DEBTS OF GRATITUDE...

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 19th, 2006


In the summer of 1980, just before the start of my final year of Divinity School, I learned what has turned out to be perhaps the most important lesson about ministry that I have ever learned at any time in my life. But after two very comfortable years in the bosom of Harvard Student Housing, I finally had to give up my cozy little room in Divinity Hall to make room for an incoming student, and move out into the “real” world of the Cambridge rental housing market.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really afford even a small studio apartment of my own, didn’t own a stick of furniture to put in one either, for that matter; and was really at something of a loss for what I was going to do, until finally, through the help of some friends, I was able to find a vacant room on the campus of the nearby Episcopal Divinity School, which not only I could afford, but which also came with a meal plan.

The only problem was, the Episcopalians wanted the entire amount for a year’s room and board IN ADVANCE, and I didn’t have it. So I went to my field education supervisor, Rhys Williams, to ask whether the church might be willing to consider advancing me the entire amount of my meager student minister stipend for the year, so that I could have a place to live. I figured it was kind of a long shot, but I didn’t really have any other options...so I went to Rhys, and I explained my situation, and what he did next kinda surprised me.

He didn’t talk to the church treasurer, or take my request to the Standing Committee for a vote. Instead, he took out a checkbook from his desk drawer and wrote out a check to me personally for the entire amount. And then he told me not to worry, that the church would continue to pay me my regular stipend every month just as they had for the past two years. And when I tried to explain to him that I wasn’t sure I would be able to pay him back, he explained to me that no doubt in the course of my own ministry there would come times when someone else would be sitting in my office expressing a similar sort of need, and that if I had the resources at my disposal I should help that person just as he had helped me.

Now as far as I’m concerned, this story could easily be my entire message for this morning; but I want you all to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth, so let me elaborate a little. Today’s sermon on “Debts of Gratitude” and next week’s message on “Labors of Love” are linked together, at least in my own mind, around a common and culturally pervasive economic metaphor which seems to understand the world as some sort of “marketplace,” in which our lives are simply (or basically) a long string of “transactions” through which we attempt to exchange things of value for other things of value in an on-going effort to acquire things of increasingly greater worth.

But setting aside for a moment the unasked (and therefor unanswered) question of What IS “Truly Worthy” of being “Valued,” it’s intuitive to assume within the context of this metaphor that being in someone’s debt is something to be avoided. Indebtedness has a negative connotation in the marketplace: it is, after all, a commitment to repay past considerations with future favors, an obligation which binds us to return value with interest. No one is really supposed to LIKE being in debt; or at the very least, it would seem much more preferable to have others indebted to us, rather than the other way around.

Yet these social networks of mutual obligation are in many ways what bind human beings together as a society. And understanding this principle, one also realizes that it is often far easier to initiate a new relationship by allowing the other person to do you a small favor, which then places you in their debt, thus allowing you an opportunity to return the favor at a later time, reinforcing the reciprocal connection between you.

The indigenous, aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast near where I grew up practiced this principle of reciprocal obligation to a remarkable degree, through a custom known as “Potlatch,” -- a practice which so upset the Christian missionaries among them that they eventually convinced the Canadian government to pass a law against it. A potlatch was a celebration, a party hosted by a prosperous family, during which they literally gave away everything they possessed to the other members of their village, thus acquiring immeasurable amounts of prestige and social influence in exchange.

The missionaries saw this custom as wasteful and improvident, because it seemed so contrary to traditional European commercial values like thrift, industry and frugality. Yet the New Testament itself also contains some very provocative teachings about debt and the nature of indebtedness, not the least of which can be found at the heart of the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us.” The Greek word ofeilhmata means literally “that which is owed” or “that which is due,” and in Luke’s gospel at least it is explicitly equated with the forgiveness of sin or armartia which in this context is probably best understood as a “missed” obligation or unfulfilled duty owed to God.

But then in the very next section of that chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus shares this parable: “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be open for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be open. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone; or if he asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish?...”

When I first read this passage many years ago, I basically thought it was saying “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Even if somebody is your friend, they aren’t too likely to get up in the middle of the night to give you something just so that you can entertain someone who is (to them, at least) a stranger. But if you just keep pounding on their door long enough and hard enough they will eventually get up and give you what you want, just to make you go away, even though they aren’t too likely to stay friends with you for very much longer.

But now (thanks to my expensive seminary education) I’ve come to see that it is the urgency of the NEED that evokes the response: the obligation to provide hospitality to someone who arrives at YOUR door hungry and in the middle of the night is what justifies your persistence, and in turn elicits the generous response from your neighbor.

There’s another story about debt, this time from the Gospel of Matthew, that made an even stronger impression upon me when I was young. In it Jesus tells his disciple Peter that “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him in prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt....”

It didn’t really take a Harvard education to figure out what THAt parable meant (although it was nice to be able to look at the footnotes in my study Bible, and learn that a denarus was equal to about a day’s wage for a common laborer, while a single talent was worth about 5,000 denarii, or roughly fifteen YEARS wages). And while I am still a little curious about how a common slave could run up a debt of ten thousand talents in the first place, it is the relationship between debt and bondage, freedom and forgiveness that is most intriguing to me now. The complex connections between debt and reciprocal obligation, servitude, forgiveness, and liberation, are well-explored themes throughout the Bible. They are central not only to the teachings of the Gospels, but also to the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and were important as well to the self-understanding of the Pilgrims who came to the New World, whose gratitude for their survival in the face of terrible hardship we commemorate on Thanksgiving Day.

There is a profound irony at the heart of the human condition, that often the liberty of a privileged few is purchased and maintained only at the expense of the servitude of others, who typically share in relatively few of the benefits produced by their service. For example, academic historians have quietly acknowledged for years that the freedom and prosperity which allowed Mr. Jefferson to declare that “all men are created equal” was generated by the labor of his African slaves, and that this same economic arrangement was in a larger sense true of American prosperity in general, even for people like the mill operators of Lowell, whose mechanical looms spun raw cotton into cloth, even though they themselves did not directly own slaves.

Somewhat more recently and closer to home, author Caitlin Flanagan has argued in an essay that first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly that the modern feminist movement was both made possible and necessary by Globalization and a related influx of cheap immigrant labor here to the United States, which not only produced a ready supply of low-paid nannies and housekeepers, but also created the need for two-income households in order to replace the loss of “family wage” manufacturing jobs which have now moved “off-shore.”

It’s a complex equation, and I don’t honestly know what the answer is. How does one fairly distinguish between the honest, well-deserved rewards earned through the hard highly-skilled work of a talented few, and the outright exploitation of the relatively powerless, unfortunate and desperately-needy souls who work themselves to death without ever seeing even a fraction of the wealth generated by the products produced by their own hands? Where is the justice, and the equity, in this equation? How do we balance these accounts?

You don’t have to be from an underdeveloped, third world country in order to know the servitude of debt peonage. I’m confident there are people right here in this community who are wearing “golden handcuffs” -- people whose mortgages, car payments, credit cards, educational loans for themselves or their children trap them in jobs and lifestyles they might not otherwise have chosen for themselves. Even the very wealthy are not nearly so free as we like to imagine they are, while the lure of the things which money can buy can easily tempt us in to obligations we might not otherwise have assumed. How much money does someone really need before they can consider themselves “independently wealthy?” And are any of us ever truly financially “secure?”

I’m not suggesting that it isn’t possible; I’m just saying that, as a minister, I don’t really have that much first-hand experience of the subject. I tend to lean a lot more in the Thoreauvian direction of the equation, of measuring my wealth by the things I can afford to leave alone. The principle of Voluntary Simplicity -- of “downsizing” our lifestyles in order to free ourselves from the burdens of debt and the financial obligations of the marketplace, is an increasingly popular alternative to the never-ending pursuit of more and more. But there are limitations to this approach as well. Is it every entirely possible to become truly independent of the marketplace? Is complete self-reliance, and self-sufficiency, even desirable, much less plausible?

But just suppose that we should instead decide, either as individuals or as a society, to pursue a third way. That rather than seeking a financial independence that, more often than not, is more promise and illusion than tangible good, we decided instead to invest in Community, to create a network of mutual interdependence and reciprocal obligation that is both valuable and worthwhile in its own right, in that it truly embodies more worthy values than the mere acquisition of personal wealth. This is the path that many of the world’s wealthiest individuals, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, have already chosen to follow. How would our own lives look different if we too chose to honor this debt of gratitude, and embrace this labor of love?

We’ll continue to explore these questions next week. But for now I would like to leave you with the words of Peter Raible, with which I opened the service.

"We build on foundations, we did not lay.
We warm ourselves at fires, we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees, we did not plant.
We drink from wells, we did not dig.
We profit from persons, we did not know.
We are ever bound [together] in community."


READING: “A Bounty of People” by Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends...with hearts...and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.