Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

"Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains." (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

Nobody knew what to do with Charlie Bucket, the kid who only opened two Wonka bars.

Do you know that scene from the famous movie adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? After all the fevered frenzy of a worldwide search for the five hidden "Golden Tickets" hidden in chocolate bars around the world had seemingly subsided, and it seemed that all the winners had been found, poor ol' Charlie Bucket is back in school with his classmates as the teacher tries to give a mathematics lesson on percentages. The teacher asks several students how many Wonka bars each opened and ate, and every time the numbers are astonishingly large.  One student opened a hundred candy bars; another ate a hundred and fifty, and so on.  Then the teacher asks Charlie, who softly mumbles, "Two." The teacher assumes he means "two HUNDRED," until Charlie corrects him to say, "No, just two." The whole classroom is scandalized at the lack of excess, at the absence of gluttony and avarice from Charlie's response.  Everybody else had gone all-out to hoard, open, and eat as many candy bars as possible in pursuit of one of the impossibly rare Golden Tickets, and here Charlie Bucket looked absolutely outlandish precisely because he was content with only two chocolate bars.  The boy stood out scandalously, not because he had so much more than everyone else, but because he was apparently at peace with so much less than everyone else.  In the movie, everybody knew how to understand the all-consuming quest for MORE; they didn't know what to make of someone who could be satisfied with what he had.

I want to suggest that the New Testament envisions something just as scandalous for us: the scandal of satisfaction.  Today's verses come from a passage in what we call First Timothy that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and they envision a life in which Christ-followers stand out precisely because they are contented--they are satisfied--with the essentials of life like food, shelter, and clothing and therefore are free to spend their energy, resources, and love caring for other people and enjoying life as a gift precisely because we aren't constantly driven for "more."  We'll be a minority report in a world drowning in its own acquisitiveness--a movement of Charlie Buckets in a culture of endlessly consumed confections.  We Christians will look like weirdos... outliers... and folks on the countercultural fringe, because we are no longer driven to spend our lives seeking more-for-the-sake-of-more, but find joy in appreciating what we have as enough.  We will find ourselves on the margins because so few other people will know what to do with folks who aren't constantly obsessing over the next big thing we have to buy in order to get the next dopamine spike so that we can tell ourselves we are happy.  We don't have to play that game anymore, and we don't have to spend our energy chasing after whatever the voices on TV and the targeted ads on our phones and feeds tell us we have to have in order to finally have "arrived," because we have found that God supplies what we really need.  Like the old adage goes, "There are two ways to be rich in this life: either get more, or want less."  First Timothy would tell us that the first option is really a mirage, but the second one works once we discover that our lives are freer when we aren't burdened and weighed down by "stuff."

All too often, the loud voices in our culture tell us we can't really be happy if we don't have "X," if we don't wear "Y," or if we don't have a net worth of "Z." And instead the apostle tells us that the pursuit of all those things that were supposed to make us happy turn out to be the very things that lead us in to misery. When my life is oriented wholly around getting more, I will never be able to appreciate what I have--it will never be enough.  When my life is instead oriented on savoring what I do have, even small amounts keep their flavor.  I can only assume that after the first fifty chocolate bars from Willy Wonka, you start to get sick to your stomach, or at least tired of the taste.  But when you can slow down enough to appreciate what is right in front of you, you start to notice wonders, graces, and blessings you had overlooked before. You start to see beauty in unexpected and undervalued places.  You start to rediscover (or discover for the first time) the joys of a conversation with a friend, the comfort of a few pieces of well-made and well-made clothing rather than racks full of things you'll only wear once, and the deliciousness of simple but good ingredients (whose names you can pronounce).  It is a different kind of life from what conventional wisdom in a culture of consumption would try to sell us, but it is a good life.

I wonder what might happen in our lives if we made a concerted effort to refuse the voices that prod us always to want more and to listen instead to the voices of people around us who are simply our neighbors so that we can learn again to love people and use things, rather than the other way around.  I wonder what efforts in our life we could let go of, and what more worthwhile pursuits we could spend our time on instead.  I wonder what things we have been ignoring or overlooking might be found again and enjoyed.  And I wonder how that kind of quiet but powerful witness might catch someone else's attention and lead them to re-examine what is keeping them from contentment in their own lives, too.  They might just want to find out about the God who gives us daily bread and graces us with the gift of enough-ness, all because they have seen from us, out on the margins of a consumption-driven society, what it looks like to be scandalously satisfied.

Lord Jesus, give us once again the contentment that comes from receiving what we truly need without the constant drive to get more for the sake of more.