Money Matters

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

February 1, 2009

I have been dwelling quite a bit on money since last summer. I mean, who hasn't in these scary and uncertain economic times when each day dawns with some bad news or the other about failing banks, corrupt hedge fund managers, massive lay-offs, huge budget deficits at the national and state levels, and deteriorating home values.

I have been pondering the meaning of money in my life, in our religious community, and in the world we live in. I've wondered about how we tend to assign all kinds of other meanings to money by projecting our insecurities, our fears, our feelings, our values onto it. I thought about how money elicits fear and envy; how we tend to "hide" our feelings about money as much as our unconscious tends to hide our deepest impulses and yearnings. I thought of all the fears people tend to carry about money -- the fear of not having enough, the fear of being jobless or homeless or both, the fears we inherited from our parents and grandparents, and the fear of being thought of being too rich or too privileged in a world that has so much need and calls for sacrificial giving. I thought about how one might possess money without being possessed by it? And if the whole point of life is to be happy and find meaning, why not invest our energy in some other, more fruitful field of endeavor than go through all the hassle, the anxiety, and frustration of making money?

I also wondered about the demonic side of money, the side that Jesus saw all too well when he warned, "No servant can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and mammon (the Aramaic word for wealth, money, profit, and property)." I was struck by how only money was and is put on par with God; not knowledge, not family values, not reputation, not talent, only money. I reflected on how money has indeed displaced God or all that is holy and sacred in our lives. I asked myself, "How can money's old gods -- of control, power, selfishness, prestige, obedience, oppression -- be transformed into new gods, gods of creativity and joy who promote compassion, generosity, justice, equity, and peace in the world?"

My objective today is not to try to answer all these questions because there are no easy answers and also because money has "power out of all proportion to its purchasing power." But I do want to try and dissect the role of money in our lives, and to explore the meaning of money as individuals and as a religious community. I want to do it particularly in preparation for our annual financial stewardship campaign that will begin early next month. Its end is not just to raise money but to engage each of us to think more deeply about our commitment to our faith, Unitarian Universalism -- what are we willing to do for it -- and to our religious community -- how are we living out its purpose and mission in these difficult and trying times.

I want to begin then, by asking a very basic question: What is money? To this, there is a very simple answer. The words "money," "memory," and "mental," all come from the same Indo-European root - "mens," which means "to use one's mind," or "to think." Money, then, is a cognitive system, a means for measuring and remembering value. There is nothing "real" about money. It is merely a mental device for comparing dissimilar things and establishing their relative worth.

With the passage of time, however, this symbol system has become more potent - and for many of us more important than the goods and services whose value it replaces. For quite some time now, money has become the primary source of grace, the fount of all blessings, in a materialistic, demythologized universe. For many people, a sense of well-being and a high net worth go hand-in-hand.

There is, as some of you may know, a statistical measure know as the "fulfillment curve" which graphically illustrates the relationship between money and human satisfaction. Over the years psychological inventories have produced fairly consistent results: up to a certain level of income (somewhere in the middle class range), there is a strong correlation between money and satisfaction. Beyond that point, however, money fails to make an appreciable difference in one's sense of happiness or contentment.

What really are most people after when they pursue and try to hoard money? That question leads me to look at the shadow side of money. Security, comfort, pleasure are only partial explanations. The real answer, I think, is control. Money may not be able to purchase fulfillment, but it does help us feel that we are in charge of our own destiny. The more money we have, the more of life's variables we think we can manipulate, the more of life's vicissitudes we think we can escape, the more of life's demands we think we can negotiate.

Now, for some people it doesn't present real problems. But for those in whom major insecurities are coupled with a strong control drive, the appetite for money can become insatiable and thoughts about money, obsessive. It isn't greed but the need for control that keeps us lusting after the almighty dollar. And unfortunately, this is a kind of addictive behavior that our society wholeheartedly endorses.

Now, everything that I've said so far has to do with the downside of this money business, but there is an upside. I'm not here to demonize money, to recommend holy poverty to everyone in the audience. I am not a big believer in austerity. When I entered the ministry, I did not take a vow of poverty. I like drawing a good salary, I want my family to enjoy basic "creature comforts," and I sincerely believe that "money" is not - either in fact or as a figure of speech - a four letter word. Eschewing money is not the solution to the problems I've mentioned. But, at the same time, I believe that we need to break with a culture that's gone bananas over money. It's a deeply religious matter.

What we need to do, I think, is to reconsider the purpose of money, reconfigure its role and value in our individual and collective lives, and alter our relationship to it accordingly. As members of a counter-cultural religious movement, we need to figure out a paradigm shift in how we view and use money.

Two ideas that we would want to entertain in any positive appraisal of money are "sacredness" and "stewardship", so let's pursue this line of thought for a while.

Despite our obsession with it, some observers have said that we don't take money seriously enough. By this they mean that in allowing ourselves to be enthralled and bewitched by it, we have ceased to think meaningfully about money.

Now, for centuries, money possessed a sacred aura, which meant that people used it with a certain reverence and awe. Early Roman coins were minted in the temple of Moneta, the Goddess of memory, and ancient coinage was often stamped with divine images. Its users were thus reminded that all good things proceed from sources beyond themselves. In ancient India, the treasury was located in the main temple and people offered their taxes and dues to the deity before remitting it with the treasury. Money belonged to and was thoroughly integrated into a larger, spiritual economy.

I would suggest that in divorcing money and spirituality, we have placed ourselves in an untenable position morally and existentially. We have somehow convinced ourselves that what we do with our money - our personal resources - doesn't have a whole lot to do with who we are as ethical and spiritual beings. But the fact is, the two are intimately connected. Where we worship, what we profess, who we serve, and what causes we contribute to give the world some indication of our values and our priorities. But that evidence can be either supported or undermined by how we handle our money.

Money becomes a spiritual rather than a secular tool, a spiritual currency, when we begin to use it for discernment. We can make, accumulate or spend money reflexively, out of those old, unconscious needs for control. Or we can begin to use money as a means for getting in touch with a self that may be a bit hard to look at - a fragile, fearful, insecure self that would like to be less anxious, more magnanimous, but doesn't quite know how to go about it. Robert Sardello insists, "The point of money is to make soul, not more money."

But there is so much emphasis of money in today's world that if we don't try to reweave into the spiritual fabric of our communities, there is a very real danger that our souls will eventually be imprisoned in strong boxes not unlike the safes that we use to store our valuables. "Greed, miserliness, fraud, exploitation stem," Socrates said, "from an inattention to the question of inner harmony." We will not achieve inner harmony until we begin to have more candid conversations with our check books.

So we need to think about, and to talk together more frequently about money's place in our hearts, its standing in our lives. We need to reflect on and talk about our "non-economic uses of money." We must be able to air and not suppress our fears and anxieties about money. And we have to be tough-minded, prayerful, and gentle --- gentle because these fears are very real.

I believe the concept of "stewardship" can help us do this. There are two ways of understanding one's assets and possessions. Most of us think in terms of "ownership." These things are mine, we say. I worked for them. I paid for them. I hold the contract on them. I am entitled to them. But the more prone we are to think this way, the more possessive and less giving we are likely to be.

The steward's outlook is radically different from that of the owner, and it is based on two clear conceptions that I invite you to consider. First, that sole possession is an arrogant illusion. Nothing we possess was gained without the support and the cooperation of myriad forces, known and unknown, beyond ourselves. We are, at best, co-owners of our assets. Second, the steward recognizes that he or she is not going to live forever and accepts that whatever he or she possesses is merely "on loan." Nothing we have is really ours to keep.

Enlightened by these two insights, stewards are disposed to be both more generous with their assets, and more conscientious about their use. Stewards give gratefully; appreciating that life has been generous to them.

Charles Feeney is one of them. Some of you, I’m sure, read about Mr. Feeney a few years ago in Time magazine. He's the tycoon who anonymously gave 600 million dollars to charities in the last two decades, and placed the balance of his $3.5 billion dollar fortune in two foundations, in order to provide funding for "good works" in perpetuity. Feeney did keep $5 million dollars for himself, but the more important fact is that he gave away 99.9% of everything he was said to have owned.

I don't think we can emulate Charles Feeney but that doesn't mean we can't at least begin to think more like stewards.

"Money is the yardstick of value in the exchange of one thing for another," wrote David Appelbaum in an issue of the magazine Parabola, "It belongs to the class of great mental inventions known as measures. Measure fixes limits, degrees, amounts, and quantities. Money brings things of different value together without becoming one or the other." So we must decide what the religious exchange rate will be. How much is our family worth to us? Or, how much is this beloved community worth to us? How do we measure its value to us?

Our money or our lives? Our money or other people's lives? Our money or our children's lives? Our money or the lives of future generations? Have we made any difference in the world, in this country, in this city, in our and our family's lives with our money? These are the questions that we, as stewards of this community, need to ponder as we ready ourselves for our annual stewardship campaign.

I believe bringing our values to bear on our choices and actions in all areas of our lives is vital to spiritual growth. This is at the heart of the connection between our religious lives and our choices about money. How we chose to allocate our financial resources, at least in part, demonstrates what is important to us. It has been said, "You can learn what someone values by looking at their check book." In this light, I find the financial matters of budgeting, spending, giving, and investing, all become spiritual practices. The acts of discernment and allocation based on religious values work to elevate what could be mundane financial necessities to deliberate expressions of faith; much the same way mindfulness can transform a casual walk into a meditation.

I believe that nurturing spiritual growth is an integral part of UUC's mission. Therefore, it is imperative that we engage in conversations that challenge us to see if our choices and actions are in line with our values, including our choices that involve finances. Talking about the financial realities of membership and congregational life should be as natural as talking about peace-making, demonstrating for GLBT rights, or the challenges we face when we celebrate diversity. Money is an integral part of our lives and our congregational life. All too often, we act as if we are ashamed of that fact.

I believe that if we only talk about finances at annual budget time, if we do not make the conversation about finances a part of ongoing congregational life, we send the message that it is separate from the daily business of our lives. Alternately, we can encourage others and ourselves to deepen our understanding of how money affects our individual and congregational lives by talking openly, naturally and often. We can examine how our daily financial choices work to support the expression of our faith.

This faith, this place challenges us, sometimes uncomfortably, to get beyond the selfishness of luxury and self-satisfaction to the holiness of sharing, of giving, of being connected. We are challenged to put our money where our religious mouth is, but also where our heart is. Here, working together in shared ministry in a liberal religious life, we offer up hope, faith, and love and try to do our part to repair a broken world.

It is amazing grace to have felt lost, but now are found. How many times I hear guests say, "I never knew a church like this existed; why didn't anyone tell me sooner?" If we are "found" here, we must share our good fortune. There are so many who hunger for what we have, for what we are co-creating here with the world, that it would be a sin not to share, not to take the stranger in. How many lives we have touched here, how much love and comfort have we given to those in need or in sorrow, or in doubt? How many more lives are there for us to touch, to transform? What choices have we but to return God's love with our own? Money is transformational magic -- it allows us riches beyond the gold coins -- it allows us to trade life force energy anywhere on this planet with anyone -- and it allows us all to co-create the beloved community here on earth -- and helps us to realize our dreams and visions.

REFERENCES:

The Money Taboo by Mark Morrison-Reed

Writings of Jacob Needleman, David Applebaum, William Sloane Cofffin, and Michael Schuler