Uncertain Times
Sermon by Steve Edington
October 12, 2008
Every once in awhile I do a sermon on a dare. Not a dare from someone else, but from myself to myself. I dare myself to offer a sermon on a subject I know very little about and with very little idea as to where I'd go with it. That, dear friends and congregants, is what you are getting today. As good and productive as our strategic planning workshops have been over the past couple of Saturdays, I decided they're not the stuff of a sermon - just not yet anyway. And since I am, after all, "The Decider" when it comes to sermon topics, I decided to go in another direction today.
Intermingled with all the electioneering now taking place as this seemingly endless Presidential campaign thankfully and mercifully approaches its end, has been all the news of financial turmoil and great financial uncertainty. The news reports have included failing banks, tightening credit lines, and 700 billion dollars in federal money being approved by a very reluctant Congress, in an attempt to bring some stabilization to an increasingly unstable set of circumstances, first in the United States and now around the world.
This past week a CNN poll revealed that 60% of Americans believe another Great Depression is likely. However reality based such fears may be, this is truly a case where perception takes on a reality of its own. The reason this is a "dare" sermon is because I'm on the same page with Senator John McCain when he said, "I really don't know much about economics." Of course, I'm not running for President, but let's set that aside.
No, I don't know much about economics. I somehow made it all through college without taking a single economics course. I confess to a little fear myself right now about even looking at the current state of my pension plan. But I do know something about fear and uncertainty and what these things can do the mind and spirit of human beings, and that is the angle from which I will speak.
I first want to share with you the movie scene that flashed into my mind as I tried to get my head around this matter. It's from the 1961 version of the film Splendor in the Grass, which is on my all time favorites list. The musical score is composed by my good friend David Amram. David did me the honor of writing the Foreword to one of my books a few years ago, so perhaps I'm a bit biased about the whole thing. I've not seen the 1981 remake.
The film is set in a small Kansas town in the late 1920s. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty play a couple of high school seniors - Deannie Loomis and Bud Stamper - who are in the throes of teen-age love, and in the throes of struggling with their intense late adolescent sexuality. Sexual repression against the backdrop of small town America circa 1927-28 is the major plot line of the film
There's also a subplot. If the major plot is about the seductiveness and precariousness and delight/danger of sex - all of which lands Natalie Wood's Deannie Loomis in a mental hospital for a time - the subplot is about the seductiveness and precariousness and delight/danger of wealth. These dual themes do a dance throughout the film. If you're looking for me to run with the sex theme, well - sorry about that - I'm running with the sub-plot wealth theme instead. This business of daring myself only goes up to a point.
Bud Stamper's father, Ace Stamper, is the richest man in town - if not in the entire State of Kansas. He's made a fortune in oil, which he's put in the stock market, which in the booming and roaring 1920s is making him richer by the day. He acquires for himself all the trappings of wealth. One of those trappings involves him basically buying his son's way into Yale University, even though Bud has neither the academic qualifications nor the desire to go.
The scene in this firm that came back to me this week, perhaps not surprisingly, takes place in a church. The Stampers, their wealth notwithstanding, still need to keep up social appearances. One way that was done in small town, 1920s America, was to go to church - preferably one of the local Protestant churches.
The scene is a Sunday morning service with the Stampers, the Loomises, and lots of other townsfolk in attendance. The minister speaks from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and decay destroy..." and he goes on from there to talk about the perils of becoming unduly reliant upon earthly wealth, and on the need to keep one's mind and spirit focused on higher things, and the like. In the midst of the sermon Ace Stamper falls asleep. There's this great juxtaposition, then, of the minister speaking about the capriciousness of "earthy treasure" with the snoring sounds of the richest man in Kansas in the background.
The minister looks clearly out of touch up there in his pulpit. Many of the other townspeople are also doing quite well for themselves, whether it is directly due to the Stamper fortune or to the booming economy of the 1920s. They are polite enough, however, to stay awake. They indulge the minister that much at least. But his sermon appears to be having about as much effect on them as it does on Ace Stamper.
If you've seen the film you know how it plays out. Bud goes off to Yale where he proceeds to fail all his courses. The stock market crashes. Ace Stamper jumps to his death out of a New York City hotel window where he's gone in a failed attempt to save his fortune. Bud marries a waitress he's met in New Haven and they go back to Kansas to be chicken farmers on the last little bit of property left in the Stamper family. In the final scene Natalie Wood, as Deannie Loomis, pays Warren Beatty, as Bud Stamper, one last visit out at his hardscrabble farm. She tells him that she'll soon be getting married herself; and that their lives must go on. I'm not a guy who cries at movies but that last scene always puts a lump in my throat.
I only learned this when I did some research of the film over the past few days: Its screenwriter was William Inge - a good playwright in his own right. He was given the opportunity to play a bit part in the movie as a way of putting his signature on it in a way similar to what Alfred Hitchcock did with his movies. Mr. Inge chose to play the part of the minister in the scene I described. The scene itself lasts for maybe a minute, but the minister is the movie's truth-teller. I guess that was the point the screenwriter wanted to make by taking on the minister part for himself.
As I replayed this film in my head, thinking especially about the church scene, I wondered what William Inge's minister said to his congregation after the fall. What did he say to his congregation after his point about the capriciousness and seductiveness of "earthly treasure" had been proven in some very cruel and harsh ways. That's my point of departure in sharing with you what thoughts I've been able to pull together on this crucial matter.
We're not in a Depression. But sixty percent of our citizenry, if that CNN poll is accurate, think we're headed for one. I won't prognosticate on that, because it really doesn't matter what you call it. The sense of anxiety and uncertainty that this financial crises has quite understandably generated is clearly amongst us regardless of whatever label we may put on it.
One of my colleagues in the UU ministry, the Rev. Galen Guengerich at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, spoke to this same topic last Sunday. Galen didn't open with Splendor in the Grass but he cited a passage from a book by Jonathan Sacks, who is the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain that is well worth passing along. Rabbi Sacks' book is titled The Dignity of Difference. The passage is a bit long, so hang in with me as I read it:
"Economic superpowers, seemingly invincible in their time, have a relatively short life-span: Venice in the sixteenth century, the Netherlands in the seventeenth, France in the eighteenth, Britain in the nineteenth, and the United States in the twentieth. The great religions, by contrast, survive. Islam is 1500 years old, Christianity 2000 and Judaism 4000. Why this should be so is open to debate. My own view is that world faiths embody truths unavailable to economics and politics, and they remain salient even when everything else changes. They remind us that civilizations survive not by strength but by how they respond to the weak; not by wealth but by the care they show for the poor; not by power but by their concern for the powerless. The ironic yet utterly humane lesson of history is that what renders a civilization invulnerable is the compassion it shows to the vulnerable. The ultimate value we should be concerned to maximize is human dignity - the dignity of all human beings, equally, as children of the creative, redeeming God."
You don't have to be completely simpatico with the Rabbi's theology to appreciate his larger point, which is that there are certain truths and values than actually have greater staying power than those of economic might, which various nations and civilizations have achieved at various times over the course of human history.
I'm going to assume that we can accept Rabbi Sack's contention that the ultimate human value is the maximizing of human dignity. He's simply restating, after all, from his own tradition our first Unitarian Universalist Principle which holds that we affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." Where might this principle and affirmation take us at this present moment? I'll briefly speak to this at both our societal, national level, and to what I see it meaning for us as members or friends of this congregation.
Three weeks from today, on November 2nd, I'll offer my pre-election sermon. This will be just a quick touch-down today. To be sure, we need leaders in positions of political power with the wisdom, and the skill, and the courage to confront the financial crises we are in and push for solutions that will alleviate it - painful and costly as some of those solutions may be. And I'm listening carefully to the solutions that are being proposed and advocated.
But I'm listening for something more as well. I'm listening for some articulation, some concept, some vision of the Common Good in the midst of very uncommon times. I'm looking for those who would lead us to show us a path towards that "more perfect union" that our founders called for, even as we face some of the most serious and costly imperfections that have come our way in the course of our nation's history. I'm looking for leadership that will acknowledge that we are living in fearful and uncertain times while not being driven by that fear and uncertainty.
Of course I'm concerned for my personal well being as well as that of my family, just as each of you are of yours. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that I'm also part of a larger community, in this case a national and global community. I'm looking for leadership that can keep all of us mindful of that, even in the midst of whatever personal crises and uncertainties we may be dealing with. I'm looking for leadership that shows at least some level of awareness of Rabbi Sacks' reminder that "civilizations survive not by strength but by how they respond to the weak; not by wealth but by the care they show for the poor; not by power but by their concern for the powerless." Enough on this for now. I'll revisit it in three weeks.
Finally I want to turn our attention to this congregation, to this community that means so much to so many of us. Whatever leadership we may get in the political and financial arenas we also have our own calling to be faithful to. If, as Rabbi Sacks suggests, it is world faiths that [quoting him] "embody truths unavailable to economics and politics" then let us continue to embody the truths we hold dear. Let us continue to seek the ways of "justice, equity and compassion in human relations" as another of our Principles call for. Let us continue to extend a portion of our resources to those whom Jesus and the prophets called "the least of these."
And let us as well make our human resources - here in this human community of religious liberals - available to ourselves. This is truly a time for us to be caring for one another. The fear and uncertainty of which I've been speaking is not - by any means - all "out there" somewhere. Some of you, perhaps many of you, know what I'm speaking about first hand. You have your own concerns, your own anxieties, your own uncertainties to deal with - especially in light of the events of recent weeks.
I know that the natural human reflex to feelings of fear and uncertainty is to pull back into oneself. That's generally the first place I go when I find that I don't quite know where I'm going. I understand the need to stay curled up inside when that feels like the only safe place to be. The only thing I can say is don't stay there any longer than you actually need to. You have a home here. I hope you'll seek care and support from those you've come to know and trust, and offer care and support to others in return whenever and wherever such is needed.
We have a house to care for and we have a home to be nurtured here in this place we call the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua. I have every confidence that we can and will do both, now and in the days to come. Some of us have spent the past couple of Saturdays helping to chart a course for ourselves as a congregation in the years ahead. It will take renewed commitment and dedication to get us there; and I believe we have what it takes.
I'll close with one more revisit of the movie scene I put before you earlier. There's a second part to the passage the minister cites after the line about "lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and decay destroy..." He goes on with the same verse to where it says "but store up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor decay destroy..." On a literal level, of course, the idea of "treasures in heaven" sounds pretty quaint and irrelevant, especially if the physical locale of a place called heaven doesn't quite make it onto your radar screen.
But the larger point, if you can get past the 1st century terminology, is that there are more important things to be gained in our earthly lives than whatever earthly treasures we're able to acquire - as valuable and necessary as those earthly treasures of yours and mine may be. My hope for all of us is that this house and home will be a place for us where we truly may seek and find that which is eternal and lasting in our lives, and that we will continue to share our findings with one another as our journeys of meaning and spirit continue.
Stephen D. Edington
October 12, 2008
