It’s (Not) Magic
I was spending a few days with my friend Ruth when Ruth’s cousin came by for the afternoon with her kids and one of her daughter’s friends. As I remember it, Cousin told Ruth and me that she liked to bring the daughter’s friend into situations where she’d meet women like us–independent and self-sufficient–because the friend’s mom was known to regularly tell her, without a hint of irony, “it’s as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man.” Cousin and Ruth and I tutted in judgment of the other mother and in concern for the daughter who, we felt, was being encouraged to sell her love.
I think about that afternoon often. I think about the three of us sitting on the dock of Ruth’s familial lake cabin–a barebones, 1950s cabin that hadn’t been updated much in the ensuing half century but a private lake cabin nonetheless. Ruth and Cousin were married, not to rich men, but to good men, with solid jobs. Ruth and I have three master’s degrees between the two of us. I don’t know Cousin’s exact level of education but she’s a teacher, I think, so has at least an undergraduate degree. All three of us had careers we’d chosen and in which we felt fulfilled. How shamefully easy it was for us to sit in judgment of that absent single mother. How easy for us to declare the supremacy of love over money. Because we had money and the things money can buy–inherited wealth of the solidly middle class variety, stability, education, options.
While that mother’s message–as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one–is far removed from the messages I try to give my daughter, and is, I believe, problematic on many levels, my judgment, those many years ago, was harsh and ill-informed. What did I know of that family’s circumstances and experience? And what did that mother know that I didn’t?
She probably knew (or believed) that money changes everything. That money is magic.
It is easy, and not untrue, to argue that money isn’t everything, that money can’t buy love, that many of the best things in life are free, and all the other things we say to comfort ourselves when we don’t have as much money as we’d like or when we observe others with an abundance of cash and luxury items and feel just the tiniest bit envious. Money is not magic, we might insist. At most it only changes superficial things. However, it is also true–and not quite as easy to say in our capitalist society–that just about every experiment in universal basic income demonstrates that regular cash payments, even quite modest ones, given without restriction on their use, allow recipients to pay off debts and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Perhaps money, like magic, does change everything, quite despite all the years of pithy statements and overly simple wisdom we’ve absorbed.
As soon as we allow it to be more complex than Bob Dylan or Ben Franklin or Jonathan Swift or the Beatles or even the Gospel of Matthew proclaimed in our opening words, it's not one or the other, of course. Neither magic nor not magic. Or with fewer negatives, money is both magic and not magic.
Context matters. Individual circumstances matter. Enough money at the right times changes lots of things, things we can’t dismiss as inconsequential. Hunger transformed into well nourished bodies. Poor credit into good credit into reliable transportation. Lack of medical care into preventative care, inadequate treatment into good health. Eviction notices into mortgage payments. Dreams into tuition payments. But money doesn’t transform loneliness into connection. Terminal into curable. Estrangement into reconciliation. Discontent into satisfaction. Drought into sufficient rainfall. Mourning into rejoicing. Heartbreak into true and lasting love.
Add money and everything changes. Add money and nothing changes. It’s magic. It’s not magic.
As it goes with individuals and families and money, so it goes with churches and money. Sufficient money makes all the difference, especially after a period of financial insecurity. Church leaders breathe sighs of relief. Physical plant upkeep and improvements kick into high gear. Tech enters the twenty-first century. Programs are revived, expanded, and created. Grants may be made to community partners to serve folks living at the margins of society. But if a church is wounded, if members don’t trust their leaders, if members are unkind to one another, if traumatic experiences deep in the church’s past have been buried, but not healed, then no infusion of cash alone will restore the church’s spirit, and bring about congregational health and vitality.
In the past three years or so church leaders here at UUCS have worked hard to restore financial stability after the hits of the pandemic shutdown and the stressors of ministerial transition. That work gave them confidence to offer me a full-time contract beginning in August 2022, even though Reverend Susan’s interim contract had been part time. Last year’s record-breaking stewardship drive brought in enough money for those sighs of relief I mentioned a moment ago, allowed us to hire a lead nursery care provider and an assistant, and made the fund trustees feel secure enough to give the go ahead for new and upgraded HVAC and other projects.
Meanwhile, the spirit of our church is strong, deep, lively, and bold. Visitors are becoming regular attendees and signing the book, the choir outnumbers the chairs in the ‘loft’ some Sundays, the our children and their parents love RE, our social justice ministries–all four of them–offer us more opportunities to help heal the world than any one of us can take up, new members have launched new offerings such as Game Nights and Arts Saturdays–engaging our creativity and deepening connections.
The general health of the congregation, on the heels of last year’s amazing pledge totals, might lead us to believe that this is one of those times and circumstances in which additional money won’t change much of anything. That we don’t need the magic of a strong finish to this year’s stewardship campaign in order to transform uncertainty into possibility or faltering programs into vital ministries. But this is precisely a situation in which money is magic of a whole ‘nother level. The board has plenty of ideas for spending money–from adding a paid part-time tech position to our staff to budgeting for all the worthwhile extras that come up in the course of the year but are currently not in our budget (such as funding for board training and development, and holiday bonuses for our hardworking staff), from increasing the music funding to allow us to bring in more guest musicians to starting a lecture series modeled after the Music Mix concert series. Meeting or exceeding our pledge goal for the 2024-2025 fiscal year will allow us to move from strength to strength, expanding our outreach into the community and deepening the life of the congregation in these and other ways.
A few weeks ago, when I announced the generous gifts that came to the church following the death of member Joe Rice, I spoke a little bit about various ways money comes into our church and how we spend it. That information bears repeating.
Pledge income, funds raised from the concert series and the auction, and rental income from our flat, from weddings and other uses of our buildings, and from the CandleLight concerts, account for the majority of the money we spend on operating expenses each year. Memorial gifts, bequests, and other large donations sometimes go into operating expenses, and sometimes go into the endowment fund or the building fund depending on directions from the donors. Those funds are then used for both long and short term benefit to the church, outside the scope of our general operations.
Like the family in this morning’s story, and the family in one of readings that had savings in the bank downtown and in the crawl space under the house, our church brings in money in more than one way, and saves money in more than one way, and spends money in more than one way. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons I chose A Chair for My Mother as our story today. Because that family spent the mother’s wages on everyday expenses and saved up her tips along with spare change, for a big expense outside their normal budget–a flower-covered chair big enough for mother and daughter to snuggle in together.
I also chose that story because I know what happens in the sequel. The family doesn’t toss the big jar into the recycling bin once they’ve converted the coins into paper money and purchased the chair. They start filling it up all over again. And when it’s full the narrator is allowed to spend it on something special just for her, as a birthday gift. Spoiler alert–she buys a used accordion because she wants to get something the whole family will enjoy. I won’t tell you what happens after that because someday I might want to read you the third book in the series! The point is, we don’t stop with one successful stewardship campaign or one auction that blows by its goal by almost five thousand dollars or one capital campaign when the time comes for major renovations or repairs. We go right back to filling the jar again–for next year’s operating expenses, for the next staff expansion, the next brilliant and transformative ministry idea that emerges from the hearts and minds of this congregation.
Most years I preach my stewardship sermon on the first day of the pledge drive. This year I’m batting clean up, but the message is the same. Money alone is not magic and changes nothing. Money alone won’t guarantee that a young woman who marries someone rich will have a happy and fulfilling life. And money alone certainly won’t, to reference our second reading, extinguish an “absence smoldering/like a childhood fever”, nor quench “some unprotected desire/greed that is both wound and knife”, nor assuage “a failed grief” that drives personal or corporate mergers and acquisition, leveraged buyouts, and hostile takeovers. But money wedded to generosity, given in service of healing a broken world, offered in love, each according to our ability….ah, then money is magic to restore even “a lost radiance” beyond limits of our dreaming. May it be so.
Amen.
[Readings: Accounting by Natasha Trethewey
Mergers and Acquisitions by Edward Hirsch
Story: A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams]