Vulnerable Trust
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 22, 2015
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
A couple of years ago I came upon an article online...I don’t remember now which publication it was in...it was a difficult piece profiling the struggle of a single-mother trying to make ends meet in Connecticut’s Fairfield County, incidentally, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.
The woman was in many ways a portrait of those who have come to be known as the working poor: She has a job...but it doesn’t pay a living wage or offer benefits...She has a run down car necessary for work, but in need of repairs she can’t afford...She’s trying to take college courses in the hope of improving her earnings potential. And she is eligible for certain public assistance programs which she uses. Indeed the article began at the grocery store where she was buying grapes...for 99 cents a pound...with her electronic benefits card... more widely known perhaps as food stamps.
I could almost feel the woman’s exhaustion as she was quoted throughout the article. Still, she was hopeful. To be sure, the circumstances of her life were, in many ways, sad, but what followed her story was nothing short of tragic...a slew of commentary left by readers of the article tore into the woman...berating her for being a single mother, condemning her for using food stamps....and even more so for daring to buy grapes with food stamps...presumably a luxury some readers felt she and her child were unworthy of. They laid into her for having a car...for not walking or taking the bus to work...for not saving to fix the car....and for taking college courses instead of saving money to fix the car. And on and on they went... with rare exception...in comment after comment... the woman’s morality, intentions, intelligence, judgement, and humanity were called into question or worse...the lack of empathy was appalling.
The story... and the comments that followed it in particular... stayed with me longer than many articles I read. What was it about this woman, I wondered, that so enraged people?...Who were these commentators...could they really, as the poet William Blake asks, “see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?”
In his classic novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky recounts a parable of an old miserly widow who is languishing in hell because of her greed. Her Guardian angel, seeing the poor soul in such agony, petitions God for mercy, reminding God that the woman had one time given an onion to the poor. God agrees to release the widow from hell and instructs the angel to hold an onion above the fires of hell in such a way as to allow the widow to grasp it and thus pull herself free. The angel does as God instructed and the widow grasped the onion. All seems to be going well when the other souls noticed the rescue in progress and rushed to grab onto the widow and be carried out of hell with her. Now, according to religious lore, souls are light and so the onion could have easily accommodated the weight of the additional souls but the widow...the widow lashed out, kicking and beating the other souls off the onion. As she swung and shoved and kicked, the onion began to give way and eventually broke apart sending her and the other souls back to hell....the widow’s greed having denied the others a share in her near release.
Greed is defined as an “inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort.” In the Christian tradition Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins and it is the sin we will explore together today in our continuing series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Sin, as we have defined it throughout this series, is something that gets in the way...an obstruction that blocks us from seeing or knowing some truth.
Greed gets a lot of air time in our culture....it is a source of scandal and, at times, veneration in politics, business, and religion. And while greed tends to be associated with great material wealth and power, no one is immune to its lure...indeed to reduce it to a vice of the rich is to ignore its true nature.
Phyllis Tickle, long time religion editor and author, echoing a sentiment expressed in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, calls greed, “the sin of apostacy, of desiring a life subject to human control over a life of vulnerable trust in the unseen.” (pg. 28)
We see this at work in the actions of the greedy widow in Dostoyevsky’s parable...kicking away her fellow damned for fear they will drag her down... displaying a complete lack of trust in what promises to save her.
Greed then is also a reaction to existential fear...a lack of trust in all that supports and affirms life...a fear we seek to alleviate by grasping for some sense of security, be it material possessions, a place of privilege or power, or simply an air of superiority.
It is this grasping, I believe, that lies beneath the imperious and cruel comments left by people in response to the article about the single mother struggling to make ends meet. Like the widow grasping onto the onion, the commentators swung, shoved, and kicked for fear that any improvement in the lot of this single mother’s life or any other such person comes at the expense of gains achieved in their own lives...gains they believed they are entitled to largely because of who they are socially or what they do professionally.
Perhaps this is why we so easily demonize the poor and too eagerly deify the wealthy in this country...one has come to represent in some sense our deepest fear, a life lived for nought...a fear we try desperately to control by clinging to impermanent things...the other represents our greatest hope, a life of fulfillment...a hope we need, but struggle, to trust is always available to us.
Maybe the commentators from the article did, for just a moment, put themselves in the shoes of that single mother...and saw themselves dangling, like her, from the hem of a miserly society, seeking some kind of salvation... and it scared the you know what out of them...immediately inducing a desire to distance, to separate, to disassociate themselves from anything to do with her and her situation for fear of jeopardizing their own sense of security....security sought in scornful words that deny the woman’s humanity and their own...or in claims this woman has no right to that which the commentators enjoy or want for themselves...security built upon an illusion that they are self-made...seeing themselves as neither beneficiaries nor benefactors of the common good...security born of self-deception that transforms greed into virtue by dressing it in the language of thrift....personal responsibility...and freedom.
Elevated to the level of virtue, greed shackles our mind and hardens our hearts, enlisting us in a labor of division...sorting the world into haves and have nots, worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving....a world were, as Adam Smith wrote, “we pursue(s) the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose, which we may never arrive at, and for which we sacrifice a real tranquility that is at all times in our power.” How many of us recognize the painful truth of Smith’s words for ourselves?
Greed is a deadly sin, a sin fatal to spiritual progress, because it keeps us from seeing and nurturing what is most true within us and others. It inhibits trust and instead preys on our existential fears, leading us to seek a prepackaged standard of living rather than a quality of life...it tells us human existence is a zero sum game...a no holds barred competition for resources, power, and privilege...the ultimate “reality” show. Greed’s reality though, is worse than bad television, it is the matrix of a living hell.
Traditionally, the heavenly virtue of charity or giving has been prescribed to counter greed. Giving is certainly important, but I’m reminded again of Adam Smith’s insight, that when life is given over to the pursuit of security through the accumulation of wealth the real tranquility or security that is always and readily available to each of us is sacrificed. It is not that Smith (or myself, for that matter) is opposed to material gain, upward mobility or anything like that, quite the contrary. His concern is, like Phyllis Tickle, the suffering that arises from a “desire for a life subject to human control over a life of vulnerable trust in the unseen.”
Vulnerable trust in the unseen...sounds a little vague...and perhaps, more than a little scary. For some the unseen is called God, for others it is an ineffable, animating force that supports life. Still for others it doesn’t matter who or what the unseen is, but enough to simply acknowledge that the mystery of life is beyond human comprehension and that we live our lives as beings interconnected within a vast and complex web of existence that stretches back and beyond the flash of our individual lives.
To live with vulnerable trust in the unseen is to make peace with our limitations, our absurdities, our mortality... to admit we’re not really in control and then live...live in a way that affirms and trusts life is meaningful and worthwhile...a way that is expansive, generous, and kind, aware of our interconnectedness, aware of our shared origin and destiny.
And so in the face of greed charity... yes, giving... yes, generosity... yes...but most importantly, in the face of greed seek trust...vulnerable trust in that which is unseen but is made known to us... in the embrace of a friend of loved one... in a child’s smile... in acts of human kindness, in the beauty of the natural world...and yes...in the fragile hope of a woman on food stamps who chooses to buy grapes for her child over and against the protests of greed’s shrill chorus.
May we then, as individuals and as a community of faith...loosen our existential grip and trust in the unseen... trust in what inspires and brings us alive...and in so doing may our lives be a song of hope to pierce through greed’s seductive incantation.
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 22, 2015
by Rev. Craig M. Nowak
A couple of years ago I came upon an article online...I don’t remember now which publication it was in...it was a difficult piece profiling the struggle of a single-mother trying to make ends meet in Connecticut’s Fairfield County, incidentally, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.
The woman was in many ways a portrait of those who have come to be known as the working poor: She has a job...but it doesn’t pay a living wage or offer benefits...She has a run down car necessary for work, but in need of repairs she can’t afford...She’s trying to take college courses in the hope of improving her earnings potential. And she is eligible for certain public assistance programs which she uses. Indeed the article began at the grocery store where she was buying grapes...for 99 cents a pound...with her electronic benefits card... more widely known perhaps as food stamps.
I could almost feel the woman’s exhaustion as she was quoted throughout the article. Still, she was hopeful. To be sure, the circumstances of her life were, in many ways, sad, but what followed her story was nothing short of tragic...a slew of commentary left by readers of the article tore into the woman...berating her for being a single mother, condemning her for using food stamps....and even more so for daring to buy grapes with food stamps...presumably a luxury some readers felt she and her child were unworthy of. They laid into her for having a car...for not walking or taking the bus to work...for not saving to fix the car....and for taking college courses instead of saving money to fix the car. And on and on they went... with rare exception...in comment after comment... the woman’s morality, intentions, intelligence, judgement, and humanity were called into question or worse...the lack of empathy was appalling.
The story... and the comments that followed it in particular... stayed with me longer than many articles I read. What was it about this woman, I wondered, that so enraged people?...Who were these commentators...could they really, as the poet William Blake asks, “see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?”
In his classic novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky recounts a parable of an old miserly widow who is languishing in hell because of her greed. Her Guardian angel, seeing the poor soul in such agony, petitions God for mercy, reminding God that the woman had one time given an onion to the poor. God agrees to release the widow from hell and instructs the angel to hold an onion above the fires of hell in such a way as to allow the widow to grasp it and thus pull herself free. The angel does as God instructed and the widow grasped the onion. All seems to be going well when the other souls noticed the rescue in progress and rushed to grab onto the widow and be carried out of hell with her. Now, according to religious lore, souls are light and so the onion could have easily accommodated the weight of the additional souls but the widow...the widow lashed out, kicking and beating the other souls off the onion. As she swung and shoved and kicked, the onion began to give way and eventually broke apart sending her and the other souls back to hell....the widow’s greed having denied the others a share in her near release.
Greed is defined as an “inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort.” In the Christian tradition Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins and it is the sin we will explore together today in our continuing series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Sin, as we have defined it throughout this series, is something that gets in the way...an obstruction that blocks us from seeing or knowing some truth.
Greed gets a lot of air time in our culture....it is a source of scandal and, at times, veneration in politics, business, and religion. And while greed tends to be associated with great material wealth and power, no one is immune to its lure...indeed to reduce it to a vice of the rich is to ignore its true nature.
Phyllis Tickle, long time religion editor and author, echoing a sentiment expressed in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, calls greed, “the sin of apostacy, of desiring a life subject to human control over a life of vulnerable trust in the unseen.” (pg. 28)
We see this at work in the actions of the greedy widow in Dostoyevsky’s parable...kicking away her fellow damned for fear they will drag her down... displaying a complete lack of trust in what promises to save her.
Greed then is also a reaction to existential fear...a lack of trust in all that supports and affirms life...a fear we seek to alleviate by grasping for some sense of security, be it material possessions, a place of privilege or power, or simply an air of superiority.
It is this grasping, I believe, that lies beneath the imperious and cruel comments left by people in response to the article about the single mother struggling to make ends meet. Like the widow grasping onto the onion, the commentators swung, shoved, and kicked for fear that any improvement in the lot of this single mother’s life or any other such person comes at the expense of gains achieved in their own lives...gains they believed they are entitled to largely because of who they are socially or what they do professionally.
Perhaps this is why we so easily demonize the poor and too eagerly deify the wealthy in this country...one has come to represent in some sense our deepest fear, a life lived for nought...a fear we try desperately to control by clinging to impermanent things...the other represents our greatest hope, a life of fulfillment...a hope we need, but struggle, to trust is always available to us.
Maybe the commentators from the article did, for just a moment, put themselves in the shoes of that single mother...and saw themselves dangling, like her, from the hem of a miserly society, seeking some kind of salvation... and it scared the you know what out of them...immediately inducing a desire to distance, to separate, to disassociate themselves from anything to do with her and her situation for fear of jeopardizing their own sense of security....security sought in scornful words that deny the woman’s humanity and their own...or in claims this woman has no right to that which the commentators enjoy or want for themselves...security built upon an illusion that they are self-made...seeing themselves as neither beneficiaries nor benefactors of the common good...security born of self-deception that transforms greed into virtue by dressing it in the language of thrift....personal responsibility...and freedom.
Elevated to the level of virtue, greed shackles our mind and hardens our hearts, enlisting us in a labor of division...sorting the world into haves and have nots, worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving....a world were, as Adam Smith wrote, “we pursue(s) the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose, which we may never arrive at, and for which we sacrifice a real tranquility that is at all times in our power.” How many of us recognize the painful truth of Smith’s words for ourselves?
Greed is a deadly sin, a sin fatal to spiritual progress, because it keeps us from seeing and nurturing what is most true within us and others. It inhibits trust and instead preys on our existential fears, leading us to seek a prepackaged standard of living rather than a quality of life...it tells us human existence is a zero sum game...a no holds barred competition for resources, power, and privilege...the ultimate “reality” show. Greed’s reality though, is worse than bad television, it is the matrix of a living hell.
Traditionally, the heavenly virtue of charity or giving has been prescribed to counter greed. Giving is certainly important, but I’m reminded again of Adam Smith’s insight, that when life is given over to the pursuit of security through the accumulation of wealth the real tranquility or security that is always and readily available to each of us is sacrificed. It is not that Smith (or myself, for that matter) is opposed to material gain, upward mobility or anything like that, quite the contrary. His concern is, like Phyllis Tickle, the suffering that arises from a “desire for a life subject to human control over a life of vulnerable trust in the unseen.”
Vulnerable trust in the unseen...sounds a little vague...and perhaps, more than a little scary. For some the unseen is called God, for others it is an ineffable, animating force that supports life. Still for others it doesn’t matter who or what the unseen is, but enough to simply acknowledge that the mystery of life is beyond human comprehension and that we live our lives as beings interconnected within a vast and complex web of existence that stretches back and beyond the flash of our individual lives.
To live with vulnerable trust in the unseen is to make peace with our limitations, our absurdities, our mortality... to admit we’re not really in control and then live...live in a way that affirms and trusts life is meaningful and worthwhile...a way that is expansive, generous, and kind, aware of our interconnectedness, aware of our shared origin and destiny.
And so in the face of greed charity... yes, giving... yes, generosity... yes...but most importantly, in the face of greed seek trust...vulnerable trust in that which is unseen but is made known to us... in the embrace of a friend of loved one... in a child’s smile... in acts of human kindness, in the beauty of the natural world...and yes...in the fragile hope of a woman on food stamps who chooses to buy grapes for her child over and against the protests of greed’s shrill chorus.
May we then, as individuals and as a community of faith...loosen our existential grip and trust in the unseen... trust in what inspires and brings us alive...and in so doing may our lives be a song of hope to pierce through greed’s seductive incantation.
Amen and Blessed Be
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