Fulfilled, Or Just Full?
Sermon
Come As You Are
Sermons On The Lord's Supper
William H. Willimon, Professor of Liturgy and Worship at Duke University, author of over twenty books, is one of America's most prolific lecturers on the subject of worship. I've heard Willimon several times. I've always found him to be insightful and delightful. One thing that makes him so engaging and so effective is his lack of pretense and his honesty about himself. He talks quite openly about his struggles in life and his struggles with faith.
Like many of us, one issue William Willimon wrestles with is his weight. Willimon knows he sometimes overeats. Hence this revealing passage in one of his books: a book on Communion ironically titled Sunday Dinner. In it Willimon writes, "I am convinced that my own overeating, the binges I often lapse into, have a direct relation to periods of intense pressure or anxiety in my life." He continues, "My weight is a kind of barometer of what is going on in me. For instance, in the summer, when my family and I are at leisure, my weight seems easier to control. In the winter, in a time of schedules and deadlines, short days and long nights, overeating is my inadequate but all-too-frequent method of coping." Sound familiar to anyone? Willimon concludes, "We are how and what we eat" (Sunday Dinner, The Upper Room pp. 65-66).
I think Willimon tells the truth for a lot of us. Many of us (not all of us, of course, but many of us), when we feel sad, when we feel blue, when we feel overwhelmed, when we don't think we can cope much longer, seek solace in the refrigerator or the snack cupboard. Some of us try to fill up the emptiness inside with a double-fudge chocolate nut brownie or a Hostess Ho-Ho. Or maybe a case of Hostess Ho-Hos! In order to feel fulfilled, some of us sometimes try to get full.
But does it work for us? Does it? Often not. Oh, in the short run, perhaps, we get a sugar or chocolate "high" and feel satisfied for a while. But in just a couple of hours, we'll likely feel hungry again. And in the long run we perhaps will end up with new things to worry about, like high cholesterol or a heart condition. Some of us have discovered from considerable personal experience that we can't fill our inner emptiness with food.
So maybe we try to fill that inner emptiness with possessions. We may hope to make ourselves feel happy with the things we own. In a recent book, Your Money or Your Life (Penguin Books), authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin write insightfully about Americans' love affair with possessions. Their book is filled with sound sociological analysis, the results of surveys, facts, figures, and graphs.
One chart describes a phenomenon that many of us know well. It's something I've observed, suspected, and experienced but never named. They name it. They call it "The Diminishing Satisfaction Curve."
It works like this: acquiring something new does have a tendency, at least initially, to make us feel better. After all, few of us are really fulfilled living in poverty. Initially at least, some new possession, say a brand-new car, will make us feel great.
But at some point on the curve (probably a different point for each one of us, but at some point on the "satisfaction curve"), the accumulation of more and more possessions starts to bring more heartache than joy. Does that sound "right" to you? It rings true to me.
After all, more and more possessions mean more and more responsibility, more things to care for, more things to watch over, worry about, protect, maintain, repair, and insure. Plus, you can only enjoy a few of your possessions at any one time. I've found it impossible to use my sports car, my golf cart, my swimming pool, my hot-tub, my RV, my speedboat, and my vacation home all at once!
And often, just when we're really enjoying one thing, something else is wearing out or breaking down! Does acquiring more and more things fill the emptiness inside? I wonder. It seems to me that often all it creates is a temporary satisfaction, followed by a hunger for "more."
That reminds me of the question once put to a class of college students by a professor of philosophy: "Who's more satisfied, a man with fifteen million dollars or a man with fifteen children?" One student's answer: "The man with fifteen children, of course." "Why?" asks the professor. "That's easy," replies the student. "The man with fifteen children doesn't want any more!"
If things don't do it for us, can we fill up that inner emptiness with fame and distinction? It seems to me that if public recognition and acclaim could ensure our happiness, then the British novelist and playwrite Somerset Maugham surely should have been a happy man. After all, at the time of his death in 1965, Maugham was described by Time as the most famous author in the world. He had sold eighty million copies of his books, plays, and short stories. At his fabulous villa on the French Riviera, he dined on silver plates and entertained kings.
Yet Somerset Maugham, this much acclaimed author, appeared to have been an unhappy person. Everything was wrong with his life, he once said. "My success," he said, "means nothing to me ... All I can think of now are my mistakes. I can think of nothing else but my foolishness ... It's brought me nothing but misery ... I wish I had never written a single word." Was there happiness in fame and fortune for Somerset Maugham? His own words seem to indicate "No."
Or consider the words of Otto Von Bismark, the powerful and successful Chancellor of Germany. Bismark once remarked that if he were to add up all the happy moments he had experienced in his eighty years, the sum total of his happiness would add up to less than 24 hours! For many, food, possessions, fame and distinction just don't seem to fill up the inner emptiness. It would even seem that sometimes they can leave us not "filled up" but "fed up" with life.
Where to turn? Twenty centuries ago, just after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus spoke to a group of hungry people on the shores of Lake Galilee. They were hungry for bread, but also hungry for love, and hungry for acceptance and hungry for meaning in their lives. They were like us. They knew the same loneliness and dissatisfaction and emptiness that we sometimes feel.
So they got into boats and followed Jesus around the lake. When they found him, they begged Jesus to fill them up. "Work another miracle for us, Jesus!" they cried. "Fill our stomachs with bread! Become our new king, Jesus, and fill our nation with prosperity and power!"
But Jesus wouldn't make bread for them. And he wouldn't become their nation's king. You see, he knew it wasn't more food or more things or more power that they really needed to be fulfilled.
No, Jesus offered them the one thing that can fill up the emptiness inside. He offered them a relationship with himself. "Do not labor for the food which perishes," he said to the people. "[Labor] for the food which endures to eternal life" (John 6:27, RSV). Then he identified for them and us what that food is. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst" (v. 35).
Some wise ones among the people said, "Lord, give us this bread always" (v. 34, RSV). And he does.
My personal belief is that all of us, from the crowd at Lake Galilee 2,000 years ago, to Lydia, wealthy seller of purple, in Philippi in the early days of the Church, to those of us gathered together in this sanctuary in the closing years of the twentieth century; all of us are seeking the same things. We're seeking satisfaction and fulfillment.
Jesus says we will begin to be fulfilled when we begin to fill ourselves with him.
Like many of us, one issue William Willimon wrestles with is his weight. Willimon knows he sometimes overeats. Hence this revealing passage in one of his books: a book on Communion ironically titled Sunday Dinner. In it Willimon writes, "I am convinced that my own overeating, the binges I often lapse into, have a direct relation to periods of intense pressure or anxiety in my life." He continues, "My weight is a kind of barometer of what is going on in me. For instance, in the summer, when my family and I are at leisure, my weight seems easier to control. In the winter, in a time of schedules and deadlines, short days and long nights, overeating is my inadequate but all-too-frequent method of coping." Sound familiar to anyone? Willimon concludes, "We are how and what we eat" (Sunday Dinner, The Upper Room pp. 65-66).
I think Willimon tells the truth for a lot of us. Many of us (not all of us, of course, but many of us), when we feel sad, when we feel blue, when we feel overwhelmed, when we don't think we can cope much longer, seek solace in the refrigerator or the snack cupboard. Some of us try to fill up the emptiness inside with a double-fudge chocolate nut brownie or a Hostess Ho-Ho. Or maybe a case of Hostess Ho-Hos! In order to feel fulfilled, some of us sometimes try to get full.
But does it work for us? Does it? Often not. Oh, in the short run, perhaps, we get a sugar or chocolate "high" and feel satisfied for a while. But in just a couple of hours, we'll likely feel hungry again. And in the long run we perhaps will end up with new things to worry about, like high cholesterol or a heart condition. Some of us have discovered from considerable personal experience that we can't fill our inner emptiness with food.
So maybe we try to fill that inner emptiness with possessions. We may hope to make ourselves feel happy with the things we own. In a recent book, Your Money or Your Life (Penguin Books), authors Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin write insightfully about Americans' love affair with possessions. Their book is filled with sound sociological analysis, the results of surveys, facts, figures, and graphs.
One chart describes a phenomenon that many of us know well. It's something I've observed, suspected, and experienced but never named. They name it. They call it "The Diminishing Satisfaction Curve."
It works like this: acquiring something new does have a tendency, at least initially, to make us feel better. After all, few of us are really fulfilled living in poverty. Initially at least, some new possession, say a brand-new car, will make us feel great.
But at some point on the curve (probably a different point for each one of us, but at some point on the "satisfaction curve"), the accumulation of more and more possessions starts to bring more heartache than joy. Does that sound "right" to you? It rings true to me.
After all, more and more possessions mean more and more responsibility, more things to care for, more things to watch over, worry about, protect, maintain, repair, and insure. Plus, you can only enjoy a few of your possessions at any one time. I've found it impossible to use my sports car, my golf cart, my swimming pool, my hot-tub, my RV, my speedboat, and my vacation home all at once!
And often, just when we're really enjoying one thing, something else is wearing out or breaking down! Does acquiring more and more things fill the emptiness inside? I wonder. It seems to me that often all it creates is a temporary satisfaction, followed by a hunger for "more."
That reminds me of the question once put to a class of college students by a professor of philosophy: "Who's more satisfied, a man with fifteen million dollars or a man with fifteen children?" One student's answer: "The man with fifteen children, of course." "Why?" asks the professor. "That's easy," replies the student. "The man with fifteen children doesn't want any more!"
If things don't do it for us, can we fill up that inner emptiness with fame and distinction? It seems to me that if public recognition and acclaim could ensure our happiness, then the British novelist and playwrite Somerset Maugham surely should have been a happy man. After all, at the time of his death in 1965, Maugham was described by Time as the most famous author in the world. He had sold eighty million copies of his books, plays, and short stories. At his fabulous villa on the French Riviera, he dined on silver plates and entertained kings.
Yet Somerset Maugham, this much acclaimed author, appeared to have been an unhappy person. Everything was wrong with his life, he once said. "My success," he said, "means nothing to me ... All I can think of now are my mistakes. I can think of nothing else but my foolishness ... It's brought me nothing but misery ... I wish I had never written a single word." Was there happiness in fame and fortune for Somerset Maugham? His own words seem to indicate "No."
Or consider the words of Otto Von Bismark, the powerful and successful Chancellor of Germany. Bismark once remarked that if he were to add up all the happy moments he had experienced in his eighty years, the sum total of his happiness would add up to less than 24 hours! For many, food, possessions, fame and distinction just don't seem to fill up the inner emptiness. It would even seem that sometimes they can leave us not "filled up" but "fed up" with life.
Where to turn? Twenty centuries ago, just after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus spoke to a group of hungry people on the shores of Lake Galilee. They were hungry for bread, but also hungry for love, and hungry for acceptance and hungry for meaning in their lives. They were like us. They knew the same loneliness and dissatisfaction and emptiness that we sometimes feel.
So they got into boats and followed Jesus around the lake. When they found him, they begged Jesus to fill them up. "Work another miracle for us, Jesus!" they cried. "Fill our stomachs with bread! Become our new king, Jesus, and fill our nation with prosperity and power!"
But Jesus wouldn't make bread for them. And he wouldn't become their nation's king. You see, he knew it wasn't more food or more things or more power that they really needed to be fulfilled.
No, Jesus offered them the one thing that can fill up the emptiness inside. He offered them a relationship with himself. "Do not labor for the food which perishes," he said to the people. "[Labor] for the food which endures to eternal life" (John 6:27, RSV). Then he identified for them and us what that food is. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst" (v. 35).
Some wise ones among the people said, "Lord, give us this bread always" (v. 34, RSV). And he does.
My personal belief is that all of us, from the crowd at Lake Galilee 2,000 years ago, to Lydia, wealthy seller of purple, in Philippi in the early days of the Church, to those of us gathered together in this sanctuary in the closing years of the twentieth century; all of us are seeking the same things. We're seeking satisfaction and fulfillment.
Jesus says we will begin to be fulfilled when we begin to fill ourselves with him.
