Sermon on May 3, 2026
“Satisfaction”
By: Rev. Pamela Dolan
Gospel: John 14: 1-14

There’s a reason that one of the most enduring and popular rock songs of all time is the Rolling Stones’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which was released before I was born and still gets airplay today. Okay, one reason is definitely that guitar riff by Keith Richards, but another reason is that we live in a society that is rooted in dissatisfaction. If that sounds like a too-sweeping generalization, I invite you to imagine what would happen if one day everyone in this country woke up completely emotionally and spiritually satisfied. No more worry about our weight or our hair or our GPA or the color of our bedroom curtains. One thing that would happen is that the American economy would collapse! Dissatisfaction with our bodies, our homes, our bank accounts, and even our relationships drive the consumerism on which our entire society is built.

Before I go on, it’s important to note here that the word “satisfaction” sometimes has an entirely different meaning in a religious context, based on the idea of repaying a debt, and is closely aligned with theories of atonement and redemption. That is not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I am thinking about the remarkable exchange in today’s Gospel, when Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” This is the statement that got me wondering: If I could ask Jesus for one thing, the one thing that would satisfy me, what would it be? And is there really any reason not to be satisfied right now, with the life and the circumstances I already have?

If keeping us perpetually dissatisfied is the purpose of the advertising and marketing pressure we experience day in and day out, that doesn’t mean that all dissatisfaction is shallow or wrong. For example, not being satisfied with what is “good enough” fuels much of the achievement and innovation on which progress, as we understand it, depends. Driven, high-achieving people use a certain kind of dissatisfaction to get things done, to push past the boundaries of what seems possible, leading to breakthroughs in science, technology, art, medicine, and more.

Another healthy, even holy, dissatisfaction can be that sense of dissatisfaction with injustice and inequality that drives some of our great reformers and activists. If everyone were satisfied with the status quo, we would have nobody asking the hard questions about poverty, environmental racism, endless wars, and the countless other ills that beset our society. Sometimes “good enough” really isn’t good enough, and we need people who will remind us that all is not as it should be and inspire us to do something about it.

At the heart level, feeling dissatisfied can be a clue that something is amiss, in our selves or the world around us. My spiritual director sometimes talks about “sacred cravings” and says it’s important to pay attention when we feel dissatisfied. If I start getting envious, convinced that everyone else is having fun without me, it could be the Holy Spirit reminding me that I haven’t taken a day off for a while, or haven’t been focusing on people and experiences that bring me joy. The trick is to remember that when I feel like there’s something “out there” that I need to fill myself up, it might be time to do a little internal calibrating, to see if I really need a trip to Tahiti to feel okay again or if maybe just a day at the Arboretum with a friend would suffice.

So, those are some of the ways that we perhaps need the energy that occurs through dissatisfaction, energy that can create change and make the world a better place. Nonetheless, there is a danger that dissatisfaction can go too far and result in unhealthy perfectionism, chronic restlessness and discontent, and/or becoming hyper-critical of oneself and others. Which leads us back to where we started, with the concern that our inner lives are being coopted and colonized by people and corporations who profit from our dissatisfaction.

To see how the idea of “satisfaction” works in today’s Gospel, it might help to remember that this passage from the Gospel of John is a part of what we often call the Farewell Discourse; it is essentially a set of instructions that Jesus give to his friends on the last night of his earthly life. He is preparing them for what it will be like to live without him. Except that, paradoxically, he is also saying that they will never actually need to live without him, because he will even death cannot separate them. We often hear this passage at funerals, and it tells us everything we need to know about the Christian understanding of death that we are hearing it again now, during the Easter season. By dying and rising again, Jesus goes ahead of us, preparing a place for us, so that we might have eternal life. It’s that simple—and that hard to grasp.

I keep circling around that pronouncement of Philip’s, that all he and the other disciples need to be satisfied is to see the Father, whom I take to mean God. On the one hand, Philip and all of those listening have been taught that nobody can see God and live, so his request is audacious in the extreme. On the other hand, it is so touchingly pure and faithful, so simple and trusting and wholehearted. I wonder if I can honestly say the same thing myself: Would seeing God be enough to satisfy me? Or will I always want more? And how is this connected to Jesus telling us to not let our hearts be troubled? Is that another way of saying, “Be at ease, be satisfied. Even your grief can be held lightly, because you have all that you need right here and right now.”?

The English word “satisfied” is only one way to translate the Greek word arkeō. As New Testament professor Laura Holmes points out, this precise word is likely placed here in John’s Gospel to remind us of an earlier exchange between Jesus and Philip. She writes, “At the feeding of the 5,000, only the Gospel of John narrates an exchange where Jesus explicitly ‘tests’ Philip by asking him, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ Philip responds, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy sufficient (arkeō) bread for each to take a little.’” [i]Of course, in that miraculous situation, the people do end up with enough bread to be satisfied—in fact, more than enough, since there were baskets left over.

I almost wish the people who put the lectionary together had included Psalm 22 as one of today’s options, with its wonderful lines “The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him.” This parallelism makes clear that God wants us to be satisfied and that, at the same time, God is the means of our satisfaction. You hear it in the Lord’s Prayer petition to “Give us this day our daily bread,” the spiritual and ethical implications of which are made clear by the John Philip Newell translation, “May love rise again in us today with food for every table, shelter for every family, and reverence for every life.”

Clearly the Gospel message about satisfaction is very different than what commercials or even the Rolling Stones mean by the word. Gospel satisfaction is about enough-ness, about sufficiency, not about having everything we could ever desire or imagine. But it is also not stingy or tightfisted. And, paired with the “I am” statements that come next, it is clearly about Jesus himself being that sufficiency, that satisfaction, that bread that feeds our bodies and our souls and that will never leave us hungry.

Asking myself, “What do I need to be satisfied?” and being honest with myself about the answer is a good spiritual discipline. It occurs to me that the whole history of our faith would be very different if for the last two millennia the question, “What do I need to be satisfied?” had been more central and urgent than the question, “What do I need to do to be saved?” This passage from the Gospel of John, so often used to exclude or frighten people, is not Jesus telling people what to do to be saved. It is him telling us that he is the way, he is the bread, he is the satisfaction. If, like Philip, we truly want to see God, all we have to do is open our eyes—open our eyes to Jesus and to the divine presence in the world around us.

The Eucharist is one place where we practice this kind of satisfaction. We take one small chunk of bread and one sip of wine, and we know that we are tasting the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and that it will be available to us again and again. We can also practice satisfaction by noticing how much we already have, how much the world that God created is longing to give us glimpses of God here and now. When we are satisfied with what we have, not only can our hearts focus on what matters, but we are helping to create a world where everyone can have enough.

This sense of enough-ness, and the satisfaction to be had through creation, is beautifully captured in the poem by Wendell Berry entitled “What We Need is Here.”  He writes,

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for a new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear. What we need is here.

What we need is here. Let us eat and be satisfied. Amen.

[i] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-141-14-7

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