Sermon by Rev. David Roth

Sermon: Here’s an interesting paradox, to my mind, where it says in the Lord’s Word, that we’re not to be too concerned about worldly goods, or worldly things, to the point where it sounds like we should just give it all up, give it all away to other people, have no possessions at all. Things like “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” The Lord also says, “If you want to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. And come, and follow Me.”

He also says, “If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.” He says, “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

All these teachings are pretty much about giving it up, right? Why, then, does the Lord care enough about these things to have a commandment about not stealing? If it didn’t matter, why do we have this commandment? It seems the lesson is just - give it up. Give up those worldly things.

Yet we know this is one of the Lord’s commandments. You shall not steal. And we all know the difference between giving something away, and having it taken from us. If anyone here has ever been robbed, you know what that’s like. You know the violation that it is, to have something taken from you without your permission. We were robbed in North Boulder, our house, in ’98, when we lived there. They didn’t get a lot; they got some bananas, and my wife’s purse. But she had keys in it, and a wallet - so you have to change all the credit cards, get the house re-keyed, the car re-keyed, and so on. But the real problem for us was, it felt like a real violation of your space – like trust and your home, your safety and so on. So there’s a clear violation - it’s something disorderly and evil, and it hurts people.

Well, in our study of this commandment I thought about it – oh good, I don’t have a problem with this one. I don’t steal. Right? Finally, I get a break. Because we’ve been working hard during our Spiritual Growth Campaign … For those of you who don’t know about that, we’ve been working on this campaign called, Rise Above It: Spiritual Growth Through the Ten Commandments. So each week we’ve been taking one of the Lord’s commandments and talking about not only the literal meaning but also the spiritual meaning. For example, murder is not just about killing people, but about killing their spirit, criticizing them, acting with anger and so on. So, we’ve been working on that – no lusting, no criticizing, praying for help and trying to appreciate people, and so on. And that’s a lot of work.

So I started to read about this commandment, and all about the various forms of stealing, and I started to get uncomfortable. I started to squirm and sweat and feel like – uh oh, I have a real issue with this one.

There’s all kinds of possibilities you can think of just in the realm of stealing – things that we can do that are actual theft. How often do people take money by - not directly taking money from a company - but working slowly, or padding their hours. Or taking extended lunch breaks, and so on. Taking from the company that way. Or not declaring everything on taxes, saying, “Oh well…” Hmmm.

I remember in college, my roommate taught me about this laundry machine in the building that was the one to use because you could put your coins in there, the quarters in there, and if you pushed it in just far enough until it clicked, then you could pull it out again and get your coins out, and the machine would start. Was that stealing? I didn’t think so. At the time I thought it was great! “This is wonderful!”

How about borrowing things and not returning them. I look at my bookshelves at home and go, “I don’t remember owning that book. Oh yeah, I borrowed that. I haven’t given that one back yet.” Or videos, CDs, all kinds of things that we borrow but we either forget about, don’t return, forget that we took them.

Or cheating on tests, or cheating on things. I didn’t think of myself as someone who would cheat on a test, but in high school there was a course, a history course, that we took, that you just knew from the years leading up to it that this was a course that you could cheat on, and no one would get caught. It was like, expected, to cheat. Right? And you were supposed to write notes and just keep them to yourself – but it was sort of hush-hush that it was okay. Well, my friend and I got caught cheating in this history class. It was terrible! Like, I felt betrayed, violated, because I was supposed to be able to get away with it. Obviously poor judgment on my part.

Or, we used to work in a snack bar in high school, volunteers from the students that would work at this snack bar. And students would come in and buy things. And you’d kind of pitch candy bars to your friends when the coordinator wasn’t looking – “oh, you’re my friend, let me give you something for free.” So I was kind of taking from that snack bar for other people’s benefit.

How about making personal calls on a business line, or playing computer games, or internet games, on your computer while you’re at work? How about when we think certain kinds of stealing are okay - because it’s a big corporation, right? They won’t notice, or it doesn’t matter. Or it’s the government – we can take from them. That’s not really stealing, it’s mine anyway. Or – they’re rich; they’ve got a lot. Why would it matter?

One example from the Lord’s Word is King Saul being commanded to go and destroy the Amalekites, I mean, just wipe out everything, the sheep, the oxen – take it all, and kill it. To keep none of it. Which in the Lord’s Word, by the way, corresponds to, in our own life, looking at our own evils, our own disorders, and shunning them completely, not keeping some of it behind. So it’s not about how we should go and murder things, but it’s about how we should prevent those – work on that disorder fully.

So Samuel, the prophet, comes to Saul, and Saul had actually kept some oxen, he kept some lambs, behind. He thought, “The Lord won’t miss these. It’s okay. There’s lots, right? Why would it matter?” So Samuel comes and accuses him. He says, “Why didn’t you keep the commandment that the Lord gave you?”

He said, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” I love this story because it says, “What is the bleating of sheep in my ears, and the lowing of oxen that I hear?” Can you imagine Saul standing there, “I did it all.” And then you hear in the background “Maa…aaa…aaa. Mrrr…rrr”. “Oh – those sheep! Oh, was that wrong? Was I….. ? Oh!” See how he sort of manipulates the system, to get what he wants? It happens in the Old Testament.

There are all kinds of examples we could talk about. You probably have one in your own life, things that you’ve kind of done under the radar screen. Not really stealing, because – you know, it’s not a big deal. Well, another way to state this commandment is to say, “Don’t take what’s not yours, or don’t take what’s not your own.” And it’s pretty easy to delineate between what is ours and what is somebody else’s. At least when we’re talking about physical stuff, or things.

It’s not so easy when we’re talking about the realm of feelings and the realm of human relationships. Many of us are thieves, and we don’t know it. We steal from other people many things, and we steal from the Lord even more things.

Well, what am I talking about?

I’m talking about what the Lord calls “spiritual theft.” Listen to this passage from the Writings for the New Church. It says that “in the spiritual sense stealing means depriving others of the truths they get from their faith. This is the effect of falsities and heretical beliefs. It is taking away from the people their means of salvation, the truths of faith.” So strictly speaking this is talking about messing with people’s belief systems. Ever try to convince someone that you’re right and they’re wrong? I think that kind of enters into this realm as well. Especially about spiritual things.

But the example they always use is about the priest. So this one’s more about me, I suppose. It’s the idea that you’re not supposed to lead people, by means of falsities, to yourself, as a priest. Lead them to the Lord by means of truth, but don’t lead them to yourself. Don’t lead them to praise you, or admonish you in some way. It’s about leading people to the Lord.

Well, another part of this, though, to consider - for all of us - is stealing the spiritual life away from people. How do we steal spiritual life away from other people? Well, think about verbal abuse, for example. Stealing someone’s sense of worth by the words that we use. Or their dignity. Or stealing life from them by criticizing them. Or stealing our young boys’ ability to feel, and have intimacy as adults, when they grow up – or as children even. We tell them that they have to feel a certain way. “Big boys don’t cry.”

Maybe you were told that as a child, or maybe you taught that to your own kids. We teach them that it’s not okay to have feelings so they shut down and become incapable of intimacy.

There’s actually a survey that was conducted that – the result was that, they said, by age three or four most boys are shut down emotionally. They’ve just been shut down because of all the feedback that they hear – everything that comes to them. So they don’t know how to feel any more.

We’re stealing the boys from our daughters, teaching them that they have to please others or serve them – not freely, but because it’s the thing that they have to do as women. They’re only as important as they are an attachment to somebody else who has a position. And the survey – that same survey – talks about girls by age twelve or thirteen have lost their voice. They’ve lost their power, their ability, their own sense of self.

How about stealing usefulness and dignity away from our elders, by separating them from our lives, or locking them away from normal life because we don’t know how to deal with it? Don’t want to deal with it. Not ready to take care of that responsibility.

Or stealing peace of mind and innocence from our teenagers. Making them grow up too fast. The onslaught of sex and violence in the media. Stealing their hope.

And - following upon last week’s commandment – about not committing adultery, or the idea of honoring marriage. So, in what way do we steal from marriage? In what ways do we do that? Being cynical about marriage perhaps is one way of thinking of that - instead of talking about the good parts of it, that you appreciate. Being cynical and saying things like, “Aw, my ball-and-chain….” Or, “the old lady” – you know, things that people say, like that, that degrade that relationship or degrade that institution.

What kinds of things do we do that steal from the marriage, steal strength from our marriage? Steal attention, and love, and energy from it? If you’re always at work, work all the time, don’t spend any time at home. Or go out all the time with your friends, don’t spend any time engaging in the relationship. Or using internet pornography, for example. Stealing your affection from your relationship, and polluting your perspective.

And there are many other things you can think about that would take energy away from that relationship and divert it to something else; to steal from that. Or robbing the children of their innocence. Making them grow up too fast as well. Making them have to make mature decisions. Dealing with media that they’re not ready for. Or dealing with our own anger and impatience. And we unleash that on them. And bring them down.

So that’s all very depressing, isn’t it. Well, the inner and deep-seated reason for this commandment is that it demands that we acknowledge something about our relationship to the Lord, and about human nature. The Lord says, “Without Me you can do nothing.” What about….? No, “without Me you can do nothing.” The Lord is the source of our life. Everything that comes to us that is good and true, loving or wise, is from the Lord.

“I am the Vine, you are the branches.” You saw what happens when the leaf gets detached from the Vine. It withers and dies.

Everything we have is from the Lord. We steal from the Lord when we take credit for things that are the Lord’s, and aren’t ours. Notice how the Ten Commandments begin. “I am the Lord your God who brought out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” We are not the ones that brought ourselves out of bondage in Egypt. We don’t bring ourselves out of slavery, out of addiction. We participate in that, but the Lord is the One that frees us. He has the power to do that. We don’t. We don’t have power from ourselves. The Lord has all the power, all the strength. But He’s giving it to us freely. The Lord is flowing into us all the time with all of His love, all of His power, all of His mercy, all of His strength. And He’s offering it freely to us. He’s just asking us to acknowledge where it’s coming from. Because when we don’t, when we take credit for it, we spoil it, we ruin it. So if we can live that way, we don’t have to worry about not having enough strength to overcome the things we’re facing in our life, or deal with the temptations in our life.

All of us in some way or another, I bet, try to control things. We try to control our own life, we try to control other people’s lives, we try to control situations and outcomes. And if you’re like me - I stink at it. I can’t do it because it can’t be done. You can’t really control. I can’t control myself, let alone somebody else. So how are we going to control other people and their outcomes? So we need to acknowledge that. Let go of that sense of, you know, “I am in charge of the world.”

We can take it too far, to the point where you believe you have no self-worth and you’re no good at anything. To the point of self-loathing, where you feel like “I am no good. I am nothing.” In a negative sense you’re stealing from yourself and robbing the Lord of the ability to bless you, and give you delight in your talents and in your uses. We all have special gifts, we all have talents that the Lord has blessed us with. We’re all different because of what we bring to the common whole, the common good. And to not bring that forward is robbing everybody of that talent, and ourself of the joy of doing it. But if we give that credit back to the Lord, we don’t have to worry about, “Am I being too prideful here? Am I being too full of myself, of taking credit here?” Because we do that, as a practice.

I had a friend in Theological School who was from Ghana and one thing they did, apparently a cultural thing, I suppose, when someone praised them they wouldn’t say “Thank you.” They would go – he’d brush his hand against the side of his head and snap up, meaning, “That’s from the Lord.” Yep. I think it’s a beautiful little thing to do. You don’t have to do it physically but just, when someone compliments you or says something nice, say, “Thank you, Lord. That was from the Lord.” You don’t have to walk around, “Oh yeah, well that was from the Lord.” I think that’s not what He has in mind. Just the simple process of “Thanks, Lord”.

Well, a really important spiritual law that helps with this is – the Lord teaches in His Word that all good flows into us from the Lord, through heaven, and we are receptacles of that. We’re in equilibrium to choose to accept it or reject it. On the other hand, too, all evil, all negativity, is flowing into us from hell, from spirits there. And we’re in the middle, in freedom to accept or reject those things. And the Lord is saying, “You are not the source of the good, and you’re not the source of the evil.” We often can say, “Yeah, I’m not the source of good,” because we have some humility about that. But we tend to attach ourselves and say, “Oh, I’m so bad! These thoughts I had, and these feelings I had! I’m so awful!” The Lord is saying, “No, you’re not. You’re letting them in to yourself, and that’s why you’re responding in a bad way, but you’re not the source of those. Let go of that. You are not the origin of those feelings, and those thoughts. They flow into you and you have the freedom to accept them or to reject them.”

The Lord says if we knew this, and we practiced it, all of the evil that flowed into us would be diverted. It wouldn’t stay with us, and all of the good that flowed into us would stay with us and would become ours, because we wouldn’t take credit for it and spoil it. If we identify with it we steal it, and get what we don’t want and miss out on what we do want. So I ask you to practice that in your own mind. Just say, “Oh, that’s from hell, I don’t want that.” However you want to phrase that. “That’s from the Lord. Thank you.” If you practice that, your life will change dramatically, I promise you.

Sometimes we wonder why we all have to struggle in our spiritual lives. Or times when we hit rock bottom and we feel a lot of hurt and pain. Well, the Lord allows us to feel pain and frustration and hurt because it has the ability to break us open to the truth. Now, let me say the Lord doesn’t cause bad things to happen. He would prefer that nothing bad would ever have to happen. But he permits it to happen if good can come from it. If growth can come from it.

The problem can seem that Him permitting things can seem like Him causing them to happen. But that’s not true at all. If the Lord sees there’s no other way for good to come to this person, or for him to wake up and smell the roses – then, “I’ll permit this to happen”, so that they might have an opportunity to see things differently. And you’ve probably all had that moment in your life when someone we care about maybe gets sick, or dies, and how that shifts our thinking. Or how something bad happens to us and it changes our life because we realize, “Wow, I need to turn things around.” Or maybe you had an addiction that brought you to the point, just the lowest floor in the building, and you wake up. “Wow, I can’t go any lower than this. I need to do something differently.” The Lord would prefer that didn’t have to happen, but if that’s the only way, He’ll permit it to happen. And it brings Him pain to see us in pain, but He knows that it can help us.

The Lord says in the Writings for the New Church that “the angels have nothing of wisdom and intelligence from themselves. They themselves openly confess, indeed they’re indignant if anyone ascribes to them anything of wisdom and intelligence, for they know and perceive that this would be to take away from the Divine that which is Divine, and to claim for themselves that which is not theirs, and thus to incur the crime of spiritual theft.” If someone compliments them, it’s like then, again, “It’s the Lord doing this. Thank you.”

So our tendency can be to fight for control and to make the world fit into our little system. I think we do that to try to feed a void, or an ache that we find in ourselves. And by doing it, though, we steal power away from the Lord and from other people.

But the ironic thing is that the more we try to do it, the more we end up feeling empty, and alone, and lost. Again, acknowledge that all evil is flowing into you from hell, and just let it go. “It’s not me. That’s not me. I have a choice here. I’m going to say, ‘No.’” You want to do it, I acknowledge that. You may really want to do what’s being suggested. But you have the power to say, “No, I don’t.” (You don’t have the power. But you will get the power. Let me clarify that.) And all good is from the Lord. When it comes in, say “Thank you.”

He wants to give it. He wants you to be joy, as we talked about, so that your joy may be full, or complete. So thank Him for it. And don’t spoil it with your own sense of merit, your own sense of self-greatness. Because when we steal we’re robbing from ourselves, we’re really robbing our own sense of happiness. It reminds us of that part of the prayer, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” If you have trouble with this just say that over and over in your head. “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.” Everything good, true, and loving is from the Lord.

It may not feel like we have the ability to give up control in our lives, but we do. The Lord says we’re all free, we’re all in this state of equilibrium, and any moment we can choose what’s right or we can choose what’s wrong. We have that ability. And the Lord is flowing into you with His power, to give you the strength to stop. You just have to ask for it, and thank Him for it when it shows up. And work at letting go of control, and letting God be God. If we think that we’re God, and we’re not letting God be God, then we’re shutting Him out of the situation, and not letting Him do what He does well.

Before we were talking about humility. That song that we sing says, “You are the Potter, I am the clay.” That idea that we are shaped by the Lord. We’re in His hands, and He wants to shape us into something beautiful. I love what it says, in Isaiah, “Surely you have things turned around.” Listen to what it says, “Shall the Potter be esteemed as the clay, or shall the thing made say of Him who made it, ‘He did not make me.’?” Imagine the vessel saying to the Potter, “You didn’t make me,” after I just spun you on the wheel. Or shall the thing formed say of Him who formed it, “He has no understanding, He doesn’t know what He’s doing.”

We really do that in relation to the Lord sometimes. We say, “Oh yeah, You didn’t make me. I’m fine. I’ll figure it all out on my own.” It doesn’t work. And we know it doesn’t work. The Lord can help us to step away from that, if we ask for His help, and work with Him.