Each Week Fr. Scott's sermons may be read here on line.
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – June 27, 2010
Not being much of a gambler, I have never had occasion to enter a casino, be it housed in a palace in Las Vegas or in a riverboat in Aurora. Not only do I prefer keeping my discretionary funds close at hand, I am convinced that were I to walk through the doors of any of these establishments, I would immediately set off some sort of alarm, alerting the staff that they have a live one on their hands, and I would walk out the door without a penny in my pocket. So, unable to draw on my own experience in these matters, I have to rely on the witness of others, in this case a reporter for the Daily Herald named Joseph Ryan.
“On a sunny Wednesday afternoon,” he wrote, “gamblers crowd the endless banks of slot machines at Elgin’s Grand Victoria Casino as the sounds of clanking coins, bleeps and upbeat music floods the hall. Wheelchairs and canes clog the aisles. Toward the back, a lonely Jungle Wild 2-cent slot calls out in harmonious beeps. Images of happy monkeys, gleaming pyramids and bright orchids spin randomly.” (Sounds like sensory overload for the senior set to me.)
Mr. Ryan continues: “Mary Lou Schulz saddles up and feeds in the last bit of cash the 73 year old set aside for gambling from her Social Security check. ‘I was bored,’ the Palatine widow says in explaining her drive to Elgin.”
As far as I can tell, casino operators and the operators who run our state make quite a good living counting on Mrs. Schulz’s boredom. In 2007, slot machines alone took in $600 million statewide, out of which the government gets half. And even though the number of people legally gambling has dropped over the last few years due to the economic downturn, Illinois casinos have managed to rake in even more cash during the same time period.
Contributing to this increase in earnings, experts say, is something known as tighter slots, that is, machines programmed to keep more from every dollar bet. In 2000, 7% of suburban slots kept more than 10 cents of every dollar bet on average. Last year, 46% fell into that category.
Now, again, I know very little about gambling, but on the surface this makes little sense; “loosest slots” was long the enticing billboard promise along the expressway. Now, those signs are gone, as are those slots. Players are apparently demanding more and more of these tighter machines, which pay out less money but provide more interactive entertainment. Not your granny’s one-armed bandits, many look like video games, sometimes featuring interactive touch screens, TV or movie clips. These machines are designed to keep the player engaged as long as possible, offering second levels and encouraging everyone to “bet max.”
Some new machines even give players the illusion of control, offering bonus rounds that require the gamblers to select boxes or targets to win prizes. The newest model rolling out of the factory offers so call “mechanical” reels which appeal to some gamblers who don’t trust a computer. These reels, of course, are all controlled by computer chips.
It’s those chips that make all the difference, not the ones you bet on the poker table. Slot machines are programmed to pay out at different rates. Some “dribble” out small amounts to gamblers more often, stringing them along. Others hold back on the smaller payouts and let loose with fewer, seemingly larger rewards, accomplishing the same goal. The people who make the machines which play with our psyches call this “playing with the math.”
Playing with the math, figuring the odds; what kind of bets are we willing to make, and how much are we willing to risk on them? These questions fascinated the 17th century French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, credited with inventing the first calculating machine, proving the existence of the vacuum and developing the first public transportation system.
Brilliant, but prone to a kind of mystical melancholia, Pascal, who died at 39, is noted in theological circles for his random collection of thoughts known as “Pensees,” which contain his famous “wager.”
Longing for some sort of spiritual certainty but used to a scientific, rational approach to problem solving, Pascal looked at his world and was appalled by the frivolous behavior he observed in those around him, diversions which he believed kept people from examining their lives and thereby kept them from God. If they were willing to risk their wealth and reputations for the sake of a game of chance, Pascal wondered, wouldn’t they also be willing to take the same risk on the possibility of eternal life? In an effort to reach what he called the “rational doubters,” people who did not read philosophy or theology, Pascal developed a practical argument for the existence of God.
An argument he begins with a simple proposition: either God exists or He does not. Reason, he said, cannot prove the matter either way; the best approach is to treat it as a game of chance. (Remember his audience.) “At the far end of this infinite universe,” he wrote, “a coin is tossed – which will turn up, heads or tails?” It is necessary to make a wager. Necessary, he wrote, because “we are already launched upon the waters.” In other words, we are aware of both our existence and our mortality. So he says, “Let us weigh the gain and loss in wagering that God is. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that God is.” Simply put, to believe in God is a good bet.
Even if it turns out that there is no God, Pascal says, if you make this bet you still come out a winner. “You will be faithful, honest, humble and grateful,” he writes. “You will be full of good works and become a true, good friend to those who know you. What will you lose? Noxious pleasures, vainglory and riotous times.” (I love the way they talked back then.)
Of course, belief in God is not a sure thing, he says. But if we only acted on certainty, Pascal says, we would do nothing at all. Still, mindful of the risks involved in living our faith, we wish, as the saying goes, to “hedge our bets,” a phrase originating around Pascal’s time when property owners would attempt to protect their territory by planting rows of hawthorn bushes which they called “hedges.” Eventually, the name of the barrier came to be used in connection with other kinds of safeguards, including betting on both sides.
You get the sense that the three would-be disciples Jesus speaks to today are attempting to do just that; they want to hedge their bets, to place conditions on their discipleship. And Jesus, along the lines of Pascal, is telling them that they have to go “all in,” put everything they have on the table.
Jesus himself has done just that; he has already made his choice and is not looking back. In a key transitional moment in Luke’s Gospel, he has “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” where he will face his pain and meet his death. In Luke’s description we hear echoes of the prophet Isaiah who said: “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.”
Jesus knows the risks of the way he has chosen to walk and is willing to meet them head on; all he expects is that others who wish to follow in his way will do the same. “I will follow you wherever you go,” the first one says and Jesus tells him that the way of the follower will be no easier than the way of the leader. Creature comforts will be minimal; no free drinks.
To the second person, Jesus issues the same command he earlier gave to Levi, “Follow me.” Levi could do so; this man cannot. The duty to bury his father stood in the way. A noble duty, to be sure, but Jesus’ reply demonstrates that nothing is to be considered more important than following the pathway to the kingdom. The third person is asking no more than What Elisha asked of Elijah when Elijah chose him to be his successor. “Let me kiss my father and mother, and then I will follow you.” “So who’s stopping you?” Elijah said. But Jesus says, “No.” He demands more of his followers than Elijah did.
What does he demand of us and what are we willing to risk to throw in our lot with him? Yes, it’s a gamble, the point of view that while suffering and evil are indeed realities, we are not put on this earth for misery but for love; it’s a gamble, this life we have chosen to lead, taking a chance on bringing that love to life.
We have little to lose in this way of life, and I’m not talking about riotous times, which the people here will never give up! I’m talking about losing our cynicism, even when we are faced with a seemingly rigged world. I’m talking about losing our loneliness and our insistence on making the trivial seem important. We have much to gain, as well, and I’m not talking about eternal life, that’s up to God. I’m talking about a life of purpose, not boredom; that is up to us.
In the early Christian church there was a group of people known as the “parabolani,” or the gamblers. The word literally means “to throw yourself alongside someone or something,” kind of like risking everything on a throw of the dice. They came by this name honestly, embracing a call to visit those who were sick with deadly or contagious diseases, or tend to dangerous prisoners locked away in deep dungeons.
In 252 A.D., when the city of Carthage in North Africa was decimated by plague and the dead were left lying in the street, the bishop called on the Christians of the region to be “parabolani,” and risk their lives to bury the bodies. They did so and the plague was averted.
The plagues we face are different now; despair – or, in the case of Mrs. Schulz, boredom, lie closer to most of us than death. And the gambles we take for our faith are far less life threatening; yet it can require a form of courage to maintain and proclaim a message that life will indeed triumph over death. That William James was right when he said that the “great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.”
The choice is certainly ours, even if other choices seem to be out of our hands. According to the latest reports, a deal was made in Springfield which would put hundreds of video slot and poker machines at Arlington Park and other race tracks around the state. Apparently discussions have been going on for weeks behind the scenes and, as the deal is currently proposed, local governments would not have a say in the outcome. As I understand it, the owners of the track, Churchill Downs, Inc., are threatening to reduce the racing schedule if they cannot get these machines installed. As the late Mike Royko would say, the fix is in.
While people are certainly free to spend their money and time legally as they wish, what, I wonder, would be the long term effect in our society if all that money and time were spent on something which outlasts the pleasures of ringing bells or flashing lights or slightly delayed rewards? To broaden my question beyond the four walls of a casino and beyond the borders of this or any state; what would be the long term effect in our lives if we stopped hedging our bets and follow the one who shows us the way to what Paul calls “the boundless riches of Christ;” the path of eternal life, life in the presence of God, the one who is not tight-fisted but abounding in steadfast love.