The Enemies of Gratitude, Part 5: Disappointment

Deuteronomy34:1-12        

A simple question was asked at the roundtable this week: Why didn’t Moses get to enter the promised land?

Why not, indeed? Having asked the question, we needed to go back and address it. Why did God refuse Moses the opportunity to enter the promised land, at long last? It was all because of Meribah.

Do you remember Meribah? The name means quarrel. Meribah was a place we visited with the Israelites a while ago, early in their wilderness journey. Meribah was the place where they panicked because there was no water. Meribah was a place of desperation, and then, fulfillment.

At that time they were wandering, going by stages through the desert, and they stopped at this place, but there was no sign of water. The people turned on Moses – “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us with thirst?” – and Moses turned to God – “Help me! They’re going to kill me!”

So God helped Moses help the Israelites, by leading him to a rock which would bring forth a gush of water, assuring them once again that the Lord was with them.

Was that all that happened? It depends on what you read. The book of Numbers gives us more detail, saying that God instructed Moses take his staff, the staff with which he had already performed many wonders, and assemble the people before the rock. Command the rock to give its water, and the water shall flow. But what Moses did was actually a bit different.

Moses took the staff and assembled the people, then said to them, “‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly” (Numbers 20:10-11).

“But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’” (Numbers 20:12) That’s the story.

At the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord, Moses lost this hope of someday entering the promised land. For he had, apparently, failed in making it all about him. Maybe Moses was getting a little high on this power God had given him. He had this awesome staff – is it possible he had started to feel like the power was in his control? If not that, maybe these people of Israel had gotten to his last nerve and he just lost it. Whatever it was, it hardly seems that bad, does it?

Moses had been faithful and obedient from the beginning to the end. He had been steadfast in trusting the Lord and providing good leadership to Israel. He had done everything he was asked to do, all toward the hope of someday reaching the promised land. But Moses would not get that chance.

And twisting the knife in the wound, God takes Moses up to the mountaintop to let him see what he won’t get. Look at all this land. Beautiful, isn’t it? You’re not going there. Oh well.

How disappointed Moses must have been. How disappointed we are on Moses’ behalf.

We know all about disappointment, we are all too familiar with the concept. Let us count the ways:

The hope of a pregnancy that never materializes or, perhaps worse, ends prematurely in miscarriage. The dream of a family gone.

The child, for whom we had such bright hopes, whose life is turned upside down by mental illness or addiction.  The dreams for this child’s future now gone.

The young bridegroom who goes to war and comes back a triple amputee.

The man who suffers a massive heart attack and dies one week before his planned retirement, leaving his wife a widow.

The husband whose tragic accident renders him unable to work with four young children at home.

The cancer that cuts a life short. The economic downturn that steals your retirement funds. The fire that destroys all our hearts treasures.  We all know disappointment. Life is full of disappointment.

But perhaps even worse than the disappointment we feel about such loss, is the loss that occurs as a result of disappointment: disappointment, as justified as it may be, robs us of our joy and gratitude.

The grieving woman who, unable to have children of her own, can take no interest in children because of the bitterness of her loss.

The widow who isolates herself in her bitterness about being left alone just when she and her husband were on the threshold of their golden years.

The father unable to work, whose embarrassment about his plight prevents him from loving his children and wife.

Getting stuck in our disappointment prevents us from moving forward with our lives, however they might unfold. And this is a tragedy, my friends. For isn’t a life, no matter the great plans that were destroyed, still a precious life?

We all have our personal tragedies. And no one of us can tell another just what their tragedies ought to teach them. None of us has the right to assign meaning to someone else’s suffering. But each one of has the potential to discover something greater than misery in our own disappointments.

Each one of us has the possibility of seeing our own short life in the context of something great. What part is your life, it’s pleasures and beauties and tragedies, in this grand narrative of God’s story? From the many who came before us, some of whom we remember with love, to the countless who will follow us, what part do we play? How do each of our disappointments connect the pieces of the past and the future?

Moses didn’t set foot in the promised land, but he did see it. He got to know that he had been instrumental in bringing his people there. And, trusting in God as he always had, he knew they would arrive there.

Gratitude has many enemies, we have seen during these past five weeks: nostalgia for the good old days, worry about the future, entitlement about what we think we deserve, greed for all kinds of things we don’t deserve or need, and disappointment about all that was lost, all that might have been.

Each of these enemies reveals a failure to welcome each moment of this life for the gifts that they offer. God has a memory that stretches way back, and a plan that looks well into the future. The best we can do is to live each moment of time. We will find, again and again, that the present moment is full of gift. In receiving what is offered, this is where we find joy. And for this we can be truly grateful.

The Enemies of Gratitude, Part 4: Greed

Matthew22:15-22

In the film Wall Street, the character Gordon Gecko announces in front of a meeting of corporate stockholders, “Greed is good.” It is a very provocative, shocking thing to say. But it turns out to be something that many people do believe.

People will work hard out of self-interest. One of the joys in life for many of us is to have extra money to use however we want – to treat ourselves to something special. And one of the things we hate is to feel like most, or all, of our paycheck goes to someone else – taxes, mortgage, utility bills. We want a bigger piece for ourselves. Some will say that desire to have a bigger piece for ourselves will motivate us to work harder, work smarter. That may be true for some. Others might just feel resentment.

The Jews of Jesus’ time seemed to feel resentment about too much of their paycheck going to someone else – namely, the Roman Empire. They were heavily taxed and mightily oppressed. The system employed tax collectors who worked out of a profit motive – they collected as much as they could squeeze out of people, because the more they could get, the more they could keep in their own pockets. Greed inspired many tax collectors to take advantage of their fellow Jews. It is not surprising that they were resented by their own community. This included many of Jesus’ followers, who knew firsthand the suffering people endured at the hands of greedy tax collectors in the employ of a greedy empire.

But for some of the Jews, it wasn’t just a matter of paying too much. They resented that they had to pay anything at all to this idolatrous Roman government. The emperor was god and all things belonged to him. The coin Jesus held up for an object lesson not only had a picture of the emperor’s face but also would have had an inscription to the emperor’s divinity. Whereas our coins say “In God We Trust,” the coins of Rome said essentially, “The Emperor is your God, trust him or not.” The Pharisees were certainly offended. They were, like the people who go crazy every December railing against folks who fail to wish them a Merry Christmas, indignant at the fact that not everyone believes the same way they do.

Now, the Herodians in this story – those Jews who are apparently in league with Herod (no doubt, out of greed) – also have an interest in this issue. This group would include the tax collectors and any other Jews who are employed by the empire. The whole sordid system is working for them, so they strongly support the payment of taxes to the emperor.

Everyone standing around Jesus at this moment has an interest in the question. Everyone is waiting to hear what he will say. Is it lawful, according to the Law of Moses, to pay these taxes to the emperor or is it not?

He says, “Whose face is on the coin?” It is, of course, the emperor’s face. Once that is established he says, “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s.” His picture is on it, so it must be his. Give it to him. And, of course, it naturally follows, give to God what belongs to God.

I’ve always thought his answer to this question is one of his most brilliant moments. It dumbfounded his listeners that day. It dumbfounds us today. Because, when we try to break it down, we can’t quite figure it out.

If all the money belongs to the empire, what is left for us? and what exactly belongs to God?

Does this mean that God is not interested in money? That would certainly have an impact on our pledging and offering, wouldn’t it?

It has been suggested that since the Bible commands a tithe from Israel, 10 percent of all their livestock and crops, this means that 10 percent belongs to God. But that seems a paltry amount, especially in light of Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; the world and all who live in it.”

But, if everything belongs to God, then how can any of it belong to the emperor? And, most important of all, what is left for us?

This seems to be an impossible problem to solve. It will remain an impossible problem for us, as long as we continue to see life as a zero-sum game, where anything that goes to God, or the emperor, means less for us.

It will remain an impossible problem as long as we believe that giving to you means taking away from me. It will remain an impossible problem as long as we are succumbing to the problem of greed.

Even if we don’t agree with Gordon Gecko that greed is good, we still need to face the truth that it exists. We need to acknowledge that we all struggle with the sin of greed. Known as one of the seven deadly sins, greed has been a human weakness throughout our time on earth. And it is, like so many sins, a matter of something good or innocent taking a deadly turn.

It is not wrong to take care of yourself, clearly. But when taking care of yourself turns into the belief that anything that is good for me is good, period, we have entered the realm of greed.

Another film that helps us think about the problem of greed is the old Capra film, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Longfellow Deeds is a man who lives a simple life in rural Vermont, when he learns he has inherited a fortune from a distant relative. His first reaction is to say he doesn’t need it; he already has enough. But he is convinced that, like it or not, he is responsible for managing this fortune now, so, Mr. Deeds goes to New York. The money men who surround him in New York quickly decide that Mr. Deeds is hopelessly naïve and will be easy for them to manipulate – which is exactly what they want to do, manipulate his fortune away from him.

The mere proximity of wealth seems to make most men and women greedy for it. The men and women Deeds encounters in New York are blinded by their greed, losing touch with any ethical underpinnings they might have once had. Somehow, the character of Deeds is immune to it. He decides he wants to give his new fortune to the struggling farmers back in Vermont, giving them a hand up. He almost gets committed to a psychiatric hospital for it. His notion that he has enough – enough – seems positively lunatic to others.

In Wall Street, Gordon Gecko is asked by his young protégé, “When will it be enough? How much is enough for you?” Gecko’s answer is that there is no enough. It’s not a question of enough, it’s a question of winning or losing.

And so, in this scene from the gospel, where Jesus is surrounded by Pharisees, Herodians, and Jewish taxpayers, let us consider it from the perspective of winners and losers. The Pharisees and the Herodians want to make Jesus the loser; they want him gone because his very existence takes away from their authority or wealth. The followers of Jesus who hope to see him overthrow the empire want to see Jesus win, thereby making the empire lose. Those who have no more of an interest than that they are tired of paying taxes want to see the empire lose so they can win a little more of their wealth. But Jesus doesn’t play that game.

He will take up the matter of greedy tax collection when he talks with Zacchaeus, but for the moment he will simply remind his listeners that the game of zero-sum is not the way God’s economy runs. In God’s economy, the more you give the more you will have, the less you give the less you will have.

Everything in this world belongs to God. Everything. All that we have is a gift from God. And while it is ours to use, we are to live every day mindful of how we can best serve God. If our first thought is to how we can best serve ourselves, we are missing the mark.

Everything in this world belongs to God. You and I are the stewards of all this wealth. Therefore, every decision about how we use these wonderful resources must be made from the perspective of how well it serves God and all of God’s creation. It won’t ever be a matter of mindlessly following a rule of thumb because God doesn’t want us to ever stop thinking about how much we have received, and how much we can give.

God gives to us out of God’s grace and generosity, asking us to do the same for the sake of this wonderful world God made. And for this we can truly be grateful.