HomeGood Morning!
This morning I am speaking about money; in particular, about money as spiritual currency, which means first that I must say a word or two about one standard though not universal, approach to religious thinking.
Many religious thinkers envision and proclaim a great divide between the divine and the mundane, between the spiritual and the material.
Whatever your position on that may be, I ask that for the duration of this sermon you accept the proposition that the spiritual is not separable from the material, the physical, the intellectual or the emotional. I ask you to accept for today the proposition that the spiritual includes, encompasses or infuses all of these, that there is a wholeness to life.
Personally, and many of you know this, I have always had ambivalent feelings, at best, about money. My 60’s youth that still lives within saw greed and profits as the enemy of social justice. That view is still very much alive in me because, as I look at the world around me, so much that is taking place today only affirms that perspective.
I say that only to share with you how difficult it is for me to see money as somehow connected to the spiritual. So if it is difficult for you, I understand.
Still, the truth is that it can be spiritual.
It is not only I who say so.
Sri Aurobindo was a famous Indian political activist and guru who lived from 1872 to 1950. He spoke of money, and I want to read just a few selections from a writing of his:
Money is the visible sign of a universal force… In its origin and its true action it belongs to the divine.
He then points out that--like power and sex--wealth can be perverted what he called Asuric, what westerners might call Satanic, purposes. In response to this, he says, some religious traditions ban riches and require poverty. He says of this, “this is an error; it leaves the power {that is, the power of money-DB} in the hands of the hostile forces”.
He further says: Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service. All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it are trustees, not possessors…All depends upon the way they discharge their trust while it is with them, in what spirit, with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.
From our own heritage, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous poet, speaker, essayist and Unitarian minister, is quoted in his essay on wealth as saying “A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values.”
I take both of these sages to mean that in our gaining of money and in our use of money we express our ethics and serve either good or evil values.
The sense of money as having its source in the Divine is part of the ancient tradition of tithing that dates back at least as for as Ugarit in ancient Mesopotamia about thirteen centuries BC.
The concept of the tithe is that everything one owns belongs to the Divine, God or the Gods; it is a gift. In recognition and thanks for the gift, one is expected to return one tenth of one’s yearly income—including money--to the Divine. Given that everything is a divine gift, a one-tenth return is a minor requirement.
The concept of the tithe carried over into Judaism and Christianity.
Money can be used for any purpose, good, ill or neutral. To call it merely a tool, while valid, is insufficient because, unlike a tool, money is transmutable. Work, when traded for money, becomes higher energy. Whatever work one does in exchange for currency becomes energy that can be used for any purpose, whatever one chooses to apply it to. Whatever skills one has, whatever work one does, can be transformed like magic into anything.
In essence, money is stored value.
Barter is more limited. Barter, the direct exchange of goods and services, is a series of individual negotiations mostly with those within one’s immediate vicinity. If I have chickens to trade, they are good only if other people nearby want chickens. But with money, one can do work here in the New York metropolitan area, and use it to buy goods from anywhere in the world.
Rob Baker and Ellen Draper, co-editors of Parabola magazine wrote in 1991 that in the exchange of money “a kind of circulation was established, like that of the blood in the human body.”.
I was taken by that metaphor. I liked it. Money acts within a society like blood does in a body. It carries life-giving nourishment to the different parts of the body; it feeds the body, that is, society. In fact, to some extent, it DEFINES the body. So the creation a few years ago of the Euro was the birth of a new being, a new state, a new entity, whether it is called that or not. It was a literal acknowledgement that these various states are now one. From that perspective, nations like the United Kingdom, which refused to join the Euro zone, are like single celled creatures that refuse to take the next step in evolution.
If the metaphor of money circulation to blood flow holds, then each of us acts as a nub at an arterial branch. We decide in which direction that energy flows, for good or ill; for our selves alone or for the service of the whole.
With your indulgence I will strain the metaphor a bit; if we are miserly, if we amass money for ourselves, if we hold on to it, then we function just like whatever it is that causes plaque buildup in the arteries. The amassing of money is interference with the flow of life.
Francis Bacon said, “Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”.
Well, with all of that as background, I want now to turn to the more personal: how do I think about and spend my money?
Let me say in passing that the question I have just asked applies to each of us individually, but also to us corporately. How do we as a nation spend our money, do we as a nation use it to serve good or ill? Do we spend our money on weapons of death or on service to the poor? What are our priorities, how do we express them?
But my focus this morning is on the personal; it is on each of us.
In preparing for this sermon I spent some time thinking about my values, thinking about the things that I hold to be important, and then thinking about how I spend my money. I thought, you see, that that would be a good way for each of us to look at our selves and our lives. List your values, and then next to that list how you spend your money, including the amount of money you spend on each of the values you have written down. That would show how much we actually honor our proclaimed values.
So, what’s important to me, what are my stated, proclaimed, verbalized supreme values?
Well, human rights--including religious freedom--and economic justice.
And how do I spend my money?
Well, not on those things.
After a few days of regret and some minor self-chastisement, I concluded that the approach I was using didn’t work. Wasn’t that convenient? If you don’t like the results, change the parameters of the measurement.
But the fact is that a simplistic listing of values and expenditures doesn’t really work. For one thing, it does not take into account Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Briefly put, Maslow stated that there are layers of needs that we each have; only when one level of needs are met can the individual move on to the next level.
We each must provide for our own survival before we can move on to serving others.
Well, that’s a relief. I NEED my home in the Connecticut suburbs before I can serve others.
I am going to set that discussion aside for now. Suffice it to say, we are both entitled and required to take care of our families and ourselves before we provide for the care for others. I will for today leave to you the question of how much we need to provide for our children and ourselves.
Ancient societies recognized that and so only required a person to give only one-tenth of his or her income.
Ah, but wait. That is not quite true.
While the concept of the tithe changed over the centuries, generally speaking, the tithe belonged to the Sacred. Giving to God, giving a tithe, did not absolve one of charitable giving, which is giving to one’s fellow human beings. So the Mishnah, a collection of rabbinical laws assembled about two hundred A.D., required TWO tithes, one sacred one charitable.
Assuming we each already one tenth of our annual income to the Sacred, that is, to this congregation (pause for laughter), let me turn my attention to the other requirement, to charitable giving. But as I do so, I want it to be clear that charitable giving is also giving that goes to and is required by the Sacred. Giving to the divine alone, vertical giving, if you will, is incomplete; it must be “rounded out” by horizontal giving, giving to other human beings and to the world.
I have been through several stages of charitable giving. I share these with you not to suggest that they are the right or proper set of stages to go through, but only so that we may together think through some of the issues involved.
At one time, if I received a request for money in the mail, assuming I thought the requester worthy of funds, I would send a few dollars if I had them that month. If I did not, I would throw away the request.
At the same time, when some group was collecting money or selling small items for a dollar or two at the local shopping mall, I would always give them something. It made me feel good and it helped them out.
At some point I began to find this to be unsatisfactory. Most people who ask for money are worthy of receiving it. But some feel more important to me. So I wanted to start setting priorities.
And, I became uncomfortable about the fact that the people who had proximity to me, the people with whom I came into contact, are not the only people who deserve support from me.
Example: Where I shop for groceries, it is common for the Norwalk High School marching band to have a yearly fund raising event. They used the money to travel to regional and state competitions. I forget now whether they sell candy or raffle tickets, and it doesn’t matter.
Now the Norwalk High School marching band is a worthy organization. There is nothing wrong with giving them money for the purpose they put it to. But it occurred to me one day that children living with hunger and poverty in the inner city areas of Bridgeport or New Haven are not able to present themselves at the door of my shopping center to ask me for money. And if they did, they would be chased away as a nuisance, as beggars. (Isn’t that interesting.)
And so if I think about how I target my small contributions to ending the problems of the world, I want to be sure that most of my money goes to those who most need it even if they cannot directly ask me for it.
Now here is a little twist on that very story. I went through that process of thinking several years ago—five or six. Today, most of the people in this room know someone with a strong link to the Norwalk High School marching band. Debra Haffner was our ministerial intern last year. Her daughter Alyssa was actively involved in the band, though probably not yet at the time I went through my internal reflection. It is fascinating to me that it makes a difference to know that, to know that someone I now know was involved in that group.
Each year we purchase wrapping paper from the children of our friends, Girl Scout cookies or raffle tickets, and that is fine. Somehow, that doesn’t feel like charity, it feels like support.
At any rate, I had stated that the hungry child in Bridgeport was more worthy, more deserving, of my donations than a high school marching band.
But I also am a believer in systemic change. I believe that any resources I provide directly to the poor serve merely as a holding action, as a temporary help that ultimately leaves them living in a state of injustice. And it serves only those limited few whom I can reach with my money.
So I resolved to use my resources to support those working for systemic change, that is, those politicians, political candidates and organizations that believe in government action to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless. I do not mean by that feeding people in soup kitchens and housing them in shelters. I mean recreating the old Great Society programs that would provide the poor with the resources they need to rent a real living space and to buy and prepare their own food. And I mean creating a worldwide effort to do the same, to end disease and poverty for all of our brothers and sisters.
That ought not be thought of as idle dreaming. In the wake of September 11, our political leaders told us that the effort to end terrorism would be two-fold. The first would focus on security; the second would focus on ending the conditions that breed terrorists. So far I have seen very little effort given to the second of those.
The problem with giving only to systemic change is that many of those who are poor and hungry today cannot wait for that change to come.
And so the conundrum for me: to feed the poor today, knowing that the system as it is will simply keep them poor and create ever more poor in years to come; or ignore the poor today in order to bring about conditions of economic justice that end poverty. Who is to be sacrificed: Today’s poor, or tomorrow’s? And how do I deal with the guilt I feel for not sparing everyone that suffering?
When I finished writing those words, I sat with them for a few moments, and then I was struck by the overwhelming egotism involved in them. I do believe that we collectively are responsible for our brothers and sisters, and that we collectively share the guilt when they suffer. But it is not me alone. If I do the best I can, if I serve as a conduit for change, for bringing energy and resources to those in need, then it does not matter whether I give only to individuals in need, or give to individuals working for social change, or give something to each. I will have done that which I could do.
And then as I stand before whatever I call divine, be it God or Goddess, Cosmos or conscience, I can know that I have acted out of my own values, out of my own morality; that I have acted as an agent of the divine.
But that will only be true to the extent that I rise above the selfishness and acquisitiveness that go beyond serving the legitimate needs of my family and myself.
May I hear the call of service within, and may it be as strong and loud as the call to selfishness.
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