09/21/2008 IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING. IS IT ENOUGH?

IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING.  IS IT ENOUGH?

          Last Saturday, Tina Fey wowed Saturday Night Live viewers with her comedic impression of Republican Vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.  Three decades earlier, a member of the comedy troupe’s original cast, Gilda Radner, entertained a different generation with a character she created, named Rosanne Rosannadanna.  Do some of you recall her?

Rosanne was a featured commentator on the “Weekend Update” news segment of the show.  Each week, the gum-chewing Rosanna, hair teased in sphinx-like fashion, would verbally launch into some ridiculous situation, apprising audiences of more details than they ever wanted to know, then conclude the report with her trademark phrase, “It’s always something!”

That’s the way I felt after watching a TV ad for the latest men’s grooming product.  To my utter shock I learned that while I & every man alive sleep, our skin dries at an alarming rate.  Did you know this?  Eight long hours of no fluid intake, combined with pajamas & bedding that insidiously wick away any latent moisture, leave men’s skin screaming for hydration!  It’s an epidermal nightmare!

  How did my skin survive these 47 years in such a sorry state each morning upon rising?  Worse yet, how did the male species ever manage after millennia of living without these hydrators placed into our body washes (no longer just soap!) during the morning shower?  We can thank modern chemistry, & creative advertising, for discovering a secret Swiss formula (& I’m of Swiss origin, so this must be meant for me!) that now provides a remedy to moisturize & reinvigorate the suppleness of our rapidly aging skin, an invention called “aqua capsules.”  I can now sleep soundly at night once again!  Salvation at last!  Thank you Madison Avenue.

It’s also the Madison Avenue ad execs working with auto manufacturers who continue to raise the bar on new car options.  Have you noticed that optional items in earlier models often become standard fare in newer ones?  And even if they don’t, in our mind they do.  Each vehicle we purchase, new or used, has better features than the previous model we owned.  It’s not even the Joneses with whom we need to keep pace.  We simply want to one-up ourselves.  We’re not content taking a step backward in convenience & luxury.  I always brag about how little we pay for cars in our house, but each one is a little better than the previous one.  There’s always something new.  It’s never enough.

Those bigger & better improvements even apply to the homes we’ve lived in at each pastoral appointment.  How did we ever survive in that one bathroom split level in Morrisville, or even the two bathroom rancher in Bristol?

Can you live without HD-TV & 1,000 channels?  Can you find your way to school or work without a GPS?  Can we make do on family vacations without DVD players to occupy the kids?   Will tap water ever again suffice?

Is it enough?  Is it ever enough?  Is Christ enough?

“Hold on!  Reverse the tape.  Did the preacher say, ‘Is Christ enough?’  What’s Jesus got to do with it?”

Last week I noted that the words which Paul uses in chapter 1’s opening, words like “servant” & “saint,” are words which we take for granted from the Bible.  When the apostle originally penned those words in the context of his letter, readers were stunned.  They never thought of themselves as servants for Christ, let alone persons made holy (saintly) by him.  St. Paul’s words seem so commonplace today that we take them for granted.

Likewise, Thomas Jefferson’s infamous phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” contained in the Declaration of Independence, struck colonists & Members of Parliament, alike, as completely alien.  No one in the 18^th century ever expected life to be happy.  Happiness was a dream, a fantasy.  To be happy was not associated with one’s earthly existence, but with the kingdom of heaven, as in the King James Version of the Beatitudes, “Happy are the….”  Jefferson’s words were beyond even hope & aspiration.  They were the most wishful of thinking.

Yet a nation that read Jefferson’s fanciful dictum took it literally by taking the words to heart as a cultural goal – a self-fulfilling prophecy -- creating the wealthiest, most technologically- & scientifically-advanced society the world has ever known.  Despite the lending crisis & its effect upon us, the internet, modern medicine, agricultural production, modes of transportation, public utilities, & all sorts of advancements provide us with phenomenal lifestyles.   Even the poor in America, as we define the poverty level, have a standard of living that is far above the poor in other countries.

Is it enough?  Is it ever enough?  With everything, is Christ enough?

“There goes the preacher again.  What’s with this question, ‘Is Christ enough?” 

Although blessings abound, we still are still discontent & unhappy.  The preacher who wrote Ecclesiastes (& “Ecclesiastes” in Hebrew means “preacher”) calls it vanity or a pointless chasing/feeding after the wind.

Despite the cynical nature of his text, the preacher advises us to “eat, drink, & be merry.”  It is a good thing to enjoy the blessings of life God provides.  One does not need to be a total self-sacrificing ascetic.  Even the simple-living Jesus enjoyed a hearty meal & goblet of wine, stimulating table fellowship, & parties with friends.  He was no party-pooping stick-in-the-mud.

So, don’t get this preacher wrong.  The sermon is not meant to incite, or inflict, guilt for possessing life’s blessings earned or received in honest, wholesome ways.  Neither is this a sermon teaching that only when you give your life to Christ will you be materially blest – the prosperity gospel so popular in our culture. I am saying what the Bible makes clear, namely, that life is to be enjoyed.  Jesus came to give us abundant life, not just “the good life,” but the best life.

Well, is it enough?  Is Christ enough?

Paul was imprisoned for two years when he wrote this letter to his church friends in Philippi.  He knew that he was facing capital punishment.  And he did not have any false hope that he would escape the death penalty.  Yes, he was a solid believer in the resurrection, so being acquitted & set free were not beyond the realm of Holy Spirit-inspired possibilities.  Paul, though, having long ago surrendered his life & his life’s purpose to God, trusted that jailed or free, dead or alive, he was accomplishing God’s will.  That’s what really mattered.
 

It is similar to the prayer which John Wesley wrote for the Methodists & we pray at the beginning of each new year:

          I am no longer my own, but thine.  Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.  Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.  Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely & heartily yield all things to thy pleasure & disposal.

It is intriguing, then, how persons today live lives of total freedom, as so-called captains of their fate, yet so many of them lack a purpose-driven life like Paul’s.  Their existences are just that, bare existences, that cry out for meaning & fulfillment.  They are Sunday regulars & souls which never set foot in a church.  All kinds of experiences they enjoy, yet quietly note their desperate lack of an experience & encounter with the Divine.  They have the things that the world tells them should bring happiness, but rank themselves rather low on the satisfaction spectrum, personally ranging from modestly discontent to absolutely miserable.

Is what they have enough?  Is it ever enough?  Is Christ enough?

It doesn’t matter what we have or not, how successful we are or not, how healthy, wealthy, & wise we are, or not.  None of it is ever enough, even when it is (seemingly) enough.  Only Christ is enough.  Only Christ is sufficient for our lives.

This is not to say that the things of this world don’t matter at all.  They do.  “We are in the world, but not of the world.”  Family, friends, work, goodwill, making a living, serving others all matter, but they never matter as much as Jesus Christ.  They all pale in comparison.  As valuable as they are, it is Christ who is our companion, who is sufficient for us & our every need now & forever.

That’s how Paul could sincerely declare that to live is Christ, yet to die is gain.  If he is set free, he serves God.  If he is executed, he serves God.  It’s not about Paul.  It’s about God.  It is Paul’s over-powering, overwhelming, overriding, overarching conviction that in life & in death he’s participating in the reign of Christ, & that is so worthwhile.  Clearly, looking back with the advantage of 2000 years of hindsight, Paul, indeed, served God in life & in death.  Only the Creator of life & death can allow life and death to be of value to Him.  Life doesn’t end when we take our last breath.  It’s just a new & far longer life.

Your employer cannot use you when you’re dead.  Your team cannot use you when you’re dead.  Your family cannot use you when you’re dead.  Only God can use us to accomplish the kingdom’s glorious purposes whether we are dead or alive!  This is not to sound fatalistic, but to realize, as St. Paul does, that value is found in God alone.  That’s why he wrote that Christ’s grace was sufficient for him (2 Cor. 12:9).  Now & forever, Christ can be enough for us, too.

I mean, if it’s always something, then that something best be Christ.

In the Name….                        Copyright 2008 by G.D. Knerr at Lansdale, Pa.  All rights reserved.