Sermon for 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Yacht Or the Moon
By Samantha LaDue -
Stars & The Moon | Jason Robert Brown
I met a man without a dollar to his name
Who had no traits of any value but his smile
I met a man who had no yearn or claim to fame
Who was content to let life pass him for a while
And I was sure that all I ever wanted
Was a life like the movie stars led
And he kissed me right here, and he said
"I'll give you stars and the moon and a soul to guide you And a promise I'll never go
I'll give you hope to bring out all the life inside you And the strength that will help you grow
I'll give you truth and a future that's twenty times better Than any Hollywood plot."
And I thought, "You know, I'd rather have a yacht."
I met a man who lived his life out on the road
Who left a wife and kids in Portland on a whim
I met a man whose fire and passion always showed Who asked if I could spare a week to ride with him But I was sure that all I ever wanted
Was a life that was scripted and planned
And he said, "But you don't understand? "
"I'll give you stars and the moon and the open highway And a river beneath your feet
I'll give you day full of dreams if you travel my way And a summer you can't repeat
I'll give you nights full of passion and days of adventure No strings, just warm summer rain."
And I thought, "You know, I'd rather have champagne."
I met a man who had a fortune in the bank
Who had retired at age thirty, set for life
I met a man and didn't know which stars to thank And then he asked one day if I would be his wife
And I looked up, and all I could think of
Was the life I had dreamt I would live
And I said to him, "What will you give?"
"I'll give you cars and a townhouse in Turtle Bay
And a fur and a diamond ring
And we'll be married in Spain on my yacht today
And we'll honeymoon in Beijing
And you'll meet stars at the parties I throw at my villas In nice and Paris in June."
And I thought, "Okay."
And I took a breath
And I got my yacht
And the years went by
And it never changed
And it never grew
And I never dreamed
And I woke one day
And I looked around
And I thought, "My God
I'll never have the moon.
“and so it is for she, who lays up treasure for herself, but is not rich toward God.”
For a significant part of my life, I clung to opera not only as my preferred artform, but as my identity. I still use it, in certain circles.
Starting at the age of 14 I toiled, polished and protected that identity—spending hours in a practice room, making an unspoken competition between myself and my peers. I figured that if I put enough effort in, I could prove that I was talented and would earn opportunities to really speak to and connect with people.
I was proud of the intense pressure I placed on myself. To be a stronger and more unique artist, to bring greater breadth and depth of meaning to songs. I wanted so badly to connect to people through this artform that no amount of good enough would be good enough for me. I continued on like this for years. It seemed like a profitable approach. All my work garnered some nice results:
I attended the prestigious Boston University Tanglewood Institute and won or placed highly in a variety of vocal competitions. I had so many things going for me as a result of my work, plus there would be even more opportunities to connect and communicate more things if I kept this up! And, I kept it up-- until my undergraduate Junior recital.
It was a typical upstate New York early spring day, chilly and windy, but still sunny and bright. I arrived at the school with my black velvet ball gown, and a perfect sparkly blue necklace that complimented my eyes, my hair still in rollers. I did my makeup, squinting in the mirror as the sun set behind me, trying to avoid having to turn on the awful fluorescent lighting in the reception room. I stood outside the double doors to the Casadesus Recital Hall stage smiling in anticipation of what would come, as my voice teacher Mary and accompanist Chai Kyou complimented my appearance.
I felt so proud. This was a big moment. I’d worked for and earned this. So many people were there to hear me -- all the professors I admired most, even friends who were attending school several hours away had traveled to see me perform my Junior Recital. The stage doors opened, the applause began, and I stepped into the spotlight.
I was full-speed ahead, anticipating the greatest thrill of my life— zooming through difficult passages, lengthening already long phrases, leveraging a pianissimo that graduate students had told me they envied—all to Make A Point.
…off I went, excitedly anticipating the ways my toil and troubles would pay off with deep, meaningful conversations about the art I was putting into the world!
After the performance, I noticed that everyone’s comments were focused on the surface stuff: the beauty of the voice, the way my dress looked. My heart was sinking fast and all I could think was “who cares about these superficial things?! What about the ART I just made?!” All that work, a total loss. Worthless refuse, totally futile. I was so disappointed. I had been so focused on fullness, but felt so empty.
“So it is for she, who lays up treasure for herself, but is not rich toward God.”
We humans really value things. As early as the age of two, we endow value and meaning on things. By the age of six we exhibit what Psychologists call the “endowment effect”- the overvaluing of things.
Typically, when the term endowment effect shows up, it is being related to our very human desire to protect ourselves from loss. Behavioral studies have also shown that human brains are wired in such a way that the fear of loss will cause us to take more risks and even prime us to act dishonestly.
With brains hard-wired to avoid loss, it’s no wonder some of the greatest philosophers, theologians, mystics, and artists of the ages have put considerable effort into highlighting the loss and emptiness that creeps in when we let the hard-wiring of our brains and egos take over:
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- We ask the Jesus’ of our lives to act as arbiter or judge, and exert force to control another person’s behaviors on our behalf.
- We put forth incredible effort to tear down and re-build our barns, so that we can store more, and maybe someday relax
- We convince ourselves that, by making the right choices and doing the right work, we are making ourselves valuable and deserving and that we can control how others perceive or hear us
- We build relationships with the things we amass; we advocate for things-- often in lieu of people.
I might note here that when I say things, I’m talking about more than objects. I’m talking about identities, our preferred worship times, parking availability, seating arrangements, protection of our territories and idols, whether or not we feel someone’s followed our version of socially acceptable behavior and are deserving of the help they seek or simply need…the list goes on and on
We dump such effort and energy into protecting the things we endow with value. So powerful is our brain’s anxiety-fueled desire to exert control and avoid a sense of loss that we are blinded to the ways we are walking ourselves right into the greatest loss of all-- We are not rising up into life when we let our brains take over like this, rather, we are grinding our souls into further emptiness and alienation.
So, what are you saying here, Sam? We’re all co-conspirators in a massive consumption-based economy where we’re doomed to hell because not a one of us is giving all we have away for God’s sake? #ThankGoodnessForDivineMercy ?
Nah, dudes. #RenderUntoCaesarWhatIsCaesars . We live in an earthly world, where earthly things happen.
When I read this weeks’ texts, I was reminded of something a Jesuit Priest and scholar, Fr. Felix Just, S.J., taught me: Jesus’ parables are built with a “Huh?!” moment. The “huh?!” is often not obvious on the surface- but there is usually some kind of contradiction in the mix, and the contradiction is, typically, where the heart of the message is for us.
The contradiction I found in this week’s gospel revolves around fullness and emptiness. And, the emptiness idea, in particular spoke to me.
Buddhism has an engaging and, on the surface, a contradictory, Jesus-style “Huh?!” about Emptiness. I like the way Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains this concept. He says, “A flower is made up of non-flower elements- the whole cosmos is in the flower, it is full of everything, except one thing: a separate identity. Likewise, we are empty of only one thing: a separate, independent self. We cannot be by ourselves, alone. Emptiness means empty of a separate identity. Empty of a separate self.”
Despite doing all the things and working hard as I could, I discovered, and continue to discover, that working the hardest won’t give me the meaningful life I seek. Working harder doesn’t make people look beyond the surface, working harder won’t make people hear me. I don’t get to control my world and my experiences through toil. In fact, all that work only brought me continued hunger, and more emptiness. There’s that word again- emptiness. I worked harder, focused on fullness…and I felt empty.
Colossians tells us today that, there is no “slave and free”- in other words, that we are empty of a separate self. That smells an awful lot like Buddhism’s concept of emptiness, doesn’t it? Emptiness is full of everything, except a separate identity
In Jason Robert Brown’s song The Stars and The Moon, the singer expresses her desire for a secure life, full of all she could ever want—she overvalues being rich and equates it with preserving a lifetime of options for herself. But- by the end of the song she realizes that though her choices led her to all she thought she ever wanted, they left her...empty. You get the sense by the way Jason Robert Brown wrote the accompaniment for this piece that her realization is not the end for her. It’s not too late- The accompaniment drops out on the word moon, as though this woman is choosing to enter this new emptiness, and then the accompaniment starts right back up again and the song finishes with a chord that sounds like what contentment feels like to me. A nice, artistic gesture indicating that this woman’s realization of emptiness perhaps led her right into fulfillment. And there’s that contradiction again. In this example, this singer too, was focused on fullness and landed with emptiness—but, in a twist that works with Buddhism’s philosophy, her realization of emptiness perhaps leads her to fullness.
The men in the gospel reading sought fulfillment and fullness by working and advocating for getting their things in order. In their own way, they discovered they would not receive what it was they thought they had earned. They both did the right things in socially acceptable ways, and yet would come up empty. Focused on fullness, they landed with emptiness.
Jesus said, “So it is for those who lay up treasure for themselves, but are not rich with God”
We are the people of the Gospel, we are the person in the song-- and they are us. We intuitively seek fullness, joy, love and light, just as they did. We want to dwell richly with God, yet our anxiety-driven loss-averse brains often lead us to deny ourselves by focusing on fullness—by placing a lot of value and a false sense of security on the things.
God doesn’t judge our human failings here, God doesn’t have a problem with earthly goods here. God has a problem with the mistreatment of our own selves by denying ourselves that which we can’t earn, but is freely given: life.
Fulfillment is found in the task of realizing that we are empty of separate identity—but full to the brim with, as our Buddhist neighbors put it, the entire cosmos. Our Christian language might say that we Christians only find fullness of life when we fully realize that Christ is within all -including us.
So, what’s the message this week? The message I got is that God is asking us to wake up to a most extraordinary contradiction: It’s only through focusing on emptiness that we’re going to arrive at fullness, because emptiness is not empty, it’s actually full of the entire cosmos.
We toil tirelessly, focused on the things we place value on. There is nothing wrong with that work, as long as we are able to mindfully override our brain’s instinctive desire to avoid perceived loss to the point where we’ll lose sight and deny ourselves the ultimate in satisfaction and meaningful existence—dwelling richly with God.
In the moments when, just like the woman in Jason Robert Brown’s Song, we wake up and look around, and think “My God” …I hope our eyes will be opened, and we’ll recognize that this is a moment of hope and opportunity.
Will we seek what is above, or below?
Will we keep reaching for the yacht? Or, will we reach up, for the moon?
Samantha LaDue
Director for Music and Liturgy
Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, Aug. 3&4, 2019
