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"Wealth Without Work"
Luke 15:11-32
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
February 17, 2002
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
In 1947, a year before he was assassinated, Mahatma Gandhi gave his grandson, Arun a piece of paper. On that piece of paper, Gandhi had written what he called the seven blunders of the world. On that paper were the words: wealth without work; science without humanity; commerce without morality; education without character; pleasure without conscience; politics without principles; and worship without sacrifice.
These seven issues, he said, were forms of passive violence in which we are prone to participate if we are not careful and intentional about our lives. Getting beyond these seven deadly social sins or seven blunders of the world is essential if we are to live lives typified by nonviolence.
Knowing that Jesus’ mission was to call us to a higher and more profound nonviolent life, unconformed to this world and transformed by the renewing of our minds, we will look at each of these seven deadly social sins during our Lenten journey. Each Sunday, we will focus on one topic, utilizing scripture and experience to reveal God’s new way for us to exist and thrive in this world.
I had the opportunity to meet Arun Gandhi two years ago at a Soulforce action in Cleveland. Soulforce, the organization founded by Mel White to confront spiritual violence by denominations toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities takes its name from Satyagraha which is Gandhi’s word for life-force or soul-force which is the life of nonviolence. It is more than a tactic to win approval of your position. Nonviolence, Satyagraha, soul-force is a lifestyle where the rules are changed and we all join our Creator in the work of justice by the only means that has ever worked and the only means advocated by Jesus: nonviolence. He and I even spent an afternoon together in a cell-block after we followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and were arrested at the Methodist Church’s General Assembly meeting. I look forward to learning from him again when he teaches at the Soulforce Institute for Nonviolent Change which will precede the action at the Southern Baptist Convention’s meeting this June in St. Louis. Like his grandfather, he is humble, self-deprecating, and committed to living a life of nonviolence.
I know I am prone to violence. Most of us are who grew up in the present culture. Too often, when pushed to the edge, I find myself wanting to lash out. Parents are prone to this for some reason. I often fool myself into thinking that if I don’t hit someone, then I’m not being violent. I see violence more in terms of my fists than I do in some of those more intangible aspects of life. But as Martin Luther King said, we need to be nonviolent in our hands, but also in our tongues and our hearts. The seven deadly social sins are sins of the flesh, but also of the heart. We need to get a handle on the heart if we are truly going to live as disciples.
All that having been said, we start our investigation of the seven social sins with the sin "wealth without work". And to help us along we have the story of one who demanded his wealth without the work that accompanies it, the prodigal son.
We know the story of the prodigal. He was the favored son who had it all. But all was still not enough for him. He wanted his freedom. He didn’t like all of the rules. He was a man, or so he thought. So, in his youthful arrogance, he demanded from his father, not only all of the stuff from his room he had grown up with, but his college fund, the value of his life-insurance policy and all of the money he would have inherited at the time of his father’s death. And what is amazing is that his father gives it to him. I hear tell that teenagers do this kind of threatening a lot, but his father actually called his bluff. He gave him everything and said, "good luck".
The young man had never worked a day in his life. We know that from the resentment of the older brother. He now had wealth, but since he had no work experience and no work ethic, he was like a kid in a candy store. He spent it all before he knew what had happened. So addicted to pleasure was he, so spoiled was he by all of his wealth he did not realize how empty his life was. The book of Revelation talks about the church in Laodicea, "You say ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing;’ not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked."(3:17) When we have wealth but not work, we have the form of prosperity but not the benefit to our souls. Gone is the honest day’s work. Gone is the satisfaction that comes from doing a job right. In its place are sleepless nights which need alcohol to numb the pain and help you forget the cavern that is one’s soul.
I know a lot of us work real hard and don’t accumulate much wealth at all. Others of us are searching for work or are looking for better or more satisfying jobs. Many of us are happy in their work. I count myself among them. But Gandhi is saying that you cannot be ultimately happy, ultimately fulfilled, ultimately satisfied if you have wealth without work.
Think about the wealth without work in today’s world.
The Enron scandal is big in the news. All of those people taking the fifth amendment at the capital are protecting the wealth that they accumulated without work. They are also protecting the wealth that they influenced by campaign contributions and strategically placed executives and board members in the present and former presidential administrations. Our system is structured to retain the wealth of those at the top ends of the ladder, whether or not they work. The irony is that those same wealthy lawmakers cut program designed to help those with little wealth. They condescendingly say "you need to work harder". But no matter how hard we work, chances are we will not receive the wealth of the lawmakers.
Gandhi often railed against the materialism of the world and mourned over the growing gap between the ones who do an honest day’s work and the ones who sit back and profit from another’s work. Gandhi once said, there is enough resources in the world for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.
Wealth without work is temporary. It cannot and will not last forever. In the 90’s many of us saw our pensions, 401k’s, our meager investments and even our UBC foundation receive record returns. But those who had depended on the stock market in the past few years have felt the pinch. Some have had their lives destroyed because of the falling market. It shows that if you put the focus of your life on your wealth, then your soul will be longing and lacking in the truly finer things of life. I’m glad that the UBC foundation is used to undergird this ministry and with the capital campaign behind us, it will be used increasingly to alleviate the suffering in the world and to help us to do our unique and powerful mission here in Minneapolis.
Kim and I became homeowners for the first time almost a year ago. We don’t see ourselves as diabolical as Enron but we look forward to taking the advantage of the largest housing program in the nation, the mortgage interest deduction. There is no such deduction for renters so this housing program is really skewed toward the relatively wealthy. We happened to get our home reappraised this past month and found out that its value increased significantly in less than a year. We gained a lot of equity by no more work than buying at the right time. Wealth without work.
Gandhi told the people committed to his movement that they needed to participate in their own liberation. This included the liberation from the accumulation of wealth.
Walter Wink said at the ABC Biennial Conference in Des Moines a few years back, "There is a critique of violence on every page of the Bible. Christ is telling us not to respond to evil with violence but rather to take the momentum of evil and use it to put evil in an absurd position. Nonviolence is active and morally coercive, not passive or physically coercive. The greatest tragedy of Christianity is that churches have never decided that domination and redemptive violence are wrong. Why couldn’t we call on all Christians everywhere to adopt a nonviolent way of life—of understanding the Gospel?"
When I was preparing to go to Lynchburg a few years ago to meet Jerry Falwell and his constituents, I had to go through a 17-step journey into Soulforce. It was all done via the Internet—ah technology, bridging gaps with lightening speed. What we sought to do was to unlock ourselves from the demons that control us. Some of those demons rear their ugly heads as untruth, hatred, self preservation, our various lusts, and our own wealth. Only when we renounce all of these can we unleash the force of our souls.
You see, it’s not only about changing another’s attitude or action , it is about changing ourselves. I found myself changing from a cynic to a more hopeful person. I was challenged to actually pray for my enemies as well as confront my own demons.
We had to take five vows.
They were:
1. Vow to truth. I promise to seek the truth, to live by the truth, and to confront untruth wherever I find it.
2. Vow to love. I promise to reject violence (of the fist, tongue, or heart) and to use only the methods of nonviolence in my search for truth or in my confrontation with untruth. Love is more powerful than hate. My enemy is untruth, not a person. I will love the person while witnessing against the untruth which binds them.
That last vow is the hardest for us first world people who like our things. But that is part of the problem. We expect our things. We don’t expect to have poverty, just because of where we live and who we are. We expect, even unconsciously, to have it all. And that is precisely where we get stuck into Gandhi’s social sin.
Because of our wealth and our relative privilege, we don’t question the system that gives us wealth and keeps it from others. We do not question the legitimacy of the military industrial complex. We don’t worry so much about others in the third world. We all of a sudden wake up from our slumber on September 11th and wonder why the world hates us so much while we accumulate wealth with or without work and over two-thirds of the world goes hungry.
The prodigal’s father was a wise man. For the prodigal never knew poverty until he had squandered all of his goods. He never knew people who were homeless and hungry. He had always looked down on them before. He never knew what it was like to be grateful for food, for land, for family, for every single breath he took. That’s why the father rejoiced so much when his son returned home. The one who was lost was lost for most of his life, not just the previous few weeks. His son now was a new man. He recognized the value of wealth, and recognized for the first time that wealth was not about money or possessions as much as it was about relationships: relationships with family and by extension and allegory a relationship with God.
Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
Sisters and brothers, during this Lenten season, may we look once again or perhaps even for the first time at our lives and see if there is some aspect of our lives that is standing in the way of joining our creator in the work of justice (making things fair for all). May we free ourselves from the temptation to attain wealth without work and may we be set free to be the disciples that God calls us to be.
May we also free ourselves from the fear that often holds us back. Remember, we do not do this work alone. We seek out this new way of life with Jesus by our side, with these sisters and brothers by our side and with a renewed life-force undergirding us. It’s hard work, but it results in wealthy souls with clear purpose and unimaginable power.
Let me close in this black history month with a few words from Nelson Mandela who worked out a peaceful exchange of power in South Africa. His inaugural speech drives home the point of this Lenten journey much better than anything I can say:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us: it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
May it be so in all of us. Amen.