It's Not the Soup

I just saw a commercial that started with beautiful images--families hugging, a toddler being tossed in the air, an older woman swimming in the surf. The narrator asked us, "what are you doing to get happy?" I thought back to my platform address on Sunday, to the comments I heard from people later that day about what makes them joyful--dancing, playing with their children, doing good for someone else.

Cut back to the commercial, as we see a delighted looking woman and the narrator asks another question: "Have you tried soup to make you happy?"

I love soup. Especially on a cold day, it really does warm you up. It makes me, I suppose, a little happy to have a good bowl of soup.

But I have to tell you, buying soup is not, in the end, going to make you happy. If I could have added one more layer to my address on Sunday, it would have been considering the way that real human connection, religious human connection, is fulfilling in a way that our material culture never will be. Urged to buy more and more of whatever people are selling today, we think we'll find some kind of joy in that experience. I'm here to tell you, it's not the soup. It's the people across the table.