Of course there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.

I was going to call this sermon “The Pursuit of Happiness” but Thomas Jefferson and Will Smith beat me to it, so I am inviting you to chase contentment, to hunt down the inner security that we all need in order to make it through the storms of life, in order to find the meaning of life.

How do we do that? How do we chase contentment? How do we find the meaning of our lives?

I was asked that this week by someone whose life story has inspired me over and over again, someone who has faced 10 times the obstacles that I have faced and who is not only respected but held in deep affection by the people who know her, yet she was concerned that she doesn’t understand the meaning of her life.

Isn’t that precisely what we have learned about Mother Theresa by reading – and I was fascinated and inspired by it, even as I felt guilty about reading something so private and personal – the letters she wrote about her own struggle for meaning? Hers was a struggle that she repeatedly surrendered to God only to find it re-emerging in her soul again and again.

So if the great saint of Calcutta and one of the great saints of Clover Hill cannot shake free of the struggle, what hope is there for me or for the rest of us?

Are we simply doomed to an extended dark night of the soul with nothing much to guide us but the assurance that something far better waits far down the road of life?

No, I can’t buy that one and so I won’t try to sell it to you.

Christ promised us that he came so that we would have life, abundant as well as eternal, and that this quality of life was not just a distant promise of a time when we would always enjoy it, but it was and is a present possibility for each one of us.

So where are we going to find it?

Well, here’s a hint, we aren’t going to discover it in the values of our culture as Americans living in New Jersey.

Let me be clear, I love being an American, I love living in NJ. This is this culture that has shaped me and challenged me and it is in the midst of this culture that I have found and been found by God over and over again.

However, having said that I also need to say that I cannot, you cannot, we cannot expect to find meaning for our lives in the values of our culture.

Our society’s questions for meaningful living are easy to identify: How much money do you make? What kind of car do you drive? How big a house do you live in? How physically attractive are you? But even when we have had those things we have learned that it is not enough, and never will be. Are there any people in the nation more miserable, and less to be envied, then the young celebrities who have all of the stuff we call important?

And even the diversions that we chase around after, and give too much attention to, has nothing to do with us, the sports and TV and movies, it is all just surface stuff and the real stuff lies deep, beneath the surface.

I know that I pay way too much attention to sports, but I also know that whether the Mets or the Giants or Rutgers win or lose, my life’s meaning will be untouched.

And I know that however those goofballs on the TV show Lost get themselves off the Island in a few years, the next day I will wake up and still be me.

If Jimmy Buffett were to retire today and never sing again, my life would go on uninterrupted. I would have to find a new source for sermon quotes but Bruce is still out there.

That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy all of that surface stuff, there is much in our culture to enjoy and participate in and our Reformed Theology urges us to do so, we view the world as the place where we need to be with our faith.

But.

We can’t ever lose sight of how transient those shallow pleasures are.

And we can’t ever lose sight of how eternal God’s deeper blessings are.

We are a culture that is capitalist, competitive and materialistic - I use each of those words non-pejoratively – they are not good or bad in and of themselves.

But they are challenges to us as Christian, to understand capitalism, competition and materialism as the lay of the land in which we live and also to see them the way that God sees them, changes them, adds to them and makes them holy.

To be a capitalist is to recognize the possibilities that wealth can bring; to be a capitalist and a Christian is to recognize the responsibilities that wealth can bring.

The parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is just one of many examples from scripture, that none of us want to hear, of the expectation that God has for the ways in which we use our wealth, whatever our wealth might be.

And the questions come bubbling up to us: Who are we ignoring in the use of our wealth? Are we growing or shrinking the gap between us, the richest people in the world by capitalist measure, and the poor whom Jesus tells us are the richest people in the world by spiritual measure? And which side of that gap do you think God is going to settle down on? Not ours. Not unless Moses and Solomon and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Peter and Paul and Jesus himself are all wrong.

To be a capitalist and a Christian is to recognize the enormous responsibilities that wealth can bring.

To be competitive is to strive to do our best, exceeding our own expectations, to be competitive and a Christian is to strive to allow others to do their best as well.

I have these people I know – I won’t mention any names – but they play golf with me from time to time, and they struggle, as I do, with their game. Well since the Golf Outing they have decided to play best ball, meaning that after they have each shot they decide who had the best result and they both go from there. All of which has resulted in a significant drop in their score – which they point out often during a round - and an even more significant increase in their enjoyment of that ugly Scottish game. They have changed the competition into a cooperation and that has made all of the difference.

And again the questions come, who are we working to cooperate with? Where are the creative partnerships for us as a congregation? Where can we work together here to bring about more than we can do alone? When will we realize that the sum of whole will always far exceed the sum of the separate parts?

To be competitive and a Christian is to strive to allow others to do their best as well, even if it is at our own expense.

And to be materialistic is to want the best of the things of this world, while to be a Christian is to recognize that the very best things of this world – material and intangible - are the things that God has created and turned over to our care.

This is the great gain of which St. Paul wrote, to be able to see and enjoy the blessings around you and to know, at that moment, with a startling clarity that we are content, that we have, at that moment, everything that we need in life.

God is the creator of the things we see and the things we cannot see, creator of the beauty of the land and of the beauty of the ties of your heart. It takes godliness, that is to say God’s own vision that looks at this world of ours and calls it “very good”, to see the Holy things and Holy relationships of life, but when we see them we know a contentment, a peace, a fulfillment beyond words or explanations.

And so the meaning of life, the purpose of life, is take those sacred moments and multiply them, increase them more and more and more and more until every moment and every relationship is seen for the holy gift that it is.

Of course there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.

Oh, but there is one more thing, a catch of sorts, the fine print if you will and it is this.

I can’t increase my moments of holiness, my great gain, no matter how much I try.

Nor can any one of you increase your moments of holiness, your great gain, no matter how much you try.

I can only increase the moments of others.

And only others can increase mine.

That’s how God has structured the deal, that’s why we are called into relationships, that’s why we are called to be a Church so that through each of us others might know godliness combined with contentment.

If I want to chase contentment, I need to provide it for other people, for it is as we care for and pray for and laugh with and talk with and mourn with and celebrate with others that they touch our hearts and our vision and we see the opportunities and blessings that the Rich Man ignored.

This is the meaning of your life: to allow others to see what God has created in them and then to lay yourself open to their touch. There is a tongue in cheek moment at the end of the parable when Christ puts these words in the mouth of Abraham “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Luke is giving us one of those nudge-nudge, wink-wink, get the joke? Moments.

However, sadly, all that you have to do is read the paper each day to see the truth of the joke, people living unconvinced even by the one who rose from the dead.

But you and I don’t have to.

What we have to do is to listen to the one who rose from the dead, to see others as God sees them, beloved children.

And when we do we will experience that godliness combined with contentment.

And there is such a great gain in that.

Of course there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.