Money, Money, Money

We like to talk in our society about money in terms of investment, logic, financial planning, expanding markets, earned income, profit, loss, emerging markets and charitable donations. All this language really clouds the issue. Make no mistake, money is about trust, faith and unity.

Money functions as it does in our world because of the way we believe in it. We believe that work and education have monetary value, as do material possessions, land, airspace, airwaves, sperm, eggs and now even mental anguish. We evaluate and classify a lot in the world in terms of money, and conveniently, usually US dollars, as one of the most powerful currencies.

We put our money where we have our faith. If we have enough faith in emerging markets, we put it there. If we have more trust in government bonds, we put it there. If we believe that earning money is a priority in life, we work hard to earn money. If we believe in sharing what we have, we donate, more than anything else, more than food or clothing or toys or organs, as a people we donate money. An ultimate test of faith is supposed to be putting your money where your mouth is. And of course, the places we draw money from, and the places we give money to, we feel a unity with. Not necessarily a primary unity, a unity of differing degrees depending on the circumstances, but a unity nonetheless.

There was a piece on National Public Radio that I caught the tail end of a while ago. A commentator was lamenting that a young man who mowed their lawn kept coming to her and her husband and asking for money. They kept turning him down. They doubted the stories that went with his requests, including one he told them about his brother just having been shot. Guiltily they would refuse him and close the door. Finally he came with another request, saying that his brother had died from the shooting, which was true, and asking for $20 to help bring his sister back. They trusted this promise and later he made good on it. The commentator closed her story with the point that money was about trust.

She is right, insofar as the importance she attached to giving the money came from the outcome she expected. Giving the money seemed right to her only under certain circumstances: that the story was true, that the need was real, and that promises would be kept. And when her trust was rewarded, this sealed a sense of unity with the young man that was created by the requests and giving of money.

This story illustrates an important difference between trust and faith. Trust is taking a chance and doing something because we believe that we can depend on the outcome. Faith is believing in the significance of the act of faith itself as much as the outcome, believing that the act has meaning and will inform the outcome. That is why it makes sense to talk about a leap of faith, but not a leap of trust. With trust, there is more sureness, there are no leaps, just steps along a path that seems fairly clear and dependable. With faith, the path is not clear, and so we progress in leaps or steps that feel like leaps because we cannot see already the clear place where we will land. Money works in our lives in both ways, sometimes we employ it with trust, sometimes with faith, and sometimes we learn later that although we thought it was one case, really it was the other.

When it comes to money and religion, trust, faith and unity get really complicated. Many times we have a sense that like church and state, money and religion really just ought to operate independently of each other. Some religions exist with close ties to property, such as Catholicism. Not only does the Catholic Church own the Vatican property and all its churches, they own land, housing, great works of art, jewelry, treasure and lots of high-yield investments. Conversely, their priests take vows of poverty, where they agree to own no property and must rely on the church for funds to pay for anything they want or need even items so basic as food and clothing. But their education is paid for, and funds are available for all their needs. They do not incur personal debt, and live in clean attractive housing where their food is prepared for them and cleaning is done for them and cars are available at need. Many clergy are as poor, in different ways, as their Catholic counterparts when all is said and done. And of course, if it were not for the Church's wealth, the priests' poverty would not be an option.

Some religions traditionally charge a large fee for families and individuals to join a congregation. Many Jewish synagogues charge hundreds of dollars for tickets to special holiday services during the High Holy Days which just passed. Money is connected in many ways to the infrastructure supporting the religion, but Jews never pass the offering plate during a service.

And as we saw in the readings, the connection between religion and money has never been simple. The Exodus portion has the surprising information that at one point, people payed a biblically ordained registration fee of half a shekel per person to enlist themselves as faithful. The half shekel (or ten gerahs as the passage points out, if that makes it any easier) is at once a ransom, an offering and a form of atonement. Fulfilling these three different theological roles, its ultimate destiny is still quite worldly - the fees are actually put to support the tent of meeting, the tabernacle where the Jews used to congregate while they were wandering in the desert.

And though there is this early, scriptural basis for the intersection of money and the house of worship, as we saw in the second reading, Jesus still has a big problem with money holding sway in God’s house. All the gospels include an account of his rampage through the temple when he finally comes to Jerusalem, driving away the animals people were selling for sacrifice and overturning the tables of the money changers, who were there, of course, to provide currency for Jews coming to pay their half-shekel fee according to the rule detailed in Exodus. What infuriates him is not using animals for sacrifice or even that money is taken to support the temple, but that it happens there - the temple is profaned in his eyes by being used as a marketplace.

So much has changed in Western religion since the time of Exodus or the Gospel of John that there are many aspects of those texts and tales that are hard for us to relate to. But the issue of money is perennial - a minister friend of mine said that it used to be there were three things people didn’t talk about: money, politics and sex. Nowadays, it’s just money. And he’s pretty much right. People disclose their sexual orientation and political leanings in conversations, at parties, and on television. But people rarely talk about how much they earn, or give away, or paid for their house or car.

Nonetheless, money is necessary to any religions that has a physical, worldly dimension. We have a church. We want it to be a place of beauty and comfort for all who come here. We have staff to help this community stay connected and work for each other and the world. We exist in this world, and our religion is one that places a value on worldly existence. Unitarian-Universalists hold that what we do in this life, with our lives, and what we have to share, matters, and can help redeem the world, this world, in which we live. Unitarian-Universalism is one of the religions that doesn't charge a fee for joining or for attending any of our services. Our denomination owns only its headquarters and a few buildings, usually historic, which serve largely as satellite offices. Our clergy earn our own salaries and can own property, but also pay for our own education and training. Each of our congregations must pay their own way, and also pay yearly $35 to the Association for every official member we have. Unitarian-Universalist congregations stand or fall, grow or shrink, build or maintain or decay, based on our own gifts, capacities, decisions and actions.

This is why, one Sunday a year, ministers preach a sermon honoring our annual pledge drive, which is beginning this week. Our church depends primarily on the pledges of its members and friends for its budget. Our church’s fiscal year begins in January, and will runs until December of next year. We are already growing again and changing - we have added eight new members in the past month and a half. We need your pledges to support the budget, which we will vote on as a congregation and approve at the annual meeting.

There are two things I have to stress about giving money to the church. The first goes back to the points I raised earlier about trust, faith and unity. Certainly, our church community has a tremendous sense of unity, of caring and sharing, that is apparent in the energy and love that are present and palpable at many of our gatherings, not only Sunday services, but social gatherings, projects, even committee meetings. This congregation has endured hard times and triumphed over hardships because of the caring and commitment of its members to each other and to the identity and values of this church as a whole. We are single, we are married, we are gay, we are straight, we are old, we are young, we are Christian and Jewish and Pagan and Buddhist and Agnostic and Athiest and Humanist and Mystical Humanist, together. We are firmly united in trust and faith by this church. In trust because we know many of the things we do and have to do together, we must clean up after RE and coffee hour, we have our board and council meetings on Tuesdays, we are coming up on our first all committee night, worship starts on Sunday mornings at 10:30...you know.

And we are united in faith, because we don't know all the future will bring, we don't know which solutions will answer the challenges our growing and changing pose us, we cannot foresee all the miracles and grief that will confront us as members of the church, as a congregation together. We have faith in each other, in our caring and enterprise and searching, moving along life's journey, depending on this place for support, for celebration, for learning, for spiritual exploration, for ethical learning, for teaching, for uplifting, for a place to give of ourselves to individuals and communities in need. And money, not a dirty word, not inherently crass to mention, the words 'God' and 'trust' are right there on our currency, money has a rightful place in a model of faith and trust and unity. Money represents those elements, it tangibly supports them, and it is the lifeblood in our church’s veins.

The second is that our denomination, a hundred, even a hundred and seventy, years ago was a part of the forefront of individualism with activist philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Ellery Channing. At the time individualism was needed to fight against the uniformity and repressive systems that the nineteenth-century's reforms addressed. At the time, individuality was linked by many Unitarian and Universalist reformers like Clara Barton who founded the Red Cross, and Horace Mann who changed the model of public education, to caring on a new level, with a new understanding of and compassion for, each other. Together, individualism and caring led to freedom for slaves, greater freedom for women, humane treatment of women and prisoners and the mentally ill and prisoners of war. Greater freedom of thought and religious belief. Caring, conscientious treatment of children in public education.

Now at the dawn of a new century, individualism is rampant. There is a lack of caring, of community thinking that we miss everywhere. Older employees are fired to make room for younger, cheaper ones. Companies are down-sized while salaries for CEO's and profits for myriad singular stockholders increase. Roadrage is everywhere, with each person in their own car out for me first and you, you're gonna pay for driving 55 in the left-hand lane. We don't know our neighbors. We don't know the name of the couple that owns the local mom and pop convenience store that will be undersold and pushed out by the large chain store that just
opened. We speak about it taking a village to raise a child, and we speak with longing, because we are losing our villages, our knowledge of and connection to each other in our world.

That is why this church is so important. People yearn for communities like the one we have here. We know each other. Our children know each other. Unkindness and prejudice are not tolerated here. Aspirations and achievements and insights are celebrated. We make music. We speak. We listen. We give what we have to each other, to those in need. We need this place and the world needs us.

I believe in everything that this church stands for, I believe that the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring represents what is best and most necessary in the world. I trust this place. I have faith in all of you, and in each of you. I stand united with you in celebration of the present, of our growth and changes, and in anticipation of the future. Please join me in pledging what you can. May we reap bounteously from what we sow.

Amen.