There is a long-standing tradition at Faith Mennonite Church, the church in Leamington Ontario that I grew up in, and I was able to experience this tradition again last weekend when I went home for Canadian Thanksgiving. There is a table at the front of the church, and all members and friends are asked to bring goods - canning, pies, vegetables and fruits, flowers, fresh baking. The table is heaped with food. At the end of the service, you can make a donation and bring an item home with you. All proceeds go to the Mennonite Central Committee, which does extensive social justice and relief work around the world.
The true meaning of this tradition became embedded in me early on. I must have been 9 or 10, and my father handed me a twenty dollar bill, and told me to go get a pie. I was confused. I was beginning to understand that as farmers, we struggled to get by, the bank always looming threateningly in the background. My parents made many careful, and often painful choices about how they would manage their scarce resources. Why would my father suddenly spend $20 for a pie? My dad saw my concern and told me, "We have so much. This is what we have to do." And indeed, when I went up to the table, I saw that my father was not the only one who felt that way. The basket was filled to overflowing with tens and twenties and fifties.
We live in a world that is inscribed by money and the value we give it. From the time we are born until the time we die, we are deeply impacted by money. It trickles through most of the minutes of our day. We are consumers. We are providers and producers. We are deeply embedded in the cycles of supply and demand, and irrevocably caught in economic systems that ebb and flow, grow and shrink. Many of our informal rites of passage focus on our ability to move through the financial markers of adulthood. Getting a job, building a career, paying off student debt, mortgages, cars, homes, providing for children, paying for their education, saving for retirement, leaving an inheritance. Our measures for a successful life are often evaluated using the visible signs of financial stability.
Now it would be tempting to discredit this, to say that we are more than our money and more than the money we leave behind, and yet is there not a truth to this matter? Given our absolute dependence on money itself in this money-based economy, is it surprising that money would have such power over how we see each other and ourselves? You can't turn your back on money. It is simply not possible to do so, at least not if you want to partake in most of American life. So the issue is not whether to succumb to the power of money or not. The issue is how we will relate to money and how we will relate to others in the context of money. Given it's unavoidable impact on our lives, how do we approach our money, make our money, use our money in ethical, grounded, fulfilling ways that enrich our lives and respond to the realities and needs of the world around us?
I want to encourage us, this morning, to think about money in terms of its spiritual and religious dimensions. Because money is one important medium by which we try to meet our day-to-day demands, because money or the lack of it or the desire for it trickles through virtually every minute of our day, then the relationship that we build with money is a spiritual discipline, deeply embedded in the theologies we develop to answer the big questions of life - Why am I where I am? Why do I do what I do? What do I believe about the nature of life? What do I believe about the nature of humanity? What am I called to be in this life and what am I called to do with my life? These questions, and the moral systems that arise from them, cannot be disconnected from our lives as economic beings.
MORALITY IN MONEY
There is always morality in money and in the economic ideologies and economic systems that influence how we make money and how we spend it. Let's look at a not-so-distant example of the intersection of morality and economic organization. In the Cold War that we've really just emerged from, there was a definite morality attached to both capitalism and communism. There were ideologies and theologies in both that reflected deep truths about human nature and human need.
Proponents of Communism saw in their economic system a morality that placed great value in the equitable redistribution of goods and money. The money you earned and the things that you had in your possession were not simply yours but belonged to everyone. Everyone should be economically equal, regardless of birth, education, intelligence, or simply being in the right place at the right time. In the words of Karl Marx, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." This is a strong moral statement about the way we are to live with each other. Now I'm not suggesting we ignore how corrupt communism became, or the monstrosities that happened in its name. A whole generation of my ancestors died during the Stalin years. But, I do not think we should discount within the ideology of communism a morality that appeals for such radical equality. Despite its horrific failures, communism began with a hunger for justice.
Where communism focuses on the common good, capitalism focuses on individual freedom. The free flow of money and capital. Every individual should have the freedom to carve out for themselves the best life they can. If each of us pursues own self-interest, society as a whole will be dynamic and strong and creative. Not unlike communism, capitalism has also grown corrupt, with the hunger for freedom mutating into justification for greed and self-centeredness. Many monstrosities have happened and are happening in its name. But again, I do not think we should discount within the ideology of capitalism a morality that proposes such radical freedom of choice.
These are two very powerful economic theologies, and honestly, we live in the remnants of both. The Cold War mirrored the universal struggle of humankind to find the balance between individual freedom and communal responsibility. And somehow, in the midst of all the politics, we, the people, on both sides of the Cold War divide, continued this struggle in our individual lives, and within the context of our families and friends and communities - to build our livelihoods, establish homes, complete our educations, find partners and friends, provide for our families, and maybe even be happy. In the midst of all these larger economic and political forces, in the midst of their successes and their failures, each of us tries to find our way. And it is in the work of finding our way that we build the theologies by which we understand what happens to us and the world around us.
And so I ask you, how are you finding your way? What theologies have you either consciously or unconsciously developed to help you understand what happens to you, to your loved ones, to the communities you call your own?
Think of the story of the three men. Each did the same work. Each built a cathedral. And each developed a theology of life. One felt life to be a great burden and did his work with heaviness and resentment. The other was not much happier, but held firm and developed an inner resolve and confidence because he was providing for his beloved family. The third gloried in what he did, for he knew the beauty that would come of his work.
BUILDING OUR CATHEDRALS
Each of us is building that cathedral. Regardless of the work we do, whether it is paid or unpaid labor, labor we like, can live with, or loathe, we build the cathedral in the living of our lives, in our homes and careers, in the way we engage our personal passions, in the way we fulfill our duties, in the way we love those around us.
The cathedral is the totality of our lives. It is the work we do. It is who we believe ourselves to be. It is the children we bring into this world. It is the relationships we build with those around us.
The cathedral is also the vision that may hang before us, calling us to it. It may be that thin sliver of light that shines through the darkness in the times when we grieve our losses, doubt our choices, and question our futures.
The cathedral is also what calls us to follow the desires of our hearts in a way that is ethical, and moral, and beneficial for the good of all. It is our hunger for freedom. It is our thirst for justice. It is our need to live in harmony with our spiritual values. It is our hunger to manifest a morality that will make our lives meaningful and rich, that will leave behind a legacy that is much bigger than we are.
So let me ask you this. What is the role of money in your cathedral? How does money come into your life? For what purposes does it leave your hands? How does money function in your family, with your parents, your partner, your children? In the way you manage your money, do you feel that you are in harmony with your spiritual values, making manifest a morality that enriches your life and the world around you?
I imagine that this is a difficult question for all of us to answer. We live in a society that is deeply anxious about money. There is growing poverty all around us, even as many become more and more affluent. We live in a country that has taken the hunger for freedom and mutated it into justification for greed and self-centeredness. We live in a culture that is very quick to jump up and gush with generosity in the face of tragedy and catastrophe, and yet profoundly fails to systematically weave that generosity into the political economy of this nation. Furthermore, there is injustice woven so deeply into this nation, into this world, that it is virtually impossible to simply make a living and buy what we need without reinforcing and perpetuating injustice somewhere in the world.
Our spiritual challenge as individuals and as a society is to manifest a moral relationship with money in the face of these obstacles. To walk into the messiness of money and to live out a vision of wholeness.
As Unitarian Universalists we are called to be in the world but not of the world. That means that we readily use all that is around us to help us be religious people and to live moral and ethical lives. At the same time, we are called to stand outside of the culture with a critical eye, to live against the grain, so that we become a witness and prophetic challenge to the injustices around us.
This congregation has chosen to do that. Beginning this month, we will offer half of our Sunday collection to the service of our many communities. This is a call to stand for something much larger than ourselves. This is a call to respond with generosity not simply during times of calamity, but to integrate the spiritual discipline of generosity into the very fibre of what this congregation stands for. In a society that valorizes greed, this act of generosity not only serves those outside this congregation, it serves us. It heals us. It helps us to stand against the grain, to pull ourselves out of our small worlds, to be the prophetic witness that we hunger to be and to move closer to the wholeness that we strive for as individuals and as a community. We are building the cathedral.
In the loving of our children, in the living of our lives, in the ordinary unfolding of our days, in the joys and sorrows and come to us, may each of us be that witness, may we be prophets for a different way. May we build cathedrals of justice and wholeness and joy.
Posted: 10/29/05