Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 9/21/08
Wilderness Bread
Exodus 16:2-15
John 6:25-34
The people of Israel are at it again. They are complaining against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, v. 3, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
It wasn’t that long before that they had been praying for deliverance from Egypt. They were slaves, brutally oppressed by their taskmasters. They had cried out to God and God heard their cries. God delivered from slavery.
A short time later it was another need. This time they were trapped between Pharaoh’s army on the one side and a great sea on the other. “If only we had stayed back there in Egypt, died there in slavery,” they cried. “At least then we would not have died by the sword out here in the wilderness” (14:11-12).
God heard their cry and again God delivered them – parting the sea behind them that they might make their escape.
Three days later, in the wilderness of Shur, they arrived at Marah and found its waters too bitter to drink. They complained and God responded; turning those bitter waters into something fresh and good and sweet.
You might have thought by this point that the people would get it; that they would realize that God was there and that God was faithful and that God would always provide. But they didn’t. The Hebrew root for “complain” occurs seven times in these few verses. No matter how much they were given, no matter how many times God answered their prayers, they still wanted more. They lived in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction; focused always on what was missing in their lives.
There is a group of scholars who have invested a considerable effort in the study of well-being. These scholars have looked at how we predict what will make us happy or unhappy, and how accurate our predications actually are. Author Jon Gertner reports their findings in a paper titled “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness. ” The title of the paper says it all: what they’ve found is that we usually get it wrong.
Gertner offers an example, “We might believe that a new BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost certainly be less exciting than we anticipated; nor will it excite us for as long as predicted.” We’ve all had that experience – thinking that a new home or a new flat-screen television, a new kitchen or a new car is going to be this wonderful thing, only to find the excitement wearing off far sooner than we expected.
This is important because so many of our decisions are grounded on what we thing the emotional consequences are going to be – either the happiness we think they will bring, or the unhappiness that we are trying to avoid. If our ability to predict those consequences is off, then it stands to reason that our choices themselves (based on those predictions) will be off, as well.
These scholars aren’t a bunch of lightweights. There is Daniel Gilbert of Harvard, Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia, George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton. What they have found is that contrary to expectations, we really aren’t all that great at figuring out what will make us happy. Just think here about Israel’s experience: if only we could get out of slavery; if only we could escape this army; if only we could have some sweet water; if only we could have some bread and meat. They kept getting what they wanted only to find that it was never enough.
We aren’t any different. There are plenty of people, for example, who correlate wealth with happiness – the more we make, the happier we are going to be. What we find, though, is that it doesn’t work that way. If money is our goal, then we will never make enough. In fact, as Jon Gertner points out, “A large body of research on well-being seems to suggest that wealth above middle-class comfort makes little difference to our happiness…”
The point here is that if, as all this research suggests, we are so bad at figuring out what makes for happiness where in the world are we supposed to turn? We find our answer where Israel found hers: not in the things of this world, but in that One who brought all things into being. Our happiness isn’t out there somewhere in what we don’t have. Our happiness, rather, lies in that One who offers all that we will ever need.
This is what Jesus was getting at there in our second lesson: “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
What is this bread that brings us life? Jesus puts it bluntly, verse 35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
The things of this world, the material things and the money – they are all important. God never said that slavery was okay. God never suggested that the people of Israel should just learn to get by with bitter water, or without any bread to eat. No, God’s very promise to these people of a land filled with milk and honey shows just how important our material comfort is. God knows that there is a connection between a level of material prosperity on the one hand, and a sense of well-being on the other.
The issue is that while these material things are intended to be a blessing, they were never intended to be our goal. That’s where the people of Israel got it wrong. That’s where so many of us get it wrong. We get it in our heads that it is these things that hold the key to our happiness. They don’t. They never will. It is not the gift, but the Giver who holds the key.
For some of us, it takes a lifetime to learn that lesson. Others, however, seem to find their way to it on their own. Gary Maxworthy is one example . He was 56 years old when his wife died some fifteen years ago. When he lost her Maxworthy began to think about his own mortality. He began to think about the nature of this life and what kind of legacy he wanted to leave behind. His kids were grown. He didn’t really need any more money. He decided to give up the big salary. He left his job.
Fifteen years ago Gary Maxworthy launched a nonprofit called Farm to Family. In 2007, Farm to Family delivered some 34 million pounds of fresh produce for free to low-income neighborhoods in California. Maxworthy’s legacy isn’t the money that he is going to leave to some future generation. His legacy is the nearly three million lives that his work is touching each and every year.
Jesus, the bread of life, tells us that the way to real abundance lies not in how much we accumulate, but in how much of ourselves we give. It is there in the joy we find in truly loving others. It is there in using this gift of life to make a difference.
Some of you may remember Andrea Jaeger, the tennis prodigy of the early 80’s – her ponytails flying as she rose to the number 2 ranking in women’s tennis . Today Jaeger is a Dominican nun, and the Foundation she started operates on $4.3 million annual budget; reaching out to sick, abused or at-risk children. With the nearly one and half million dollars that she had made in prize money as a teenager, her life could have gone in any of a thousand different directions. Instead, she chose a life of service. She looks back on her tennis and all that early success as the catalyst that forced her to confront the question, “am I just going to take, or am I going to give?”
In choosing the latter, Jaeger found the abundance that she had been missing. She has found what? A sense of well-being.
Giving is counter-intuitive. Everything in us, everything in the world around us, screams out that real happiness lies in what we draw to ourselves. It is in controlling the people around us to meet our own needs. It is in taking hold of those things we don’t yet have. By this world’s standards, giving is sheer folly, and giving by that biblical standard of 10% is literally unthinkable – it is way beyond what any reasonable person would ever consider.
But then we have these scholars telling us that actually we do a pretty lousy job in figuring out what is going to make us happy. Maybe our intuition and the standards of this world aren’t such great guides after all. Maybe it is God who has got it right.
The guidance we find here in the pages of Scripture isn’t about meeting God’s needs. It’s about meeting our own. God doesn’t need our money or our time. It is we who need to give to them.
We give to express our gratitude – recognizing that it is God who is the real source of everything we have. We give to express our love – ask anyone who has given something truly precious to someone they love; they will tell you the joy to be found in making the sacrifice. And we give to break the hold that this world has upon our lives – to affirm in this very concrete way that it is God who matters most to us; and that God alone is Lord of our lives.
There is great power in this act of giving – whether the gift is of our time or our energies or of our resources. It opens our lives to something that you and I aren’t going to find any other way.
A year ago last June Bill Gates addressed Harvard’s graduating class . He spoke of his experience of Harvard, and of his gratitude for what he found there. And he also spoke of his one great regret as he looks back: “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.”
He and his wife Melinda have committed themselves to making a difference; specifically, trying to meet the needs of children – literally millions of children around the world – who are dying each year from preventable diseases. They have given the great bulk of their wealth, some $70 billion, to start a foundation.
Towards the end of his commencement speech he talked about his mother who, he says, never stopped pressing him to do more for others.
A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
And then, in a line that could just as easily be addressed to us, he said:
When you consider what those of us here… have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
At 52 Bill Gates turned over the reins of the company he had co-founded and built into a giant so that he could focus full-time on giving himself to others. No matter what our own age, it is never too late or too early to recognize that the real bread – the bread of life – lies not in what we accumulate but in what we give away.
Jon Gertner, “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” www.wjh.harvard.edu/-dtg/Futile_Pursuit.htm
Dan Kadlec, “The Do-Gooder Option,” Time, November 12, 2007
Douglas Robson, “Jaeger Now in Service to Next Calling,” USA Today, March 9, 2007
Bill Gates’ Commencement Address to the Harvard University Class of 2007