Give us this Day some Meaning
Mark 6: 30-44

Someone has made this comment: “I think my soul is like one of  those squirrels in the park. When you try to feed a squirrel, he won’t take the nut from your hand at the first go. He darts toward you, then loses his nerve and darts away. The slightest gesture scares him off, and only after a few feints will he get up the nerve to reach out for what he wants.”….reach out for what he wants…I have a few questions:  What do we want? We are we reaching for?….more accurately perhaps…What do we really need in life, and most importantly…..will we find ultimate meaning with what we want in our lives? Is there any hope of ever really achieving it?

 Valid questions!

 The Book of Ecclesiastes in our Old Testament focuses on these questions about life in many ways. This morning, I would like to pursue this theme of “meaning in life”, so I would like to offer you a picture in my mind of the writer of Ecclesiastes and his thought-structures and maybe even enticing you in the future to read the book for pure enjoyment and meditation. It is a very interesting book.

 I can picture Ecclesiastes as an old man growing older; he is concerned with life and meaning. He is desperately sensing that he is beginning to run out of time. He is perhaps worried that maybe his end will come without ever having done something truly significant and meaningful in life.  We can deduce some facts: To be sure, he has been rich and his life has been a pleasant one, but he knows as we know that riches are such transient things. In the end, he knows that he will have to face the darkness alone, without either his wealth or his pastimes to protect him.  And if he will be asked, by himself or by someone else, ‘What did you do with your life, with all the opportunities and advantages that you had?’ How and what will he answer?  That he made a lot of money, read a lot of books, and went a lot of parties?  A person’s life should add up to more than that.”

 The goals that society give us should be better than that. The tragedy for us today is that society’s goals are too superficial, and too easily achieved in many cases.  And once these shallow goals are achieved, there is nothing left to gain, no deeper values given us to seek—and at that point life becomes meaningless for many people. Our society and our civilization have greatly left off seeking religious and spiritual truths which are the only objectives  in the long run that can continue to give life meaning no matter what our age. Our society is leaving many people with a terrible feeling of confusion, and who have never been taught spiritual values.

 Surely this was the same scene and circumstance in our Gospel for today when Jesus stepped ashore from the boat in Galilee and saw a large crowd of desperate people  on the shore waiting for Him.  For we are told that as He looked pityingly on them:

   “He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep
without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things”

 We can be sure that those things that He began to teach them had to do with spiritual realities and spiritual truths. We can be sure that Jesus taught them that life has to be more than the struggle for bread, and “things”, and wealth—that life has to do with a relationship with God……loving God…….loving our neighbor, giving….sharing….compassion!

 I think that our society…..our present day culture…. tends to strip us of our spiritual wealth and, with it, our real personalities.  Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist,  was pointing at that process when he wrote this:

“We overlook the essential fact that achievements which society rewards are won at the cost of a diminution of personality.”

My friends, we must hang on to our religious outlook on life and our spiritual beliefs.  We must not allow the world or society to take these away from us.   For if we do, we fall sick in some manner, lose our way personally and can experience a sense of meaninglessness.

 Finding or reestablishing our religious outlook…..our spiritual roots is even more important in these days we are facing right now.  For it is at this point in history that the glow of “materialism” has begun to fade, has begun to rot.  Many people are now realizing that things and worldly success and power really do not satisfy the human soul. I’m sure that this would have been what Jesus taught by the seashore. For these things possess in themselves no hope, no faith, and precious little love—the things the human soul needs to live on!  Nor are many of our leaders of much help to us today.

Most of us don’t need any more political promises, don’t need any new and worthy social projects. What we need now is something for our own souls, we need food for our souls.

 So here is the important question: How do we each find “meaning” for our lives?  Viktor Frankl wrote a popular book, entitled (“Man’s Search For Meaning”). The Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, came out of those camps with an entirely new way of treating sick minds and souls.  As part of his method he sometimes asks confused and despairing individuals, “Why don’t  you commit suicide if things are so hopeless for you?”  Of course, the question jolts his patients.  Then they slowly start to speak of  the reasons, great and small, which prevent them from taking their own lives—someone needs them yet…… there is something they want to accomplish….. not letting God down!  And so slowly they discover the things that do give “meaning” to their lives. They slowly allow God’s directive power to work in their lives and reveal purpose!  Slowly they discover the things that do give “meaning” to their lives.  And once found they begin to build further on those all-important things and many folks end by putting their lives together once more.

 When men and women realize that the answers to their despair most generally lie within themselves, when they come to realize that the kingdom of heaven is within, that the spiritual values that they need in order to have meaning and joy in their lives are planted by God within them,  then everything else falls into its proper place and they find their peace and their God!

 We need to cut through the diversions and distractions of life and culture and be open to God’s directive power coming right into our lives—into us to make us into “power plants,” if you will through prayer and communion with Him. We become more secure sheep of the fold following the Great Shepherd.

 I have a final story to make my point: picture a young boy restless and fidgeting one day in church.  On the way home from church, he said to his father, “Church is boring and dull.  Worst of all, the hymns drag, they have no life and the words are meaningless.”  Now…how easy would it have been for Dad to give in and say, “Boy will be boys.  Maybe we’ll skip church next week.”  Oh no!  his dad looked him straight in the eye and said, “You don’t like it?  If you think you can do a better job, why don’t you try?

 The boy did.  He went to his room and wrote his first hymn.  And, friends, he definitely was under God’s directive power.  The year was l690, the fidgety teenager was Isaac Watts, and 350 hymns and many years later as well, Watts legacy left the world “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “Joy to the World” and many more.

….a life full of purpose and meaning….a life which has touched millions!

 Where is God directing you!  To what is He directing you? Perhaps, you are right on target, but if not, where will more meaning be revealed in your life? Of course, no one I can answer those personal questions for you.  But I can tell  you that God’s directive power is always there if you want it: we are not sheep without a Shepherd.   Jesus is our Shepherd. If we have been straying a bit, He can get us on track.

 The world is God’s beautiful creation, but you and I are created in this world in God’s Image, and each of us is destined for more than the world alone can give. The world can never give ultimate meaning. Jesus Christ, the Great Shepherd, can do that very thing! 2000 years ago, as our Gospel recounts to us, Jesus steps out of the boat “He began to teach them many things”. Let me paint a picture: You and I are in the crowd standing by the shore. Jesus does step out of the boat. Now: the individual and personal question for each of us: Will we allow Him to teach us….are we listening?

 “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”