"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
10-24-21Sermon Notes“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
Have you considered that popular songs are often spring from heartbreak, love, disappointment, or searching? They often are deeply spiritual, too. I have always enjoyed the band, U2. Their bandleader and main songwriter, Bono, has filled much of their music with spirituality…expressing not only his faith, but his skepticism and his search for truth. Bono is the son of a Roman Catholic father and a Protestant mother. He became disillusioned with religion. In a Huffpost article from 2016, he said, “Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit.” Whoa! Preach it, Bono!
Bono is far from the first to search…and not find…what he was looking for. Listen to Solomon’s search in the Book of Ecclesiates:
I said to myself, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But again, this also was vanity. 2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” 3 I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, until I might see what was good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life. 4 I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines.
9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. 10 Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. 11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecc. 2: 1-11 NRSV)
Solomon expressed what Bono did in his hit song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Solomon said, “I tried pleasure – wine, women, and song – possessions… and I never really found what I was looking for.” So…what’s the use in looking, if all is “chasing after wind?” We will talk about that this coming Sunday in Celebration service.
See you Sunday,
Pastor Sam