To listen to this sermon on gratitude by Pastor Brooks, click here.
New Testament Reading—1 Thessalonians 5: 14-22
In many ways, the faith crisis of Joe Stalinski represents the crisis faced by mainline Christianity in the United States today. It stands to reason that whether or not Joe can successfully confront and survive his crisis will serve as a strong indicator of whether or not mainline Christianity can confront and survive its own crisis as churches and denominations across the country continue to shrink in numbers. We will talk more about this larger crisis later, but for now let’s focus on Joe. To separate Joe from the millions of other Joes in the world, we will call this particular Joe, Cubicle Joe. Technically, we might refer to him as Cubicle Joe #7, because he is one of seven Joes who works in one of 1,292 cubicles at the MacLife Data Processing Center. Essentially, the job of MacLife is to do the paper work of other companies, and the job of Cubicle Joe is to do paper work about the paper work of one of those other companies.
As strange as it might sound, Cubicle Joe did not find his work very meaningful. Wasn’t there more to life than being Cubicle Joe #7 doing the grunt work of a corporation that did the grunt work of another corporation? One might think that Cubicle Joe would have been the perfect candidate for religion—something that would give his life that sense of higher calling that he so desperately wanted. Cubicle Joe was in fact religious, but that did not seem to be helping. Part of the problem was that he only felt religious for one hour on one day of the week. From 9 am to 10 am on Sunday morning, he would go from being Cubicle Joe to being Pious Pew Joe. Fortunately, he was the only one named Joe at his church. The fact that his church only had 25 members helped, but for once in his life, Joe actually wished there were a few more Joes around. His church could use more members. Still, Joe could understand why Cubicle Joes 1 through 6 might not feel the need to go to church.
Joe knew that his circumstances in life until that point likely made him a different kind of Joe. He grew up in a family that attended church every Sunday, and he was fortunate enough that this particular church was not so strict and so stifling that he ever felt the need to rebel as a teenager and leave the fold under a cloud of alienation. Joe’s upbringing was such that he still valued church life, even if it was only for one hour a week. Cubicle Joes 1 through 6 might not have grown up in such circumstances. They might have grown up in a family that didn’t go to church, or their family might have gone to a church that beat them with the Bible until they were black and blue. For Cubicle Joes 1 through 6, it would be hard to convince them that they might not want to sleep in on Sunday before lighting up the grill and watching the Seahawks play on TV.
Joe imagined that things must have been different back before cable and color TV, back when no one questioned the value of going to church on Sunday, back when going to church seemed like what everyone did unless they belonged to some other faith. In today’s world, life had become so radically different. Everyone seemed stuck in their own cubicle doing their own thing. Religion had become spirituality, and all you needed was a do-it-yourself manual. Yet, for Joe, these do-it-yourself manuals never seemed to work. They were like a bag of candy. They gave him a sugar rush of positive affirmations and thoughts, but he eventually found himself crashing with the nauseous feeling that life was not so meaningful after all.
One day when Cubicle Joe was only part way through a freshly piled mountain of paper work, he felt more spiritually deflated than normal. Cubicle Joe had no one to talk to about these thoughts, except for his lunch buddy, Cubicle Sally. At lunch, he unloaded his thoughts. Cubicle Sally was of the opinion that Cubicle Joe needed to lead a spiritual insurrection at his church, so that it would be more relevant to people’s lives each day of the week, not just Sunday. “You got to start stirring things up,” exclaimed Cubicle Sally. “This country needs a spiritual revolution, and it has got to begin somewhere. It might as well be your church.”
Joe was convinced that a revolution was needed, but he was equally certain that he was not the person to lead it. “Sally, I am still figuring things out for myself. I am not ready to lead anything,” he confessed.
“Okay, okay, Joe. Let’s focus on one thing at a time,” said Sally. “I once went through a similar faith crisis. You will get out of your crisis in your own way, but I think the advice that helped me might also help you. One day Cubicle Mindy found me in a sorry state a lot like yours. I was boo-hooing in the bathroom because Cubicle Bill had just dumped another giant pile of you-know-what on my desk, and I thought I couldn’t take it much more. Well, you know how Mindy is a take charge kind of person, so she grabbed me by the shoulders and kept shaking me saying, ‘Look me in the eye, Sally! Look me in the eye!’ So, I looked her in the eye, and she said, ‘Start where you are at. Start where you are at. Sure, there is a giant pile of you-know-what on your desk, but isn’t there still a part of your day when you feel good without any effort at all? Maybe it’s that first cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe it’s giving your dog a walk. Maybe it’s giving your son a piggyback ride. Whatever it is, your heart is in it. It’s meaningful. Maybe it’s not the kind of meaning you can easily describe, but it’s the kind of meaning that my dad would say, “You can lean back and rest in it.” Like a hammock under a willow tree, you can lean back and feel that all is right with the world.’ Mindy started shaking me again saying, ‘Are you following me, Sally? Are you following me? Can you think of moments in your day that are like this?’ I was following her alright, and I could think of some moments. Then she said, ‘These moments are the moments when you are resting in God.’”[i]
Sally paused for a second, because she could see Joe was getting lost in thought. Joe had that glazed over expression on his face. “What is it, Joe?” she asked.
“But what about the pile of you-know-what?” said Joe. “Sometimes that seems to outweigh everything else.”
“Sure, it feels that way, Joe,” said Sally, “but the way I look at it is this. The pile of you-know-what may not disappear—at least not right away. The reality is that life has its trials and tribulations, but I think the key is to keep searching for more and more of those moments when you are resting in God. When I began to make it a matter of practice, I found myself discovering more and more of these moments. I discovered them with each bite of food, each sip of tea, and if you can believe it, each breath of air. Of course, I don’t stop and appreciate each and every breath of air and each and every bite of food, but I do appreciate enough of them that I can say my life has become a grateful life, even on days when there is a big pile of you-know-what on my desk.”
Joe felt a mixture of skepticism and hope. He sensed that what Sally was saying was born of actual experience. She really did have a grateful life, and she really did appreciate a lot of the little parts of life that many people take for granted. This gave him hope. What worried him was that he would not be able to do the same thing. Sally could see the doubt in Joe’s face.
“Look, Joe,” she said, “Let me be honest with you. What I am talking about works, but it isn’t easy. What I am talking about is what Paul was talking about in the Bible when he spoke of giving thanks in all circumstances and praying all the time. Back then Christians were being persecuted and oppressed. You-know-what was happening, but Paul still encouraged people to live grateful lives. Can you believe it? Living that kind of life is hard under almost any circumstance, and it’s not the sort of thing you can do by simply reading a self-help book or even the Bible. The early Christians needed each other. They needed community, but not just any community, a community that knows how to be relevant to people’s lives. That’s why you need to lead a spiritual insurrection at your church.”
Joe agreed, but he was still certain that he was not the person to lead the insurrection. He said, “Sally, you are right, but making faith relevant to people’s lives is getting harder and harder for churches to do. Look at us! We live in a secular world full of cubicles. We don’t spend time getting together and helping each other figure life out. And, when we are not in our cubicles, we get distracted by something else or we get busy taking our kids from one practice or event to another. If we take time to rest, we certainly don’t think of it as having anything to do with God.”
Sally nodded her head and said, “Your right, your right, but at least, we’ve found each other, and at least, we’ve started to figure things out. I believe others can start to do the same. Let’s start where we are at. We will have lunch again tomorrow.”
With that, Cubicle Joe and Cubicle Sally each returned to desks with large piles of you-know-what, but they did so feeling a lot better than they did before lunch. They did so feeling grateful for what they now knew they had. Amen.
[i] Mindy’s comments quote and paraphrase David Steindl-Rast’s Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness.