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February 14, 2010

The Rev. Dr. Daniel P. Matthews, rector of Trinity Wall Street from 1987-2004, on the privilege of giving, how to get through to people about stewardship, and the importance of the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

What kind of work have you been doing in last couple of years?
I've been fortunate to have some preaching assignments. It's fun to go various places and share the ministry of Trinity Wall Street and St. Paul's Chapel with others. Most of those sermons have to do with stewardship; somehow, I've gotten labeled as a preacher about stewardship. Most clergy don't like to preach on stewardship so they bring in someone else.

So you don't mind preaching on stewardship?
I love preaching on stewardship. I think it's a very important topic, theologically, but also a very important topic for our culture, where there is such greed. The concept of stewardship has just been practically lost because of intense greed and materialism that we all face.

In your sermon this morning, you mentioned "the privilege of giving" as compared with the privilege of getting. What do you think the Church needs to be saying to the world about that?
We're a people right now who have a myth that privilege is a part of life and that having more than you need is part of life. Greed, therefore, is a word we don't like. Very seldom do you hear the word greed. And yet greed is one of the seven deadly sins and it is close to the central theme of our culture. We don't use the word and we don't like the word, but we are deeply greedy. We all think we need more. As if somehow, a little bit more will make you happy.

It's very difficult to live in a nation that continually wants more and have the Church come along and say "you've got enough." It isn't a popular idea.

Do you think the Church is doing a good job at saying that?
No.

The need to speak about it is there, but the ears to hear are not there. And therefore most preachers find it not only difficult to speak about, they find the price they pay is too high.

Do you think since the economic crisis people are more amenable to hearing it?
You know, some of us thought that would happen more than it has. Some of us thought that it was severe enough, the Great Recession as it's being called, that it would begin to change – whether it's laws or behavior or value systems.

My hunch is – not yet. It might, it still might. We are so inundated with material possessions and we are so privileged that we can't imagine letting that go. It's a tough time for stewardship.

What advice do you have for other preachers about how to preach on an unpopular topic?
If you can be funny, if you can be lighthearted, then they might laugh at themselves and say, "Oops, that's about me," without having pointed a bony finger and saying "It's about you."

I try to use in stewardship a lot of humor. I am more able to change if you help me laugh about my motives than if you judge me or condemn me. Humor for me is a very significant part of a stewardship teaching session or sermon.

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up in a year and a half. As the rector who saw Trinity through 9/11, what do you think has changed in New York since then?
I think there's a deep sense among New Yorkers that something happened to us that really did change us. It really affected us deeply. I think the average New Yorker is deeply sensitive and aware of 9/11. It made us weigh who we were and where we are.

What do you think the Church has to say to the world as we approach this day?
The nature of the Christian tradition has deep roots in accepting and forgiving. And one of the hard things for us to do, in our national psyche, is to see the enemy as someone who we need to encounter, embrace, love, listen to, accept. That's a very hard thing to do. But it's at the very core of the Christian faith; that's what the cross is all about. So to talk about that is hard to do. How do we begin to listen to Islam? How do we begin to pay attention to where they are and why they are angry with us and why that anger is so deep?

Whenever you forgive, you always feel like you're selling out. Jesus knew better: you need to forgive. For about a week after 9/11 we hadn't made up our minds to retaliate. There was a marvelous sense that the nation was asking: what does this mean? Who are we? We really questioned what we should be, how can we forgive. On the 10th anniversary, we need to say the same thing we said that first week. That's what we need to return to.

--Interviewed by Nicole Seiferth, assistant editor for website and parish publications.