How Much Is Giving Too Much?

A sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

September 25, 2005

Zell Kravinsky is an interesting man. One morning he snuck out of the house and gave his kidney to a stranger. His wife, Emily, found out about it when she read the newspaper. She was not pleased. You see, Zell had developed a habit of giving things away. He earned over $40 million in real estate, put some of it away for his four kids’ education, then gave away $40 million.

In 2002, he convinced his wife to divest of most of their income. Despite their riches, they had never lived extravagantly. They had a small suburban home. Their car was over ten years old. Zell bought used clothes. The trappings of wealth did not entice him. His wife, a psychiatrist, also lived frugally – although she did encourage Zell to spend some money at least some of the time

They gave over $6 million to the Centers for Disease Control. They donated an 87,000-square-foot apartment building to a school for the disabled in Philadelphia. The next year, Zell and Emily donated properties worth around $30 million to support a School for Public Health at Ohio State University.

But this was not enough. He learned it was possible to do more: He could give a kidney. He calculated the risks. It was 1 to 4000 that he would die, and another person’s life would be saved. It was worth it.

He was not the first to do this around the year 2000.

Joyce Roush, herself a nurse with the Indiana Organ Procurement Program . . . understood the risks (or lack of them) quite well. She proposed herself to Dr. Lloyd Ratner, a leading transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins, who was initially reluctant to discuss it. "Give me a call and we’ll consider," he told her, thinking he’d never hear from her again, only to find that she called and called, and was not to be put off. A deeply spiritual person, Joyce said she felt tapped on the shoulder by God. It was something practical and relatively easy she could do to make a big difference in the life of another person. So after a battery of psychological tests and bioethical consultations, she was finally allowed to donate one of her healthy kidneys to a thirteen-year-old boy. Joyce and Christopher both are alive and kicking today, and although a few people have followed in her footsteps, the number of "non-directed" donations remains relatively small. Just a few dozen are performed each year in the United States [1]

The need for organ donation is great. More than 89,000 U.S. patients are currently waiting for an organ transplant; nearly 4,000 new patients are added to the waiting list each month. Every day, 17 people die while waiting for the transplant of a vital organ, such as a heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, lung or bone marrow. Because of the lack of available donors in this country, 3,886 kidney patients, 1,811 liver patients, 457 heart patients and 483 lung patients died in 2004 while waiting for life-saving organ transplants. [2]

In light of this, we are taking a special collection while Chelsea [Bass] plays the piano. Several surgical teams will move aisle to aisle to gather the harvest. You may give up to three organs.

The major world religions all stress charitable giving. Giving an organ may be the ultimate Buddhist expression of Detachment: “In accepting the true Dharma, may I abandon body, life, and property, and uphold the true Dharma.” [3]

Christianity. Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life from my sake will find it." [Matthew 16.24-25]

Confucianism. The Master said, "The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete." [Analects 15.8]

Hinduism. Every sacrifice is a boat to heaven. [Satapatha Brahmana 4.2.5.10]

Islam. You will not attain piety until you expend of what you love; and whatever thing you expend, God knows of it. [Qur'an 3.92]

Jainism. As water surely will wash away blood, so the giving of food to homeless or virtuous saints will certainly destroy the sins incidental to a householder's life. [Samantabadhra, Ratnakarandasravakacara 114]

Taoism. The Great Man--his face and form blend with the Great Unity, the Great Unity which is selfless. Being selfless, how can he look upon possession as possession? [Chuang Tzu 11]

Judaism and Christianity. If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your

towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be . . . You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall

not be grudging when you give to him; because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and the poor, in the

land. [Deuteronomy 15.7-11]

Zell Kravinsky did not give for any of these reasons. Though he is Jewish by heritage, his father was a socialist and imparted a sense of fairness and sharing.

He thinks of what is the greatest good for the most people.

Ian Parker wrote in The New Yorker:

By the spring of 2003, Zell Kravinsky had become a man with no such illusion. "It seems to me crystal clear that I should be giving all my money away and donating all of my time and energy," Kravinsky said, and he speculated that failure to be this generous was corrosive, in a way that most people don't recognize. "Maybe that's why we're fatigued all the time," he mused-from "the effort" of disregarding the greater need of others. "Maybe that's why we break down and suffer depressions: we have a sense that there's something we should be remembering and we're not. Maybe that's what we should be remembering-that other people are suffering." [4]

But is that how we should live our lives? Do we need to give almost all we have to others? The big controversy about Mr. Kravinsky is that he went against his wife’s wishes. Do we have a higher obligation to our family than others? After all, she did not need his kidney. When his four kids get old enough to realize they could have inherited $10 million each, there might be a tad bit of resentment. But it wasn’t their money anyway.

But we face this every day. I balance the safety of my family versus inviting a hurricane survivor into my home. I throw away more requests for money than I respond to. I have a family to care for. All of us have to ask, What is the highest good?

If we live on the edge of poverty, what will happen if there is a catastrophe? Should we build a rainy-day fund, or should we give extra money to charity? If we leave ourselves vulnerable, we might become in need of charity and a burden to society.

The song the choir sang today talks of giving all to God. Is that an ultimate giving? The song goes as far as saying, “Take my will and make it thine . . .”

I wonder about piety. Giving it all to God seems like it could be distracting. People offer a prayer and think their work is done. Instead of giving to people who need many things, people give to God, who presumably has everything. Some people give on orders. That does not seem like charity at all. To give because you are threatened is coercion. To give to get a reward is bribery.

But does motive even matter? Which is the better gift, $10 of pure altruism or $100 given in guilt?

What if a homeless person gives his last dollar to a hurricane relief canister at the grocery store and the millionaire in the next aisle also gives a dollar? Are the gifts equal? Should we give because it makes us feel good, or should we give until it hurts?

Should we worry about how our gift is used? What if the hurricane relief is misspent? What if a non-hurricane dog gets some of the food we donated yesterday?

So when it comes to giving, there are many factors: How much one gives, how much one can afford to give, the motive behind the giving, whom you give to, and how your gift is used.

Which is the most important to you? What do you have to offer? How will your life be a gift to the world?

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1. “How Good Do We Have to Be?” Gary Kowalski - January 2, 2005, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington http://www.uusociety.org/sermons/how_good.htm

2. National Kidney Foundation http://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/fsitem.cfm?id=30

3. Buddhism. Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala 3 http://www.unification.net/ws/theme124.htm

4. August 2, 2004, The New Yorker, “The Gift”