Isn't this exciting? We're
already on the second commandment. It was only two Sundays ago that
we renewed the first commandment, which is "Thou shalt have no
other gods before me,” to read, "You shall open your heart to the
holy." So we're on a roll: one down and nine to go.
I'm reminded of a “Speed Bump”
cartoon that shows Moses with the two tablets of commandments under
his arms surrounded by his people who are all holding hamburgers
and hot dogs, and he says, “Boneheads! I never said I was bringing
ten condiments.”
Our task today is to renew the
second commandment, which is, “Thou shalt not make for me any
craven images or any likeness.” The renewed translation is this:
“You shall value people over possessions and meaning over
materialism.”
The story of Midas from the For
All Ages illustrates what happens when we make our obsession for
possessions and our mania for materialism into a god: it causes the
death of the spirit and the destruction of relationships.
If you dust off your bible you
may remember a similar story in the Book of Exodus which tells what
supposedly happened when Moses was on Mt. Sinai having a forty day
one-on-one with God. Aaron was left in command, and the Israelites
became so upset that Moses was on an extended sabbatical that they
demanded Aaron create a god for them to worship. Wanting to keep
everyone happy, Aaron melted down all the gold earrings from the
Israelites and forged a great golden calf. When Moses finally came
down from Mt. Sinai and saw the calf, he threw down the tablets,
breaking them into pieces, and then burnt the idol in a fire. He
must have saved his receipt because he then went back up Mt. Sinai
and got a replacement copy of the commandments.
This is what the second
commandment is all about: the temptation of people to worship false
gods instead of daring to look into the face of the one true power
of revelation and transformation. In that day people worshiped a
wide variety of gods who answered their prayers for power and
possessions. But this new God that Moses brought down from the
mountain was different; he came not to bring happiness and
satisfaction to the Israelites, not as a Santa substitute, but to
demand their allegiance and their righteousness.
Ironically, I found a similar
message in my favorite movie of the year “The Invention of Lying.”
How many of you have seen it? The comedian Ricky Gervais plays Mark
Bellison who lives in a world where no one can tell a lie – that's
hard to imagine, isn't it? Everything that is said is absolutely
true, resulting in many very blunt and often cruel statements.
There is no such thing as fiction – since it's all a lie -- so
television and movies are one dull lecture after another. And of
course religion does not exist for obvious reasons.
But Mark somehow learns to lie,
and he's the only person in the world who can. He's frightened by
this new skill but finds it does come in handy for getting dates.
The most touching part of the film is the scene where Mark is at
the hospital sitting beside
his dying mother. She is terrified of death, believing she will
go into an eternity of nothingness. Mark suddenly realizes that he
has the power to make her feel better, so he tells her about a
joyful afterlife where no one ever dies.
His mother dies happily, but he
soon receives worldwide attention for this new vision. Under
pressure to reveal his sources, he comes up with ten revelations
that he writes on a pizza box – like this one. Here are some of
them:
There is a man in the sky who controls everything.
When you die, you don’t disappear into an eternity of
nothingness. Instead, you go to a really great place.
In that place, everyone will get a mansion.
When you die, all the people you love will be there.
When you die, there will be free ice cream for everyone, all
day and all night, whatever flavors you can think of.
If you do bad things, you won’t get to go to this great place
when you die (You get three chances, just like baseball).
This of course is blatant
satire of religion, but it's also an explanation – and a good one –
of how religions begin and develop. They grow out of compassion,
trying to help people in pain. We comfort those we love by telling
them what may not be totally true, ranging from “You're going to be
alright,” to “You're going to a better place.” And then things gets
out of hand and before you know it you have Cathedrals, creeds,
commandments, and corruption.
I personally don't believe in
the man in the sky or a life after death where our personal
consciousness survives. But I do believe there is a power greater
than ourselves that calls us to awaken our consciousness and our
conscience. And I do believe in life before death, that we have the
power to make heaven or hell here on earth, and our purpose is to
do all we can to better our piece of the planet.
But this is not a job for
sissies. We are living in a world where the god of wealth and
materialism is worshiped by many, and the results have been
catastrophic. An economic earthquake has affected all of us,
pension funds shrunken, jobs lost, homes taken away. The pain
experienced is inconceivable, and as usual, those who are poor are
suffering the most.
You may have seen the Post
article last week explaining that “three out of 10 children in
Washington D.C. were living in poverty last year,” with the number
of poor African American children at 43 percent. This is in our own
community, where we live, and ironically it's the political center
of the world. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of Americans own almost
50 percent of privately held investment capital in the nation. One
economist described these as medieval numbers.
There is no moral or practical
justification for these levels of inequality. When inequality
becomes the norm, then our system is in crisis since capitalism
works only when wealth, income, and opportunity are distributed
fairly. And yet today the rich are trying to convince the rest of
us that they deserve large tax cuts so that they can become even
richer.
There's also a more personal
and spiritual impact to this worship of the golden calf in our
nation. The loss of people's net worth has taken a toll on our
self-worth. For many people self-worth is largely defined by what
we own and how much money is in the bank.
If making money is our purpose,
then it's humiliating when we don't. We feel bad about ourselves,
and when our worth is diminished, there's a tendency to diminish
the world of those we don't agree with. This anger has turned into
a nastiness and even hatred that has caused our civil discourse to
spiral down into something akin to a sewer system.
As painful as this crisis is
for many, it's also been an opportunity for some people to discover
their self-worth beyond what they own and spend. These folks have
decided to live by the old Shaker hymn: “’Tis a gift to be simple.
’Tis a gift to be free...”
In a recent book titled,
“Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream,” David
Platt suggests that people cap their lifestyle by living as if you
made $50,000 a year and give everything else away. We may not be
able or willing to take such a radical step, but we can begin
moving towards a simpler and more generous lifestyle.
As the Christian activist, Jim
Wallis, says, “We must learn again that true freedom lies between a
dull, bleak, deprived life and one of opulence and greed where
credit cards are our chains, and debt our prison.” Politically, we
need to remember the lesson of Native Americans who made important
decisions by asking how the outcomes would affect the people and
the land for the next seven generations. And we need to hear the
message from both Mother Earth and the financial market that the
whole growth model we’ve created is unsustainable economically and
ecologically.
There are certainly many who
believe like Gertrude Stein that, “Whoever said money can't buy
happiness didn't know where to shop.” Instead of worshiping this
golden calf of consumerism, we need to move to a relational model
where people are valued more than possessions and meaning more than
materialism.
We can do this by building
community and developing deeper relationships with those around us
and those who are different than us in lifestyle, class, and
religion. It's a radical act to be relational, to be willing to
listen and speak from the heart.
We are attempting to become a
more relational church by having one-on-one conversations with
others in our congregation as a way of creating community. We're
asking all of our committees, task forces, and teams to begin their
meetings with one-on-one conversations with each person taking
three minutes to answer a question. This month's question is, “What
do you value most in your life?” I invite everyone here today to
find one person during Coffee Hour to join you in a six-minute
one-on-one. You will not regret it.
To be relational is to be
religious. The first commandment calls us to open our hearts to the
holy, that is to experience within our deepest selves our unity and
oneness with the interdependent web of all existence. The second
commandment is more of a reminder that when we genuinely experience
our unity, then we can't help but become aware of the inherent
worth and dignity of every person and to feel a universal love for
all of creation. Our kindness and compassion flows naturally.
Do you get it? This is not only
our purpose as human beings, but I believe it's the best definition
of Unitarian Universalism: the experience of unity – that is
Unitarianism – leads us to a universal love of all creation –
Universalism. This is our vision, not nearly realized in our lives
or in our world, but it's a vision we can move towards step by
step.
Yes, we really are on a mission
from God, if you want to put it that way, but I prefer saying it's
a mission from Life. It's a call to be the breath of life, as Rev.
Carlton called it last Sunday, to choose to stand on the side of
love, to walk side by side with Jesus of Nazareth and Gautama
Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi and Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Clara Barton and so many others who have gone before
us, sacrificing their freedom and even their lives so that this
breath of life, of goodness, will not cease, and the light of peace
and justice will never go out.
We are called to shun the
golden calf of consumerism and to value people over possessions and
meaning over materialism.
We are called to build the
Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, Heaven on Earth, right here
where we stand, in our souls, our homes, our community, our world,
and right here in this church. I invite you to join us in this
mission by living a simpler life, by becoming a more relational
person, and by building a land and a church “where justice shall
roll down like waters, and peace like an ever flowing stream.”
Do I hear an Amen?
Watch The Story of King Midas And The Golden Touch
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