© Hannah Wells
September 28, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
SERMON
This is a sermon about money. I had nightmares about preparing this sermon because, frankly, I’m not very experienced with money. I’ve never had a lot of it, and I don’t know anything about investments or credit cards. When I do have money I tend to spend it on myself – on stuff like travel and books and cds. It’s only in recent years that I began giving money to my church in Berkeley because I became a member. I did a lot of pro-bono preaching toward my pledge. What could I possibly preach to you about money that would hold any weight? What I have to offer to you today is what I’ve learned in exploring this issue in my own life. Maybe you’re not good with money either. Maybe we can all learn something together here.
It’s a time of anxiety in our country. I meet people who are out of work all the time. Some of them saved during the dot-com years and some didn’t. I’m not out of work now, but next year I will be. It makes me nervous – to think I might not even have much luck finding a temp job. I’ve gone through unemployed stretches in the past. The worst thing about it is all the restless time you have on your hands, day after day. Time to feel anxious. But also time to think creatively, if you let yourself.
That brings up the main question I want to talk to you about today: how can we take care of ourselves the best way possible in these times of social and economic uncertainty? It has to do with staying focused on what matters the most to us, and doing all we can to keep nurturing our sources of wholeness. How do we know what that is? We’re grounded enough to know that life isn’t just about what we do for a living – most of us know that we can’t ultimately define ourselves by the status of our career. But what is this life about?
For me, life is about loving our selves, our lives, and others, in that order. It has to be in that order because you can’t love others until you love yourself. The life force of nature actually seems to be hard-wired this way. In the film, “Adaptation” the character who plays the orchid thief, John Laroche, explains the way nature designed pollination to take place between insects and orchids. He says,
” . . . what’s so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. A certain orchid looks exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower that’s double it’s soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after, the insect flies off and spots another soul mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance, the world lives but it does – by simply doing what they’re designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense, they show us how to live, how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way.”
The metaphor here suggests that nature has designed each being to be attracted to itself to ensure attraction to others. So what we are drawn to in life is a reflection of the beauty we see or know about in our kind. The more beauty we see in ourselves, the more beauty we can find in the world. The more we love ourselves, the better we are able to love others. When we deny that we are beautiful, the world becomes colorless as well.
This concept of life can be applied to the lives of institutions as well. People are drawn to institutions that reflect their own qualities. A healthy church attracts healthy people. We love the qualities in a church that we love in ourselves, qualities such as compassion, openness, courage, honesty, a willingness to explore the aspects of life that are difficult. We support the life of a church because it reflects what is most important to us in our own lives. We choose to support those institutions that we think are a positive presence in the world – institutions that function in the community as we ourselves wish to but that no individual alone could.
When you look at the state of the world now, supporting the non-profit organizations, whether it’s churches or social service agencies, is one of the best statements of hope you can make. You’re saying that you believe in a better future, that you believe in people finding comfort in caring for each other. You’re saying that, despite the uncertainty and anxiety, that this is what really matters – that people continue to have caring institutions to associate with. Because it’s questionable whether many of us will have social security benefits in the future; it’s questionable if the middle class will ever stabilize. A lot of us don’t have basic health insurance right now; it’s a national crisis.
This is the reality, folks. But it’s the churches and non-profits – our grassroots institutions – that represent a woven tapestry of faith and hope. These support networks are what we need to feel like we can count on wrapping around ourselves like a blanket when we need to in the future, or even right now. I don’t have much faith in the government these days, but I do have faith in the people. The government may not seem to care about us as they sign another multi-billion dollar bill to fund the damage done in Iraq, but I know the people of this country care about each other. WE care about each other.
But all this goes beyond the importance of supporting the church. Everyone here already understands why that’s important. What I want you to leave with here today is thinking about better ways to take care of yourself in uncertain times. At one point in “Adaptation,” Susan Orlean, the character who plays a writer, says, “I suppose I do have one un-embarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.” Do you know what you love passionately? Do you really? Because if you do, that means you are loving yourself well – if you know this, you can get through times of anxiety, you can remember what’s most important in life. If you care about something passionately, you don’t forget it and it keeps your life focused.
So what I’m suggesting here, or trying to encourage, is to love this church passionately! OR decide what you DO love passionately! Know what it means to love with passion. Find the freedom of heart that gives you permission to love passionately. Financial support is an expression of love – figure out what you love and love it well. Let yourself be the first thing you love. Doing so will lead you to support the institutions that are good for you and good for others.
Later on in the film the character Susan Orlean comments, “there are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” This is an argument for simplicity, but it’s also saying that there are really only a very few things in life that you can love passionately. When we prioritize just a few things to love with all our strength, it actually helps make life more manageable in a world that can seem overwhelming.
I know a lot of people in their late 20’s and early 30’s who could really find some solace in this idea. So many of us haven’t heard the call yet in regards to what to DO with our lives. Vocation comes from the Latin verb, vocare, to call. Therefore, ministry is not the only profession one has to be ‘called’ to. All of us have a call to something particular in life, something particular to who we are, to what our gifts and talents are, to what are passions are. I keep thinking of that image of the insect bee-lining for its flower. What is your flower? If you are a bee, what is the flower you are drawn to that, once spotted, you can’t let anything get in your way? I suggest that we can hear this call most clearly when we let ourselves be certain about what we love most. If you are discerning what you are called to do, it’s no time to be modest and humble. That comes later, when the steady paychecks are coming in.
Yes, back to money. I think all of us can probably remember a time when we spent a lot of money on something and later on, we didn’t feel good about it. But have you ever looked back on the money spent on a charitable donation and felt bad about that? It’s taken me a while to learn this, but giving to the causes I believe in feels good. It helps me to feel good about myself; it’s actually good for my own sense of well-being. When you think about what you want to give to the church, think about the amount that later on you can feel good about. Don’t give until it hurts; give ’til it feels good! Or it feels right.
The climax of the movie “Adaptation” is the line one brother says to another brother toward the end of the film. The bizarre twists and turns of the film has led them to being fugitives in an alligator-infested swamp in Florida. Charlie Kaufman is a miserably panicked and constantly self-berating screenwriter. They are hiding behind a felled tree in the dark when his twin brother says to him, “you are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.” You are what you love, not what loves you. I love that line, and I think it’s true. Think about it: you are defined in really lovely way by what you love and support. With the economy suffering the way it is, this becomes more important than ever.
It is so easy to be seduced by this culture into thinking that we can only know who we are through the perceptions of others. If people think you have the right job, the right clothes, the right body, and you think you are loved because of these things, then who are you living for? If you don’t have the money for these things, how can you be loved?
Now, I’m going to use a phrase that I know my peers are familiar with, but I acknowledge may be a bit risque for some of you, so I thank you for indulging me here. I have a girlfriend who just had a boob job. I got an email from her, “I got boobs,” as though she bought a new car. She is a very sexy woman, but has a notoriously difficult time meeting men. She thinks this will turn her luck around. But it seems like if she put her energy into loving what she loves, that love could more easily find her. She seems to be defining her self worth by what she can attract. How will she ever find a love that’s good for her this way?
All of us are susceptible to being seduced by enhancing our self worth through material means. It’s part of being American. But the purpose of good religion is to save us from this illusion. It’s to remind us that we are what we love, not what loves us. If we are what we love, and we love this church, then we are the church, and we love it well because we know that caring for the things we love is the freest and most healthy way to live.
If you’re not finding any of these spiritual incentives to give to the church compelling, here’s something for those of you who prefer practical incentives. And this is hopeful news about our government. A few weeks ago the house overwhelmingly passed a new bill called The Charitable Giving Act, or House Resolution 7, HR7. Its purpose is to encourage more giving to churches and non-profits, especially for those folks who don’t itemize on our taxes. For every 250th to 500th dollar you give to non-profits, you get that back in your tax return. Which essentially means you get back in your tax return half of what you donate to charity.
This isn’t just great for non-profits, this is great for those of us who are furious with the way the government is spending our tax dollars these days. It means we can take back some control of how the government spends our hard-earned money. With the way this law works, the more you spend on institutions you care about, like your church and your favorite non-profits, then the more control you reclaim on how the government spends your tax dollars. Let’s pray that the Senate passes this new law that could provide renewed faith in our country’s leadership and combat apathy. This is great hope for healing democracy.
So whether you decide to give generously to the church because it’s good for you or good for your tax return, just keep this in mind: we are the church – it is a reflection of what we collectively hold most sacred. It represents the hope we have for the future. It represents the faith we have now in the high standards of justice we seek, faith in the freedom of the unencumbered search for truth, and faith in the deep caring we have for one another. Let this be what you love.
I love that image of bees and insects teaching us about life. They see this flower that looks like what they love, and “bzzzzzzzzzz,” they go for it and they find it and life gets a jump start.
Can you see it? You find what you love in yourself. You find that expressed and supported by an institution – like, this church. You set your sights on it, you let nothing get in your way, you go for it.
“Bzzzzzzzzz . . . “
