"Epiphany" Courtesy Wall Street

January 4, 2009

Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

When was the last time you had an "epiphany?" When did the heavens open, the light of revelation beaming down, flooding you with insight and guidance . . . your eyes opened for the first time . . . an experience you could almost, would almost have to, describe as "miraculous," the very light of God . . . an "ephiphany" if not on par with the Magi and their wandering star at least in that ballpark?

If you tell me you have that sort of thing happening, say weekly, I would respectfully have to doubt your experience, and suggest perhaps some medication would be in order. Even in the Bible where angels seem to appear on every page, they really don't. People with such visions of angels - Jacob's ladder filled with them, and of course Joseph's and Mary's angelic visitors, the young man in dazzling white at the empty tomb, or St. Paul knocked off his horse by Jesus, no less - these are few and far between - a handful, really, over the course of a several thousand years. The rest of the time - most of the time - people lived with the same questions we do, and had to be content with more ordinary means of answering them. Our "epiphanies" are less dramatic, perhaps, but can be just as life-changing as an angelic visitor.

And sometimes those epiphanies arise out of the most secular of venues. Like, Wall Street. As we begin this New Year we are faced with an economic climate that people who know about such things have to go way back to 1929 to find any precedents, to find any parallels. That which we thought could never happen - the collapse of such financial giants as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and on and on - what we told ourselves couldn't happen, has happened. And we don't know what may happen yet.

If you had money in the stock market, as most of us do in pension funds or retirement IRAs, you have today 30 to 40% less saved for retirement than you did a year ago - 35.4% to be exact if it's in the UCC pension account. Of course, the more money one had, the more one has lost - unless you were among the few who pulled out the market before the bottom fell out, and if you did - congratulations, but please keep that to yourself! Just pretend to be suffering like the rest of us, and you'll get along with us much better!

In recent interview [Speaking of Faith Podcast]Rachel Naomi Reman, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom talked about this economic crisis as a spiritual crisis, a moral one. She calls it that because of the questions people are asking because of these unprecedented, for us, situation. Looking at their monthly 401(k) statement, and perhaps bidding goodbye to the hopes and dreams and plans those numbers are erasing, many are having to ask in a way we haven't before the real questions of life:

In whom or in what do I trust, really trust for my future?

What will sustain me, feeding my soul through uncertain times?

What do I really need in order to live?

These, she says, are profoundly spiritual questions - caused by the sudden and unexpected reversal of monetary fortunes, thoroughly mundane, this-worldly matters to be sure, but nevertheless provoking the most fundamental of spiritual questions. And these questions can be the first steps along a new spiritual path. What can I trust . . . What will sustain me, nourish my soul . . . . What do I really need - not what do I want, but what do I need in order to live?

These are not new questions. Religion constantly asks them of us - we pose them here in our worship: what will make us happy, really - is it the things we own, or the people we love? Do we trust in our goods, or in our God? Men and women, Jesus said, do not live merely by the bread the eat - the physical food we take in - but by the word of God, the truth of God who is spirit, God who is within us and among us. Questions of trust, of sustaining one's soul, of how we use our worldly wealth to serve not just ourselves but others in need - these are religious questions. And the silver lining of the present economic crisis is that for the first time in a long time people - even religious people like us - are asking in a new and more sincere way these basic questions of life - the answers to which can lead to a deeper, more compassionate, better way of living; to a much deeper connection to a larger reality.

Such questions if asked honestly, can change our lives, send us in a different direction - to a place where we can live according to our values, not the values of the culture, but our own genuine values, the values that we find revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus. Next Sunday's Life-long Learning topic - "Countercultural Living" - is exactly what we need to be talking about as we look for new ways to live in the light of the new economic reality of the world.

Rachel Remen says that a spiritual emptiness has been around a long time; we have too easily bought into the world's idea of what we must have in order to be happy. And now, having been relieved so abruptly of what we thought would make us happy, we can address the spiritual emptiness of our day, of our lives.

And that, my friends, is good news. That can be the occasion for an epiphany - a revelation, a pulling back of the curtain that has blinded us to what life can be, and show us a new way, a brighter way, a lighter way of living. In this New Year let us, perhaps as we have not been able to before, ask ourselves just what is "the good life," and what changes can we make that would allow us to live it?

Anna Quindlen wrote in a recent Newsweek essay entitled "Why Did I Buy All This Stuff?" about how many of us have, because we could, too easily bought into the false notion that the more I own the happier I will be. The reality of the new economics lets us - perhaps forces us - to question that. Jesus and many other religious teachers throughout the world and throughout time have already told us that the measure of a person has nothing to do with the measure of their wealth. The great opportunity of this year is that we may be willing now to listen.

There are many in the world, of course, for which this economic reversal raises not just spiritual questions, but very real material ones too: How can I eat today, where can I live, how can I obtain healthcare, will my children survive? As we who have had so much can better order our lives, we will be better able to care for those who have so little.

Angels will probably not be appearing to us in the New Year; a star will probably not lead us out of our troubles. But the light of God's grace will yet guide us to a new way of being in this world. Let us follow that light, and so find the way that is peace. Amen.