TREASURE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday February 4th, 2007

“Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not consume, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” -- Mt 6: 19-21


[extemporaneous introduction -- Super Bowl Sunday: a celebration of the traditional American Values of Competition, Consumption, and Gambling]

I don’t know how many of you regularly listen to “A Prairie Home Companion,” but last night was the annual Joke show, which naturally featured a good assortment of new Unitarian jokes. Here was my favorite: Unitarian Universalism is a religion which prays “To Whom It May Concern,” and where nobody has to listen to anybody else, and everybody disagrees. Hits a little close to home, doesn’t it?

I heard something else interesting awhile ago, and of course now I can’t even remember where I heard it (although maybe some of you heard it too); but I heard that here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts our little town of Carlisle has the highest per capita ownership of both the Toyota Prius and the General Motors Hummer. Did anybody else hear this, or did I just imagine it? I remember thinking at the time, that it seemed a little puzzling to me that two so very different vehicles could both be so popular in the same little town; but after further review it started to make perfect sense, especially when I paused to consider that in a community of only 5000 souls, it doesn’t really take that many actual vehicles to have the highest number of them per head. And then, with that conundrum resolved, I simply filed this little tidbit of information away in that part of MY head where I store similar such trivia, such as the familiar statistic that (at over $144,000/year) Carlisle has the third highest median household income in the Commonwealth (trailing only the towns of Weston and Dover), but also the fourth highest average tax bill (behind Weston, Sherborn, and Lincoln).

Personally, I always get a little nervous when I start hearing numbers like this getting tossed around, because I’m never really sure what they really mean. I know, for example, that my annual household income is nowhere near $144,000; in fact, it’s not even half that, but then again, my household consists only and entirely of me and a twelve-year-old, 23 pound dog. Likewise, because I live in a church-owned parsonage I don’t really pay any property taxes either (or perhaps more accurately, the church itself isn’t taxed on the value of that property) -- a tradition which goes back to the days when clergy here in Massachusetts were paid out of general tax revenues, and considered to be just another town employee, like school teachers, police officers, and firefighters. But what really makes me nervous is the way that tossing around these big, six-figure numbers can start to make the rest of us feel like maybe we aren’t making as good a living as we ought to, when in fact (if you pause to think about how a lot of the world lives), we’re all actually doing pretty well for ourselves.

But let me get back to the vehicles for a moment. Personally, I’ve always sorta felt that it takes a lot of chutzpah to drive a Hummer in this era of high gas prices and global warming. And I suspect there are a lot of folks here in the Unitarian Church who would tend to agree with those sentiments. Even if someone desperately desired to express their solidarity with the troops in Iraq by cruising around Carlisle in the same kind of vehicle our soldiers drive daily through the streets of Baghdad, I still think they could make an even stronger statement by driving a Hybrid...or perhaps even just riding their bicycle. But here’s the bottom line. If your sentiments run the way mine do, and you’ve already made up your mind that you wouldn’t really want to be caught dead riding in a Humvee (no matter HOW much money you may have), that still doesn’t put you behind the wheel of a Prius. Taking that next step requires some form of positive action, and not merely the rejection of the undesirable alternative.

Likewise, when it comes to the subject of treasure, until I went away to Divinity School and started reading the Bible more seriously, I’d always sort of associated the term with words like “pirate” and “buried.” A treasure was something Pirates put in a treasure chest and buried on a deserted island: Treasure Island (something which I now know was historically very rare, since most pirates tended to prefer quickly spending their ill-gotten gains drinking and carousing in places like Jamaica or the Bahamas, rather than wasting their time digging holes in the sand to hide something they might easily not live long enough to ever see again if they were foolish enough to leave it behind in the first place).

But thanks to my extensive theological education, I now possess a much more sophisticated understanding of the topic. For example, I know that the word “treasure” in the Greek New Testament -- thesaurous -- and the Greek verb in that same verse which we translate “to store up” -- thesaurizete -- are basically one and the same. A treasury is literally a “storehouse” where we store up the things we have accumulated that are precious to us, and thus worth holding on to. And if you have a good ear, you may have also recognized the root of yet another familiar English word -- Thesaurus -- which is, of course, a treasury or storehouse of words: linguistic synonyms which writers can draw upon in order to communicate a precise nuance of meaning, or perhaps simply to spice up their writing, and vary the tone and rhythm of their narrative voice and discourse.

Most writers I know still treasure a good Thesaurus, although with so many built-in editing tools now written right into most word processing software, my trusty old dog-eared paperback Roget’s now seems like a dinosaur threatened with extinction...or at least it would, if I could still even find it. And yet, as valuable a tool as a good Thesaurus can be in the right hands, many inexperienced writers tend to squander their treasure, by simply looking for a different word instead of the Right Word -- the perfect word which expresses precisely the meaning they wish to convey. And along these same lines, one of my former writing teachers (Annie Dillard) often advised the students in her workshop to think of words as if we were spending money. “Never use a twenty-five cent word when a ten cent word will do,” she’d say. Yet this can be difficult advice to follow, for those of use who love the language, and are easily tempted into showing off our erudition.

When I think about the things I personally treasure most, books would certainly be close to the top of the list. And yet, as Thoreau so eloquently cautioned, there are many times when I do not so much feel that I possess my books as though my books possess me. Often times the things we think we treasure most end up taking over and consuming our lives, and we become prisoners of our possessions. Or as Scripture warns us, we strive to accumulate treasures on earth, which are impermanent and pass away, rather than learning and remembering to treasure the things that are NOT of this world: our spiritual and ethical values, our personal integrity, our interpersonal relationships with friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. For where our treasure is, there shall our hearts be also. And likewise, whatever it is our hearts desire, our treasure will surely follow.

Over the years I’ve come to think of Treasure in terms of three words which my Thesaurus tells me are synonyms, but which in my own mind have three very distinct and precise meanings: Wealth, Worth, and Value.

Let me start with the last word first. The things I value are the things I esteem, which I appreciate and admire and find valuable in their own right, whether or not they are actually in my possession. They reflect my personal values: the standards and principles by which I attempt to live my life, and which give my life its meaning, as well as those things which simply give me pleasure and which make life more pleasant. And believe it or not, it’s a pretty abundant list -- ranging everywhere from Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All to a good plate of BBQ ribs and a nice cold beer on a hot summer day.

Worth, on the other hand, is a measure of those things which are truly worthy of my time and attention. There are lots of things which I value personally which are relatively unimportant in the greater scheme of things, and which are therefore unworthy of my unmitigated devotion. It’s not that they are without value; it’s just that there is only so much of me to go around, and so I have to be selective about what I choose to give myself and my life to.

And then finally, Wealth is basically a measure of my ability to balance these other two priorities -- to match my resources to my values in a worthwhile way, so that my life feels abundant and fulfilling, rather than limited and empty. And I hope it’s clear from what I’ve said so far that these understandings of Wealth, Worth and Value are not limited only to money, or to the things that money can buy. In many ways, how I am able to spend my time and use my talents are even more precious to me than whatever “stuff” I may have accumulated along the way, and I imagine they are for many of you as well.

Last fall I agreed to do something which at the time I thought was very important, but which I’m already beginning to regret. Last fall I agreed to serve as the Treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. I took on this responsibility for two reasons. First, I was the chair of the Nominating Committee, and I couldn’t find anyone else who was willing to do the job. But I also felt that it important for me to get a little different perspective on some of these issues, and that serving as an actual “Treasurer” might be just the thing to help me do that.

I’m sure you’ve figured this out already, but clergy don’t necessarily do math in the same way as other, normal human beings. As ministers, we are encouraged to think about potential and possibility -- to draw upon the promise of God’s limitless blessings, and to lift up our eyes to the horizon, as prophetic visionaries proclaiming our faith in what might someday be, if only we will devote ourselves to the challenge of doing God’s good work in the world. And nothing is ever impossible.

But Treasurers pretty much need to stay focused on the bottom line. And being the treasurer of any organization is pretty much a thankless job, because basically you always find yourself saying “no” to other people who see something exciting that they want, and want you to sign the check that pays for it. As the Treasurer, you know how much money there is in the bank, and you also know that money doesn’t grow on trees: that every dollar you spend today on this or that is a dollar that won’t be available to spend on something else tomorrow.

Fortunately, the responsibilities of the Treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society are not especially complicated as Treasurer-responsibilities go. The mission of that organization is basically to republish old books which have gone out of print, and to create opportunities for people like myself to write and talk about other people who are now long ago dead. But it is a good thing (or at least I think it has) for me to catch a tiny glimpse of life on the other side of the ledger.

Ministers can stand up here and talk about Prosperity and Abundance and Generosity to our heart’s content, but when the checks start bouncing, it’s the treasurer who is generally held accountable, and who has to answer all the hard questions. And, of course, both these perspectives are important, even essential, for the on-going health and prosperity of any organization, religious or otherwise. Balancing the available resources to the multitude of potential opportunities is a never-ending challenge. There is never enough money to do everything we dream of doing. Yet somehow we always seem to find enough to do the things we feel are essential, the worthwhile things which we truly value.

I’ve been debating in my own mind for several months now about just how specific I wanted to make this last portion of my message here this morning. And I’m not so sure that I’ve really made up my mind even now. So let me just say that next Saturday I’m hoping that all of you will be back here at church bright and early, to participate in the process of envisioning the future of this congregation, and creating the kind of church you dream of as we approach our 250th year of ministry in this community: a community which in many ways has coalesced around the existence of the church itself, and our on-going mission of service and hospitality to our “Neighbours & Fellow Cretures.” Yet none of these dreams will amount to anything if we can’t come up with the resources to make them come true.

This has been kind of a tight budget year here at FRS. Not that every year isn’t a tight budget year around here. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but the one we rarely talk about is that over the years, our overall level of pledging here hasn’t really kept pace with the rate of inflation. If you compare our average pledge to the average pledges of other UU congregations, both across the country and right here in New England, you’ll find that we fall in the bottom 20%. Of course, in a town as expensive as Carlisle, it’s nice to find an occasional bargain, and one of the reasons we have been able to get away with this for so long is that we are also the beneficiaries of the generosity of our spiritual ancestors, beginning of course with Timothy Wilkins himself. But when the stock market dipped a few years ago, the three year rolling average rate of return on our endowment funds also declined, and with it the amount of revenue we derive from those investments. And then finally there is the thing that we all can see, but would just as soon forget (or at least ignore)...that in the aftermath of the difficult struggle over whether or not to declare ourselves a Welcoming Congregation, there are too many good people on both sides of that issue who, for whatever reason, have decided either to scale back their support and involvement at FRS, or in a few cases have left the congregation altogether.

But it also seems to me that we’ve recently started to turn the corner a little. The Market is back up again, and with it we can look forward to an additional $4000 revenue in next year’s operating budget. The Parish Committee is actively pursuing new outside revenue streams, such as leasing space in our attic and belfry to Sprint/Nextel and T-Mobile, which would not only help our bottom line, but also provide the additional benefit of making it possible for our Neighbours & Fellow Cretures to have reliable cellular telephone service here in Carlisle Center. And of course, if you look around you, you’ll also see there are plenty of new faces here at FRS , people who are hoping to find here the same kind of close, caring spiritual community that so many of us have come to appreciate, and who are no doubt eager to help us make it even better, if only we will set a good example and show them the way.

And it all begins when we simply take the time to LISTEN to one another speak honestly and openly about the things we truly treasure about FRS, and to share with one another our dreams and aspirations for the future of this community. And out of this discussion will come the slightly more awkward conversation, in which we sincerely ask one another to each dig a little deeper into our own pockets, in order to make our collective dreams come true. But I’m confident (or perhaps I should say, I have faith) that if we just give ourselves permission to have this conversation, we will astonish ourselves with the results.

Because I’ve seen with my own eyes that we are a Truly Generous People. I’ve seen with my own eyes how we can help raise tens of thousands of dollars in just a few days for Katrina relief, or the support of the Sharing Foundation. And I’ve also seen the joy and the pride which flow from that generosity, and accompanying the knowledge that together we have achieved something valuable and worthwhile.

Now the time has come for us to learn how to express that same generosity toward one another -- so that together we might generate the resources to find the time to share our talents for the benefit both of one another and the wider world, and in doing so discover that we are indeed Truly Wealthy....