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You are here: Home / Archives for Economy of God

7 Epiphany: You are the data point!

February 20, 2022 by Cam Miller

Countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_in_2020

THIS WEEK’S WORSHIP VIDEO FOLLOWS

I am going to be brutally honest with you.
This sermon I am about to share
feels to me
like yelling into a stiff wind
standing over the Grand Canyon.

It is not that I think you do not care
or that you will be belligerent,
it is more that I know myself
and I know how frequently I turn my back
on what I know
even though I know it to be true.

It is like Marie Howe’s poem about the earnest intention to pray
and be a good pray-er:
”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

We know what we need to know
and we have the capacity we need to have
in order to act.
And yet
and yet
an yet we know
we have not and
we do not and
we will not.

Arrh!

It is like Climate Change.
We know what we are doing
and that we should change
but we are not
and likely will not
…in time.

But, here I go
because, well because,
it is my job.
I also happen to believe it is true
even if I turn my back on it regularly.

This passage from Luke
leads us to the very heart of the Christian dilemma
because it tells us what we know
even though we know
we won’t do it.

Will we really spend the currency of our lives
in the Economy of God
when what we know and trust
is the Economy of Self-Preservation?

The Economy of God
and the Economy of Self-Preservation.

There is our dilemma.
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate,
dispossessed Holy Man –
insists that we reverse
our long nurtured impulse toward Natural Selection.

This is a basic conflict of interest
between how we choose to live life
and how Jesus urged us to live life.

Do to others
what you want them to do to you.
In other words, love them
by doing good toward them — especially the ones
who hate you.

Loving them
is not just refraining
from smacking them
or spreading gossip about them.
No, restraint is not the loving Jesus is talking about.
Jesus says to be pro-active — do good,
do good to them. Do something you wish
someone would do for you.
That kind of loving.

Oh, and by the way lend your money and stuff
without expecting anything in return.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Here is some more of the bitcoin
we are supposed to spend in the Economy of God.
God is kind
to both the ungrateful and the wicked,
so be merciful, just like God is merciful.
How?
Do not judge, and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given to you.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Just to be really clear about Jesus
and the Economy of God,
he concludes with this:
The measure you give will be the measure you get back.
Wow.

I am sure I don’t have to tell you
that the Economy of God is a metaphor
for the Kingdom of God
that Jesus says we are to create on earth
as it is in heaven.
And that means, of course, its counter-part
is the Economy of Self-Preservation
which is the economic culture of consumerism
in which we live.

So the heart of Jesus’ wisdom
is in blaring dissonance
with what we believe is our self-interest.

Unlike our economy,
the benefits of spending our lives as currency
in the Economy of God
is not measurable in with a cost-benefit formula.

We measure benefit and reward
by productivity,
profit-margins,
and the bottom line.
God’s economy trades on risk,
generosity,
and abundance.

Now here is where I am going out on a limb.
While you and I
rarely exchange the currency of our lives
as if in the Economy of God,
I believe
that you and I know,
deep down in our bones,
that it is both better than ours
and doable.

Here is what I mean.

We know,
because we have experienced it, that love creates love.
We know it.
We have done it.
We have witnessed it and been healed by it.

The fact that love creates love
means there is no scarcity of love, only abundance.
Even more than that,
loving our enemy frees us
from the debilitating burden of hatred and resentment.
We know it
because we have experienced it.
It is a fact
and we are the data.

So the willful choice to love someone
who we could more easily hate
actually heals our woundedness
and generates greater capacity to love.
That is not pie-in-the-sky,
some nice sentiment.

It is a fact. Love creates more love
and loving an enemy liberates us.

Now in our economy of self-interest
a self-generating commodity
that had an ever-increasing capacity
to produce more —
a self-generating resource in other words —
would be more valuable than gold or bitcoin.

Then there is the fact
that forgiveness attracts forgiveness,
in the same way that cells attract other cells
in the process of forming new life.
Forgiving someone else
generates within the forgiver
a greater capacity to forgive him or herself.
So without any further self-improvement
the simple act of forgiving someone
improves how we feel about ourselves.
That is an amazing characteristic
and valuable beyond scale.
Like love, forgiveness is absolutely synergistic:
the willful choice to forgive someone
who it would seem more easy to resent,
conditions the spiritual muscles we need
to more deeply accept ourselves.

But it is kind of funny to think about this treasure
in our economy.
Such radical self-acceptance
would sound the death knell of whole industries
and marketing programs that prey upon and promote
self-doubt and self-hatred.

Again, looking down the denominations
of currency in the Economy of God,
we come upon mercy.
Jesus says mercy spawns mercy also.
The reason for this is that mercy melts away
our drive to be right
and it does so with the warmth of kindness.

By the willful choice to be merciful
when we could more easily demand fairness
or distributive justice,
we are freed to enjoy the sensation of kindness.

If we do not have to figure out
how the good guys and bad guys
are all going to get what’s coming to them,
then we get liberated from a ton of yucky gunk
that builds up on our heart and soul.

Lastly on our list, is generosity.

We know all about generosity
because we choose it sometimes.
We know that generosity ignites generosity
just like love creates more love
and forgiveness begets self-acceptance.

The risk to stop clutching what we own
empowers the dissolution of anxiety.

The willful choice to let go or give away
when we could more easily clutch and hoard,
actually increased our generosity
as it reduces our anxiety. Wow!

You have been there,
and you have experienced this, I know you have.
The impulse toward generosity — when we embrace it —
produces an almost miraculous affect
of igniting a sense of abundance
where only moments before there was scarcity.

In our economy, if unleashed,
the power of generosity would transform
the barren divide
between the have’s and have not’s
and turn it into a field of dreams.

”Help me (God).
Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

You see the dilemma as well as I do:
The central figure of our religion – an itinerant,
illiterate, dispossessed Holy Man –
talks as if you and I can
reverse the long nurtured impulse of Natural Selection.

We know that what he says is true
because small moments in our own experience
serve as the data points.

Jesus’ list of tough love,
is tough because it is to be aimed at our enemy
and those we hate
as well as those we love.
Do good.
Do not judge.
Do not condemn.
Forgive.
If we do, it will generate more riches for us.

That is a fact
and we are the data
that proves it
in those few times and occasions
when we have chosen it.

So why do I feel like
I am shouting into the wind
over the Grand Canyon?

”Help us(God). Even as we contemplate these words
we are reaching for reasons they are not true,
rationalizing our other choices
and along with the preacher,
finding ways to walk away before
Cam finishes the sentence.”

The crazy thing of course,
is that what Jesus told us is in fact true,
are in fact, facts
about the nature of a life we could live
and a kingdom we could create.

We know every one of these
crazy ideas is true,
is a fact,
because we have done them before
at least once.

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Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: datapoint, Economy of God, Love

Proper 20A 2017: Mercy Resentment

September 24, 2017 by Cam Miller

For children, life is a justice issue.
For many adults that never changes.
“Did I get what I deserve?”
“Did I get my reward?
“Did I get my share?”

My mom was a bit obsessive
when it came to making sure each of her five children
had exactly, and I mean exactly,
the same number of Christmas and birthday presents.
But even on a daily basis she made sure
that at dinner everyone had exactly the same
proportion of each serving –
more than once I saw her counting the green beans
on every dinner plate.

The book of Jonah
is a hilarious one-page book of the Bible
about a bean-counter extraordinaire.

I won’t regurgitate the whole story,
pun intended,
but for those that do not know this story,
God knocks on Jonah’s door (so to speak)
and tells him to go to a distant country called Nineveh,
and then tell the Ninevehvites
they are bad boys and girls
and they need to repent OR ELSE!

The ‘or else’ is God will “smite” them.
No one wants to be smitted.
No one really knows exactly what it feels like
to be smitted, but it sounds really bad.

We should remind ourselves
that in 4th century BCE Mesopotamia,
a peasant listening to the Jonah story
would have no doubt that any one of dozens of gods
had the power to do some wicked smiting.

Try this small act of imagination.
Conjure up the horrendous images
of Texas towns under water,
or Caribbean islands after this week’s hurricane,
or Mexico City crushed by another earthquake.
Now imagine all the victims
of all that suffering
believing it was the result of a punishing God.
God tells Jonah
to go warn Nineveh they will be smitted,
unless something changes fast.

A 4th century B.C.E. peasant most likely
would have lived through one or more smiting events in his or her lifetime,
and such a threat
would surly have caused them to shudder.

“Yeah, sure thing, I’ll do that right away,”
Jonah tells God,
then runs the other way.

Now as 21st century folk who don’t believe in smiting,
we imagine all Biblical heroes are like Abraham,
who said, “Yeah sure,”
and then went above and beyond what God asked.
But not Jonah; not in this story –
and not in a bunch of other stories as well.

Jonah hops a on the nearest ship and sails away
to get as far beyond the reach of God as possible.

That is just one of the funny
and surprising parts of the story
if we were hearing it in the 4th century BCE.

In those days, everyone knew that any god
was a god of place – a local god.
So you might be able to out run a god if you had to.
If it was a god you didn’t like, it was also a god
of that place
or those people
or that country.

Escape that place
and you might find a god more to your liking.

So Jonah gives God a head fake
and then makes a mad dash for somewhere else.

To make this short story even shorter,
God follows Jonah.
God agitates the ocean
that incites the sailors
that fling him overboard
that causes a big fish to gulp him down in one piece.

Now imagine Jonah’s surprise,
and the laughter of those hearing this story,
when the big fish belches him out.
Where? On the shores of Nineveh!

So now we are caught up
with the part of the story we read today.

What we heard this morning
answers the question about why Jonah
ran away from God in the first place.

Because, Jonah whines,
I knew
you were a god of mercy not justice!

Jonah just knew
that after haranguing the Ninevehvites
about dire consequences,
God would show them mercy. Bah!

Jonah was just like us,
resentful and angry when the beans get miscounted.

Jonah is deeply disturbed
because God is going to be merciful
toward people he told, in no uncertain terms,
to change or get smitted.
“I knew it,” Jonah spits.
“I knew you were a sissy-god!
I knew you were a bleeding-heart liberal god!
Mercy, bah humbug!”

Now we can pretend,
sitting here in our very polite
and earnest Sunday-go-to-meeting mindset,
that we would not be angry and resentful,
but please, tell it to somebody else.

All of us have that juvenile penchant for justice living inside us.
4th century BCE or 21st century CE,
the Jonah story is about you and me;
a story about how we prefer justice to mercy, unless WE are the ones in need of mercy.

The Matthew story is more of the same,
without the humor.
We can bet that when the good ol’ boys
that had been working all day
heard the Line Boss paying the last hired
a FULL DAY’S PAY,
they were salivating for the windfall headed their way.
Who wouldn’t?

But then the Line Boss
pays them exactly what was contracted for.
They were incensed.
They were furious.

They were resentful –
all because they got paid what was expected,
while someone else got mercy.

Mercy is perfectly fine if WE are the recipients,
but if someone else gets mercy
when we only get justice,
look out!

Mercy.
The last few weeks
we have been stuttering on mercy and forgiveness
because that is where the readings have pointed us.
It is a kind of worldview
rising up in the mist between the verses of the Bible
from the book of Genesis all the way to Matthew.

It is a worldview that claims
the Economy of God
is guided by the invisible hand of mercy.
That is different than our economy.

Anyone who took Econ. 101 knows
that our economic system is guided
by production and scarcity – not even justice.
That is radically different from God’s economy.

The Economy of God,
if the Bible is to be believed even a little,
is guided by the laws of
extravagant,
excessive,
profligate mercy.

If we stopped to think about it,
if we even believed it,
it would make us angry enough to spit.
It is almost humorous how infantile we can be
when it comes to justice and mercy.

Let’s take an esoteric and abstract example,
to give us a little emotional distance
from our penchant for justice,
so that we can see it in better focus.

When human beings have imagined
the other side of death,
invariably it is a scheme built on justice, not mercy.
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity
all assert an intimate relationship between
how we live this life
and the quality of another life.
No matter which religion, or whether
it is an Afterlife or the Wheel of Life,
there is always a relationship between
here and now, and then and there.

Reincarnation,
Samsara,
Heaven and Hell,
whatever, are all based upon a connection
between our behavior (or consciousness) now,
in this life, and the next life or dimension.

But what if there is no connection?

What if God really is as radically gracious
as indicated in the parable of the Generous Employer?

What if God’s mercy bears no relationship to justice?

What if God embraces good guys and bad guys
with the same joy and tenderness?

If the Economy of God really does operate
by the invisible hand of mercy then…
well, then what?

Well then, we will have to find new reasons
to do what we think is right,
instead of trying to motivate ourselves
with fear, guilt, or shame.

So imagine no fear.
Imagine no fear of the law.
Imagine no fear of punishment.
Imagine no fear of being caught.
Imagine no fear of Hell.
Imagine no fear of judgment.

Suddenly, we would need to find another motivation.
Suddenly, we would need to find
additional drive and impulse
to live our lives by the core values we claim.

Imagine spirituality with no guilt and no shame:
no guilt that we did not live up to expectations,
and no shame that we have failed.

Imagine religion with no guilt that we did not do
whatever it was we were supposed to do,
and no shame that we are not what we had hoped.

We would need to find new motivations
for resisting the temptation to forsake our principles.
What would those motivations be?
What could possibly be more powerful
than fear, guilt, and shame?

Just this:

  • That the values we have chosen are the ones we love.
  • That the principles we acclaim,
    we believe deep down in our bones,
    are the best ones to live by;
  • That we are convinced of our core values because we have experienced their wisdom, rather than because someone else or some other authority told us they should be ours to hold.

No fear,
no guilt,
no shame; and instead,
because our values, principles, and beliefs
are the ones we love
and the faith we hold
and the principles we have discovered
are the right ones to live by.

Without fear, guilt or shame,
when we violate our principles, values, or faith –
which we will always do because we do not have a snowball’s chance in Hell of perfection –
we will fall into the arms of God’s mercy
and recover there.

And if we do that,
instead of dwell in the valley of fear, guilt, and shame,
we will be more merciful to others,
and let them off the hook
so they can keep trying too.

We could call a world like that, a Life-giving Cycle
in contrast to the current one,
which is a Vicious Cycle.

The Viscous Cycle is a downward spiral
of fear, guilt and shame
that actually makes it harder for us to recover
and live our core values and faith.
A Life-giving Cycle is an upward motion
healing us and empowering us
to live out our values and faith
even as we stumble over our failures.

A Life-giving Cycle
rests upon our embrace of mercy more than justice,
of loving-kindness more than reprisal,
of humility more than vindication.

And the good news is, the best news really,
it is our choice!

It really is our choice
whether we live by mercy or justice.
All of us have been raised in the justice-system,
and we have been infected with or wounded by,
fear, guilt, and shame.
But the great thing about growing up
and spiritual maturation,
is that we have choices to make.
We get to choose
whether to live in the kingdom of mercy
instead of chasing justice.
To be sure, it is a learning curve
and it takes a lifetime to learn and re-learn,
but it all begins with our choice.

We can be sitting here, even now,
like Jonah under the shade of resentment
and pouting about things we don’t like
or changes taking place,
and decide – actually, choose – to be different.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

 

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 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

 

 

 

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