The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper on “Why Do We Eat Bread Which Does Not Satisfy?”

Posted on Mar 12, 2010 - 11:17 AM

The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper, Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, is a activist for the progressive Christian movement.  Recently Donna delivered a sermon in Miami, FL and referred to “punishmentalist” not “fundamentalists” who encourage victimization and the blaming of others.  Donna says, “We live in a time of appreciation deficit disorder.” Here is the entire text of Donna’s sermon, “Why Do We Eat Bread Which Does Not Satisfy?”

I will save my reminiscences for the lunch after service so that those of you who are interested can listen – and I won’t bore all the wonderful new faces here today.  Thank you for the invitation to come back.  You could have made it a little warmer, but I forgive you.  That forgiveness will actually be the theme of this sermon, which starts with the song the rolling stones trinity.  “I can’t get no satisfaction.”  Repeat three times.  The sermon ends with a kind answer to the question of why we eat so much bread which does not satisfy.

The humorist Paula Poundstone gave me a great description for the automated and remote spirituality of our time.  Apparently someone has figured out how to automate confessions.  You dial an 800 number.  You can push one if you want information on how to make a confession.  You can push two if you actually want to confess something. And you can press three if you want to listen to other people’s confessions.  The theme of the 800 number is left unremarked.  Confession is required, one-way or another.  You are to find some form of confession and sing - or unsing - it.  Why do we eat so much bread, which does not satisfy?

Because we think confession is essential and that we are fundamentally unworthy.  This unworthiness is the root cause for eating bad bread.  Bad people eat bad bread.  Note my frequent use of the word bad. That word has permeated religion and spirituality and its penetration is the reason we eat so much bread that is unsatisfactory.  Below the root of our badness is another root.  It is the reason we often press 3.  Let’s listen to some other people confess.  At the root under the root of unworthiness, most of us, thank God, don’t think we are that bad in the first place.  Like the rolling stones, we think the lack of satisfaction is the fault of someone else, and we are its victims.

The punishemntalists - never call them fundamentalists, that gives them too much – have convinced us that God thinks we have done something wrong.  Perhaps we have had an abortion or as Glenn Beck put it last night on Fox news, failed to raise our children properly.  Progressives join punishmentalists in the same rhythm.  We too think we have done something wrong.  Perhaps we didn’t work hard enough for justice or failed in courage when our boss was discriminating against someone unjustly.  Punishmentalists and progressives have a similar theology: both imagine unworthiness and both imagine obligation, the doing of right, as the antidote.  Most of us, including me, press button three.  We don’t really confess because we don’t really think we have done anything that wrong.  I mean, given the circumstances, what else could I do?  I am the victim of other people’s wrongness.  We do like to look at other people and listen to their confessions.  Why else would Oprah be so popular with so many people, as afternoon after afternoon, mostly women tell her why their lives are so miserable?  By the way I really like Oprah.  But I do think she trades on injury and blame rather than grace and responsibility.

Punishmentalists and progressives alike eat bread which does not satisfy because we get God wrong.  We get religion wrong.  We get spirituality wrong.  Do you see my finger waving?  Naughty, naughty, bad, bad.  It is almost impossible to preach a sermon or live a life without setting up some kind of enemy and attacking it.  Again, that attack, that blame, that wrong disclosed with a guliting glee, is what is wrong!  It is the root of the root of why we eat so much bread which does not satisfy.  It turns us into victims who blame other people for our victimhood.  If there is one meaning to be a Christian without an adjective in front of your name, like progressive or evangelical or fundamental of catholic or UCC or Baptist, take the wag out of your finger, your heart, and your soul.

Today I want to get to the good bread and to make sure we all remember that God lives in the field beyond right and wrong, as the poet Rumi said.  Jesus is the one that refused to create an enemy to create a self.  Jesus is the one that refused to hate himself or hate others.  Jesus refused to be a victim.  To be a Christian, which is way different than being a punishmentalist OR a progressive, is to live without enemies, to live without blame and to live with out bad bread.  To be a Christian is to live without resentment, without enemies, without unworthiness. Imagine living without unworthiness, waking up in the morning and knowing you were ok, you didn’t have to rush, you didn’t have to perform, you didn’t have to fulfill your obligations because you didn’t have any obligations.  What you had instead was good work, great loves, joy in your heart, something called satisfaction.  You do work for justice but you do it without your finger wagging. You do raise your children well but not out of the cold fear that you won’t or can’t.  If you’re a democrat, you know how to have fun with Republicans.  If you are republican, you know how to appreciate a democrat. 

We live in a time of appreciation deficit disorder.  Appreciation, deficit, disorder.  We keep thinking if only someone else would appreciate us, then we would feel better.  Look better. Eat better.  Be more satisfied.  The truth is close to the opposite.  If we were to withdraw permission to the hoard of others who we think should appreciate us more, we would have more satisfaction.  We would resolve our own appreciation deficit disorder, stop depreciating our losses, and find ourselves overwhelmed by appreciation, thanksgiving, from which would follow good bread.  Imagine a life without the excuse of being a victim and you will get it.

Let me break that down.  We eat bread which does not satisfy in an effort to please others.  Some of you know this as the get thin quick strategy, which will make you look like you are supposed to look and put you on the cover of a magazine.  Then your partner will appreciate you more and because of his or her appreciation, you will feel appreciated.  Or you know it more systemically.  You may have gotten over the thin issue and faced some of the systemic dysfunction.  If only you had the money for a better house, or a new bedroom set, or some other kind of make over, then you would be the kind of person whom others could appreciate.  As it stands now, you are not worthy of appreciation, even though you have done your duty and eaten all the bread that does not satisfy.  You have done everything right and your mortgage is still under water, your job is still iffy, and you still need anti-depressants, which of course you should not need because they showcase your unworthiness.  We get religion wrong when we misunderstand God, as though God were the chief Judge of the Spiritual Supreme Court.  God is instead Jesus, a mild man who understands the word “tranquil.”  Tranquil.  Jesus even understands how we get God wrong, how much we love the word wrong, and refuses to even use it.  You will not find it in his vocabulary.

Spiritual Enlightenment is the joy of not being afraid that we are wrong.  It is the far side of the fear of being wrong. It is the courage to sin boldly and to make great world-class mistakes. Spiritual enlightenment is the feast of the good bread. If enlightenment is a great lightness of being and a relief from fear why do so many people pursue it so grimly?  If enlightenment is a great joy in a land beyond fear why are so many people so grumpy?  I have watched many women marching down the street with a yoga mat strapped on their arm and a scowl on their face.  And I do mean marching.  I hear people talk about yoga, a great example of new consumer based enlightenment, in the terms of should. I so should go to yoga today.  I just skipped it, I was too tired.  People almost seem to lament the invitation into joy.  I know I should feel grateful but.  I know I should be lighter but. I know I should frames an awful lot of life as we refuse it.

Before you start throwing the Pollyanna epithet at me, let me clarify a few terms. I want to talk about the fear that limits our joy today. It has a large and lethal advertising budget.  There is nothing wimpy about the scare and hate people.  They give every appearance of being in charge.  They actually seem to like terrorism.  And the more power we grant them, the more power they have.  In fact, the power of the scare and hate people grows every time we forget to go to yoga or breathe deeply into joy, with or without a yoga mat.  There is no need to grimly pursue joy, to know that we should but that we don’t.  There is no need to be as afraid as we are.  We can be lighter.  We can live more at home on the planet, in this time and on this day.  We may not be able to change the difficulties that surround us but no one else is in charge of our attitudes towards them but us.

For some reason I have internalized a nearly impossible set of life expectations. I know I am not alone.  I want lots of excitement and lots of peace at the same time.  I want lots of impact on society and its lethal economies and I also want a lot of nights off and out of meetings.  For decades now I have known two contradictory forms of personal happiness.  One is that I’d like to live on a farm and grow things.  The other is I want to do urban ministry.  I appear to think my own vocational home is simultaneously rural and urban, simultaneously diverse and homogeneous, simultaneously quiet and loud.  At the end of a good day in the country, I wish I was in the city.  At the end of a good day in the city, I long for the country.  This personal confusion is most aptly described by the kind of car I want to drive. It is a convertible pick up truck with a hybrid engine.  It is probably red.  You are right if you think that kind of vehicle does not exist.  Did I also tell you that I want to live my life surrounded by family and friends and that I really like solitude?  Did I mention that I long for deep and sustained attachments with real human beings, half of whom drive me crazy?  I know I am not alone in this abundance of unsatisfying bread.I watch many of us desire to write a beautiful play but spend our days directing not for profit institutions.  I watch musicians go through whole months without writing a new song, simply due to the I Know I should but I don’t frame being the victor of our spirits.  If I thought will power could get any of us out of these confusions, I would stop here and blame us all for being blameworthy.  While more serious personal direction and even a good dose of will power helps some of us some of the time become joyous and enlightened, usually it does not.  Usually it is the failure of the will and its power that puts us on the path to enlightenment.  We become lighter and more joyous not because we succeed at taming ourselves but because and as we fail.  We come to terms.  We live happily in either the country or the city, writing songs or not, achieving Broadway or not when we disattach from our personal confusion and learn to love its chaos.

Yes, disattach.  I love Theologian Paul Knitter’s line about how he came to be a Christian by becoming a Buddhist first.  When we line up with the promises of God, we realize that these promises are not just for inner peace.  They are also for inner turmoil which kneaded and yeasted well becomes inner peace.  I have long said that the gospel is the permission and the invitation to enter difficulty with hope.  One of the ways we get light is to enter our own difficulties and confusion with hope.  We stop the I know I shoulda’s and begin the I know that the shoulda’s are not the whole story.  We give ourselves permission not to have all the life we want, right in the middle of not having it, and there receive the lightness of disattachment from absurd expectations.  We grock grace.  We get grace. You might call spiritually lightened and enlightened and enlightening people the Gifted and Talented Program in the great primary school of life.  We are not gifted and talented in the normal way, as in good test scores or astonishing abilities to manage life’s curve balls.  We are gifted and talented because we get over good test scores, curve balls and disattach from their nearly constant oppression.  We stop trying to earn our stripes and enjoy our stripes.  If disabled, we reject the overcoming script and limp along with dignity and power.  That way some of us even overcome.

If personal confusion is not your issue but instead you enjoy larger and more dramatic fears, consider the loss of core trust in democracy.  Do we really think there is any leader who could manage us?  Or climate change? Or global recession?  There are plenty of things to be afraid of.  There is just no reason to give that fear any more than it has already taken from you.

Obama may in fact receive 30 death threats a day, and Glenn Beck may get paid a lot of money to scorn and sneer.  But we can still trust in God, trust each other, trust the people and not get moved off our own confused path by the fear of what our so called enemies can do.  We can stop having enemies.  We can learn to devictimize ourselves and others.

One more strategy for lightenment and its good bread.  I don’t know if you all have heard but Bishop John Shelby Spong has made a decision.  He will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone.  He just won’t do it.  Spong is tired of living a reactive life to subjects not brought up by God.  I daresay some of us in this very room are tired of living a reactive life.  When we speak of spiritual enlightenment, we move out of the land of reactivity.  Reactivity is a form of exquisite victimhood in a high priced restaurant that serves bad food, to which we return over and over, thinking someday it might be better, if we just paid more for it.  It keeps the wag in your finger.  Being for gays or against gays is really not that much different in spirit.  Instead of living in fear, we live in joy.  When we refuse the bread that does not satisfy, the bread of “knowIshoulda”, we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. There we live lightly, joyfully pursuing the very LIGHTEN UP that is always and already pursuing us.  And the bread is fabulous.

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