St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
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Austin, Texas
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From the Pulpit:
How many of you all know about Chuck Feeney? I had never heard of him until last week when there was a piece about him on NPR that I heard driving in the dark to church. He’s just a guy who doesn’t own his own home or car, wears a $5 watch and flies coach. He wears store-bought clothes and reads the paper at the library, just an ordinary guy except for the fact that according to Forbes Magazine he was at one point the 27th richest person in the world. So how come nobody has heard of him? Because he didn’t want them to. He made his fortune - $4 billion is one of the guesses – from those duty free stores you see in airports all around the world, but his work is giving it away. He works hard at it, and until recently when he was outed, worked overtime to keep it anonymous. Actually, in an interview he told the reporter that he finally decided to go public when his foundation became synonymous with anonymous. Until recently the universities, health care charities, and children’s groups who received his money had no idea where it came from. One day they would just receive an enormous cashier’s check in the mail. There was no one to thank. And there was no one to ask for more. He gives his money where he pleases, and where he pleases includes the peace process in northern Ireland, Operation smile, which gives free surgery to children with facial deformities in third world countries, schools and colleges, and hundreds of other charities that help the disadvantaged and outcast of the world. At sixty-six years old, his goal is to give away every penny by the year 2020, and obviously it is not to get accolades or attention. One writer says his life is what Donald Trump would be like if he lived upside down. Feeney has gone public for the sole reason of promoting the value of giving while you’re living. He has generously allowed himself to be an example of doing what one ought to be doing, of having the joy of being an instrument of peace, healing, education, and generosity incarnate. Jesus and the disciples are on the road and in my old Bible, the one I had growing up, it is a sea of red letters. For page after page Jesus has been teaching, giving the crowds, the Pharisees, and mostly the disciples parable after parable. In today’s reading the apostles ask him, “Lord, increase our faith.” I imagine he stopped and looked at them in disbelief. He may not have said it in so many words, but I’ll bet the look on his face said, “You idiots! You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said, have you?” His answer, like most of his answers is more enigmatic than that. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed – itty bitty faith, just a speck of it – you could tell that tree to jump up and go grow in the ocean.” There’s dead silence on the part of the apostles. Deer in the headlights expression on their faces. Jesus goes on and talks about a slave. Slavery was a condition of their world. We have named it the evil that it always was, but it was a condition they could not imagine a society functioning without, and slavery is not the point of this discussion. Duty is. It is unthinkable that when the master came home from doing whatever his master-work was he would put on an apron and open the fridge and tell the servants to sit down and have a cold one while he grilled the steaks for them. Unthinkable. No, the servants would jump to work and get his dinner ready and think nothing of it and expect no thanks. They were only doing what they should be doing. And that was as it should be. Last week millions of people watched Ken Burns’ mini-series on the Second World War. We have heroes among us, but the thing about heroes, the thing about truly courageous people is that they don’t set out to be courageous. They simply step up to the job at hand. It was easy to name the evil in the world at that time, and there was no question, once Pearl Harbor was bombed, but that the United States had to fight that evil. Young men like my dad lied about their age to be able to enlist and thousands of them gave their lives, never for a moment intending to be heroes. Ask the members of the greatest generation – even the ones not on the battle front were giving their all for the effort. The whole country experienced rationing, everybody who could afford to bought war bonds, they planted victory gardens and worked on assembly lines. And nobody set out to be a hero. They were just stepping up to the job at hand with what they had to give to it, which was everything they had. That’s all Jesus is asking of us. Everything. And that’s why the apostles’ question is absurd. “Give us more faith, Lord.” It doesn’t make sense because faith is not something to be had. I’ll say again and again until we all get tired of it, faith has nothing to do with doctrine. Faith is not something done with our mental functions. It has nothing to do with a check list of statements that we go down saying, “I’m ok with virgin birth. I’m ok with walking on water. I’m ok with resurrection, but I really have trouble with the feeding of the five thousand. There must have been a trick to it.” That is not faith nor is it lack of faith. Faith is acceptance of the gift we have been given, which is infinite. It is the gift of the recklessly attentive shepherd, of the ridiculously scrupulous housewife, of the shamefully compassionate father. It is the gift of God inhabiting a human body, subject to all the pain and indignity that comes with having a body, and the gift of Jesus’ own death on the cross, and the gift of resurrection to show us what an immense gift it is and that it is for all of us. Not the ones who deserve it, which is lucky because not a single one of us does. It is not the gift for the ones who have enough faith To be able to spare a little to share with the world. Faith is not something we can get. It is only something we can live. And as Jesus said, even the tiniest speck of it can change the world. I hope most of you have seen the Dewitt Jones video by now. Isn’t it marvelous? I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and I’ll be happy to watch it again and again. It makes my heart soar like that sea bird that hovers over the cliff in Hawaii. One of my favorite parts is where he is talking about his own difficulty in meditating, and the teacher gives him the words that have become my mantra, words that superficially are about breathing, but that are really about living. “Take it all in. Give it all back.” Try it. Take a breath in – take it all in. This is the air that God has given us. It is a blessing. Doesn’t it feel wonderful? It’s just air, but there is plenty for all of us and for the birds outside and for the clouds to float on. Take it all in. It’s a free gift from God. And give it all back. You can’t hoard the air. You’d explode. Have you ever had to hold your breath for a very long time? It feels so good to exhale. Give it all back. That’s what faith is. It is living in recognition that we’ve been given all we need. A member of our Thursday Bible study class loves to bring us little jokes and quips. Last week it was letters to God from first graders. My favorite was, “Dear God, If you will give me a lamp with a genie in it, I’ll give you everything I have except for my money and my chess set.” Hmm…I wonder when I’ve been like that. “Dear God, If you will give me what I want…and then I stop to think about what I’ve been given, a lot of it without asking for it – a very comfortable life full of people I love and who for some unfathomable reason love me, a great family and a great church and a great dog, enough money to live comfortably in a free country, not to mention life itself – Well, God, if you’ll just give me whatever I ask for then I’ll give you everything I have -- except for my money. I’m scared to give you my money. I might need something you can’t give me.” Well, what would that be? I realize that Charles Feeney sets an awfully high standard, and it’s a higher standard than the tithe many of us are working towards. We’re not asking anyone to empty their bank account. And Feeney willingly lives a very simple lifestyle. He points out that nobody can wear two pairs of shoes at the same time, But most of us do like to have more than one pair And there’s nothing wrong with that. But he does offer us an example of why we should be giving. It is because it is our duty. It is simply doing what we ought to be doing. It is not to gain fame or to be publicly thanked even though I like to be thanked and I like to thank you all for what you have given. We give because it is the proper response to having been given everything we have, none of which do we deserve. So let’s all take a deep breath, Let’s breathe in our gratitude for all God’s good gifts. Breathe it all in. Give it all back. Amen.
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05/16/2008 | ||||||
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The
Rev. Margaret Waters