Christmas Envy

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning comes from the ancient story of Joseph, as it is told in the Torah. The Hebrew Joseph has been sold into slavery down in Egypt by his brothers, and though he had a kind master, after a time he was thrown into jail on unjust charges. Meanwhile, the rule of Egypt, Pharaoh, had a very unpleasant dream one night, and that’s where this reading picks up the story:

“In the morning, Pharaoh’s spirit was troubled; so he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but there was no one who could interpret them to Pharaoh.

“Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, ‘I remember my faults today. Once Pharaoh was angry with his servants, and put me and the chief baker in custody in the house of the captain of the guard. We dreamed on the same night, he and I, each having a dream with its own meaning. A young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. When we told him, he interpreted our dreams to us, giving an interpretation to each according to his dream. As he interpreted to us, so it turned out; I was restored to my office, and the baker was hanged.’

“Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was hurriedly brought out of the dungeon. When he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’ Joseph answered Pharaoh, ‘It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.’ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘In my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile; 18and seven cows, fat and sleek, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass. Then seven other cows came up after them, poor, very ugly, and thin. Never had I seen such ugly ones in all the land of Egypt. The thin and ugly cows ate up the first seven fat cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known that they had done so, for they were still as ugly as before. Then I awoke. I fell asleep a second time and I saw in my dream seven ears of grain, full and good, growing on one stalk, and seven ears, withered, thin, and blighted by the east wind, sprouting after them; and the thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears. But when I told it to the magicians, there was no one who could explain it to me.’

“Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘Pharaoh’s dreams are one and the same; God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven years; the dreams are one. The seven lean and ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, as are the seven empty ears blighted by the east wind. They are seven years of famine. It is as I told Pharaoh; God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do. There will come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. After them there will arise seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt; the famine will consume the land. The plenty will no longer be known in the land because of the famine that will follow, for it will be very grievous. And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about. Now therefore let Pharaoh select a man who is discerning and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years. Let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.’

“The proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants….”

…

The second reading is also from the Torah, from Exodus 20.17:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Sermon

I have to tell you, Christmas is not one of my favorite holidays. You can probably guess why: it’s the commercialization of Christmas that I dislike. Here’s a holiday that started out as a celebration of the a celebration of the return of longer days after the winter solstice; then Christians turned the solstice celebration into a celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth; then in 17th C. Massachusetts, the Puritans banned Christmas and even made it illegal to celebrate the holiday; in the 19th C., Christmas got Victorianized into a sentimental holiday for families to celebrate together; and finally in the 20th C. Christmas got transmogrified yet again, this time into a holiday of excessive consumption.

If you recall the old medieval Christian list of the “seven deadly sins” — lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride — it will be immediately apparent to you that Christmas today, in the 21st C., is a blatant glorification of envy. Christmas envy is the natural outcome of the ongoing evolution of the commercialization of Christmas. These days, we expect to give and to receive lavish gifts at Christmas. Even those who don’t celebrate Christmas find themselves getting sucked into the Frenzy of gift-giving and money-spending — atheists buy generic holiday gifts, Jews give Hanukkah presents, and pagans have solstice gifts. And if we don’t have the money to afford expensive gifts for all our near relations and close friends, we feel that we have somehow failed. Worse yet, if we don’t receive lots of fancy gifts — the latest laptop of video game, expensive clothing, exclusive perfume, whatever it is you long for — if we don’t receive expensive gifts, we feel somehow cheated.

I define this Christmas excess as a species of envy. It is covetousness. We covet what we don’t have. We covet what our neighbors do have — whether those neighbors are our actual flesh-and-blood neighbors, or the virtual neighbors that we see on television or in photographs in magazines or on the World Wide Web. Rather than coveting our neighbor’s spouse or ox or donkey, we covet our neighbor’s toys and gadgetry and lifestyle.

But you already know all this. We all know about Christmas envy. Every year, pundits and preachers rail against the commercialization of Christmas, and every year we ignore them. Envy it may be, but it’s also good fun. It’s fun to find just exactly the perfect gift for someone you love. It’s even more fun to watch that person as he or she opens that gift, to see his or her face light up with pleasure. And it’s fun to receive gifts; it’s fun to get cool things, of course, but it’s also fun to see what someone thinks is just the perfect gift for you, because it reveals something of their character, and it reveals something of how they understand their relationship to you.

So I will not join the preachers and pundits who tell us that we should stop giving gifts at this time of year. If you want to give Christmas gifts or Hanukkah gifts or solstice presents at this time of year, I say: Go for it! Moderation in all things, of course, so don’t go into debt, but if you find gift-giving to be fun, then why not have some fun.

And having said that, I want to turn to the old story of Joseph that is found in the book of Genesis, beginning at chapter 37, and really extending right through the end of the book of Genesis into the beginning of the book of Exodus. Te weekly Torah portion for the sabbath which comes during Hanukkah comes from the middle of the story about Joseph, and we heard part of that weekly Torah portion in the first reading this morning. But before I get to the first reading, let me remind you of the story of Joseph.

It all begins in the land of Canaan. This is the beginning of the story as it is told in the Torah:

“Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan…. At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers… And Joseph brought bad reports of them to his father. Now [Jacob] loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he had made him an ornamented tunic. And when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, they hated him so that they could not speak a friendly word to him.” [Genesis 37.1-4, the New Jewish Publication Society translation]

As you can see, envy lies at the beginning of this story. Joseph’s brothers are envious of his coat of many colors, a coat given to him by their father. Actually, his brothers are envious of the fact that their father loved Joseph better than any of them, but the coat serves as the symbol for the greater love their father bestowed on Joseph. And they are really annoyed when Joseph tells them about a dream he had one night, in which all his brothers and even his father and mother would wind up bowing down to him.

So what do Joseph’s brothers do? They attack him, tie him up, rip off his distinctive coat of many colors, and then they sell him to a passing caravan as a slave. Off went the caravan, taking Joseph with them. Joseph’s brothers smeared his coat with some blood, then off they went to tell their family that Joseph must have been devoured by wild animals. They may have been envious of Joseph, but I feel that was taking things a little too far: selling your brother into slavery just because you’re envious of him!

Fast forward a little bit, and we find Joseph, now a slave, taken to Egypt and sold to one Potiphar, who is the chief steward of Pharaoh, the king and ruler of all Egypt. Joseph prospers for a while, but then winds up getting thrown into prison on the basis of false testimony — of course, as a slave, we can be sure that Joseph was not allowed to testify in his own defense. So now Joseph is not only a slave, he is in prison: this is what his brother’s envy has done!

While Joseph is in prison, he gets something of a reputation as an interpreter of dreams. He manages to correctly interpret the dream of a fellow prisoner, and that prisoner is later pardoned by the Pharaoh, and returned to his old job as Pharaoh’s cupbearer. Well, one night, Pharaoh has a dream: In the dream, he sees seven beautiful cows come up out of the Nile River, the greatest river in Egypt, and the cows grazed contently in the grass along the river. Then seven scrawny, emaciated, sickly cows come up out of the Nile River, and they ate up all the beautiful cows. At that point, Pharaoh awakened. But he fell asleep and dreamed a second time: this time, he dreamed of seven plump ripe ears of grain that sprout, only to be swallowed up by seven thin, scrawny, misshapen ears of grain.

And this brings us to the second reading this morning. In the second reading, Pharaoh called all his magicians and other wise people, and asked them the meaning of these dreams. No one was able to figure out what these dreams meant. But Pharaoh’s cupbearer remembered that Joseph could interpret dreams accurately, so Pharaoh brought Joseph up out of prison. Sure enough, with the help of the God of the Israelites, Joseph was able to correctly interpret Pharaoh’s dreams: there will be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. Therefore, said Joseph to Pharaoh, during the seven years of plenty you must put aside enough grain that when the seven years of famine come you can feed all the people.

Pharaoh liked this idea — and that’s where the second reading left off. Pharaoh gave Joseph oversight over all food production, with the power to take surplus grain and store it in the Pharaoh’s granaries. By this point, some six or seven years had passed since Joseph was kidnapped by his brothers and sold into slavery. The seven years of prosperity came, just as in Joseph’s interpretation of the dream, and Joseph went out and bought up something more than a fifth of all the grain produced throughout Egypt. And then the seven years of famine came. The farmers produced very little grain. The Egyptians came to the Pharaoh’s granaries and bought grain from Joseph, the Pharaoh’s representative. The famine continued over the next few years, and when the people ran out of money, Joseph took their cattle in exchange for grain, and when they ran out of cattle, he accepted title to their land in exchange for grain. So it was that by the end of the seven years of famine, Pharaoh owned all the land and all the cattle in all of Egypt — thanks to Joseph’s good management.

The famine extended even as far as Canaan, where Josephs’ father Jacob and all his brothers still lived. Starving, Joseph’s brothers came to buy grain from Pharaoh. They didn’t recognize Joseph when they came before him to buy grain; and they did indeed bow down before Pharaoh’s representative, just as Joseph’s dream had predicted all those years ago.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi tells us that twenty-two years elapsed from Joseph’s first dream, the dream that predicted that his brothers would all bow down to him, to the moment when Joesph’s brothers actually did bow down to him in reality. Twenty-two years to wait for a dream to come true! Twenty-two years of kidnapping, enslavement, and imprisonment! Twenty-two years is a significant portion of a human lifespan. And based on this, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi tells us that that we ourselves can expect to wait as much as twenty-two years to fulfill our own dreams. [“Miketz,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miketz&oldid=175158548 (accessed December 7, 2007).]

This is a good story to remember at this time of year; it is a good antidote to Christmas envy. Envy arises in part because we want something now; we see our neighbor’s ox or donkey or video game, and we want it now. Even if it’s completely impossible! Envy arises in part when we are hard on ourselves, when we set ridiculously high expectations for ourselves. It is easy to think that we must have perfect lives. And too often, “perfect” is defined for us by someone else; someone else defines perfect for us as we should all be living in a house in the suburbs with 2.5 children, 3 cars, a dog, and a lucrative career in business that allows us to buy fun electronic gadgets. Nor should we have to wait for this dream of perfection to be accomplished.

Or maybe perfect is defined like this: if you’re a man, “perfect” means you look like Matt Damon, and if you’re a woman “perfect” means you look like Lindsay Lohan, and if you’re transgender, or don’t have white skin, or are over 35, well you’re just out of luck and you can never be perfect. In other words, our society makes it impossible to be perfect, and too often we wind up striving for a kind of perfection that just doesn’t exist.

The story of Joseph reminds us that mostly life is not perfect at all. Our lives, just like Joseph’s life, our lives are full of setbacks and disasters and impediments, and our lives most certainly lack perfection. Yet like Joseph we have dreams, and our dreams might not be unreasonable. But Rabbi Joshua ben Levi reminds us that dreams can take decades to come true. And the story of Joseph reminds us that even if our dreams do come true, they may come true in ways that we could not have imagined. When Joseph first dreamt that his brothers would bow down to him, do you think could possibly have imagined how that would come true? — with Joseph working for Pharaoh, so that really his brothers weren’t bowing down to him at all, they were bowing down to this representative of the all-powerful Pharaoh.

If you want to go out and have the perfect Christmas, and spend thousands of dollars and get the perfect lavish gift for everyone on your list and host the perfect Christmas party in your suburban house with 2.5 children, I for one won’t stand in your way (especially if I’m one of the people for whom you will purchase the perfect lavish gift, and by the way I could use a new computer).

But I’m also here to tell you that it’s OK to lower your standards for Christmas, or Hanukkah or solstice or whatever you celebrate. You do not have to give the perfect gift to everyone — and if your children complain that they didn’t get very good gifts this year, feel free to do what a mom of my acquaintance did; when her son complained that he “didn’t get anything good this year,” she told him that if he didn’t want his gifts she would be happy to send them to someone who would appreciate them. You do not have to give the perfect gift to anyone, and you do not have to receive the perfect gift yourself. You do not have to send out Christmas cards (or the Hanukkah cards which I see in the stores these days) — it is perfectly fine to delay and send out Valentine’s Day cards instead. You do not have to decorate your house unless you feel like it. You do not have to attend parties unless you want to do so.

In fact, as your minister I will tell you that there are only two things you have to do to meet your complete religious obligations as a Unitarian Universalist at this time of year. You must give a gift to, or otherwise help, someone less fortunate than yourself; and you must take the time to light a candle and sit in silence watching it burn. If you want, you can meet both those religious obligations by coming to the Christmas eve candlelight service here on December 24, lighting a candle, and giving some money when we pass the collection plate for a charity. Or you can simply go home tonight and light a candle after sunset, and after the candle burns down write a check to the charity of your choice. Or whatever.

Everything else about this season is optional. If you want to go all out and celebrate madly, that’s fine. But this can be a stressful time of year, and you don’t need to be hard on yourself. Which means that you don’t need to envy anyone else’s gifts, or anyone else’s celebration.

So take it easy. And I really mean it about lighting that candle: it really is a religious obligation to sit quietly on a regular basis, even for a minute or two, and do nothing. Sitting quietly gives you a chance to put things in perspective, to reflect on dreams deferred, to understand that you and your soul are more important than whatever gadget your neighbor owns. It’s the sure cure of Christmas envy.

The Carpenter’s Son

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading was a short poem by Alan Powers titled “Carpenter’s Son.” Copyright laws do not permit the reproduction of an entire poem, so it is not reproduced here.

The second reading is from the autobiography of Edward Emerson Simmons, the man who painted the picture that is reproduced on your order of service. He told this story about this painting:

“In the year 1888 I sent two pictures to the Royal Academy which were duly accepted and hung. Imagine my joy when a large and formidable communication found it way to my studio in Paris, asking the price of one of my canvases and signed by the Chantry Bequest. This was a well-known fund created to buy pictures for the government to place in its permanent galleries, and everyone knew that, once the price had been asked, it amounted to the same thing as a sale….

“The picture, which I called ‘The Carpenter’s Son,’ was a simple pose of one of my children in my studio. A blond boy with a light shining over his head sat dreaming, instead of sweeping out the shop, while his mother, in the back, told his father what a worthless son he had begotten. The shavings had accidentally fallen in the form of a cross [which you can see at the bottom right], and the light seemed to be a halo. The [Glasgow] Scotsman came out with a scathing denunciation of the work (not at the idea, mind you) but because, as they said, I had been sacrilegious enough to paint Christ in the costume of a French peasant boy! Of course, the Chantry bequest did not buy — for the first time — after asking the price.”

Sermon

The stories we tell about ourselves, about our beliefs, and about the world around us — these stories are vital to who we are. I believe that one of the most important tasks of religion is to shape the stories we tell about ourselves and about our lives, to the end that our stories affirm life and love; and to the end that the arc of our stories’ narratives bend towards justice.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. The opening hymn this morning was a wassail song, and without a story, it would be nothing more than a silly song sung at Yuletide. But instead, we tell two stories about this wassail song.

The first story we tell goes like this: Years ago in England, during the Yuletide season less wealthy people would walk around to the wealthy households in their village and sing wassail songs. The wealthy householders were required by anceint custom to give food, drink, and money to the wassailers. When we tell this story, we are saying that Yuletide is a time of year to remember ordinary people who may not have much money.

The second story goes like this: Some folklorists believe that these apple wassail songs grew out of ancient pre-Christian rituals meant to re-awaken the fertility of apple trees at the time of the winter solstice. We know that hard apple cider was an important drink in the days before everyone had guaranteed access to clean, drinkable water because the modest alcohol content helped reduce the number of pathogens present; thus cider apples were a vital crop to ensure health. This second story tells us that the Christmas season holds many remnants of the old earth-centered pagan religions, religions which contained superstitions we may no longer follow, but which contained some good hard common sense.

So you see, the stories we tell about ourselves and about our traditions help us to shape those traditions in meaningful ways. This morning, I’d like to tell some stories about a painting that was central to the life of our church, a painting that is relevant to the Christmas season. And I believe these stories reveal a great deal about who we are and what we stand for.

Let me begin at the beginning. In 1888, the American painter Edward Emerson Simmons painted a painting which he called “The Carpenter’s Son.” You’ll find a reproduction of the painting on the cover of your order of service. This large painting by Simmons — some four feet wide and five and a half feet tall — showed a boy in a carpenter’s shop, sitting on a saw horse, surrounded by wood shavings and saw dust; while in the background two adults, presumably the boy’s parents, seem to be talking about him. The boy, rather than working, is simply sitting and staring meditatively off into space.

Simmons showed “The Carpenter’s Son” at the 1888 Paris Salon, then later at the Royal Academy in England, and also in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1892 Simmons sold the painting to Amelia Jones of New Bedford. When Amelia Jones purchased it, Simmons wrote her a letter which said in part:

“Dear Miss Jones,

“There is little to tell you of the picture that you have greatly pleased me by wishing to own. The picture was painted in the season of 1888 and being unsatisfactory to me was scraped out, to a great extent and repainted, with my older boy as a model for the boy in the foreground.

“It was painted at St. Ives — of cat fame — in the extreme east of Cornwall, England. The result of the repainting was an unusual success at the Royal Academy — joined to an offer of purchase from the trustees of the Chantry fund — withdrawn — I suspect from the opposition of the English Church people.

“When sent to Scotland — Glasgow — it caused me to be the amused object of much fury and denunciation from the “Scotsman” — if I remember the paper….

“I know very little of how the details of Christ’s surroundings should be told. I imagined no one knows enough to be worth listening to. Therefore we younger men fall back upon our own time — believing that man has always been fundamentally the same….

“Faithfully, Edward E. Simmons.”

This was, in fact, a heretical painting. As it happens, Simmons was raised a Unitarian. His father, George Simmons, was a Unitarian minister who was also a fervent abolitionist. Not only was Edward raised a Unitarian, but he grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, in the day when several great Unitarian writers and thinkers lived there — Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Alcott family, the poet Ellery Channing, and others — and as a boy, Simmons met and conversed with many of these radical Unitarians. Edward Emerson Simmons had radical Unitarianism in his very bones, and for the rest of his life he called himself a Concord Unitarian.

When a Concord Unitarian goes to paint a picture of Jesus of Nazareth, he does not paint an orthodox picture of Jesus. Instead of painting some saintly, unearthly, barely human figure, Simmons choose one of his own boys as a model — not because that was what Jesus would have looked like, but because, good Concord Transcendentalist that he was, he believed that Jesus was fully human, and that human beings have been pretty much the same down through the ages; you can be sure that if Simmons had been African American, the boy in the picture would have been African American; had Simmons been Native American, the boy would have been native American; you get the idea.

Well, I’m sure you get the idea, but the orthodox Christians of the day did not get the idea. They did not like the painting one bit, because Jesus looked too human — he looked just like an ordinary boy who could have been anyone’s son — which they thought sacrilegious. Indeed, there are people today who do not like this painting.

And who purchased this heretical painting from Edward Simmons? Amelia Jones, a member of First Unitarian in New Bedford, that’s who. She bought it, sent it off to be shown at the great 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and then it came to hang in her house in New Bedford, the house that is now the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum just down County Street from here.When Amelia Jones died, she gave the painting to First Unitarian Church. What better place for such a painting to hang?

This heretical painting hung for many years in our Parish House. If you talk to some of the people who grew up in this church, the painting was very much present in their consciousnesses. Here was a painting of a child who looked like an ordinary kid, yet this ordinary-looking kid grew up to be one of the great religious leaders of all time. Such a painting must have been an inspiration to at least some of the children in this church!

Older people might have seen something a little different in this painting: Here’s this boy just sitting there and staring off into space when he is clearly supposed to be sweeping out his father’s carpentry shop — if you look closely at the front of your order of service, you can see the broom on the floor that Jesus has abandoned. And there in the background are his parents, clearly talking about their son. His mother is pointing to Jesus as if to say, “Look, he’s dropped his broom again, he’s just sitting there staring off into space.” And we can imagine his father saying, “He’d make a good carpenter some day if he’d just pay attention to what he’s supposed to be doing!”

Or more generally we could say: What Edward Emerson Simmons has done in his painting of Jesus is to imagine what Jesus must have been like as a fully human boy. Being a Concord Unitarian, Simmons did not restrict himself to what might be found in the Bible. Unitarians like Edward Simmons feel comfortable telling new stories about the historical figure who was Jesus, whether or not those new stories might offend the orthodox.

In true Unitarian Universalist fashion, there are many more stories for us to tell about this painting. Alan Powers, a poet and member of this church, tells another story in his poem: he tells us of a Jesus who was the son of an ordinary working class family, a Jesus who began his life dealing with very concrete things and who went on to teach in very concrete metaphors and parables; a man who in the end was put to death for his radical religious and social views. There is more than one story to tell about this painting, just as there is more than one story to tell about Jesus.

Now let me finish the story of the painting itself. In 1993, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., planned a centennial exhibit of works of art that had been exhibited in the great 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, and they asked to borrow “The Carpenter’s Son.” So the painting was cleaned, and insured, and shipped off to Washington, where it hung from March through September, 1993, in the show “American Art from the 1893 World’s Fair.” After that show, the painting came back and hung once more in its accustomed place in our Parish House.

And then in 1996, disaster struck. A vandal broke into our church, tipped over one of the grandfather clocks in the Parish House, broke the nose off one of the statues here in the sanctuary, and slashed a huge piece out of the middle of “The Carpenter’s Son.” The clock and the statue could be repaired, but with the piece gone from the painting, it was worthless. It was a great tragedy in the life of the congregation, and if you ask someone who was here that Sunday morning when they discovered the damage, they can tell you what a horrible shock it was.

When I first arrived here at First Unitarian two and a half years ago, I heard the story of this painting. Whenever someone told me the story of the vandalism, they would add the fact that, horrendous as the destruction of the painting was, at least the insurance settlement made it possible for the church to install an elevator in improve handicapped accessibility. I liked this twist that the people of this church add to the story of the vandalism: this church took an act of vandalism, and turned it into an act of justice for persons with disabilities. How very like the Unitarian Universalist stories about Jesus! for we emphasize Jesus’s acts of social justice, we emphasize his deep humanity and his empathy with all persons.

Then came our own Unitarian Universalist mini-miracle. Just over a year ago, the Women’s Alliance of this church donated a new refrigerator for the kitchen. As the old refrigerator was being removed, the man who was moving it saw something had been thrown behind it. He called to Claudette Blake, our church administrator, and she immediately realized that what she was seeing was the missing piece of the painting: there was the face of the boy Jesus. And, something of a miracle, the vandal had not slashed through the boy’s face — I like to believe that the vandal’s essential humanity asserted itself and prevented him or her from being that destructive.

It turned out that the insurance company now owned the painting, and until we could buy it back we had to keep it safely locked up; we sent it up to an art restoration expert to hold for us. We also realized that we could not keep the painting any longer. We knew this building is not secure enough to house important works of art, nor do we have financial resources to restore the painting. Thanks to behind-the-scenes work on the part of many church members, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House and Garden Museum agreed to purchase the painting from us, for the $20,000 that we had to pay the insurance company for it. What better place for the painting? The Rotch-Jones-Duff House used to be Amelia Jones’s house, and it was where the painting hung before it came here. Besides, the Rotch-Jones-Duff House could restore the painting and make it accessible to a wider public.

I particularly like to think that the painting will have a wider audience, once it is restored. It will take perhaps another year before the painting is finally restored that is, assuming that the Rotch-Jones-Duff House is able to complete their fundraising, for as of now they have only $18,000 of the $30,000 needed to pay for the restoration. Many good people are working on raising funds, including our own Nancy Crosby and Bob Piper, and needless to say many members and friends of First Unitarian have given or are planning to give money to help pay for the restoration. Perhaps by next Christmas, a wider public will once again be able to see Edwards Simmons’s Unitarian vision of a Jesus who was a great religious genius and whose birthday is worth celebrating, but a Jesus who is fully human.

I like the idea that in this way we are spreading one of our Unitarian stories about Christmas out to a world that needs to hear it. The world needs to hear our stories of a Jesus who cared more about creating a heaven here on earth, than getting people into some heaven in the sky. The world needs to hear our stories about a Christmas holiday that is not about spending more money, but is rather about remembering a religious prophet and sage who with his very humanity taught us about the essential humanity of all persons. The world needs to hear these stories, because it matters what stories we tell.

Greedy Guts

Due to a computer glitch, the last half of this sermon is missing. This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning comes from Robert Graves’s two volume Greek Myths.

“Midas, son of the Great Goddess of Ida, by a satyr whose name is not remembered, was a pleasure-loving King of Macedonian Bromium, where he ruled over the Brigians and planted his celebrated rose gardens. In his infancy, a procession of ants was observed carrying grains of wheat up the side of his cradle and placing them between his lips as he slept — a prodigy which the soothsayers read as an omen of the great wealth that would accrue to him….

“One day, the debauched old satyr Silenus, Dionysus’s former pedagogue, happened to straggle from the main body of the riotous Dionysian army as it marched out of Thrace into Boeotia, and was found sleeping off his drunken fit in [Midas’s] rose gardens. The gardeners bound him with garlands of flowers and led his before Midas, to whom he told wonderful tales of an immense continent lying beyond the Ocean stream — altogether separate from the conjoined mass of Europe, Asia, or Africa — where splendid cities abound, peopled by gigantic, happy, and long-lived inhabitants, and enjoying a remarkable legal system. A great expedition — at least ten million strong — once set out [from] thence across the Ocean in ships to visit the Hyperboreans; but on learning that theirs was the best land that the old world had to offer, retired in disgust…. Midas, enchanted by Silenus’s fictions, entertained him for five days and nights, and then ordered a guide to escort him [back] to Dionysus’s headquarters.

“Dionysus, who had been anxious on Silenus’s account, sent to ask how Midas wished to be rewarded. He replied without hesitation: ‘Pray grant that all I touch be turned into gold.’ However, not only stones, flowers, and the furnishing of his house turned to gold but, when he sat down to table, so did the food he ate and the water he drank. Midas soon begged to be released from his wish, because he was fast dying of hunger and thirst; whereupon Dionysus, highly entertained, told him to visit the source of the river Pactolus, near Mount Tmolus, and there wash himself. He obeyed, and was at once freed from the golden touch, but the sand of the river Pactolus are bright with gold to this day….”

[pp. 281-282]

The second reading is from the ancient Hebrew book known as Proverbs, chapter 8, verses 1-12.

“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
‘To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
acquire intelligence, you who lack it.
Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right;
for my mouth will utter truth;
wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
All the words of my mouth are righteous;
there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.
They are all straight to one who understands
and right to those who find knowledge.
Take my instruction instead of silver,
and knowledge rather than choice gold;
for wisdom is better than jewels,
and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.
I, wisdom, live with prudence,
and I attain knowledge and discretion.’  ”

Sermon

This is the second in a series of occasional sermons on the so-called seven deadly sins. I have to preface this sermon by saying that I most certainly do not accept the traditional understandings of sin nor do I accept the notion of original sin; that, as a Universalist, I cannot accept that an allegedly loving God would condemn anyone to hell for an eternity; and that therefore I do not accept the category of “deadly sins” which were, in traditional Christian theology, sins so horrible that to engage in them would be to risk eternal damnation. Yet having said that, the traditional listing of so-called seven deadly sins — lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride — remains a pretty good catalog of bad behavior and egregious human error.

And on this, the biggest shopping weekend of the year, what better sin to talk about than the sin of greed? I always stay out of the shopping malls and stores on the days following Thanksgiving, but it’s not because I’m especially virtuous, it’s just that I am not fond of crowds. And what crowds turn out to go shopping on the days after Thanksgiving! You know those vast expanses of asphalt that surround malls, the ginormous parking lots that never ever seem full? On the Friday after Thanksgiving, those ginormous parking lots get so full that people wind up cruising around in their cars, unable to find a parking place; those huge parking lots are designed for the shopping excesses of one day a year.

Greed is such a fun activity to indulge in; what could be more fun than looking at all the enticing and wonderful objects available for us to purchase — video games and large-screen televisions and the latest Martha Stewart kitchen gadgets and those robotic vacuum cleaners that vacuum the house all by themselves and the latest digital cameras,, and hundreds of other fun gadgets and toys and objects — for greed is really more about the wanting and the desiring, than it is about the possessing. I’m especially fond of greed because I don’t necessarily have to own all those wonderful things — if I owned them, where would I put them all? how would I find the time to play with them all — because although greed requires that you accumulate lots of objects, the essence of greed (or so it seems to me) lies in always wanting more than you have now. Greed is a hunger deep inside our guts, a hunger that can never be satisfied.

The story of King Midas is the classic story of greed. Good old King Midas begins as a fairly ordinary king in Macedonia. Midas enjoyed the many pleasurable things that kings may enjoy; as one example we are told that he devoted a good deal of time and energy and money to cultivating roses, to the point where his rose gardens became celebrated far and wide.

As we heard in the first reading today, a drunken satyr named Silenus was one of the throng of followers of the god Dionysus. It should be noted that a satyr is a mythical being that is half-human and half-goat. Now Dionysus was the god of wine, and so his followers were not strangers to drinking and even to drunkenness; but it appears that Silenus was more prone to drunkenness than most of the others, for one day he got excessively drunk, and collapsed in King Midas’s rose gardens.

The next day, King Midas’s gardeners found old Silenus asleep under a rose bush. They didn’t want to anger whomever this satyr might owe allegiance to, but at the same time the sight of this drunken reprobate, half-human and half-goat, lying asleep in the garden alarmed them enough so that they symbolically tied Silenus up with garlands of flowers, and only then led him to King Midas. Silenus then proceeded to entertain King Midas with outrageous and delightful stories; Midas felt that the stories were enchanting, rather than excessively untruthful. In any case, at last Midas sent Silenus back to the god Dionysus.

Thus far, the story of King Midas is a story filled with excess — excessive drinking, excessively untruthful stories t old as entertainment, excessive attention to rose cultivation. Such excesses alone do not result in greed. But King Midas’s next action is greedy. For when the god Dionysus asks Midas what reward his would like for taking care of Silenus, Midas answers: Pray grant that all I touch be turned into gold.”

This request may safely be characterized as greed! Firstly, it is self-evident that Midas has no need for addit6ional gold: not only is he a king, but he appears to lead a comfortable, even lavish lifestyle. Secondly, even if Midas were to ask for gold, he could have asked for something more reasonable, such as: “Pray grant that I find four large bags filled with gold in my bed, beside me, when I awaken tomorrow”; but instead, Midas asks fro something that he hopes will bring him an unlimited supply of gold.

Thus Midas’s wish can only be characterized as greed, because he does not need more gold to begin with, and he certainly does not need an unlimited quantity of gold. No wonder the god Dionysus was so amused when Midas began to realize all the implications of his very unwise wish. When it turns out that even food and drink are turned to gold by Midas’s touch, suddenly Midas finds himself in the same position as people who are so poor that don’t have enough to eat, and so slowly starve to death; the irony being that Midas has plenty of money, money which is no essentially useless to him. And so Midas has to appeal to the god Dionysus, in order that he will not starve to death in the midst of plenty.