begin with God, His presence, His indwelling power and peace, or the aching void will not be filled.

The trouble with man is that “he would rather receive salvation from God, than receive God as salvation.”

“But God will not force the door to enter in,” says George MacDonald. “He may send a tempest about the house; the wind of his astonishment may burst doors and windows, yea, shake the house to the foundations; but not then, not so, will He enter. He watches to see the door move from within. Every tempest is but an assault in the siege of His love. The terror of God is but the other side of His love. It is love outside that would be inside, love that knows the house is no house, only a place, until He enters.”

“Thomas Calhoun Walker was born a slave in 1862. He had everything against him but he grew up to become a fine lawyer and an outstanding citizen. After freedom came, the family lived in a little shack and knew extreme poverty. Walker remembers being awakened in the morning by his father praying with such earnestness that he almost shouted. “O God,” he would plead, “please take care of my children, because I don’t know how.”

This is a prayer with universal meaning and it goes to the center of the essential situation. None of us knows enough to take care of our children, our brethren, ourselves. We cannot deal with the emptiness of the human heart. But the One who warned us of the danger also promises to fill us with power and assurance.