The Eighth Commandment Renewed: You Shall Be Generous of Heart, by Rev. Carlton Elliott Smith, April 3, 2011

Listen to this Sermon: Coming soon to the Playlist

Back to the Sermons

“The Eighth Commandment Renewed: You Shall Be Generous of Heart”

        The Eighth Commandment says “Thou shall not steal.”

        You shall not steal.

        That’s pretty easy to do if you think about stealing as shoplifting, robbing banks or even cheating on your taxes. We’ve all got this one down-pat, right?

        Or do we? In a book I found immensely valuable entitled The Ever-Transcending Spirit: The Psychology of Human Relationships, Consciousness, and Development, the author, Toru Sato, speaks with great clarity about what it means to steal other people’s energy.

        One of the first Unitarian Universalist songs I learned was:

        From you, I receive – to you, I give.
        Together, we share, and from this, we live.

        The energy that passes between us is called prana in Indian cultures or chi in Chinese. Energy moves between us continually. I smile, you smile back. Someone gives something musically, poetically, intellectually, emotionally and we want to give something back … applause, or a word of gratitude, a handshake, or a hug.

        “Good morning!”

        “Why, hello there! How are you?”

        When our energy exchanges are done well, it feels like an elegant dance … in fact, dancing with a partner or partners can be a very inspiring expression of energy exchange.

        Other times, when we feel anxious or our desires are going unmet, we might be inclined to steal energy from others. In the same way that we all have the capacity to be selfish and unable to see beyond what we want for ourselves, we are all also capable of stealing energy from others to get our needs met.

        Sato lists several ways that people steal energy. Are any of these familiar to you--either as victim or perpetrator?

• Being overly demanding
• Making others seem inadequate through interrogation or criticism
• Using intimidation and anger to make others fearful
• Guilt-tripping
• Getting out of doing things by buttering other people up
• Talking non-stop
• Expressing the desire to solve a problem when the real goal is to receive attention
• Provoking emotional reactions in others (We saw an example of that this week with the burning of the Koran.)
• Asserting our privilege
• … Even avoiding others who you think are going to steal your energy can be a way of stealing their energy.

        Put this way, at the end of the day we might ask how we stole from others rather than if we stole from others.

        In fact, if we look at the conflicts and injustices in our world, a lot of them have to do with energy being stolen from others.

        The Persian poet Rumi wrote:

        We should ask God
        to help us toward manners. Inner gifts
        do not find their way
        to creatures without just respect.
        If a man or a woman flails about, he not only
        smashes his house,
        he burns the world down.
        Your depression is connected to your insolence
        and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking
        on the path, and refuses to praise – that man or woman
        who steals from others everyday is a shoplifter!

        I know I don’t want to be a shoplifter … what about you?

        We have other options. We don’t have to steal all time …

        We can live from a space of generosity, where instead of taking energy from people by reminding them of their failings and inadequacies, we can give energy by building upon what they do well. This is the fundamental idea behind the concept of Appreciative Inquiry. You’ll find an example of this in the report I submitted to the Board of Trustees last month, available at the church website, uucava.org. I looked at what was going well this year in two aspects of our social justice work -- specifically, our immigration focus and EqualityUUCA, the new alliance across gender and sexual identities that promotes fairness for all. The group will have its public debut this afternoon with the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal celebration.

        One of the things that is working well is the spirit of generosity that is running through both programs. The members of these initiatives are patient with one another and share responsibility for tasks toward common goals.

        As many of you know, immigration has been a focal point for much of our social justice work this year. Sarah Bazzi recently posted a story on uucava.org that originally appeared in the New York Times. The piece was written by Justin Horner and is called “The Tire Iron and the Tamale”.

        Horner had roadside car trouble three times in the past year, and each time, the people who came to his rescue were “Spanish only” immigrants from Mexico. One man who stopped had a family of four in tow. When Horner broke the man’s tire iron while trying to remove a tire, the man sent his wife to buy a new one from a store 15 minutes down the road.

        When the job was finally done, both men were dirty and drenched in sweat. The wife brought a jug of water for them to wash their hands. Horner offered the man 20 dollars but he wouldn’t take it. Horner discreetly slipped the 20 to the wife and thanked the family profusely. Horner wanted to send a thank-you gift and asked their young English-speaking daughter for an address. The family lived in Mexico and were in the United States as migrant workers, harvesting cherries and peaches.

        As they said goodbye, the little girl asked if Horner had had lunch. When he said no, she ran up and gave him a tamale.

        Walking back to his Jeep, Horner unwrapped the tamale and found the 20-dollar bill. The man rolled down the window of his car. Shaking his head and summoning the little bit of English he knew he said, “Today you, tomorrow me.”

        He rolled up his window and drove away. The little girl waved at Horner from the back of the van. Horner ate his delicious tamale and started to cry. It had been a tough year and he couldn’t contain the depth of his appreciation.

        He concludes the piece -- “In the several months since then I’ve changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and once drove 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to the airport. I won’t accept money. But every time I’m able to help, I feel as if I’m putting something in the bank.”

        As you know, we have this significant Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal celebration this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. right here. I hope many of you will come back for it.

        Some of us have been working almost around the clock – to help ensure that things go smoothly. So when our faithful membership coordinator, Sarah Masters, stopped by my office last Thursday evening with 36 thank-you letters to be sent to contributors to the capital campaign I knew it was important to do this task sooner rather than later--especially since this particular batch should have gone out about a week before. I thought about putting it off--, but as I seek to simplify my life, I’m committed to closing the gap between saying I’ll do something and actually doing it.

        So with a touch of anxiety about pulling away from what seemed to be more pressing concerns, I sat down to add a personal note to those 36 contributors. I couldn’t match every name with a face. I consulted the church directory to jog my memory.

        One thing that struck me was that there was no way to measure the individual’s generosity based on their pledge. Were “large” pledges actually small relative to the means of the giver? Were “small” pledges large sacrifices based on circumstances of that contributor?

        I didn’t know and I don’t need to know. Each of us must uncover what “generosity” means for us.

        I was surprised how many names I knew. As I composed a personal message for each note, pledge amounts disappeared. This task that had at first looked like distraction from more important matters had become a profound encounter with the spirit of life.

        Your pledges to the capital campaign and the annual pledge drive are vitally important to the health of this congregation, and at the same time, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington could collapse overnight if that was all you gave here. Or, it could become one of those places where finances are abundant, but the soul of community lacks power and vibrancy.

        In this sermon on generosity, I want to share with you some of what I saw Thursday night as I read your names and pictured your faces. Although I only signed 36 letters, what I found there is repeated throughout this congregation.

        I see you –

        Caring for your children

        Signing the membership book

        Serving as covenant group leaders

        Raising money for scholarships and youth service trips

        Singing in the choir

        Leading a meeting

        Dealing with the cards life has dealt you

        Sitting through another long meeting

        Waiting for your spouse to finish sitting through another long meeting

        Serving on a committee

        Giving a ride in your car

        Organizing for disenfranchised people in our community through VOICE

        Making aloha greeting calls

        Offering a smile

        Leading a discussion group

        Creating worship through drama and dance

        Advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights

        Drumming up support for the capital and annual campaigns

        Sweating the details of some program or project that might not come off right

        Serving coffee, or snacks, or helping people buy books

        Transporting your teenagers

        Preparing food and decorating

        Showing up at a meeting excited because you’ve made some progress

        Writing thank you letters and notes, and letters to our elected officials

        Ushering and greeting and helping people find their way around the building

        Making room for new leaders to emerge

        Playing music for a service

        Sharing your expertise

        Crying because you’re just so frustrated

        Crying because you’re just so moved

        Opening the doors of your homes to welcome newcomers over for dinner

        Making enough food to share with someone just coming out of the hospital

        I had to stop a couple of times writing those notes to dry my eyes and blow my nose.

        And I realized I had nothing to fear as long as I was at UUCA. I was sitting alone in the common area of the office suite, but I knew I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by the generous soul of this place. The soul of the people who bring UUCA alive from week to week and those who have already departed--who I will never meet.

        Even when there’s no one else around, I’m not really alone. The same generative force that brought UUCA into existence more than 60 years ago is still making things happen today. And when I stand before you, it may look like I’m standing alone, but in my most conscious moments, I know we are as inseparable as the sea is from the shore.

        I’m very grateful for the generous heart of this community.

        In his poem, Manifest: Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Wendell Berry summarizes the troubles of our fearful, greed-driven era, with its mechanized, mindless consumption before issuing his challenge:

        So, friends, every day do something
        that won't compute. Love the Lord.
        Love the world. Work for nothing.
        Take all that you have and be poor.
        Love someone who does not deserve it.
        Denounce the government and embrace
        the flag. Hope to live in that free
        republic for which it stands.
        Give your approval to all you cannot
        understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
        has not encountered he has not destroyed.
        Ask the questions that have no answers.
        Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
        Say that your main crop is the forest
        that you did not plant,
        that you will not live to harvest.

        The word generous has the same root as generate, generation, gene. They all point to the miraculous ability to bring forth life out of nothing. When we are generous of heart, we create the space of miracles, not only for ourselves, but for others as well.

        Some of us are called to a level of generosity where we literally lay down our lives in the name of love. Tomorrow is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His was a generous heart. He could have chosen to stop working for justice, to stop speaking prophetically on behalf of the dispossessed and the impoverished, but he chose to keep giving, knowing that there were those who wanted to steal his life.

        Not everyone is called to that level of sacrifice, but each of us can think of large and small ways to give our lives to others -- putting aside selfishness, greed, and ego. When we make room for other people’s contributions and freely share what we have, we see in our own lives what we saw this morning in the story “Brothers” – we become boundless channels of giving and receiving energy… the grace we put out into the world comes right back to us. May it be so for us all, today and everyday of our lives. And so it is.

Photos of the Service