In Defense of Contentment

Jer. 32:1-3a, 6-15

I Timothy 6:6-19

When I use the words “content” or “contentment” – what comes to mind?  What kind of person comes to mind?   Are you thinking of a person who has solved the riddle of life, a person who’s happy and wise?  Or are you thinking of a sad-sac, passive, loser of a person who’s falling behind everyone else?

Our culture doesn’t value contentment.  I think there are two basic reasons.

First, people who are content don’t buy stuff.  If there’s one thing a capitalist, market economy needs – it’s people discontent with what they have.  Our economy needs to move product.  All those planes and trains and trucks hauling merchandise from here to there – they need someone to buy the stuff!  And so our brightest young people to go into marketing.  And they utilize their brilliant minds to find a million ways to persuade us that buying x, y, or z will make us happy. 

 

Second, people who are content appear un-ambitious.  And in our culture, appearing un-ambitious is perhaps the most detestable crime.  Lacking ambition is the unforgiveable sin in our achievement-addicted culture.

Our culture is afraid to death of being content.  And we’re not very good at it when we try.

But in our reading today, Paul sets before us this word “contentment” – describing the highest kind of life offered to us.  According to our reading, learning to experience contentment is the key to a happy and healthy life.  So I guess we better figure out if we can rehabilitate this word, and re-think its negative or unenticing tone in our ears.

You and I are being offered a new way of organizing our lives, a new approach to money, income, spending, status, and wealth:

Godliness combined with contentment is “great gain” (v. 6).

Suppose you had to choose between two different lives.  In one life your income is modest but your relationships are richly rewarding.  And in the other life your high income allows a wide variety of perks – a beautiful home, stylish clothes, frequent travel, and freedom from worries about paying bills.  But in this life, there is less time to enjoy yourself, less time to relax, less time to spend with friends and family, and the ongoing stress of making sure that your income stream remains high in order to insure that your spending habits can remain in place.  Now this is an artificial question of course.  But which would you choose?  Which ARE you choosing, I suppose I should say?

Paul’s point is that godliness is rewarding, but not in the financial terms that some in the community are teaching.  Learning to be content is “gain,” but you’ll have to learn to think outside the narrow terms of “financial gain.”

As an example of how to live simply, Paul reminds us that we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out. 

I think I’ve told you this story before.  We lived in New Haven when Henry was born.  Stephanie’s water broke while we were in bed around 5am (which was kind of inconsiderate).  She woke me up, we got ready and headed downstairs.  She turned right to go out the apartment door and I turned left towards the kitchen.  She said, “What are you DOING?”  I said, “Getting a bowl of cereal!”  “No, you’re not,” she said.

So the whole morning I was hungry.  I didn’t really get to eat until lunch time.  It was a difficult day for me.  Anyway . . . back to my wife’s delivery: I was by her side, dutifully holding her hand, but I situated myself towards the upper half of her body.  I did NOT want a bird’s eye view of the actual birth of our child.  So do I remember everything about that special moment?  No.  Most of it I’m trying to forget.

But I do remember that when the nurse handed Henry to me, he was covered in what looked to me like cream cheese.

I do remember that he was not wearing the latest, fashionable jeans.  No jewelry.  No cool sunglasses.  No wallet.  He had no stories of trips he’d taken to exotic places.  He came into the world like we all do - completely, utterly dependent upon others for his well-being.  He was naked, hungry, vulnerable.

We go out the same way.  When we gather around our dying loved ones, they might be wearing a simple gown but they’re pretty close to naked.  They have returned to a place of vulnerability.  There isn’t anything they have or anything they own that will make this passage into death any easier.  The only things to value at this point are the loving support of family and friends gathered around you, and your trust in God’s promise to care for us even in death.

Now IF life begins and ends in such simplicity, why is it that we complicate things in the middle of life with all of our desires and needs and wants and jealousies and check-lists of who has what?  Wouldn’t you be happier – and a better person – if you could find peace living simply, with modest expenses, free from clamoring desires for more stuff, and a smaller balance sheet of assets?

The word “Contentment” is autarkeias, and can mean “self-sufficiency,” not needing or desiring what one doesn’t have.  Paul uses the same term in Philippians 4:11 where he says, “I have learned to be content with what I have.”

If you were paying attention when you came in, you noticed that the song playing before services was a song by Sheryl Crow, Soak Up the Sun.  She sings the line, “It’s not having what you want/It’s wanting what you’ve got.”

OK, maybe we’ll admit that Paul is onto something.  But we’re not convinced yet.  What exactly is the problem with pursuing wealth and wanting nice things?

Two things, Paul says.

First, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (v. 9).

This is pretty spicy stuff.  Do you agree with it?  Paul describes the desire to get rich not as a virtue – as it is in our culture.  He describes it as a sickeness, an aberration, a dangerous and harmful lifestyle.

All of us have to make decisions about what kind of life we’re after.  And I think Paul is right – if your primary life-plan is to get rich, there’s something wrong with you.  You’re in the process of trapping yourself in a very narrow life.  Because the desire for wealth is an all consuming desire, you will be tempted to reshape your entire life around the desire for wealth.  You will end up doing things that harm both you and others around you.

If you need some examples of this point, consider the kind of damage incurred by Bernie Madoff on himself, his family, and in his investors.  Or consider that many earn their wealth by using people up in low paid, dangerous labor like coal mining.  Or consider the harms done by the many who get rich by kidnapping young people and forcing them into sex trafficking work.  Now those are the extreme examples, of course.  But they can alert us to some of the more common dangers of our own choices.

           

Second, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (v. 10).

Jesus tells us that we can’t serve two masters – God and money.  Both God and money want to be our master.  And you can’t split your allegiance 50/50 between them.  Both demand to be our ultimate concern, our life’s organizing principle.  That’s why there is often a crisis for those who are wealthy or who want to be wealthy.  The real life allegiance is to a financial plan, and the life of faith is seen as a nice little addition on the side.  No wonder that some who are rich have an initial conversion experience, and then later wander away from the faith.  Following Jesus Christ is extremely inconvenient if your primary life-project is acquiring wealth.

And yet for all the warnings about the desire to become rich, Paul makes it very clear that wealth isn’t the problem.   In fact, there are several wealthy persons in the congregation.  This was true of many first century churches, and true of many congregations today.

So there are guidelines here for those followers of Jesus Christ who are rich.  So if you have a good income or some wealth, listen closely.  And if you’re young and dream about having wealth, listen closely.

First, don’t be haughty – don’t be full of yourself.  Don’t live with some value scale in mind where you rank higher than others because you have wealth.  In God’s kingdom, all the values are upside down, remember.  The last are first and the first, last.  Make sure you maintain connections and relationships with friends, neighbors, and others in the congregation who struggle financially.  And be careful not to advertise your financial success with outward signs of it. 

Second, don’t live with misdirected hope in wealth, which is always uncertain.  If you have nice things, ask yourself, could I be perfectly happy and content without all these nice things?

Third, be rich in good works, generous, ready to share.  Make sure you’re living well beneath your means.  That’s the only way you’ll be able to share generously with others.  Don’t allow all your energy to flow towards your work and your plans to improve your life financially.  Make sure some of your time and energy goes toward plans for creative generosity.  Spend time dreaming about how you can bless others who are in need.

We began by talking about the conflict that exists in our culture between ambition and hard work on the one hand, and “contentment” on the other.  And so it appears normal to many of us to imagine that those who are well-off financially are the hard workers, the go-getters, the real athletes.

But our reading today suggests that the heroic, really impressive, athletic life is a life of contentment.  It’s the simple life that is the most ambitious and takes the most work.  The ambition that fuels many of our pursuits often turns out to be, on closer inspection, nothing more than nervous and anxious attempts to present ourselves as loveable.

The life of contentment is very different.  It’s a response to the experience of being loved by a God who gives us all good things.

The language Paul uses here suggests an active and courageous choice for a new kind of life.  He calls this life both “eternal life” (v. 12) and “true/real life” (v. 19).  But in both cases the verb used is “take hold of.”  This suggests that we are to energetically seize this new kind of life. 

This energetic tone continues in the athletic metaphors used.  Paul begins the letter by urging Timothy to “fight the battle well” (1:18) and returns to that same imagery at the letter’s end: “Fight the good fight of the faith” (6:12).  Some of you may have boxing imagery in mind with the word “fight.”  The term is actually a little broader than that.  You might translate it, “compete in the contest well.”  It’s clearly an image of an energetic, athletic endeavor.  No wonder Paul tells Timothy to “flee” from a materialistic way of life and “pursue” a new way of living (v. 11).

The life of faith is a life of contentment.  And it is an ambitious undertaking.  It summons our best energy and effort.  It’s not for the timid or the passive.  It’s not at all like floating down a river, or relaxing in an easy chair.  And it’s certainly not like just accepting what’s offered to you without question.

The “confession” Paul mentions here is Timothy’s baptism.  So he’s calling all of us to remember the significance of our baptisms, and our confession of allegiance to one Lord, Jesus Christ, who alone is worthy of our allegiance.  The baptized life is eternal life, life that’s truly life.  Jesus Christ is the only one who will not distort us.  He’s the only object of our ultimate affection and loyalty that will not turn out to be an idol.  (He will always be the crucified one, giving us life instead of taking it from us).

May God grant you freedom from your desires for something more, something else.  Amen.