"Hold Fast to What is Good"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on October 15, 2006
Text — Romans 12:9-17

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;  love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

There are two subjects that have an irresistible power to hold our attention. One is sex.  The other is money.  And we’re especially fascinated with how much of them other people have. Today, I’m going to talk about money. 

I know your immediate thought — that I want the church to have more money and for you to have less. But that’s not the case. I do want the church to have more money, but I want you to have more money too.  And both can happen at the same time.

Every article and book on financial planning that I’ve read says that it’s in the nation’s interest, the economy’s interest (at least in the long run), the world’s interest, and I would add, the church’s interest, and your personal interest for you to save more money.

Now I’m speaking here mainly to people who are bringing home a paycheck. If you’re retired, or not in the paid workforce for some other reason, some of this won’t apply in quite the same way, but it does apply and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

If you do have a paying job, it’s pretty obvious that if you saved more money, you’d have more financial security and more freedom, including freedom to change jobs. And if you saved more you’d have more comfort and peace of mind when you get to the age to stop working. 

Almost every day, I see articles about how little Americans save, how much Americans spend, and how much consumer debt, especially credit card debt, is hanging over people’s heads. Spending money is for many people a kind of drug that makes you feel better for a while, but it leads to a kind of bondage.  This is a spiritual matter. 

Last year, 1.5 million Americans filed for bankruptcy.  In 1990, Americans had $200 million of credit card debt.  Today, it’s $800 million.  In that same period of time, mortgage debt has doubled. Almost every week, in the Money & Business section of the Sunday Courant, there’s an article about people in their late fifties and sixties who have nothing or almost nothing saved for retirement. 

What does almost nothing mean?  $10,000?  $50,000?  $100,000?  Would $200,000 be enough?  That sounds like a lot of money, but being 65 with $200,000 to spread over your expected lifespan would give you maybe $16,000 a year.  Add to that about $10,000 in social security and you have about $26,000 a year in today’s dollars.  Would that be enough?  Maybe it would, for people in the habit of not spending much. But I suspect most of us would like more than that when we’re over 70, and most of us would rather not to have to work until we’re 70 or 75.

As you can probably guess, I’m a saver.  When I was in my twenties, I worried a lot about money because I had very little and I couldn’t think of any kind of work I wanted to do that would earn any money. This will sound over-dramatic, but I was actually afraid I’d be a bum on the street.  And I even engaged in a month-long experiment living as a bum on the street, just to see what it was like.  That’s a whole other sermon, and I preached it years ago. I learned some powerful lessons through it.

So, I hung on to the little money I had, but I didn’t stop living it up in a certain way.  Those were the days of Europe on $5 a day. I did Europe on $3 a day.  I could travel in Europe, hitchhiking around and sleeping wherever I could, on less money than I could live in the United States where I’d have to pay rent.  It was a lot of work and it took a lot of energy to stay on a budget like that.  I wouldn’t want to travel that way now.

But one thing I learned was that there’s great power in being able to resist spending money.  There are two ways to be wealthy.  You can have a lot of money, or you can need little money. Actually, needing little is probably a more secure form of wealth. But the combination of the two is even better.

And that’s my main recommendation to anyone who isn’t saving any money, or who is going backwards, into more debt. Need less.  Spend less.  Write down what you spend, every day.  You might be surprised how much is going on things you don’t really care about. 

Banks and credit card companies love to convince you to spend more.  They spend millions in slick advertising to convince you that you can spend more.  They love collecting 16% -20% interest on credit card balances. They like lending to people who have just gone through bankruptcy because those people won’t be able to file for bankruptcy again soon.

All that advertising has had a big impact — a lot more than my little sermon will have.  Millions of people buy bigger houses than they can afford, houses they can’t afford to heat or furnish, cars they can’t afford.  They eat in restaurants more than they can afford, go shopping and buy things they don’t need and may never even use, go on vacations they can’t afford, and save little or nothing for retirement. That doesn’t sound to me like a happy situation.

And of course, anyone who isn’t saving anything won’t be inclined to be very generous with the church or any charity, even to help people who are dying from the deepest poverty. That’s a spiritual issue.

I haven’t always been a giver, and giving still feels a little harder to me than saving.  So here’s the story of my struggle with that. When I started in the ministry in 1979, my first compensation package, including benefits, was $17,000.  I took home about $1100 a month.

That wasn’t a lot even then, but I was used to living cheap, so I kept living cheap. I rented a very cheap but very charming un-winterized cottage.  It got very cold, but I put up with it. And of my $1100 a month paycheck, I decided to save $200 a month off the top.  Almost 20% of my take-home pay. I was really tired of having no financial cushion. So that was a good start in terms of savings. 

But then I had to decide what I was going to give to the church.  That was harder, because not having any savings, I wasn’t used to giving much.  So I pledged $45 a month.  And I gave a little more, not much, to other charities.

So compare those figures.  I saved $200.  I gave $45 or $55. Not very generous, when you look at it that way. But the saving part was absolutely key to my becoming more generous.  Most of us aren’t going to be generous givers unless we feel some security, some basis for faith and trust that we will be okay. Money can’t give us all that security, but it gives us some.

So here’s my point.  The church’s job is to help us be generous. But the first step to being generous is getting our own spending habits under control. I started socking away $2400 a year, in 1980, and that increased over the years as my income increased.  I’ve paid attention to how those savings were invested.  I’ve paid attention to the magic of compound interest and reinvested dividends.  And now I don’t feel I’m in danger of a poverty-stricken retirement. That’s very liberating.

And I don’t feel I need to save 20% of my paycheck anymore.  I started out saving $200 a month and giving $45 to the church. Now Robin and I (this year) give $600 a month to the church, and another $150-200 to other charities.  And we save about the same amount.  That’s roughly 10% of our income to each. 

So that’s 20%. Another 30% or so goes to all forms of taxes.  We live on about 50% of our gross income.  And that’s enough.  It’s possible to live on that. Many people live on less.  We don’t suffer.  It’s not a painful thing to do.

Today, all the emphasis is put on income. But what’s really important is what we need, and what we spend. Spiritual wealth is about needing less. 

People find many reasons to spend more: I’m too rushed to take my lunch to work, so I eat out.  I’m used to living in a big house.  My parents will leave me something for retirement. And there are many reasons not to give more: I’ve got pay down my credit card debt, my car debt, my house debt.

Well, that’s true. If you have credit card debt, you need to pay it off and start saving. To reach the end of your life in debt, is sad. But to reach the end of life without generosity is sadder.

I’m quite aware that many of your are very generous.  If you take the total giving by this congregation and divide it by the number of people here on Sunday mornings, and you’ll find that this congregation’s giving is more generous that most other UCC congregations. That’s really something to celebrate.

Without givers there would be no church. But without the church there wouldn’t be as many givers.

The church is all about helping us become more generous and more compassionate. We all need to pay attention to how much we spend, how much we save, and how much we give, and to find a balance among those three that we don’t feel guilty about, a balance we can even feel good about.