Midweek Faith Lift
May 23, 2018
No Coveting Needed—the 10th Commandment
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Good Morning! We have finally arrived at #10- Thou shall not covet! Or more specifically as it says in Exodus 20:17
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (RSV)
If we were to write that in modern language, it would read more like “You shall not covet your neighbor’s beach house, condo in Florida, mountain home, his trophy wife, his access to influence, power and fame, his salary, bank balance or his BMW or Lexus or …or….or…anything that is of objective economic value.” If you noticed, ladies, wives fall in the category of something that has objective economic value! Whew! How in the world is this relevant to us today in 2018? Thank you God for metaphysical interpretation of Scripture!!!
If we are going to break open this commandment to not covet, the first thing that Eric Butterworth says we need to do is to reclaim the word covet from its totally negative implication. It comes from the same root word as cupid, and it means love or passion. The question we need to sit with is “what are you passionate about?” Not, “What are you passionate to acquire or where are you passionate to be?”
What we have taken covet to mean in the modern useage is “inordinately desirous, greedy, and avaricious.” The problem is not in the desiring, the problem is in the direction of your desire, in what you desire. We can all get lost in the weeds of desiring what we don’t have, no matter what that is: a thinner, taller, stronger body, thinner thighs, a larger salary, more money, a fairer boss, better hair, no wrinkles and on and on and on. The weeds of coveting are many!
More importantly, this morning I want us to ask ourselves is “What are we coveting for our church?” Do we long for lots of people here on Sunday so that we have plenty of new volunteers for things we want to do? Do we passionately desire an incredible benefactor so that we don’t have to fund raise any more? Do we long for lots of income so that we won’t default to worry about not having enough to meet our expenses and for all that we want to do? Do we worry that we don’t have enough to hire a full time minister once Rev. Deb retires for real? This whole business of coveting is a question of direction and when the rubber meets the road, the question is where are you directing your energy? Where are we looking for meaning and value?
When we put our energy and focus on wanting passionately to be somewhere other than right where we are, then we are missing the mark big time! And I do it too, as your minister. Here’s how it sounds: I want a community where everyone gets along all the time and there is no conflict! Where everyone gets wholeheartedly behind every initiative that we think up and there is no dissension! I covet the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship over on Hyland, because I am just sure that is how they are and they have a bigger budget! I covet Unity of Des Moines because I am sure they agree on everything all the time, have lots of money and they never get stuck in negativity. And I wouldn’t have that damn drive on I-35. Ha! How’s that workin’ for you, Deb? Ha! NOT SO MUCH! It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, doesn’t it? Why?!?
Because when we, you and I, are looking outside of ourselves for something “out there” to make everything all right we are never going to find it. And when we look harder, pray about it, all that happens is that we are forever going to be stuck in looking out there! That is what coveting does to us, it keeps us forever stuck and unhappy, never satisfied, never at peace always in the critical mode of looking at everything that is wrong and missing out on the opportunity to appreciate what is truly of value, what is truly precious and here right now. I don’t want to keep missing that, do you?
Our relief from endless wanting, endless coveting is to turn within, for it is there that we encounter the Divine even as we are living our very human lives. And we are passionately longing for the release of the flow of love, of the flow of all our Divine 12 Powers. As Butterworth puts it in Breaking the Ten Commandments:
The Truth is, there is a divine action within that is always working to reveal to us and express through us that which makes for prosperity and fulfillment…The coveting of things or power or relationships (or conditions) “out there” is like getting caught up in the shadows.” p. 142.
We, as a Board and as a church community have adopted 6 Spiritual Points of Light, to hold as intentions to light our common, shared spiritual/human journey at Unity Church of Ames. They are Love, Inclusion, Collaboration, Connection, Transformation and Abundance. For each one, we identified what it means, why it is important to us, and the action steps that demonstrate that we are living these points of light. We came to these 6 by reflecting on all that we do here at Unity of Ames, how we spend our money and time and how we work together. Answering questions about that helped us identify the 6 Points of Light and we felt really good about it and about ourselves when we completed the process.
What I realized in working on the talk for today is that we are only at the beginning of the process. The next step of our shared journey is to recognize when we are in the weeds, in the shadows and NOT living in accord with our points of light AND to develop the skills to call ourselves out when that happens, as it inevitably will. If we let fear of not having enough money or enough volunteers for our community to survive or do what we want to do, we are in the shadow of Abundance and in the weeds of Lack consciousness. Our Abundance is grounded in gratitude, forgiveness, and living in the flow of giving and receiving.
If we get caught up worry about how something might not work or that it could be a colossal failure, then we are at risk of falling into fear and losing our heart connections with one another. Our light of Connection says that we value fostering one another’s gifts and bringing them forth. How about we look at it as a learning experience that will bring us closer together? Even if it fails, it is a success if we learn something and learn to love each other more in the process! Aren’t we better when we take risks together and strengthen our connections by creating shared experiences and the memories that go with them?
When are at cross purposes with each other, then we have lost the thread of working together, of true collaboration. Our Light of Collaboration says that we share leadership, we share ownership of this Community and we discern what is ours to do and what is not. If we get caught in the weeds of thinking or feeling that someone or something or some situation should “just go away,” we have lost the thread of Inclusion and we are standing in the shadow of what could grow our consciousness rather than embracing it. We cannot grow into true Inclusiveness while wanting “them” to change so we can be happy and content. It just doesn’t work like that, does it?
And finally, should we retreat to our corners and wait for the other to fail or sulk in resentment when we needed to speak up and did not, then we have stepped into the shadow of transformation and we have cut off our own growth.
Every one of these shadows has been part of my experience as minister. I am saying to you all, just as you have done all of these things, so have I. We are in the light and in the shadows together. And we are here to learn from each other and to hold the light for each other.
Living in these 6 Spiritual lights is challenging, it is not a smooth path. It requires us to say to each other, I’m sorry, I was wrong and I was cranky about it, too! It requires us to accept each other as human and to love each other anyway. I can be negative, argumentative, stubborn, self-righteous, carry a martyr complex and so on. I, we have done all of these. And I can laugh at myself for doing it. When I get to that point, I am at the point of healing and true spiritual transformation, one of our Points of Light.
There is a story Butterworth tells of what it really means to long for something with passion. An Eastern teacher takes his student to the ocean and into the water. He holds the student’s head under the water until he could hardly stand it. When the student came up from the water, the teacher asked him, “When you were under the water, what did you want more than anything?” The student gasped, “I wanted air!” And when we long for God as much as we long for air, then we will begin to spiritually awaken. Likewise, when what we long for and passionately want is for these 6 points of light to really illuminate how we live and work and play together at Unity Church of Ames, we will begin to awaken. We are in sacred covenant together, in relationship. We don’t create a community here because we pledge to believe in the same thing. We create a community, we manifest Unity and Truth in how we live into our 6 points of light together.
I want to close today with a story that is a kind of parable. It is called the
Story of the Two Wolves
There’s a story of the two wolves in Cherokee culture in which a grandfather teaches his grandson an important life lesson.
The grandfather tells his grandson that there is a battle going on inside all of us. It is a battle between two wolves that live inside us.
He says, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ that live inside us all. One is evil (immaturity). It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good (maturity). It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thinks about it for a while and says, “Which wolf wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed”.
Let us feed our Divine consciousness together as we learn and grow in love together under the Divine Illumination of our Points of Light.
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb