“This Day”
November 24, 2013
John 6:25-35
Philippians 4:4-9
We live in an entertainment culture. And apparently we like our entertainment with some judging involved. Just about every night of the week, it seems, you can watch American Idol, The Voice, the X Factor, America’s Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, or So You Think You Can Dance. The audience loves to be surprised by the dowdy middle aged woman who can sing or the beautiful scantily-clad contestant who cannot. They love seeing the giant X that appears over the contestant’s head, or hear the experts say what was wrong with the dance.
There’s nothing wrong with liking to be entertained. Often we pay and pay well for the pleasure. But too many people go to church and want to be entertained—they want a good concert and a good show, and the free food at the concession stand on the way out is really nice!
I once knew of a pastor who loved to boost attendance with tricks: “If we get 300 people in worship on Sunday, I’ll eat my lunch on the roof!” And he did. And he didn’t grow the church. The church just became known as the church with the weird pastor who ate his lunch on the roof.
If all you worry about is the entertainment value, you’re not going to grow the church . . . as Jesus well knew. In our Gospel passage for today, a crowd of people came looking for Jesus. They had been with him the previous day, when he had multiplied the bread and loaves. They had eaten the miracle, and they wanted more. But Jesus knew what they were after. He knew that they hadn’t come for his teaching. He knew that they hadn’t followed out of faith. He knew that they were just there for the show . . . and the free lunch.
So he said to them, “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs that pointed to God, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” “They wanted full stomachs instead of fulfilled lives. . . . They ate the food but missed the message.”[1]
I don’t blame them for being hungry. After all, we all are hungry, and not just for food. We are hungry for acceptance. We are hungry for recognition, to be truly seen. We are hungry for meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. We are hungry for unconditional love. We are hungry for grace with no limits. We are hungry for gifts we can only get from God.
But we doubt that we can get them, or maybe doubt that we deserve them. And so instead of acceptance, we eat tolerance. Instead of recognition, we stuff ourselves with affirmations. Instead of meaning and purpose, we feast on goals and wonder why achieving them leaves us hungry still.
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” This is where we go when we are hungry. Not when we want to be entertained. Not when we want a miracle. But when our souls are hungry for that which only the Spirit can give.
And this is where we first connect with our Epistle reading of the day: “and the God of peace will be with you.” Eat of the bread of life, and the God of peace will be with you. Eat of the bread of unconditional love, and the God of peace will be with you. Eat of the bread of thanksgiving, and the God of peace will be with you.
Scientists are now discovering what people of faith have known for centuries: that gratitude is good for you. There’s a video online that has over 2 million views, and it’s not even about babies, puppies, or people falling off trampolines. The episode starts by saying, “Psychologists have scientifically proven that one of the greatest contributing factors to overall happiness in your life is how much gratitude you show.” So a group of people decided to test this with some volunteers. The volunteers started by completing a survey that rated their overall level of happiness. (They didn’t know that’s what the survey was about.) Then they were asked to close their eyes and think about someone who was influential in their lives—someone who really made a difference. Then they had to write down as much as they could about why this person was so important. The volunteers thought that was the end. But THEN they had to call that person and read to them what they had written. The last step was to take another survey, with different questions that still rated their level of happiness. Those who were unable to speak directly with the person who’d made a difference in their lives experienced an increase of happiness of 2 to 4 percent from writing it down. Not that much. But those who were able to speak directly with the person who had helped them experienced an increase in happiness of up to 19 percent. And “The person who experienced the biggest jump in happiness was the least happy person” who participated in the experiment.[2]
Gratitude is good for the soul. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to be grateful. Sometimes it’s hard to find reason to be grateful. Our Epistle reading this morning says: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And in case that isn’t clear enough, the author repeats himself: “Again I will say, rejoice.”
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find that annoying! Sure, some days I can go from rejoicing to rejoicing, from mountaintop to mountaintop with nary a valley in-between. But at other times, I have been so deep in the valley I couldn’t even see the top, much less think I’d ever get there. Rejoice then? How do I rejoice then?
A couple of years ago in Confirmation class I asked the students to make a timeline of their life, to mark the significant events as well as the highs and lows. After they were done, they were asked to go back and mark times they felt close to God. One girl perfectly exemplified the perspective of her age. She went through her entire timeline and explained, “Well, this is when I won the dance competition, so I felt like God was with me. And this is when my family was having money troubles, so it didn’t feel like God was with me.” Every single good time, she felt God was with her—or must have been, because it was good. And the bad times meant God wasn’t near.
It’s an easy mistake, especially when we hear televangelists and others preaching a prosperity Gospel—the belief that if you are faithful to God, God will bless you financially; and therefore if you are not wealthy, you must not be faithful to God. As far as I’m concerned, that boat don’t float! The concept certainly isn’t biblical.
But it brings me back to my earlier question: How do I rejoice when all isn’t well? Personally, I try to remember JoAnn.
Most of the time I spent with JoAnn was in the hospital. Her husband Warren had a serious heart condition, and she had chronic cancer. She would fight it with chemo and radiation, and it would go away, and it would come back. And she would fight again, and it would go away, and it would come back. Until, finally, it came back to stay.
One day I went to visit her husband on the cardiac floor, and then went downstairs to sit with her while she received that week’s dose of chemo. She wanted to know what was going on in worship, so I told her about something we had done where everyone was invited to write one thing for which they were grateful. In response she announced, “This day.” I didn’t understand. “This day,” she repeated. “That’s what I would have written. I am thankful for this day.”
I looked at her, sitting in the chemo room, huddled under a blanket, wearing the wig she hated but wouldn’t leave home without. I thought of her husband, upstairs, wondering if he would be put on the transplant list. And I thought, “This day? How can she be thankful for this day?”
I didn’t say it, but I guess she recognized my lack of comprehension. She said, “I say it every morning. I am thankful for this day. I am thankful I get another.”
I was humbled by her faith, and by her ability to be thankful in the midst of a situation where few would have gratitude.
I performed her funeral a few months later, and it was a hard one. I had a hard time keeping my professional composure, a hard time being the “non-anxious presence” our seminaries told all us preachers we were supposed to be. The next day, exhausted and weary, I took myself for a little pampering—a pedicure at the day spa. As I sat in the chair, I tried to ignore the discomfort I felt, seeing this line of Asian women all kneeling at the feet of white American women . . . Asian women with name tags printed with Annie and Debbie and Candy, because we Americans cannot be trusted with their real names.
My technician—whose name tag read “Annie”—kept asking me, “This feels good, yes?” “Yes,” I murmured, and closed my eyes. I tried to focus on the rollers of the massage chair going up and down my spine, up and down, hoping they would ease the fist-sized knots of grief and exhaustion. I tried not to think of why I was taking her death so hard, when I had buried other people I had loved, too.
There was background music playing in the spa—the kind of instrumental music that’s supposed to be relaxing but barely there and not recognizable so as not to offend. I hadn’t even noticed it until I realized I was humming along. The words not sung washed over me as Annie scrubbed the callouses from my feet:
And now, let the weak say “I am strong”;
let the poor say “I am rich,”
because of what the Lord has done for us.
Give thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the Holy One.
And so I did. I gave thanks for the woman who died. I gave thanks for the painful privilege of being invited to her dying, and even more for the privilege of being invited into her living. I gave thanks for the woman at my feet, whatever her name was, and I prayed for her wellbeing. I gave thanks for the massage rollers and for the grieving husband’s gift—and for the fact that I could use part of it to splurge on my toes instead of needing it for food. And I gave thanks . . . for this day, with all its heartache, because the heartache meant that I had loved.
Rejoice in the Lord always, the Bible says. Not just in the easy times, but always. Not thankful for the hard times, but finding reason to be thankful in them, in the midst of them. How do we do that? By eating of the bread of life. By refusing to eat what doesn’t satisfy the soul. And by knowing that the God of peace will be with us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.