Creekside Church Sermon of December 15, 1996 "I'm Satisfied, I'm Satisfied Not" Isaiah 64:1-4, 8-11	Rev. David Bibbee
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Friends, art thou satisfied? "It all depends. Are you talking about my work? My family? Financially, spiritually, satisfied with what's happening inside my own skin or satisfied with life in general?" It's an important question to ask, especially during Advent when our claims that the hopes and fears of all the years have been met in Jesus, run headlong into the consumer frenzy and the underlying assumption that we are not satisfied, but that we will be if only we buy or receive the right stuff.

While this solution to our dissatisfaction is way off base, the assumption that people want more and are not satisfied, isn't. Friends, art thou satisfied? The fact that you are even here tells me you are not. If you are totally content with yourself, and believe that God considers you a finished product to whom nothing more can be added or from whom nothing more can be expected, you are better off someplace else than here.

When we are honest to ourselves, we admit there is a yearning in us that swallows every celebration, every present, every good cheer and still leaves us hungry. Back when I played in a bluegrass band we did a wise old song that catalogued the insufficiency of riches and the necessity of a solid inward orientation. Just listen:

How many times have ya heard someone say, "If I had his money, I would do things my way."? But little they know, that it's so hard to find, one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old, or friends when you're lonely, or a love that's grown cold. The wealthiest person is a pauper at times, compared to the man with a satisfied mind.

When life has ended, and my time has run out, all my friends and my loved ones, I will leave, there's no doubt. But there's one thing for certain, when it comes my time, I'll leave this old world, with a satisfied mind.

Last Sunday we gave a name to the longing which bubbles to the surface by music and memories at Christmas. We identified it as the longing for home. Today we orient ourselves further toward our heart's true home in God by listening again to Isaiah.

Isaiah's good news was directed to the oppressed, the broken hearted, the captives and prisoners. Israel had suffered long at the hands of Babylon, but the time had come to climb out of the ash heap and wear flowers; time to wipe off the frown and slap on a smile; time to stop singing the blues and sing the Messiah instead. "Don't shake your heads over the devastations. Draw up the blueprints and let's rebuild the cities." To believe these words would take some doing. The rebuilding of their lives and towns wouldn't happen overnight. It wasn't yet in sight, but they could hope for it because Isaiah proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor. It was a way of saying that God was going to intervene and that what God wants God is going to get. So don't buy Babylon's version of reality. Don't get suckered by the flashy P.R. campaigns that tell you to be satisfied with what you've got and that it doesn't get any better than this. God will not disappoint you. There is more to come. God will turn the present arrangement upside down.

Keep in mind that this is poetry. But before you ask, "What good does poetry do?" Think back to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" sermon delivered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. He saw a day when God's desire for humankind would at last come together and people wouldn't be judged by the color of their skins but finally by the content of their hearts. When people refuse to be satisfied with the world's present arrangements, they see something more. Something better. Martin Luther King offered a vision of how God wanted this nation to be, and it was the impetus for an incredible change. Somewhere in a church in Bosnia or Rwanda Isaiah's poetry is being read. The people there are broken, afflicted, they are the exiled and the mourning. Do you suppose they hear these words from Isaiah addressed to them personally? We don't hear them very well because our needs aren't those of the terrorized or the homeless, but we need them just the same. I hope you recognize that these words of Isaiah are those which Jesus spoke in his first sermon. He said he was the fulfillment of this prophecy. So what does it say to us that matters?

Well, at least it means we must know the source of our satisfaction. We all at times engage in that wishful thinking exercise I call "trading places." "If I had his money. If I had her abilities. If I had their looks, their house, their opportunities, things would be different. If I had what they have I'd be a happier person." Well, would you? Since Henri Nouwen died a few weeks ago, I have been rereading his book, "Our Greatest Gift" which is about dying well and caring for the dying. He said that to befriend death, we must claim that we are children of God and brothers and sisters of each other. But that in our society, childhood is something to grow away from in order to place the greatest emphasis upon succeeding in the few years we have. The only satisfaction you will have is in what you make for yourself in the way of a name or a place or things. But every source of satisfaction we create for ourselves disappoints, or as someone put it, "A self-absorbed life ends up absorbing life." What you have, has you. But who you are as a beloved child of God can never be taken from you.

Much of the Christmas exercise in excess in which we are urged to participate plays on the feelings of discontent. If I get a certain gift, if I am invited to a Christmas party that's a ton of fun, if I pick the right Church to attend on Christmas eve, I might feel ok. Well, it's no wonder so many people get the blues at Christmas.

Christmas gift giving at our house will be a simpler affair this year in order to focus more upon the gift. It will be a reminder that our deep needs are met by knowing whose children we are and by paying attention to those details of sharing and caring for which the spirit of the Lord has anointed us. Pauline Arnold told me about a gift exchange she was part of this week. Names were drawn, but instead of buying a gift, the people wrote words of appreciation and gratitude, letting one another know why they are special. It sounds like a version of giving garlands and the oil of gladness and a mantle of praise.

Blaise Pascal was a brilliant philosopher who, while tending to some ordinary tasks one day, felt himself flooded by an indescribable warmth which flooded his life with a profound certainty. When Pascal died in 1620, someone found a sheet of paper stitched between the cloth and lining of his coat. It told of his spiritual awakening when God became real. He wrote, "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and Jacob, not the philosophers and the scholars..." It was Pascal's way of saying that God won't be found at the end of an argument, and that our greatest satisfaction comes not from a box under the tree or in a miracle on 34th street. The state of the satisfied mind comes from knowing its source in God.

But along with knowing the source, we must also discern the course of our satisfaction. By discerning the course I mean living your life in a way that discerns what you should be satisfied with and what you should not. The more time we spend with God, the more time we spend in creating what God has in mind for the world, the more we become aware of the superficiality, the injustice, and the misplaced priorities all around us. Be suspicious of the person who says they are so at home in the Lord that nothing bothers them anymore. The God of Jesus Christ never caused apathy in anyone. The result isn't a comfortable pew but ants in the pants of faith.

C. S. Lewis once said that our greatest problem isn't that we ask too much out of life, but rather that we expect too little. He said, "We are too easily pleased." Instead of doing something about situations, which keeps our lives little, we adjust to them. Shrinking membership, mediocre ministry, and fewer and fewer people to render service to make the Church stronger isn't met with dissatisfaction, but adjustment. The pulpit becomes a predictable platform for pious platitudes and warmed over religious cliches.

If you are satisfied with life as it is and the Church as it is, and you are adjusted to the way the world has become, and you aren't here for something more, then the Church is no place to be. But if you are weary of what is, out of sync with what you're told you should want or be--if you are sure your life, and your Church could be better than satisfactory, then maybe there is something for you this Advent. Isaiah had a stirring word for people who were broken, beaten up, and bound and ripe for responding to what God was up to next; people like you who want something more out of life.

It is for this reason that we fix an attentive ear to what the Bible has to say to us every Sunday. It's why during the Sundays of Advent we read Isaiah's poetry. Hearing it, it just might occur to you that God's version of reality made known in the birth of Jesus is the only one that matters. You may go home with a renewed determination to help God make it happen. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to build up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives. For all I know, you may hear Isaiah's words and recommit yourself to Him who said He was their fulfillment. You may walk away from here no longer willing to accept things as they are, willing to do what you can to will and work for something more for you, for others, for the Church, and the world. You may end up with the determination of a woman just like Blanche Schwilling.

Blanche is a little lady with an enlarged heart who has buried two husbands, one son, and who works hard to keep time from burying Bazaar, the oldest village in Chase County, Kansas. For twenty-eight years Blanche was the postmistress--until the government closed the post office, took away the stamps, cancelled the zip code, and by its actions said that Bazaar wasn't a real town. Some of the townspeople agreed since the school had also closed down and they knew that these two constituted a town more than a grocery and gas station.

All that remained in Bazaar was the Methodist Church. Then they closed it. Blanche rallied the citizens to keep it open which was a task that was made easier because the quaintness of the building still lured city people to marry there. But everyone knew the building wasn't keeping Bazaar, population 12, together--it was Blanche. Someone said, "When Blanche goes, so will Bazaar. She holds things together with her own two hands." Between alternate Sunday visits of the circuit preacher, it's up to Blanche to lead a devotional every Sunday, and she rings the Church bells. "Nobody hears it except those of us already there," she says. "But I guess that's who it's for."

While all around us people adjust, others dare to believe in, dare to hope for, dare to do something more. Isaiah was one who was satisfied, and yet satisfied not. And let's not forget that young woman named Mary who sang, "My soul magnifies the Lord...for he has done great things for me. He has scattered the proud, he has put down the mighty, and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things."

While all around people adjust, others dare to believe in, dare to hope for, dare to do something more. Isaiah did. Mary did. And you?

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