November 18, 2007 – 25th Sunday after Pentecost
Micah 6:6-8; Galatians 5:22-23; John 6:35-37; 10:10b
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Since our pastors invited me to preach some months ago, it is an example of their great faith that I would somehow be able to respond to their invitation after major knee surgery. And I thank them for their ministry and prayers during my hospitalization and time at home. (I even suggested to Pastor Roger that since tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. is the four week anniversary of my surgery, I’d meet him somewhere for a cup of coffee just to celebrate the day!)
I’d like you to join me in the coming minutes to contemplate what it is that makes us search for meaning in life. One could even say that the search for meaning in life is as old as Adam and Eve. And it is certainly true that every generation seems to involve itself in searching for the meaning of life.
And what it is about Christ Jesus that makes his offer of abundant life to his followers so compelling? And why is an attitude of gratitude so important to achieving an abundant life?
For years now, there has been a poem circulating on the Internet (and in other communication channels where people trade thoughts and ideas). The poem is deeper than some of the trite chain letters and cute stories that often flood the World Wide Web.
In fact, it carries some pretty potent truths, even if some of them seem overstated for your or my own particular situation in the world. It’s a poem entitled: THE PARADOX OF OUR TIME. I only know it as attributed to an unknown author. I’ve had it printed out for you on a piece of paper in your bulletin. You can follow along as I read it: “The Paradox of our Time in History is that, we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; more medicine, but less wellness. We read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. These are the times of tall people, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier homes, but broken homes. We’ve learned well how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years; and we’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.”
If there is a line in this poem that catches my eye and keeps coming back to haunt me, it’s this one: WE’VE LEARNED WELL HOW TO MAKE A LIVING, BUT NOT A LIFE; AND WE’VE ADDED YEARS TO LIFE, NOT LIFE TO YEARS.
Our congregation, Advent, along with Kaw Prairie Community, and Atonement Lutheran Church, are at the end of a four week journey called INSTAR. The main intent of this journey is to help provide us with a broader, deeper understanding of being God’s stewards in this time and place, and how this connects to a grateful response to God’s gift of grace to us that we know in Jesus Christ. It is supposed to be a time when we get to ask big questions of ourselves and of God. And one of those questions would be, to use the words of the poem I just recited, why do we have more trouble making a life than a living? Why the confusion between the two? Aren’t they the same thing---making a living and making a life? Of course they are not. A living will give you spending money to put meatloaf on the table tonight, or gas in the car tomorrow, or medicine to keep your ailing body going for years to come. A life will provide you with the richness of hope, a sense of gratitude for life itself, the love of family and friends, and the commitment to spend your energy on important and life-giving acts. And an abundant life, one that rings true with God at least, will provide you with these blessings day after day.
Now to survive, we need both a life and a living. But only one of the two has to do with eternal things. Only one of the two is nourished by the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ did not die, so far as I can tell, for you and I to make a good living. He died that we might have an abundant life. And an abundant life in his eyes has to do with putting an end to all of the hungering and thirsting for the wrong things. So Jesus said to all who were willing to listen to him one day: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Never! Never!
Rabbi Harold Kushner, who is probably best known for his somewhat controversial book a couple decades ago, you may remember it, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, spoke one day about our greatest fear. Kushner believes that our greatest human fear has to do with missing out on the meaning of life. “I am convinced”, he said, “that it is not fear of death, or of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear that our lives will not have mattered, that as far as the world is concerned we might as well never have lived. What we miss in our lives”, says Kushner, “no matter how much we have, is this sense of meaning.” “No matter how much we have,” says Rabbi Kushner, “it is the sense of missing the meaning of our lives that scares us the most.”
I have a gnawing suspicion that Harold Kushner is right. Our most prevalent fear has to do with a shortage of meaning in our relationships, our work, and our goals for life.
When we cannot make good sense of why we’re here on earth, doing this or that par-ticular thing with our life, it doesn’t matter how much we have or how much we know. We just live with this empty feeling of being useless, or superfluous, and less than whole.
We can live in the nicest of homes. We can become well educated and wow the world with our competence. We can secure the best of jobs and perform well enough to get that raise we’ve waited for so long. But if we have no real sense of worth and no underlying joy in our existence, we’re in big trouble. Hopelessness will set in, whether we have the self-awareness to call it that or not. And hopelessness is no good, nor is the anxiety or despair that hopelessness breeds. Before long, we will wonder if we count at all.
Tom Long is a professor of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and he makes an interesting distinction between a lifestyle and a life of gratitude.
A lifestyle is what you find depicted in People magazine. A lifestyle is comprised of all those personal choices we make about the clothes we wear, the places we shop, the car we drive, or the food we eat. Change any of these things and you can change your lifestyle, just like that. People do it all the time. They move in and out of different lifestyles, depending on how they feel, how much money they have, or what their latest desires prove to be.
A life, though, is different than a lifestyle---it encompasses everything you are, and you believe in. It’s messier, in one sense, and it’s harder to change. You can’t just trade in your car for a different car and call it a change of life. No, a life includes big problems and sorrows and well as big joys and happy times. And these problems need more than a new purchase to solve them. Here’s how Tom Long describes the difference: “A LIFESTYLE”, he says, “is like the longest suit in a bridge hand, is composed of the trump cards we lead with, the ones we lay face up on the table to show our strength. A LIFE, on the other hand, is every aspect of who we are, every card we hold, both weak and strong.”
He says renting the video of Saturday Night Fever is lifestyle; staying up all Saturday night with a child who has a fever is life. We might be able to adjust our lifestyle with a little adjustment of income. But the same is not true with our life. Our life is in a desperate enough condition that it needs to be saved.
This is why Jesus is so critical to living a good and abundant life. We cannot fashion the good life only by tweaking this or that. There is no way in the world to find deep meaning and lasting commitment without the aid of a Savior, one who can rescue us from the worst sides of ourselves, and who can provide us with companionship through the most perplexing trials in life.
In the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel account, the crowds were in hot pursuit of Jesus. They were after his words and his presence because they had seen the limitations of all other forms of nourishment. Their ancestors had devoured manna in the wilderness. But it didn’t take long for those ancestors to find that this bread did not last. Something more was needed. And the people crowding around Jesus knew it. “Whoever comes to me (he said) will never be hungry; and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
There was more meaning packed into this sentence of Jesus than anyone could have imagined at the time. We’re still trying to absorb its full power for our day.
It was Jesus’ way of trying to refocus lives that were going in the wrong direction and believing unhelpful things. It was his corrective and hopeful word to people who were trying to slog through life too much on their own.
Remember: your life and mine are in a desperate enough condition that we need to be saved. A little adjustment in income might allow us to alter our lifestyle, but not our life. What we need is a savior who can give us life, and in that life, deep meaning and lasting peace.
If your life isn’t coming together like you wish it would, and there are too many days when you struggle to find a joyous purpose, a sense of gratitude, or a good and abundant life, be mindful, friends, be mindful of the hope that is yours in Christ Jesus.
It’s a hope that will send you dancing around the next corner of your life, trusting in the future instead of fearing it. When relationships sour or dreams go unmet, it’s so easy to fall into discouragement or despair. We become suspicious of the future, regretful of the past, and negative about the present. But it is into these unwelcome experiences that hope and gratitude have their best chance to breathe. Hope takes life as it comes and makes room for God to live into that life with you.
I don’t know about you, but some of the most grateful people I have ever met are
also some of the ones who have lived through times of adversity, pain, and suffering, even in the face of defeat and death. They were people who believed that God’s spirit would labor with them for their healing, resilience, and deliverance.
Before the Dutch woman, Etty Hillesum, died in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, in November, 1943, she wrote a letter in which she said: “As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts which we receive with gratitude.” How very true. It is adversity through which the best forms of gratitude can grow and lead to an abundant life, and through which the spirit of God will labor for our healing and deliverance.
Closing Prayer: O God, in whose arms we are held, and through whose life we are fed, grant us enough hope to find our way. While we do not know exactly what you will make of each of us, we know for certain that we cannot make ourselves.
So to you we bring our past, with its triumphs and regrets; our present with its accomplishments and setbacks; and our future, with its fear and promise. And we ask you to breathe new hope into our life today and into every tomorrow. Amen.
