February 22, 2026

“That’s a No!”: Reflections on Wealth, Invincibility, and Power

I’ll never forget one occasion when I went into a gift shop to buy a gift for someone (I don’t remember what or for whom).  I do remember that I was admiring some gift I thought would be ideal.  I decided to buy it and picked up one that was boxed, opening the box to make sure the gift was intact before purchasing it.  At that, the owner of the store, an elderly gentleman, shouted at me from clear across the store, “That’s a no!”  I turned and stared at him, wondering if he thought he were my father, or that I might be five years old.  I simply put the box back and left the store, never to return.

I think something similar happened to Christian churches somewhere along the way.  They got so caught up in purveying their lists of sins and saying to people, “That’s a no!” that a lot of folks just walked out and never looked back.  So, churches like ours realized that the gospel is not about beating people over the head with all those “no-no’s”; we emphasize the positive side of the gospel, and celebrate diversity.  In a “non-creedal” church like ours, “soul liberty” is cherished: each believer has the right and responsibility to work out his or her own faith without being told what to believe.

These principles are very dear to me, but when I read scriptural legends like those this morning of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or Jesus being tempted by Satan, I realize they are there to make a point about faithfulness, and I am forced to ask myself, and all of you: Is there anything that we in this church say “No” to?  I think these stories from Genesis and Matthew are instructive.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s attention was directed to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were told, “That’s a no!”  But this quaint little tale is about more than recognizing nakedness and putting on fig leaves.  The temptation presented by the serpent was to be like gods and have a kind of ultimate, divine knowledge.  It is a very common temptation.  I succumb to it constantly.  I catch myself believing that the way I see things, the “truth” that I know, is ultimate truth.  Anyone who sees it differently is obviously ignorant, deluded, or simply ignoring the facts.  It is this very temptation, and the degree to which people succumb to it that leads to ugly divisiveness, and in the extreme, to wars and crusades.  It is perhaps the chief human failing throughout history: the tendency to assume ultimate authority – in essence, to try to be gods.

To that temptation this church says, “No!”  Even as we find ourselves, like Adam and Eve, repeatedly succumbing to it, we nonetheless affirm that it is the spirit of soul liberty that causes us to value diversity, and in turn forces us into a posture of humility and rigorous self-questioning.  We reject all forms of idolatry, and that includes placing our own minds on the throne of eternal truth.

If there were any regular human being on this planet who might be given right to a kind of divine authority, we could suppose it would have been Gandhi.  But he was wise enough to know his own limitations.  I love the story, whether apocryphal or not, of a troubled mother who had a daughter who was addicted to sweets.  One day she approached Gandhi, explained the problem to him and asked whether he might talk to the young girl.  “Bring your daughter to me in three weeks’ time and I will speak to her.”  After three weeks, the mother brought her daughter to him.  He took the young girl aside and spoke to her about the harmful effects of eating sweets excessively and urged her to abandon her bad habit.  The mother thanked Gandhi for this advice and then asked him: “But why didn’t you speak to her three weeks ago?”  Gandhi replied, “Because three weeks ago, I was still addicted to sweets.”¹

The tale of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness is also instructive.  His first temptation was to break his fast by making bread from a stone.  This is the age old desire to get something for nothing, to win the lottery, to make it big.  And in our world that usually means trampling on others to make one’s fortune – or, to paraphrase Jesus, trying to live only for one’s bread, and ignoring the truths embedded in the Gospel.

Parker Palmer has an excellent take on this particular temptation.  He writes, “Human nature . . . seems to regard perpetual scarcity as the law of life.  Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply.  If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. . . . The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear.  If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. . . . We create scarcity by fearfully accepting it as law, and by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.²

Palmer has put his finger on a fundamental distortion of the human condition. And to this we say, “No!”  This church stands for love and for justice.  That stance means that we will not give up on the ideal of equality in opportunity and in resources.  It means that we are committed to giving of our own resources for the sake of others, and sharing in our abundance in scorn of the fears of scarcity.

The second temptation was for Jesus to throw himself off the temple tower to demonstrate that he would not perish.  This is a temptation to which many young people succumb.  You see them on the highways, driving as if they were invincible.  But they are not entirely alone.  It’s easy to begin taking our living for granted, until we become so careless or calloused that we fail to recognize the mortality of not only ourselves but of other people and of institutions.  It is a simple mental trick to imagine that somehow everything’s in the hands of the Almmighty, so I don’t need to take responsibility – or, as Jesus put it, to put God to the test.

To this abandonment of responsibility for ourselves and for a world of brothers and sisters this church says, “No!”  We take up the responsibility for the advancement of the kingdom.  We say that the hands to do the work of divinity in this world are our hands, and so we strive to do Christ’s work in the world: to bring food to the hungry, and to work, and witness for peace.

And Jesus’s final temptation was to worship Satan in order to gain temporal power over all the world.  The lust for such power has ruled the hearts of men for millennia (and I do say “men” because we seem to have predominated in this one).  And so often the avenue to gaining power is to, if not worshiping evil, at least give a wink and a nod to it.  I love the scene in the TV series West Wing in which a campaign consultant is trying to convince the President in a meeting to abandon his principles on an issue in order to win votes.  Toby, the Communications Director, looks at him and says, “I just figured out who you were.”  The consultant jumps in, “He’s going to say Satan.”  Toby replies, “No.  You’re the guy that runs into 7-Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.”

To those who abandon fairness and compassion, or prostitute themselves to evil for the sake of gaining power over others, this church says, “No!”  We will not run into the Seven Eleven to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.  We will speak truth to power – or, in our case, at least the closest we feel capable of coming to truth. That phrase, “speak truth to power” was coined by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in a 1942 letter to the New York Monthly Meeting.  Offering his anti-war sentiments, he wrote: “the primary function of a religious society is to ‘speak the truth to power.’ . . . Let us avoid the possibilities of spiritual suicide.”³  Born in 1912 and living in an era of unbelievable repression, Rustin spent his life speaking truth to power as an activist for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights.  In 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Medal of Freedom.  For us, that speech to power may involve writing letters to congressional representatives, signing petitions, taking part in marches and protests, or contributing to causes we believe in.

This is a church that stands for tolerance, openness, dialog, and freedom of conscience.  But, as we begin this season of Lenten soul-searching, if we are going to be honest in our allegiance to the gospel, we must acknowledge that there are some things to which we say, “That’s a no!”

¹ Found in: Ron Rolheiser, Internet column, “Our inability to cast out demons,” October 2, 2005, http://ronrolheiser.com/our-inability-to-cast-out-demons/#.WLb8oeQizcs

² Parker Palmer, “There Is a Season,” in Paul Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, Basic Books, 2014, p.157.

³ In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, Michael G. Long, ed., City Lights Publishers, 2012, p. 2.

(Although Rustin attributes the quote to future ACLU president Patrick Malin, researches have found this was not Malin’s phrase.)