Looking For Love
Sermon
Perhaps what most people crave in today's world, is to love and to be loved. But it may also be true that not many people outside the church would use quite that terminology. Some people might say that they're looking for happiness, others might settle for contentment, especially the contentment of knowing that their family is happy and secure. Yet others might express their desires in different ways , such as the longing for good health or the desire for wealth, but probably at the root of all these wishes is the search for happiness. And deep beneath, underlying the search for happiness, is the need to love and be loved.
There's a problem with the search for happiness. As the writer of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes discovered thousands of years ago, when you search for happiness it always eludes you. Whatever you do, it's never enough and nothing you can do leads to lasting happiness. "Vanity, all is vanity," the writer said, despairingly.
Many of us, whether we like it or not, are caught up in the "if only" syndrome. It goes something like this. "If only I could afford a place of my own, then I'd be happy. That's all I want." Or, "If only I had my full health and strength back again. Then I'd be happy." Or, "If only my son would just ring up and let me know where he is. Then I'd be happy." You get the picture.
Unfortunately, it's all false. On the whole, those who have full health and strength are no happier than those who don't. Those who live in their own homes are no happier than those who don't. Those who have full relationships with all their children are not necessarily any happier than those who don't. The point is, that nothing can make us happy and those who search for happiness are doomed to disappointment.
The grass is seldom greener on the other side. Those who are unhappy with their lot will probably be unhappy whatever their lot. More money or better health might initially make those people happier, but once they became used to the new situation they would be just as discontented as they were before.
This is not to say that happiness is unattainable, it's simply to say that happiness is not attained by searching for it. Happiness is realised as a by-product of a very different search - the search for God. And it's in the search for God that we find love and discover ourselves to be loved.
Way back in the days of the Old Testament, the poet who wrote the final part of the book of Isaiah was fully aware that the way to happiness was the way of God and that it required selfless love. Some time around 687 BC when the exiles had begun to return to Israel after years spent in captivity in Babylon, he said, "If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail."
Clearly our individual happiness is tied up with the happiness of other people. If we feed the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then we shall discover happiness as a by-product of those activities and of that selfless attitude. But the more we deny the needs of others and seek only to satisfy our own needs and wants, the more we'll discover only discontent.
But this only really works if we satisfy other people's needs as a direct response to God's overwhelming love for us. In other words, if we're full to overflowing with love for God, if we're aware of all that God's love brings us, then we can't help but let that deep, inner love overflow in action. It's easy to see love overflowing in action within a good marriage and a good family. But good deeds that are done only as a result of duty are hard to take. There's a lovely story told about a vicar's wife who answered the door to a tramp. The tramp asked for food. The vicar's wife gave him a slice of dry bread and said loftily, "There, my good man. I'm doing this God's sake." The tramp replied, "Then for Christ's sake put some butter on it!"
To do God's work adequately we need to be full of God's love, not full of self-importance or the desire to look good. We need to allow God's love to overflow through us to other people. But this can be very demanding, since the need for pastoral care for the fragile and vulnerable never ends. So we also need sufficient good quality rest, which is why God has built a weekly day of rest into our human cycle.
"If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth," said God in today's reading from Isaiah.
In our modern world this precept has all but disappeared and the result seems to be increased stress, an increasing number of dysfunctional families and a whole range of modern illnesses based to quite an extent on insufficient rest and relaxation. As a society, there are all sorts of governmental worries about our health, our lack of social responsibility, our unhealthy interest in all kinds of sex, and recently our living on credit. The government has all sorts of plans to counteract these tendencies, but spirituality, religion, Christianity, and Church don't feature.
The results of our refusal to take God or the Church seriously, are easy to see in every part of our society and throughout our world. Perhaps it's time we all looked for love and discovered the way to find it. All those years ago Isaiah was right. We find happiness through discovering God's love for ourselves. Maybe the time has now come for us in the Church to spread that message to those outside.
There's a problem with the search for happiness. As the writer of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes discovered thousands of years ago, when you search for happiness it always eludes you. Whatever you do, it's never enough and nothing you can do leads to lasting happiness. "Vanity, all is vanity," the writer said, despairingly.
Many of us, whether we like it or not, are caught up in the "if only" syndrome. It goes something like this. "If only I could afford a place of my own, then I'd be happy. That's all I want." Or, "If only I had my full health and strength back again. Then I'd be happy." Or, "If only my son would just ring up and let me know where he is. Then I'd be happy." You get the picture.
Unfortunately, it's all false. On the whole, those who have full health and strength are no happier than those who don't. Those who live in their own homes are no happier than those who don't. Those who have full relationships with all their children are not necessarily any happier than those who don't. The point is, that nothing can make us happy and those who search for happiness are doomed to disappointment.
The grass is seldom greener on the other side. Those who are unhappy with their lot will probably be unhappy whatever their lot. More money or better health might initially make those people happier, but once they became used to the new situation they would be just as discontented as they were before.
This is not to say that happiness is unattainable, it's simply to say that happiness is not attained by searching for it. Happiness is realised as a by-product of a very different search - the search for God. And it's in the search for God that we find love and discover ourselves to be loved.
Way back in the days of the Old Testament, the poet who wrote the final part of the book of Isaiah was fully aware that the way to happiness was the way of God and that it required selfless love. Some time around 687 BC when the exiles had begun to return to Israel after years spent in captivity in Babylon, he said, "If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail."
Clearly our individual happiness is tied up with the happiness of other people. If we feed the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then we shall discover happiness as a by-product of those activities and of that selfless attitude. But the more we deny the needs of others and seek only to satisfy our own needs and wants, the more we'll discover only discontent.
But this only really works if we satisfy other people's needs as a direct response to God's overwhelming love for us. In other words, if we're full to overflowing with love for God, if we're aware of all that God's love brings us, then we can't help but let that deep, inner love overflow in action. It's easy to see love overflowing in action within a good marriage and a good family. But good deeds that are done only as a result of duty are hard to take. There's a lovely story told about a vicar's wife who answered the door to a tramp. The tramp asked for food. The vicar's wife gave him a slice of dry bread and said loftily, "There, my good man. I'm doing this God's sake." The tramp replied, "Then for Christ's sake put some butter on it!"
To do God's work adequately we need to be full of God's love, not full of self-importance or the desire to look good. We need to allow God's love to overflow through us to other people. But this can be very demanding, since the need for pastoral care for the fragile and vulnerable never ends. So we also need sufficient good quality rest, which is why God has built a weekly day of rest into our human cycle.
"If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth," said God in today's reading from Isaiah.
In our modern world this precept has all but disappeared and the result seems to be increased stress, an increasing number of dysfunctional families and a whole range of modern illnesses based to quite an extent on insufficient rest and relaxation. As a society, there are all sorts of governmental worries about our health, our lack of social responsibility, our unhealthy interest in all kinds of sex, and recently our living on credit. The government has all sorts of plans to counteract these tendencies, but spirituality, religion, Christianity, and Church don't feature.
The results of our refusal to take God or the Church seriously, are easy to see in every part of our society and throughout our world. Perhaps it's time we all looked for love and discovered the way to find it. All those years ago Isaiah was right. We find happiness through discovering God's love for ourselves. Maybe the time has now come for us in the Church to spread that message to those outside.
