Texts: Psalm 63:1-8; Isaiah 55

Billions of dollars are spent every year in our country to help us all feel dissatisfied…and to point us toward the items that will make the difference. The advertising is working – we all want things we don’t have, and keep thinking that getting these things will make us happy. While billions of people around the world have real reasons to yearn for more, in the U.S., Western Europe and parts of Asia, we are like dogs chasing our tails – running faster and faster to catch something that is always just out of reach.

As much as my own self-involved generation, the Baby Boomers, may want to think otherwise, we didn’t invent dissatisfaction—Mick Jagger’s “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” notwithstanding—although we may be bringing dissatisfaction to new perfection. Never have so many spent so much and gained so little from it.

We’re looking for shortcuts – from the 60-Second Manager to 30-minute pizza, we want it, and we want it now. I heard about a man rushing into a busy doctor’s office with great urgency. “I have to see a doctor right now,” he insisted, “I think I’m shrinking!” “I’m sorry,” the nurse responded, “But there are others before you – you’ll have to be a little patient.” [groan…] We’re not even a little patient…and it’s to our detriment. Some examples:
• The incidence of bariatric surgery as a solution to obesity has increased 600% over the last decade, because more and more of us are not willing to make the changes to achieve health more slowly.
• For the first time in our history, we have a negative-savings rate, which is a lovely way of saying, we’re not saving at all – we’re spending more each year than we earn, and going into debt. We are unwilling to save for the things we want – we want it now, and we want it all.
• When we have problems in our relationships, we end them;
• We don’t repair our shoes either, and many products are made with the expectation that we will dispose of them rather than fix them if they break.
Everything, people and products alike, are disposable as we throw aside one thing after another in our quest for happiness. And we are convinced that it’s out there – we seek happiness through extrinsic rather than intrinsic goals. Extrinsic goals are external – things like monetary wealth, fame, and appearance. Intrinsic goals are internal – things like giving and receiving love. According to the book Affluenza, psychologists Richard Ryan and Tim Kasser documented in three studies of adolescents that those with extrinsic goals tend to be more depressed and have lower self-esteem that those whose goals were more centered on self-acceptance, family and friends, and community. [Affluenza, page 115] Further, they point out that the pursuit of extrinsic goals may well crowd out the ability to forge relationships with people, nature and community – no wonder our satisfaction remains out of reach.

“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You," wrote Augustine, about 1600 years ago. And the psalm was written hundreds of years earlier – “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory…my soul is satisfied as with a rich feast…in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.”

We have missed what we need – we are as distracted as toddlers in a room full of too many toys. Even (and perhaps especially) in church, sometimes we miss the simplicity of seeking and finding God because we follow the ways of our culture, crowding our church relationship up with activity – committees, tasks, and service – but missing the opportunity to grow in silence with God, and in sharing our lives with one another around a table. We talked last week about authentic community and small groups, this week I want to talk about seeking God.

The Japanese Mennonite poet Yorifumi Yaguchi wrote the following:

We trap God,
hang Him
in stained glass,
entrance Him
by organ music
and chorus

We bind Him
by ritual,
tickle Him
by prayers
and train Him
to become our pet.

And we freely
make Him
take off
our guilt
of exploiting
too much,

Of having
too much,
of wasting
too much,
of living
too comfortably
Once the desert God
jealous
and wild;
now an amulet
on a charm bracelet
We are more comfortable with objects than relationships – relationships are unpredictable – with each other and with this wild God who challenges us, doesn’t meet our expectations, and demands our lives, while loving us before we even DO anything. How can we get along with a God like this?

By the way – one of the things I liked about this week’s readings from the part of the Bible we used to call the Old Testament is that they are about this loving God that Jesus taught us about, who pours out love and joy like a mother fills a bath for a child – splashing it all about to show how inviting it is.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. No, these are not our ways at all – we want retribution and penance. We have a hard time with forgiveness and pre-emptive acceptance. If God loves us this much already, how will we ever impress him?

The Yaguchi poem aptly describes what we have done with God – we don’t know how to begin to interact with the unknown God, the wild lover of creation who has somehow given us both abundance and limits – God’s abundant love, never held back, but always calling us into fuller being – and the limits of time, of our bodies, of this creation. And somehow we desire to reverse it all – we keep hammering away at the gift of limits: trying to crowd more into a day while doing without sleep, more into a week while ignoring Sabbath, taking all we can from the earth without regard for its balance… and then we want to impose limits on that which is unlimited – God’s love and welcome. We ignore all the passages in the Bible which repeatedly describe how God welcomes the stranger, the foreigner, the one who strays, and even all of us who abstain from God, we forget about the passages that describe a God who welcomes us without conditions, and we construct a God who has narrow rules to keep from spending love freely. And then we wonder why this God leaves us so unsatisfied – although we’ve ignored most of what God says about the life that satisfies: a life loving God and others with that same passion.

I was a busy, chatty teenager – I was involved in lots of activities, lots of church-type activities – but I was also attending a Quaker high school. And in this school, we met each week for an hour of silent worship. An hour, with the silence only broken if someone felt moved by the Spirit to share some words – so, it was usually silent. And we were normal kids for whom silence was difficult. Even sitting still was difficult for many of us. But we would walk each week to the Race Street Meeting House, and sit on the worn, wooden benches where generations had sat and sought God in the silence. The Quakers, known more properly as the Religious Society of Friends, believe that direct experience of God is available to all people, and that in the silence and stillness, one can experience that inner light which is God’s presence within each person. It is similar to how we might describe the Holy Spirit, and the priesthood of all believers.

Waiting in silence for God is a restless business – but over the three years of worshipping each week this way as a teenager, I grew to appreciate the silence, and to realize that I was often nourished by that time in silence, even if I didn’t feel anything in the moment.
Most people in our era are uncomfortable with silence – the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says “Most people avoid silence because we don’t want to be with people we don’t like.” His thinking is that by keeping busy, and never allowing ourselves to be alone with ourselves, we are able to avoid facing ourselves. And we are also avoiding facing all that we don’t know and can’t control about God. As long as our religious life is restricted to scripted worship services, busy committee activity, and the various causes we find ourselves involved in, we never have to experience that deep unknowing – but we also are insulating ourselves from the bubbling springs of joy that God has for us – joy which some of us find in the out of doors when we get out in the quiet and beauty of wildness.

And those experiences are important, but I would encourage us all to try silence also. Although it can be deeply nourishing, I will acknowledge that it can also be as uncomfortable as sitting on an anthill – and that is true for those of us who have long practiced silent contemplative prayer, also. When we try silence, we find thoughts rushing in to fill the empty space, and then we don’t know what to do. We can learn to let the thoughts go as easily as they come, not needing to chase them away, but not holding onto them either. I’ve been wondering whether there would be any interest in a contemplative prayer group, to try to practice silence together – so if you are interested, let me know. My own experience is that time in the silence can yield some sense that we have been held by the Holy – but the experience is often like having a memory just out of reach. We find ourselves understanding Paul’s words about seeing through a glass dimly.

“Within the heart of every man is a God shaped void that can not be filled with created things...”said the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 1600’s. Over 400 years later, we are trying harder than ever to satisfy our hunger for God with anything easier to grasp. Admittedly, in the silence, many of us have more of an experience of God hidden than God found – but as we continue to try the silence, we discover that God has found us. For God’s ways are not our ways – our ways are that when we try really hard and work really energetically, we achieve our goals. God’s ways seem to be that when we let go, and try a little less, we find what our heart really seeks. The desire we have for God is an echo of God’s desire for us, and although our seeking to know is often an experience of finding how little we know, we also find that we are known.

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,” asks Isaiah, “and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant….”

Seeking God is experienced as paradox – as we make ways to share love with others, we find ourselves receiving love; as we give away our money more generously, we find that we need not so much stuff; as we become less guarded in our relationships, we find ourselves feeling safer; as we rely less on thinking to seek God, we find ourselves understanding God more; and silence may speak with more clarity than so many words. To quote Pascal again, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” Knowing God is an unreasonable enterprise, and one in which we find ourselves unreasonably loved. As we give up on needing to understand, we may find ourselves knowing more than we thought we could. Thanks be to God. Amen.