My husband Scott and I have an unlikely ministry hero. The Rev. Don Wheat. Scott worked with him for a couple years, and I instantly 'glommed' onto him once I met him. Why, I'm not sure. He's quick and sprightly in his movements...as if he has had too many cups of coffee and someone should have cut him off years ago but didn't have the heart...a java-junkie without the java. He's honest to the point of embarrassment, stating facts and truths with an air of confidence that can border on confrontational rather than pastoral. In short, not the model of ministry one might expect to be so enamored with. But we are. Mainly because his wisdom on life and religion have stuck like gum to the underside of our souls, and we can't find a way to work our way free.
Don summed up his entire 30 years of ministry with one phrase: "The religious person is the grateful person is the generous person." It seems simple, almost archaic, but in its telling and practice - profound.
What I love and appreciate about this so much is how it reminds me that if I want to know if a person or a society is grateful, as well as religious, I need to ask how generous they are. The religious person is the grateful person is the generous person. As the last sermon on abundance this month, it's clear that the test of a person's religiosity and gratitude is their level of generosity. And if you apply this to society at large, the picture is unfortunately not that weighted toward stellar levels of generosity.
On the one hand, in the weeks following the devastation of Katrina, Don's maxim seemed right on.
Personally, I was astounded to find every store I patronized contributing to the cleanup: Starbucks, Wegmans, Brueggers, Barnes and Noble, Eckerds, Chase-Pitkin, Home Depot, Target, Michael's, JCPenny's. Each had their own giving plan, allowing their customers to conveniently donate, some with generous matching funds, others serving as a conduit for easy philanthropy, but all expediting funds to the greater good.
And then there were the generous stories: In USA today ex-basketball giant, Karl Malone was highlighted because he took a crew and 18 vehicles from this Arkansas logging company to Pascagoula, MS and spent two weeks clearing 114 lots of debris left by Hurricane Katrina. Malone said that a landowner, who had just lost everything, couldn't afford to pay the $15,000 to $20,000 to have a lot cleared. "When we told them we were doing this for free, they looked at us like we were crazy or something," he said.
So I got the feel-good stuff out of the way. But if you look at the big picture, examples of generosity, of sharing, are dwarfed by a much more prevalent example of not doing so.
Individual examples of not sharing:
On October 2nd, in the Genesee Valley Penny Saver, this Vent was published: "In the Southern tier flood of 1994, I lost everything - home, furniture, clothes, family pictures, etc. I didn't receive a new home, any food, no money, not even second-hand clothes...nothing! I wore the clothes on my back for days and moved in with others. Yes, I contacted several agencies for help and I got nothing! Am I bitter? Would you be?" (signed) Saying "No" to giving.
Corporate examples of not sharing:
On Monday, General Motors announced that they were "letting go" 30,000 employees. 30,000 families will be displaced; most of these folks have a limited skill set, one that is not so easily transferable. The one position that is easily transferable is the CEO. GM's CEO last year made about 9-1/2 million dollars of total compensation. Which in itself says something. In 1982, the ratio of CEO to the average worker in pay was 42-1. In 2003 it reached its record high of paying a CEO 300-1 more than its lowest wage earner. GE's average assembly line workers' weekly take home pay is 504 dollars; their CEO takes home $155,000 a week. Even more discouraging is corporate America's disregard for whether a company proves profitable or not. There are numerous cases of CEO's making huge dividends following quarterly record lows, and bankruptcy. (Kodak's CEO)
National examples of not sharing:
Last Friday Congress was considering a bill that would cut 50 billion of spending for such things as Medicaid, food stamps and student loans. They stayed awake until 2:00 in the morning debating the bill, and passed it with a vote of 217-215. The second half of the bill was to include a 70 billion dollar package of tax cuts to the most wealthy. They chose to wait on this decision, as passing it right after the cuts, one paper noted, "might look bad."
Clearly, our sharing of wealth and abundance for the betterment of the common good keeps getting disproportionately smaller, more parsimonious.
Ok, by now you're thinking, "come on, Kaaren, this is depressing; get off of it - we share. Our government gives as much as 15% of our federal budget away in foreign aid." Well no, in reality we are the stingiest of all the industrialized nations. We allot about 1/13th as much as is commonly believed. We share about 16 cents per $100 of our Gross National Income with poor nations. And if you added up all our generosity from private sources - corporations, American foundations, and individuals - it only goes up to about 22 cents per 100 dollars.
Further, even with this growing disparity in our own country between the haves and the have-nots, we have a plethora of abundance compared to the rest of the world, of which we don't share. The average family in the US makes $55,000 a year. In comparison, more than half of the world's people, that's more than 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day and 1.2 billion live on half of that.
Which brings this topic back to religious people. Listen to what John Crossen says in his latest book. His comments stick in my side like a sharp pricker: "As the people of the Earth increasingly divide into two mega classes called rich and poor, the first step toward the kingdom is deciding whose side God is on, and then we must ask ourselves: 'How radical must we be?'" A church that doesn't answer this question is dealing not in religion but in "hypocrisy." It's offering a "transcendental Prozac," a little vacation each Sunday. Rather than giving coins to beggars we should change the church so that it makes the world a better place, that's what it's for.
According to Crossen, step one is answering whose side is God on? Step two is asking how radical should we be? The first one, especially for most people of faith, is pretty clear cut. For UUs, if we translate God's side as whose side is the spirit of life on, or transformation, or justice, it's still pretty clear cut.
President Jimmy Carter in his book Our Endangered Values comments, "all major religious faiths are shaped by prophetic mandates to do justice, love mercy, protect and care for widows and orphans and exemplify God's compassion for the poor and victimized."
In a recent study done on the bible, every 16th verse in the New Testament referred to money or the poor. In the Hebrew scriptures, only idolatry was mentioned more times than the relationship between rich and poor." -(Carter)
It's clear whose side God is on - the poor. The question of how radical should we be? - that one's a little trickier. But when you combine Don Wheat's quote and Crossen's directive, I think you have to talk not so much about justice, though that is a part of it, but more about radical sharing. There is no way to help the poor, there is no way to deal with the income divide, there is no way to reach justice without radical sharing. So what might radical sharing look like? What might taking it to the next level look like? I think the terrible events with the hurricanes in the South offer us a good example. As I said earlier, we can be proud of the reaching out and sharing that took place with Katrina, but as valiant as these acts were, and I'm even nervous to say this, I don't think it does the under-privileged or the oppressed any favors to describe Katrina as radical sharing. The truth is, Katrina exposed two needs: one, the need to clean up after the hurricane; second, it showed us what we need to clean up and correct, the deep structural storms that effect the poor every day. Taking it to the next level means going from rebuilding New Orleans to rebuilding the common good.
But here's the thing, here's where we have to shift from talking about the societal dimension to the personal dimension. Here's where we have to talk about our personal levels of generosity. If we are going to be people of faith that prophetically call our culture to radically commit to the common good, then we have to display or witness to that same commitment in our personal and congregational lives. To be authentic prophets who call for radical sharing on a societal level, we need to live it ourselves.
Here's where I get nervous again because it really means making us rethink our comfortable assumptions about what being generous really means. For instance, we as a congregation encourage each other to give 3-5% of our income to the church and other organizations. Across our denomination, however, it is less, with our average as Unitarian Universalists being 1.2-1.5% - which is responsible - which is compassionate. But are we really comfortable calling it generous? It's a hard question. Scott will tell you I wanted to delete that line from this sermon and I don't mean it as a judgment but out of respect for the commitment and values we all hold dear, we need to ask it. It's even harder as a self-professed liberal to look at this, because I like to think that liberal applies to my giving as well, but I think Crossen would tell me, tell us, we're producing Prozac for the masses by contributing what we currently do. So, I've tried to take a deep breath and turn my head toward some folks that I think Crossen and Don would say, "ah, that's it - radical sharing - a commitment to the common good."
Rick Warren the premier mega-church minister in California and author of the best selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, with a congregation of 15,000 members, does. He gives 90% of his income away - 90%. Now granted, I'm sure he makes quite a substantial income, but to give 90% of it away. Name me someone else who does this on this level? I couldn't come up with anyone, at least not anyone who wasn't living on the dividends of un-earned income. And frankly when you give 70% of interest, of 57 billion away, in the end, you're still a billionaire, I believe.
A second example of radical giving: the third largest Methodist church in the country, Ginghamsburg church in Ohio. Their senior pastor, Mike Slaughter, prayed for guidance for an entire year on how his congregation might meet the needs of the world's most needy. He decided that the tragedy in Dufar was where he and his parishioners needed to extend some radical sharing. So on top of their tithe, which is 10%, (socio-economic piece) he asked all 3,000 of his church members, to give half of what they would normally spend on Christmas, to a fund for Dufar. They sent about $350,000 to the Sudan.
So what about us? I suggested at this year's thanksgiving service on Thursday that the congregations present might join together for a project like establishing a network of micro banks in third world countries. Micro banking organizations were started to help the lowest income people worldwide take the first step up and out of poverty, by providing conditional seed capital and business training essential to launch a small business. They help families reach a standard of living above the poverty line, and take as many as 61%, when applied in the states, off of public assistance. I wanted us to think about what we could achieve if we worked together because, surprisingly, it costs a measly $5,000 to start just one bank. Would we achieve our highest calling if we worked together?
Scott and I would also like to begin a conversation with all of you about next Christmas. We'd like to propose that next year we all give 1/2 of what we normally spend on Christmas to some project that supports the common good. In truth, we need a year, I think, to get kids and families on board, to really explore what radical sharing is, and to help discern where we as a congregation would most like to contribute to the greater good.
But what about this year? What about now?
The entire country was stunned by the pictures of New Orleans' residents stranded and dying in the city's major sports stadium while our leaders watched people die; leaders claiming lack of knowledge and hands tied because of bureaucracy.
This image of leaders standing by while people are dying has returned to both Scott and I recently in a different form. About three weeks ago, Scott was asked to speak out against the screwed up priorities of the federal budget proposal I spoke of earlier. The location of this effort was St. Joe's, the homeless shelter some of our members volunteer at on Sunday evenings. Afterward Scott talked to one of the leaders there and asked what they needed. He said, "not food, or money really, but beds." He commented, "People will die this winter because there aren't enough beds for the swelling ranks of new homeless this year. From the additional people showing up for food it looks like there will be an excess of anywhere from 50 to 150 that none of the existing shelters will be able to house! Everyone knows it's coming, everyone's talking about it, but nobody is doing anything," he said.
This same message came up again when Scott talked with Mike Freeman who is leading our Morals Behind the Headlines next week on issues of poverty and lead poisoning in the city. He, too, reiterated the urgency within the ranks of the homeless this winter and affirmed a very real bed shortage.
And again it came up just over a week ago, when I talked in Fairport at a rally trying to appeal to Congress about the cuts for spending for the poor, and how deeply entrenched in poverty many Rochester area residents are - affecting their health, dignity and shelter.
It seems pretty clear to Scott and me, after the last couple of weeks, that the same dice are potentially being thrown - people facing possible death, leaders knowing but not doing anything. For the past three weeks, Scott and I have wrestled with this equation: we don't want to be leaders that watch, we don't want our church to be leaders that watch and we know you all don't want this church to be leaders that watch.
Fredrick Buechner, a liberal Christian theologian and author, says, "your calling exists at the point where your gifts and abilities intersect with the needs of the world." I'd modify that a bit this morning and say. "your calling of radical sharing exists at the point where your gifts and abilities intersect with the needs of the world."
We know the needs of Rochester's homeless. We know we have the gifts, abilities and resources to help. Seems this intersection is calling us to leadership and action. The only question is "how radical must we be?"
If you want to talk about it, the ministry team and representatives from our Housing, Homeless and Hunger Task Force will be in room __ 15 minutes after our service ends this morning.
The religious person is the grateful person is the generous person. Let us take heart knowing that the generous person when working with other generous people, can make amazing things happen, especially when they ask each other . . .how radical must we be?"-. and then act...
May we be so charged.
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