A Gift from God
Last week I talked about a policeman who acted as a watchman and a good shepherd, stopping me when I was driving down 23 and allowing my mind to wander rather than keeping my full attention on the road. He noticed a bad habit of mine, and stopped me to warn me. I talked about how this is the intent of the church’s teachings on sin, and, since this is a huge topic, I want to continue to talk about that same theme today. And I even want to use another police story. It’s a cheap trick, police dramas are always #1 on television, so maybe they get some attention in sermons too?
I think I’ve shared this story with you before, since it happened a long time ago. When I worked at St. Dunstan’s in Tulsa, there was a member of the church, Steve Smith, who was also on the police force in Tulsa. A pretty difficult job, being on a big city police force, and Steve really believed he was called to this work, to help prevent crime, as well as to solve it, to build stronger neighborhoods, and to create a safer, better functioning city. He was a big advocate of the community service that police can provide when they are watching out for the first signs of impending trouble, and doing their best to intervene long before a situation turns dangerous. The policeman who stopped me and warned me about crossing the center line on the curves reminded me of Steve, taking his job to heart, and doing the right thing, even though people rarely appreciate being stopped.
Steve told me that one day he walked into a popular restaurant to meet his wife for lunch, and he was in uniform. He heard a woman say to the little boy sitting next to her, “You see that man. He is a policeman, and if you don’t finish eating your peas, he is going to arrest you and put you in jail.”
Steve walked over to the table and knelt down so he could talk with the little boy eye to eye. “Son,” he said, “I’m a policeman, and I am here to keep you safe. I am not going to arrest you if you don’t eat your peas. It is a good idea to eat your vegetables, but it is not against the law not to. I only arrest people who break the law, and when someone breaks the law they are doing something dangerous that could hurt themselves or other people. I am here to help people who are in trouble. I want you to know that if you are ever in trouble, you can call on me or someone like me, and I will help you.”
Then he asked to speak to the woman and took her aside. “Ma’am,” he said, “please don’t ever say anything like that to a child again.”
In the same way that Steve, quite truly, understood his job to be about upholding the law, speaking the truth, and keeping people safe, the Christian teachings on sin are meant to help us. They are not a means for threatening other people, or getting people to do what we want them to do, or frightening people. These teachings are not about making people feel neurotic guilt or toxic shame. Nor are they about establishing who is to blame, or who is at fault. The teachings on sin help us to develop watchfulness of the thoughts that are always vying for our attention, and helping us to watch how these thoughts, if we identify with them, lead to certain behaviors, attitudes, feelings, and moods. The teachings on sin remind us that thoughts are not who we are, we are not the thoughts we think. Thoughts come unbidden, and we can choose to indulge them or we can watch them, observe them, and not identify with them. The teachings on sin help us to recognize the ways that we are letting in harmful thoughts, and these are imprisoning us in a world of obsessive concern for our own comfort, pleasure and self-esteem that keeps us far from authentic service of God.
So, let’s look at today’s parable, often called the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, from this vantage point. What if this parable is telling us something about developing watchfulness of our thoughts and behaviors?
There was a rich man whose manager was squandering his wealth. Hmmm, when we are chasing after comfort and pleasure and trying to build up our estimation of our selves, are we not squandering our wealth? What is life for, this limited, short, rare, and precious life? Is it for building up our self-estimation, our fantasy pictures of ourselves, and for getting as much pleasure and comfort out of each day as possible? Is this why God created us? For this? We’re told that God created us for a much higher purpose, in fact, to know and love God, and to reflect back the image and likeness of God from a purified heart. And what does the heart need to be purified of? Could it be the obsessive selfish concerns we’ve just talked about? Could it be that the seeking of pleasure, comfort, praise and recognition for our little selves muddies up the heart? Could it be that we are here not to center ourselves upon some things, but instead to seek to praise and adore and serve God in every way and in every moment?
If that’s the case, we’re pretty off track at the moment. If that’s the case, we’re squandering the wealth, the precious gift of consciousness, of human life. And sin, of course, means to be off track, literally, “off the mark.”
So what does the Master do when he realizes the situation? He gives his manager notice. And it is true, our time here is limited. We are all going to die. Some of us in a short while, some in a shorter while. None of us has a long time to waste here on earth.
What happens next? The manager gets alarmed, he realizes that he has been wasting his time and there is no more time to waste. He had better find a way to do something for some other people, or he will be left with nothing and no one to help him. As a result, even though his motivations are still selfish, he actually begins to do his job. And this brings an interesting insight: the manager thought he was serving himself in his squandering, but was he? What master was he actually serving in his wastefulness? Was it himself, or was it the forces of evil playing with him, and eating his life up while he slept? Well, he gets his notice and he wakes up. Ironically, he begins to serve his real Master, the one who gave him notice, the one who had entrusted him with his accounts. He begins to act like a steward. He learns about the accounts, and the debts, and he begins to make deals, to forgive some of the debt. This helps everyone. The debtors are able to pay, and the Master will finally collect some (rather than none) of what he is owed. The Master is pleased. The manager has woken up and started to work, and things are beginning to change. The manager becomes a steward, he grows a bit. The Master commends him for this. And yet, we’re told, he is dishonest, and using dishonest wealth. This is because the wealth does not belong to him. It is not honestly his. But still the Master is pleased with the way he is using it. No longer is he squandering the wealth for his own pleasure, now he is using it wisely to help the debtors and make it possible for the Master to collect some of what he is owed.
It is a funny business. But think about it. When we act as if these lives belong to us, as if we can do with them whatever we want, we are actually fooling ourselves. It is dishonest. Our very lives are a gift from God, as well as whatever life brings to us. We do not possess life. We are God’s guests in this life. So, pretending that we’re here to do whatever we want to do with this life is dishonest, its more than that, it’s a delusion, that keeps us imprisoned by the tiny, little concerns for our own comfort, pleasure and self-esteem. And what master are we serving when we operate from such a puny place in the heart? Who gets the better of us in that bargain? Our tradition says the forces of evil do. We think we’re doing something for ourselves, but really, we’re just wasting these lives, and when we waste our lives, evil triumphs. When we wake up to the fact that this life does not belong to us, that it is limited, and we’d better start working for some higher purpose, we can do so much more for others and for God in this life. Our energies are no longer drained by obsessive thinking about “moi.” What matters now is doing our work, for others and for God, and getting started now, and in each and every moment.
Easy to say – harder to do. And as I said last week, the Christian tradition’s profound teachings on the ways that thoughts possess us and cluster around 7 or 8 areas of universal sin, thus blocking the growth of the soul’s capacity to grow with the Holy Spirit, and keeping the heart muddied by negative feelings and the sense of being in competition and rivalry with one another, these teachings are well worth studying and putting into practice as we begin to watch our thoughts, to observe the ways we squander the Master’s wealth, and to reorient our lives around a higher calling.
Last week, David Miller put it so much better than I have. He said, “are you saying that we are made in the image and likeness of God and so evil is working full-time to keep us from realizing it?” Yes, that’s it, precisely. And the Christian teachings on the seven deadly sins – thoughts that are deadly to the growth of the soul – are an incredible road map towards the purity of heart that can at last realize this high calling – to reflect back the image and likeness of God. And of course, being generous in giving and forgiving is very pleasing to the Master, since it reflects his own nature.
So, the question is, what is stopping us for giving and forgiving, every moment? We can find out. We have the tools in our tradition to begin to explore this. And this exploration leads to greater and greater freedom to give and forgive.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
September 23, 2007
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