Sometime this week it was in the news that along Roxas Boulevard in Manila, 80 truckloads of trash was collected. The garbage came from the rivers where people dumped their trash and they were carried to the sea. And the sea dumped it back on Roxas Boulevard. The Lord must be telling us something. I hope we are listening.
In many places today all around the world, they have problem with garbage. Here in Dumaguete, we try to limit the use of plastics. And here in the university, it is encouraged that we limit our use of plastic cups and Styrofoam containers.
In some places, they recycle the trash and use them as source of energy or make them into something. In fact, in one place in Michigan, they converted an old garbage dump to a ski slope during winter time.
Talking about trash, I have read something that seems unbelievable, but it is true. I am not a coffee connoisseur, but I have read that the best coffee in the world comes from Sumatra. It is called Kopi Luwak coffee. It is one of the most unique coffees in the world, and very hard to find. Only a couple of thousand pounds of this coffee comes up on the world market each year. And almost all of it comes from the island of Sumatra.
This coffee bean has an interesting story and one that echoes with our Psalm today. Kopi Lowak is the most exquisite, exotic, and the most expensive coffee in the world. It costs between $150 and $300 a pound. It is the only coffee sold by the ounce. Kopi is Indonesian for coffee. Luwak is a Civet cat, a nocturnal creature that comes out only at night. It is about the size of a fox. This unusual cat has a knack for sniffing out the best coffee beans on any coffee plantation. It comes out at night and wanders all over the island of Sumatra and will only pick the most perfect and succulent coffee cherries to eat. It would rather starve than to feast on any other bean.
The Luwak cat eats those coffee cherries and digests them. In the morning, the locals harvest these beans. Yes, after every one of them has passed through the intestines and into the dung of the Civet cat. The most expensive and exclusive coffee in the world is plucked from the dung of an animal. Of course, the beans have been cleaned and roasted. But every Kopi Luwak coffee bean has been in and out of a civet cat.
In nature you see this over and over again. Another example is honey. I too have read that honey is bee “dung.” Another is mushrooms. What makes them so succulent and tasty? Well, you know what their roots are planted in, right?
Isn’t it amazing how God works? Jesus came to this earth and was born in a trash place of a building called a stable. The first thing that Jesus smelled was the dung in a stable. And the last smell that Jesus had on the cross was that of garbage. He was crucified in a place called Golgotha, which was the garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem.
Our scripture text for this morning is said to be written by David. Here the Psalmist confesses that he has broken his covenant with God which will affect his children. He had sneered at God’s love and turned his back from God. He is like garbage in the eyes of God. And thus, he begged to God that he be given a new personality and a new and right spirit, a willing responsive spirit. Standing before the mirror of his soul, he saw himself in every repugnant detail and begs for cleansing.
In 1 Corinthians 1:25, we read: “Divine folly is wiser than human wisdom and divine weakness stronger than human strength.”
If we look at ourselves, there are a few who are people of wisdom, by any human standard. A few are powerful. Yet God chooses what is weak in this world to shame the strong.
God has chosen things low and contemptible, all that is not lofty nor elevated, to overthrow existing orders. There is no place for human pride in the presence of God, for we all have disobeyed God, but are made beautiful in Christ Jesus by God’s act.
The gospel is about the way in which what is most weak, what is most despised, what is most contemptible in your life and mine, what is most detested in this world, can become, through the power of the Holy Spirit, what is most beautiful, what is most radiant, and what can be most a blessing if we turn them over to God. Our weakness can be used by God to bless others.
Like the Kopi Luwak whatever is buried trash in our lives, God can turn them into buried treasure? No matter what you think are the trash cans of your existence, God can turn them into treasure chests.
The Hebrew word for hell is Sheol. Shiloh was the most holy place for it was where the Ark of the Covenant was placed. It was then the place where God lived. God can turn any Sheol into a Shiloh if you will only let the spirit of God take that pain, that suffering, that ugliness, that which is contemptible, and let the Spirit turn it into a blessing.
I can’t help but think of a composer named Ludwig von Beethoven. What is the worst thing that could happen to a composer? To become deaf. The last twelve years of Beethoven’s life, he was deaf. Think of the pain, think of the agony he went through. And yet, in these last twelve years, Beethoven composed four of his five greatest symphonies. You see, he allowed the compost of his suffering and his despair to become the humus out of which God’s Spirit grew… and it yielded some of the most beautiful music that has ever been composed.
In the whole story of the scriptures – go through it from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation and you will find over and over again the story of how God takes what is worst, the least, contemptible, lowest, and turns them to what is greatest, best, and strongest.
Read your Bible, over and over. God turns cursing into curing, turns belittling into blessing, turns burrs into spurs. The curse of being hanged on a tree was transformed into a symbol of forgiveness and salvation. This is the gospel. “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin… wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:2,7)
We feel so often that we only bless people with our strengths. And it is true that you have been given gifts and strengths to bless others. Those gifts have already been given to you by God. Use them. Use them well. But —know this. Where God will bless others the most in your life is in the places of your greatest weaknesses. You have been given natural gifts of strengths. But it is from out of your weakness that God will create gifts of supernatural strength that will pull people from despair and cause healing in their midst, turn lives, transform souls.
Thus my friends, you are invited to the Table of our Lord as a reminder of what God can do for you. Your scars can be transformed into stars. Your nights can be transformed into days. Your sunsets will be turned to sunrises. Go this week, be encouraged. God can make your trash into treasures to bless others.
