Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis February 20, 2005

I want to pick up again on the sermon series I started in January about living lives that are not conformed to the world and its twisted values, but that are transformed by a renewal of our minds, and that in turn help transform our world.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who grew up in South America and moved here when he was in his twenties. On a recent trip back home, he was sickened to find how widespread corruption had become in his home country. Even friends and businessmen that he had trusted and respected were now involved in smuggling, bribery, and governmental exploitation. Maybe it started at the top, with a corrupt president who is in office through the manipulations of our own government, that is helping the rich get richer while the poor and middle class can hardly earn an honest living. Whatever the cause, dishonesty has spread like a cancer into all levels of their society. Almost everyone is infected and weakened by it.

Thank goodness we live in the U.S.A., eh? Here, our cancer isn’t at Stage 4, where the collapse of the whole society might seem immanent. But sometimes we sense that the cancer of corruption and dishonesty are silently growing and metastasizing to all levels of our society. As we try to spread "democracy" and "freedom" into the world, we wonder whether we can trust our own elections and voting machines. Enron, Sonnenberg Gardens, and now Office Max have opened our eyes to corporate corruption that costs people’s jobs, pensions, and almost lost a public treasure.

On our home computers, we have to deal with spammed scams by the dozen, have to scan e-mails for viruses, and have to wonder what personal information like credit card numbers is being beamed to someone by hidden spyware.

Identity theft is a growing crime. Did you know that the identities of more and more men and women serving in Iraq are being stolen, because they can’t do anything about it while they’re fighting over there? Isn’t that about the lowest thing you’ve ever heard of?

No. We have heard of something lower. The church itself has been exposed as a place that would rather quietly protect the reputations of predator clergy than protect innocent children from sexual abuse. And it’s not just the Roman Catholic Church that’s been guilty of this.

Dishonesty is a disease that affects us all. And it’s hard not to conform to it, not to fall into manipulating the facts, creating false impressions, covering up our mistakes, cheating when no one’s looking.

But Jesus confronts us with a penetrating question: "What does it profit a person to gain the world, and lose their own soul?" (Mark 8:36)

I’d like to share an experience reported by Al Covino, a high school coach north of New York City who sometimes worked as a basketball referee.

Joe’s honesty had lost the championship for his classmates, his school, and his own father. But he walked off the court with his soul very much intact.

Isn’t it funny how, in the moment, gaining the championship or the dollar, –or avoiding blame or embarrassment–seems more important than our soul? Jesus wasn’t saying that if you tell a lie, you’ll fry in hell for eternity. He was saying that when we release our hold on the truth, we lose our hold on our soul. The New Revised Standard Version translates it, "What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" When we start having slippage with the truth, we start having slippage with the life we were given to live, in this world we were given to live it in.

Elbert Hubbard said, "We’re not punished for our sins, but we’re punished by them." Is it possible that by dabbling in dishonesty, we really do forfeit more than we gain, even in this life? I think so.

First, we forfeit our relationships with other people. That’s pretty obvious when we do something that betrays another person’s trust. You know what it feels like when someone you do business with, or a friend, or your spouse lies to you. You pull back–you withdraw your investment of yourself in that relationship, until trust can be re-established. Trust usually can be re-established–by confession, repentance and forgiveness. If a person allows him- or herself to be vulnerable to us and admit their wrongs and show that they are sincere about changing, we are inclined to trust them again. But until that happens, there will be a wall between us.

Trust is the doorway between one person and another. The more we can trust someone, the more of ourself we will invest in our relationship with them. Trusting someone with our whole selves is called intimacy, and every soul longs to be able to trust and to be trusted like that. Loneliness comes from not being trust-able because you’re deceitful. Other people close the door to you because they can’t let themselves be vulnerable to you. And loneliness also comes from not being able to trust others. We close the door because we’re afraid to be honest about who we really are.

I was recently doing business with someone who began sharing her personal dilemma with me. Let’s call her Jane. Jane’s father has been in the hospital on a ventilator since December, with no end in sight. Jane’s mother is living with Jane and her husband, because Jane’s parents weren’t able to travel to their place in Florida this year, and their summer cottage isn’t accessible in the winter. Jane’s mother subtly nags Jane’s husband, and she doesn’t allow them any privacy. Jane’s husband has a lot of stress on him at work as well as at home, and he recently told Jane he couldn’t take this arrangement any more. He told her she’d have to choose between him or her mother.

Jane is afraid of upsetting her mother by making any requests of her. She said she’s always been afraid to ask for anything of anyone. She would rather turn herself into a pretzel than to tell her mother the truth about her own and her husband’s needs. So life finally has in her in a position where she’s going to lose something very precious unless she can be honest enough to tell her mother the whole story of what’s happening and what she needs. For things to resolve in a healthy way, they all will have to have the honesty and trust to talk to each other about what they need, what they can and can’t do, and what their options are.

When we aren’t honest about who we are and what we really need, we may gain placidity for a time, but we can forfeit our own souls, and forfeit the life that we were meant to live and the person we were meant to be. Being honest about our own needs or about who we really are can be even harder than not telling lies or cheating or stealing, because it requires us to trust the good will or even the graciousness of another person. And some of us, myself included, don’t like to feel that vulnerable. But I also know from experience that being accepted as I really and truly am, needs and imperfections and all, is what deeply connects me to other people as it connects me to my own soul. It’s what creates a community of interdependence, which is how we were created to live. But we can’t get there without honesty and trust.

It’s a wonderful, mysterious thing, but wherever truth is found, God shows up. It never fails. When we find our truth, offer it, live it, and receive other people’s truth, there’s no questioning the presence of God. You know God is there as grace, healing, life, peace, joy, hope, and love. Everything is charged with divine energy, because God always lives in the truth. When you think about it, where else could God live?

So when we fail to live in honesty, we not only forfeit our relationships with other people, but we also forfeit our relationship with God. Trust is also the doorway between ourselves and God. We have to stretch to embrace the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, if we are going to be open enough to experience God.

And when we fail to live in honesty, we also forfeit our relationship with ourself. If we project an image to the world that isn’t who we really are, then whose life are we living? We’re living a mask’s life, not our own. Who then will live the life we’re meant to live, learn the lessons we’re meant to learn, overcome the challenges we’re meant to overcome, and develop the gifts we were meant to develop? There will be no one to live our life, because we’re trying to live a fake life. And whose loss is that? Whose loss is that? "What will it profit us to gain the whole world and forfeit our life?" The few extra dollars or accolades, the escaped apologies or confessions, seem pretty hollow a prize when they cost the only life we have.

So the truth of it is, the truth is where we discover ourselves and take responsibility for our lives. The truth is where we connect with others and form deep relationships. The truth is where we find God, not as an abstract idea but as a life-giving energy. The truth is where the rubber meets the road. Without engaging with the truth, we can stomp on the gas and make a lot of noise and run the speedometer up to 140 mph. But how far will we really travel until we’re connected to the reality of the asphalt beneath us? "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by a renewing of your minds." How genuine and growth-filled, how gracious and life-giving, how contagious and freeing our lives would be if we didn’t conform to a world of deception, but if we were transformed lovers and livers of the truth. How life-sustaining and beautiful our world would be if we could fully trust our leaders and institutions and businesses and neighbors and family members, and they could fully trust us.

Brooke Medicine Eagle said, "The dramatic action that we need to create a way of life on Earth that really works will be taken not through personal, social, or political action, but through spiritual action." The cure for the cancer of deception infesting our society lies right here with us. If each individual cell said, "No, even though the cancer of dishonesty is all around me, I’m not going to allow myself to be an agent of it; I’m going to remain a healthy cell and speak and live the truth," then the cancer would have no place to spread to. It can only take over living cells who allow it.

Joe kept hold of his soul at the time clock in the basketball game. We can keep our souls alive and healthy, and be deeply connected to God and to each other, and help create a world where trust, respect, and peace, are the reality that we live in every day. How about that–maybe we can gain our souls and the best the world has to offer at the same time.