Faith and Finance

Krista Taves (March 2004)

In all the work we do -- the job and career, daily chores, creative activity, hobbies, and housework -- impenetrable mysteries are involved. In our work we find deep pleasure, meaning, fulfillment, and a way to make a living. Fate has a strong presence in our work -- accounting for talent, aptitude and opportunity -- and at the same time it gives our work its depth and individuality. When the unique character of our soul blends with the character and quality of our work, we find a sweet blend of nature and effort that heals many wounds.

Money, too, is full of soul, even though it is surrounded by shadow. It may appear to be a mere inconsequential materialistic commodity, but it, too, is a totem of soul, working its magic, good and bad, in the lives of us all. Money can be full of illusions, as when it substitutes for the intrinsic value of an object of activity, but it is also a material to be used, like clay in the hands of a sculptor, to make a world and to sustain a community.

Both money and work are valuable sources for the soulful life, but they are each deceptive as well, and so they call for every effort of reflection and imagination, lest in our unconsciousness about them we lose our souls.

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I would say that one of the things ministers fear preaching about MOST is money. Pledge season is one that we dread and probably the one that seminary prepares us the least for. We learn all about different leadership skills, and different theologies of ministry, but the nuts and bolts, things like fundraising and pledging, are often woefully inadequate, at least they were in my seminary. It seems as if even in seminary, there is this division between the earthly and the sacred and we ignore the reality that our ministry is not just about the finer things in life like community and spiritual wholeness, renewal and growth, but also about the physical reality of what pays for them. So then we get out into the real world, into real congregations, and we are faced with the reality that there is an uncomfortable relationship between our theology, our spirituality, and our money. And we?re all uncomfortable with it. Our boards of trustees are uncomfortable with it, our ministers are, and certainly the people in the pews are. This time of the year is about money, our money, and if there's anything that can creates discomfort, defensiveness and sensitivity in our society, it's money.

I want to direct a few words to our guests this morning. I used to really feel bad for people who visited a congregation for the first time during the pledge campaign because so often pledge Sunday sermons are directed to members and friends of the congregation. I worried they would feel left out. I also felt really embarrassed because I thought, ?Oh great! Their first experience of Unitarian Universalism, and they've walked into congregation that is asking for money. How typical.? But I've started to rethink my reaction. I think it may be a great time of year to visit a congregation. You really get to see how the rubber hits the road when you watch how a congregation deals with money - how they ask for it, how they spend it. When you consider joining any organization, you?re going to want to know what you can receive from that organization, and what that organization hopes to receive from you. So often congregations sugar coat the rights and responsibilities of membership fearing that mentioning a financial commitment will scare people off. But it is the reality. One way this place works is through money. This congregation could not exist were it not for the financial commitments of its members and friends. The building you sit in, this beautiful renovated sanctuary, the heat, the administrator who keeps everything running smoothly, myself, the religious education teacher, and order of service you hold, the chalice we light, the hymnals you hold in your hand, and more?. All this costs money. And it means that once a year, we ask our members to make an investment in their community and their hunger for spiritual wholeness. This month, you have a chance to see what that might look like. If you have the hutzpah, as a guest, to visit one of our canvass dinners, well kudos to you. So welcome. I'm glad you've joined us today.

So I?m going to try and NOT be intimidated about the fact that today we?re launching into pledge season and that means that I?m going to stand at this pulpit and talk about money. I want to talk about the significance of how hard it is to talk about money. The fact that I feel intimidated speaking about money, the fact that seminary programs approach it with kid-gloves, that it can be the least favourite Sunday for parishioners, is all interconnected.

Money is a hot topic. It can divide families, destroy marriages and congregations. The marketplace is our society?s religion, its paradigm, and by that I mean it has increasingly become our center of truth. It is the focus of most of our media. Everything has an economic component to it. When Canada decided not to join the U.S. in its war on Iraq, what was the primary focus of the Canadian media? How many lost lives we would NOT be responsible for? No, they focused on the economic consequences we could face at the hands of an angry neighbour. When SARS became a real threat to this country, I don't recall hearing that much coverage about real people. There has been considerable focus on the economic impact on our city and governments running to help us with approximately $100 million in emergency aid. The stock market is seen as an indicator of the state of the world, our rising currency is a top story, as are housing markets, interest rates, and employment indexes. These are the things that rock our world. At the congregational level, we often measure our overall health by our financial situation. If we meet our budget, we?re fine. If our investments are doing well, we?re fine. If we?re not losing money, we?re fine.

In many ways, we are reflections of our money. We spend most of our lives trying to make money, and the rest of our lives figuring out how to manage it. We are barraged by a multiplicity of messages about what money means, what we mean because of our money, and how we should spend it. Money is an extension of who we are.

This makes money a deeply spiritual issue. As Unitarian Universalists we affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part. This means that if money doesn't figure into our religious and spiritual understandings of ourselves, the world, and the universe, then all the ways we try to make sense of the world are deeply flawed.

Generally, we are not encouraged to see the connection between faith and finances, money and morality. This comes from many places, the business world for one. How many times have we been told not to take it personally when it's about money, perhaps our money. Business is seen as separate from our personal lives and this is often the justification used when our financial choices detrimentally affect another's well being. This understanding of money says that ultimately money is not about morality, business is not about ethics. Business is business, and money should be able to flow where it will. That is the basis of a free market.

The lack of connection between money and religion also comes from our religious heritage. The Judeo-Christian heritage, which is our heritage in the west, created a dualism, or a split, between the earthly and the divine. Money belongs to that earthly realm, and religion and faith belong to the divine, and ne?er should the two meet. Now I know as well as you that this line has often been crossed in the past, with religion and state being fiercely interwoven. But the separation of church and state is now an established part of western society, and with it an increased belief that money and faith are two isolated things. We don?t talk about money in our churches very often, and unfortunately those that do often are characterized by fundamentalism and rigidity. Obviously the religious right has a huge financial wellspring and they often use questionable tactics to get it. But we have something to learn from them. They aren?t afraid to talk about money and to call a spade a spade. If we can?t talk about the impact of money on our lives in our religious homes, if we have to separate ourselves as spiritual beings from ourselves as money earning money needing beings, then what does that say about us as spiritual beings? We need some place where we can be encouraged and supported in asking the difficult questions about life, and one big part of life is money. If we?re not asking those questions here, we?re selling ourselves short, big time. If finance is not a part of faith, it means that you need to check a big part of who you are at the door to walk in here and that means you CAN?T bring your whole self to this place. So much for that interconnected web. It got checked at the door too.

Now I?m presenting this here as positive, but many of you may not think so. I think many of us would LIKE to check that part of ourselves at the door. To put aside our stresses about money, our worries about money, perhaps even our satisfaction at how much money we do have. In this congregation, I?m sure there are rich and poor alike. Some of us lives in houses that are paid off and have healthy investments waiting for retirement, others struggle by in rental accommodations and wait to escape a market that is increasingly characterized by contract positions that offer no long-term security or benefits. There are seniors whose retirement investments have decreased markedly with the downturn of the markets and are struggling to make their later years a fulfilling as possible on a fixed income. Others here may have no worries whatsoever about that part of your lives. I dare say there are those here who have benefited tremendously from the tax cuts instituted by the last ten years of governments. There are others who have paid dearly for them. And yet we sit together in the same congregation. Perhaps our need to be silent about our money helps us to ignore those very real differences, those very real life experiences which often butt against each other. It gives us the illusion that we are all equal and that we all have equal power in this society. Given these often painful differences, no wonder it?s easier to stay quiet, to hold our tongues, to keep ourselves from publicly celebrating what we have or lamenting what we do not. Whatever your financial situation, I imagine it might be difficult to comprehend what it would look like to bring your whole self here, and that includes that big part of you that is a financial being.

The awkward thing about faith and finance is that the the earthly is making demands on the divine, the secular is making demands on the religious, a public institution is making demands on your private being. Bringing faith and finance together means a dramatic reversal about what we have learned from society about what belongs where. No wonder we are so uncomfortable.

When you think about your own life, how do you see the relationship between your faith and your money? And by that I don?t just mean how much you give to this congregation or to other charitable organizations. Whether we're intentional about it or not, our money and how we spend it does reflect our values. It is detrimental for our society to have this idea that money is separate from morality. A society that separates spirituality and money is capable of all kinds of things ? war, environmental destruction, institutionalized sexism, racism, homophobia, it is capable of developing a business world that forgets about people, where they are simply one factor in a profit margin. It makes possible a world where the economic impact of our foreign policy is more important than its potential to save lives and where illness is measured as much in dollars as it is in lives. It creates a world where individual is pitted against individual, and group against group.

From a more personal perspective, we can examine how we approach the subject of money with our children, with our loved ones, with ourselves. How does my attitude to money and how I use my money enhance or threaten my relationships with others, with myself and with my higher power?

I don't think we Unitarian Universalists are often comfortable connecting our money to our faith. As socially conscious people, we?re very comfortable connecting our money to our values. So we give money freely to agencies that support those values as well. It's harder for us to do that with our religious organizations and so although we are per capita one of the wealthiest denominations in North America, our members give less than any other religious denomination. Most of our congregations struggle financially. It is one of the main reasons for why we continue to be a marginal group in the religious geography of this continent. Somehow we are so distrustful of organized religion that we often sabotage the very religious homes we seek out in order to meet our religious and spiritual needs.

I believe that our seventh principle -- to affirm and promote the interdependent web of all existence - can and should be applied to the way we use our money and that it asks of us, in fact demands of us, that we look to our religious homes as one place where the rubber hits the road, where we demonstrate our intent to support our spiritual values and priorities with our hard earned dollars. When we understand the place that money has in our interconnected world and with this religious home, and make decisions about what we do with our money with that understanding in mind, then we have married our faith and our finances.

And that brings us to today. I'm preaching this sermon on money because it is the launch of your pledge campaign. In the next several weeks, the members and friends here will be asked to make a financial commitment to this congregation for the coming year. To marry faith and finances is to financially support this congregation so that it has the ability to do what it is supposed to do. And what is this congregation supposed to do? Well, it's spelled out clearly in your mission statement, adopted at the Annual General Meeting in 2002. Our mission is to provide a spiritual basis for ethical living, to celebrate diversity, to affirm each individual, to support social and environmental justice through a democratic process, and welcome all seekers of truth into this religious community.

What does this look like? It means providing community, a place to belong to something greater than ourselves. It means supporting the spiritual growth of those who walk into this religious home. It means providing worship services that comfort, challenge, and inform. It means offering meaningful and relevant religious education programming for all of us, regardless of age. It means caring for each other in the many ways that we do and reaching out to those who walk through our doors. It means that we actively seek ways to address the injustices in our world. The community that we build here is not meant just for ourselves. In our social action and in our outreach, we strive to carry our message of religious liberalism into a world that desperately needs it. And given the way that money is manipulated and corrupted in our world, I would say that we definitely have a message to offer. This is one way that we try to heal the interdependent web that is this world.

The goal of congregations, and I think that this holds true for most congregations, not just Unitarian Universalist ones -- is to create within our walls a microcosm, or a mini-version, of what we would like the world to look like. If we were to be successful in putting into practice all our seven principles and purposes, this congregation would look like the kind of world most of us would like to live in. Now we know this congregation is not perfect, and we fail over and over again in our attempts to make real the goals of our faith, both in our personal lives and here. Why should this congregation be any different from the humans who make it up? None of us is capable of completely living out these principles and purposes. And yet, the point is that we are trying, and this congregation is trying. That's why it is important to support the work that we do here, because we believe that what we do here is an important part of healing our world.

To the members and friends of this congregation, those for whom this house of worship is part of your interconnected web of existence, what is this congregation worth to you? What kind of an investment are you willing to make into your personal spiritual growth? And if you?re a guest here, what kind of place could you commit your hard earned dollars to, were it asked of you?

To use the words of Thomas Moore: "Money is full of soul, even though it is surrounded by shadow. It works its magic, good and bad, in the lives of us all. It is a material to be used, like clay in the hands of a sculptor, to make a world and to sustain a community."

Amen and blessed be.