There Must Be A Meaning Here!
based on Luke 12:15-21
by Dr. David Rogne

"Duke University is a world-class university--far superior to Princeton," proclaimed a Duke senior to a startled fund-raising group. "It is one of the few major universities where it is possible to get drunk four nights a week for four years and still maintain a B average." To support his claim, he cited the recent visit of four of his Princeton buddies, who confirmed that Duke is indeed a premier party school. However, an article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly entitled "Drinking: A Sobering Look at an Enduring Princeton Pastime" casts doubts on Duke's alleged advantage. The social scene at Duke or Princeton differs little from that of other American universities. A U.S. Surgeon General study found that our nation's college students drink nearly four billion cans of beer and enough wine and liquor to bring their annual consumption of alcoholic beverages to thirty-four gallons a person. The problem is not one of thirst, however, but an attempt to cover over a widely shared sense of meaninglessness.

For several years M.B.A. students at a well-known university School of Business were asked: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" With few exceptions, they wanted three things--money, power, and things--very big things including vacation homes, expensive foreign automobiles, yachts, and even airplanes. Their mandate to the faculty was, "Teach me how to be a moneymaking machine." Technology--particularly the personal computer--was their god.

Students were found to have no incentive to delay gratification, because they place so little faith in the future. They pursue the elusive dream that it is possible "to have it all and have it now"--a dream that turns out to be a lie.

Campus life is only a microcosm of a larger picture that holds true for our whole culture. There is a spiritual emptiness that many try to cover by devotion to an uninspiring job, spending endless hours at the mall, frequent trips to Las Vegas, being mesmerized by rock music, sunning themselves at the beach, frequent rounds of golf, or endlessly watching television. We would like to sense that our lives are connected to something meaningful, but we live in a world that sends out confusing messages about where that meaning is to be found.

In Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle, God has just created Adam. "What is the purpose of all this?" Adam asks. "Everything must have a purpose?" answers God. "Certainly," says Adam. "Then I'll leave it to you to think of one for all this," says God. And God goes away.

Finding that purpose may require asking some serious questions such as: "Why am I here?" "Where am I going?" "What is the purpose of life?" "Is there a God?" "Is there anything beyond this life?" Apparently, the man in the parable of Jesus that was read for us was not asking the right questions, and the meaning eluded him. This morning I invite you to embark on a brief survey of attitudes that have an impact on whether we find life to be meaningful or not.

The first thing I would like to have us do is to consider some attitudes that do not contribute to finding meaning in life. One of those attitudes is a focus on self. The philosophy of the 70s was summed up in the title of a book popular at that time. It was Looking Out for Number One. The attitude of that time was "get everything that's coming to you," and it is an attitude that still predominates. It was the attitude of the man in Jesus' parable: take care of yourself.

The problem is that this attitude leads to competitiveness: the assumption that there have to be winners and losers. And when that happens, we tend to be alienated from one another. An older clergyman confessed that during the earlier years of his ministry, even his closest friends and colleagues were seen as competitors. In his concern for moving up, he tended to see those in larger churches as obstacles to his career advancement. He found himself wondering when they would die or be caught in some scandal, thereby creating a promotional vacancy. His success, he concluded, could only come on the heels of their tragedy. For years those feelings made it difficult for him to be genuinely friendly and open with colleagues, and made him dissatisfied with his own small congregation, despite its good points. He became a lonely, jealous, bitter person. His sermons became harsh and judgmental, with little of the love or joy he claimed to represent. He says that it was only when he became old enough to recognize that he was not likely to be appointed to some prestigious church, that he became freed up from the smallness of mind to which his competitiveness had led him. He discovered that he could rejoice with others in their success. He could now gladly serve as a mentor to younger ministers and accept his own congregants as being worthy of his love and care. He learned late that concern only for number one is a lonely and unsatisfying attitude that deprives one of meaning, but he is grateful that he learned it, so that the remaining years of his ministry could be productive and gratifying.

Another attitude that keeps us from finding meaning is a focus on having. People who feel alienated, lonely, and bored often seek meaning by embracing a lifestyle based almost entirely on having. Through the accumulation of material goods and wealth, they hope to numb the effects of pain and suffering which accompany their sense of meaninglessness. Happiness is linked to what one owns. The harder you work, the more you will have; the more you have the happier you will be. This too, was the attitude of the man in Jesus' parable: build bigger to hold more.

But, alas, to seek meaning through having is illusory. The more we have, the more we want. If we have a Honda, we will soon have our eyes on a BMW, which will only suffice until we can afford a Mercedes. Having has no upper limits.

If we have less, it affects our self-image. Inevitably, the thought occurs to us: "If I am what I have, who am I when I lose it?" That was the question that confronted the man in the parable. "Tonight you will die. What then of all you have accumulated?"

Thomas Monaghan, the wealthy founder of Domino's Pizza, had a spiritual awakening, apparently triggered by disillusionment with his vast collection of worldly possessions. He began selling off many of his prized possessions, including three houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and thirty vintage automobiles, one of which was a thirteen-million-dollar Bugatti. Construction was halted on his new five-million-dollar home, and he even sold his Detroit Tigers baseball team "because it was a source of excessive pride." He was quoted as saying, "None of these things I've bought, and I mean none of them, have ever really made me happy." For too many, life is simply a series of rungs on the ladder of acquisition, but the ladder does not lead to meaning.

Another way that people miss meaning is by focusing on pleasure. The writer of our Old Testament reading for today--the author of Ecclesiastes--decided that he would pursue pleasure as an avenue to the meaningful life. He says he devoted himself to wine, women, and song, and when he had indulged himself, his conclusion was that it did not produce satisfaction. (Ecclesiastes 2: 1-11)

Rabbi Harold Kushner tells of a woman in his congregation who managed to get out of a disastrous marriage. She was young, attractive, had a good job, but she was so emotionally scarred that she was in no hurry to enter into a new relationship. For some years she was part of the swinging singles scene. One day she asked to speak with Kushner. "I know that people envy me," she said, "the parties, the vacations, the freedom from responsibility. I wish I could make them understand how much I envy them. I wish I could tell them how soon it all gets to be dull and repetitious, until you find yourself doing things you really don't want to do, just not to be doing the same thing all over again, and how quickly I would trade all of this for the sound of a car door closing and familiar steps coming up the stairs at night."

Fun can be the dessert of our lives, but it doesn't serve us very well as the main course. Instead of helping us find meaning, a life that focuses on pleasure obscures meaning.

One further way that people miss meaning is by refusing to deal authentically with pain and suffering. One of the unavoidable aspects of life is the presence of pain and suffering. I like the honesty of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Following the assassination of President Kennedy, he said tearfully, "When you're Irish, one of the first things you learn is that sooner or later this world will break your heart." I might add that it is true also for Italians, and Africans, and Japanese, and Americans, and everybody else.

Some people feel that in order for life to be good, they have to avoid pain. They try to reduce their exposure by reducing their attachments--by not letting anything become important to them--not their job, their car, their house, their family, their health. They become so detached that they learn not to feel anything--not joy, not love, not hope, not awe. They learn to live their whole lives within a narrow emotional range, accepting the fact that there will be few high spots in their lives in exchange for the likelihood that there will be few low moments either. But in the process, something has been lost that would give life meaning. Simon and Garfunkel sang a song about that to the young people of the sixties: "If I never loved, I never would have cried . . . I touch no one and no one touches me . . . I am a rock, I am an island . . . and a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries." We can never find the meaning if we are insulated and isolated.

There are, however, some other attitudes which do contribute meaning to life. One of these is openness to relationships of love. To have only our self to love, to have no greater project in life than our self, is to be in the very depths of meaninglessness. When we love another, we rise above our self, we move beyond our self, we find our life enlarged. Love is expressed by sharing with, caring for, nurturing another. In that early World War II film, "Casablanca," the hero, Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart, is portrayed at first as a cynical, suspicious, self-protecting person. He looks out only for himself and doesn't give in to tender feelings. Living amid the cruelty and unfairness of a world at war, he has learned that only the person who looks out for himself survives. He had been hurt by life when he made the mistake of taking someone else's welfare as seriously as he took his own. He has grown cynical, safe, and successful, but he looks at the Nazi officers stationed in Casablanca, tough, powerful, unsentimental, and he knows he doesn't want to be like them. Flashes of decency break through during the movie, until at the end he gives up his chance for escape and happiness in an act of generosity to the woman he loves. She leaves for England; he is condemned to wander North Africa. The truth is that when he was worrying only about himself, he found life unsatisfying. When he stopped looking out for number one and became concerned about another, his life took on meaning.

Another thing that contributes meaning to life is the expression of creativity. The book of Genesis depicts God as a master craftsman who takes pleasure in what he has created. Humans are described as being made in God's image. It comes naturally to us to create. All of us need to create--to organize, to bring order to something, to form something that wasn't there before, to leave something behind that has our mark on it. Most of us have come to the conclusion that we are not creative. What we need is a little encouragement. Learning to transform notes on a page into musical sounds on a keyboard, a string, a horn involves creativity. Preparing a good meal involves selection of ingredients, coordination, enhancing flavor to maximize enjoyment. Some of our forebears felt the need 20,000 years ago to express themselves artistically on walls deep inside a cave. They made their mark. To carve a whistle, to build a fence, plant a tree, rebuild a Model A Ford, make a quilt--we are most alive when we are engaged in some act of creativity.

Most of my life has been spent working with thoughts and ideas, but in the past several years there has been an increasing urgency to work with my hands. As I have mentioned this to others, I have been amazed to discover how many others there are who are hungry to make something. Have you been to the local craft store? It boggles the mind to see the thousands of articles of raw material that are available for use in expressing creativity. That says to me that humans need this expression. In the act of creation, our lives become focused, energy is released, life is given order. When our creations give other people pleasure, we are filled with pride, and want to say, as does the kindergarten child, "I made that." We feel something like God is said to have felt when, surveying us and the world, he acknowledged that creation was very good. (Genesis 1: 31)

One more way that we can contribute to meaning is to extend our horizons beyond this life. The author of Ecclesiastes, after cataloguing the many things that people strive for, says, almost in passing, in the Revised Standard Version that God had put eternity in our minds, (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and it is from there that our hope springs. We work away at hunger, injustice, hatred, and violence, and when we have done what we can in our generation, these evils continue to crop up in the subsequent generation. We wonder, "What's the point of trying to improve human life if, when I am gone, nothing appears to have changed?" To give meaning to what we do, we need a larger frame of reference, a longer view. Without that longer view, we despair and fall into hopelessness. The psychotherapist, Carl Gustav Jung, wrote: "Among all my patients in the second half of life . . . . there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age has given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook." That religious outlook is faith, or hope.

Hope in God is what assures us that the good that we have tried to accomplish in our lifetime will be completed beyond our lifetime. What we have contributed is not lost. It is joined with the contributions of others seeking to bring to pass the will of God. There is a stream in the Sierras where I like to fish. Along that stream are places where gorges have been cut into the rock of the mountain by the water of that stream. To the casual observer it would seem that nothing is harder than rock, and nothing is easier to divert than water. Yet, over the centuries, the water has won the battle. No one drop of water is stronger than the rock, but each drop contributes to the ultimate victory. With the view of eternity in our hearts, what we do is given meaning.

The way we usually frame the question about meaning is by asking, "What is the meaning of life?" In a way, that is like asking a champion chess player, "What is the best move in chess?" There is no one best move in chess. It depends on the situation. There is no one answer about meaning in life, either. It is better to ask, "What gives life meaning?" To that, there are many answers, some of which we have looked at this morning. There is no one big deed or solution that gives meaning to life, but countless little ones. If we had the solution for all time and for all people, we would not need tomorrow. Everything would be solved. For most of us, a few small experiences of meaningfulness in our everyday lives will do more for our souls than a single overwhelming moment of enlightenment.

Corita Kent, the former nun turned graphic artist, says in one of her posters, "Life is a series of moments / to live each one is to succeed." The meaning of life is not a problem to be solved once; it is a continuing challenge to be lived day by day. Welcome to the challenge.