“When I’m drivin’ in my car, the man come on the radio
He’s tellin’ me more and more about some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination

I can’t get no, no, no, no … 
I can’t get no satisfaction,

I can’t get no satisfaction
I try and I try and I try and I try …

When I’m watchin’ my tv and a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he don’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me

I can’t get no, no, no, no
I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
I try and I try and I try and I try

I’m ridin’ round the world
And I’m doin’ this and I’m signin’ that 

And I’m trying to make some girl

Who tells me baby, better come back, maybe next week, 

‘cause you see, I’m on a losing streak …

I can’t get no, no, no, no

I can’t get no satisfaction

I can’t get no satisfaction.

I try and I try and I try and I try…”

All we have to do is take some air out of the rock-and-roll strut of this song, and we can hear the suffering in it. There’s still some self-pity in it but it’s hard to deny the sadness. This isn’t my insight. The musician Cat Power sings a version of this most-famous rock-and-roll song that’s got no drum beat, no driving distortion, just her lonesome voice and her acoustic guitar slowly walking out the minor chords. 

And it’s so sad; it’s a really sad song. 

We hear the emptiness. The promise of satisfaction that’s sold to us – if we just buy this or wear that or cop this look or achieve this dream of fame and fortune if all our desires are met and we are desired … it’s all an empty promise. And however much we try to fill that emptiness, we are left empty. We can’t get no satisfaction.

If we dare to be honest, there comes a time for most of us when deep down we know that there are ways we are trying to find satisfaction that just ain’t doing it. Try and try and try as we might to find a fix that actually sticks, we’re yoked to a marry-go-round of striving after things that always seem to just slip our grasp. Maybe this isn’t true for you – maybe you were born enlightened or have always had your heart filled with the ultimate reality of God – but for most of us, we have had times in our lives when we’ve had to admit profound dis-satisfaction and disillusionment with the ways we have tried to find happiness. What we thought was a great use of whatever measure of freedom and power is ours has got for us nothing but cycles of unfulfilled craving. 

This isn’t only about the kinds of things we usually name as addictions – as important as it is to name the mind- and mood-altering tools we can turn to and get hooked on, most of which are very legal and even sanctioned and celebrated. Addictions of any type are symptoms of a deeper malaise. This about the ways we seek out anything – and it can be anything – as if it is going to give us an ultimate fulfillment that is just not possible … 

 … Not possible, that is, without our ongoing surrender of our petty selves to the ultimate transcendent reality we call “God.” 

The Apostle Paul names symptoms of these desperate cycles of seeking to satisfy our small selves, of being driven by ultimately selfish desires. We heard in our reading today the vivid language that Eugene Peterson uses in his Message translation of Galatians 5: “repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.” And I think if we put our heads together, we could go on too and name more and more ways that we or others can creates suffering for ourselves and others in cycles of self-centered craving. 

The good news is that, by the grace of God as manifest in Jesus, we can be free of these cycles of delusion. We can be free to use our freedom for the sake of lives fulfilled to overflowing with love and satisfaction. 

The bad news is that our religion has too often been twisted back into the service of human powers and their empty promises of satisfaction. This is always a temptation. 

When Jesus received the Spirit after his baptism, the Spirit led him into the wilds, where he faced the temptations to use his freedom and power for self-centered ends. The final temptation was for political power, to possess and to rule the empires of the world in their splendor. Jesus saw through to the ultimate emptiness of this temptation. He pledged his allegiance to God alone, the One God of All Creation with Whom we find final satisfaction beyond human cravings.

Yet how often through history, and down to our present time and place, has the name of Jesus and the name of God been used in pursuit of just this kind of power? And how often has religion been used to excuse or mask all the various ways we have of trying to satisfy our own egos and petty appetites? 

This is as it is. We can name it with mercy and with sadness, because it does only bring suffering.  

The important question is to each of us, “what are we going to do with our one wild and precious life?” As Mary Oliver put it. How can we choose to use whatever measure of freedom and power is entrusted to us to say “Yes” to what is truly liberating and truly satisfying? 

 How can we cultivate and share the fruits of lives centered on the God of All Creation: love, exuberance, perseverance, serenity, faith, joy, gratitude, kindred spirithood, humility, peace, self-control, kindness, goodness, gentleness, magnanimity, courage, compassion … I could go on. We could go on.

And we must go on.

This is a practice. It’s an ongoing practice. 

If we say “Yes” to God and God’s liberating love, if we say “Yes” to the Way of Jesus, we are saying “Yes” to ongoing growth as individuals and a community. We will be become free of this or that a pettiness and enjoy times of expansive holy love from God; and then be soon challenged again to recognize even deeper ways that we seek satisfaction in deluded and selfish concerns. The growth never ends. It’s a practice of continual return to God’s mercy, and of ongoing sharing of its fruits.  

 So thank you for being in it together, as a community of faith, a community of practice of this love and mercy of Christ that does indeed bring satisfaction. 

 Thanks be to God. 

(Delivered Sunday, November 13, 2022, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge)

Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash