A Song in the Night

by Bob Massie

  In the months ahead, America plunged into a panic about the disease. I stood in a supermarket and spotted a magazine thirty feet away whose headline, in huge red letters, read “AIDS: NOW NO ONE IS SAFE.” Frightened people demanded that the government quarantine everyone with HIV on an island off the coast of the United States. Violence flared against gay men. A family with hemophilia had their house in Florida burned down. The conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., proposed, half seriously, that everyone with HIV should be tattooed, prompting a furious public rebuttal from my father, a friend of his, who threatened to tattoo Buckley himself.

  I watched as the debate swept across the country; as thousands of gay men struggled with the exhausting care and tragic deaths of those they loved; as families touched by hemophilia lost their beautiful sons, brothers, wives, and husbands; and as medical professionals showed what is best about our nation by committing everything they had to treating those with HIV.

  During this period and in the years afterward I also asked myself a thousand times what would have happened if we had succeeded in holding hearings in the U.S. Senate about the viral contamination of blood products five years before anyone had heard of HIV. The hearings inevitably would have focused on the vulnerability of the system to widespread contamination with hepatitis and other viruses. Senator Jackson would have asked whether known viral inactivation techniques such as heat treatment could reduce the problem. Instead, because nothing happened, the products continued to be made and shipped without any antiviral treatment, so that when HIV appeared, it shot through the blood supply, and eight thousand mostly young men with hemophilia in the United States died.

  I watched and I wondered, and late at night I worried. My time spent in the sanctuary of the church helped me gain perspective. I slowly began to accept that life, no matter how long we live, is achingly short. Every moment and every emotion is marked by fragility and meaning and grace. As we struggle together against all the currents that are carrying us relentlessly downstream, in the end our only real compass is love.

  In my very last months at Grace the finances of the church captured my attention. As a junior member of the clergy I was allowed to sit in on the monthly meetings of the vestry. They gathered in the ornately carved office of the rector, a miniature Gothic library with soaring rib-vault ceilings and a magnificent row of mahogany bookcases. Every meeting included a report from the treasurer, which mapped out the monies spent and the monies received. To my surprise I learned that the church had a vast endowment—more than $9 million—which created a continuous cash flow vital to the physical upkeep of the historic building. I marveled that the church kept its basic financial information private from the rest of the congregation, from whom most of the revenues came.

  As I thought about the endowment, I began wondering where the money was actually invested, and I approached the members of the finance committee. Their normally friendly smiles disappeared and they looked troubled. It really wasn’t a question they could talk about, they said. The clear implication was that this was not a question for the clergy to consider, especially the junior clergy.

  Yet I persisted. Eventually I obtained a list of the investments from one of the committee members, and as I studied it I was shocked. I don’t remember everything that was on it, but it was clear that no one had ever asked whether the investments of the church aligned in any way with its mission. Red flags fluttered on every page. The church had large amounts of money in military contractors, including manufacturers of nuclear and other weapons. They owned shares of price-fixing pharmaceuticals, casinos, tobacco products, and alcohol. They held stock in companies that had substantial investments in South Africa and other dictatorial countries. As I analyzed the information and the committee more carefully, it became clear what had happened. Most people on the vestry, including the rector, had no interest or expertise in investment, so they selected a few talented members of the group—bankers, trust officers, attorneys—to create a finance committee. The finance committee then placed the endowment with a conventional firm without restrictions. The justification was, of course, a version of fiduciary responsibility: the church, as a nonprofit, needed whatever revenues it could generate for its upkeep and its programs. The purpose of the fund was to maximize the amount of money it would receive. And if, to do so, the church ended up becoming part owners of and thus participants in enterprises that went against its own principles, that was not relevant. As long as the company’s actions were legal, they were morally and financially acceptable.

  From my previous work, I knew that this was problematic. I again began a small organizing campaign to bring this to the attention of the decision-makers of the church. I asked if I could go to the finance committee meetings; they declined. I suggested that they interview investment companies that excluded particularly disturbing industries from their portfolios and still made excellent returns; they demurred. I tried to put the topic on the vestry agenda; the rector refused. I brought it up over lunches and dinners with my closer friends; they politely but firmly changed the topic. After six months, I realized that I was being fully and effectively stonewalled.

  I had only one option left: I could preach. This was a serious decision. On the one hand, as an ordained minister I had the authority to raise whatever issues I felt were important as long as I linked them to the gospel. The rector and the other clergy did not preapprove my words. The congregation was always attentive and respectful. At the same time, I knew that no matter how gently I phrased it, my words would infuriate some, including my boss. I still had a few more months in my contract, and I did not want to be tossed out. I also did not want to get to the end of my tenure and feel that I had never brought up the subject publicly.

  I worked for weeks on my sermon, and as luck, or the spirit, would have it, my opportunity came when the passage assigned to my week was the parable of the rich young ruler.

  As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him.

  “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

  “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’ ”

  “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

  Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

  At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

  On a Sunday morning in early spring, I climbed the steps to the magnificent high wooden pulpit that rose next to one of the great stone columns of the church. The congregation sat down. I put my papers down and then looked out at the upturned faces of the hundreds of people in front of me, people of all ages, from many different backgrounds, almost all of them my friends.

  I started with some lighthearted comments to put people at ease and spoke for some time about the passage, asking people to imagine this earnest young man, who came up to Jesus to ask him the most basic question of all: “What should I do?” Jesus, as he often did, quoted the Ten Commandments, the heart of Hebrew scripture. Yet the man was not satisfied—surely there must be something more! Jesus was touched by the man’s intensity, his longing, and his passion. Perhaps he recognized some of the intensity of feeling that animated his followers or perhaps even himself as a younger man. Perhaps this person could become a new disciple, even a great one, fully dedicated to a life of compassion. If you want to deepen your commitment, Jesus told him, you must cut away the ties that are narrowing your vision, that are holding you back—in this case, your wealth. Rid yourself of that, and you will be completely free—free enough to join me on the greatest adventure in history. But this was not the news that the young man wanted
to hear; which is why his “face fell.” And it was not a move he was willing to make, so he walked away in sorrow.

  The passage was intended not as a condemnation of all possessions but as a caution about their enormous power. This, I pointed out, was the only recorded moment in all of the New Testament where someone is directly asked by Jesus to follow him—and turns him down. If the young man had made a different decision, he might have been known for thousands of years by his name and celebrated for his love. Instead, his attachment to his wealth overwhelmed him.

  The congregation looked appreciative. So far this had been a perfectly acceptable sermon, in both its analysis and presentation. I knew that if I stopped there, I would get the usual round of compliments at coffee hour, and that people would promise, with complete sincerity, to think about what I had said. I also knew that the effect of my words would fade almost instantly, and no matter how warmly my friends and colleagues embraced the ideas, it was unlikely that there would be any actions. So I kept going.

  What was interesting about this passage, I continued, was that I had had a similar experience just recently at Grace Church. I had met a person who had approached me and asked, regularly and clearly, how to become more compassionate, how to deepen her commitment, and how to extend her faith into the world. Through these questions, I had come to appreciate and care for this person, and I had asked more deeply about her dilemma. She had inherited a substantial fortune, she said, but she felt constrained by it. The money was managed by a group of people who had every good intention for her, but they were preoccupied with making sure she became as wealthy as possible, so that she could lead a happy and safe life and give more and more to charity. She wanted to take another step into a life of Christian commitment, but she felt blocked by the cost of her beautiful home and her monthly expenses. She told her friends that she was committed to acts of generosity and peace, but when her bank statements and trust reports came every month, she felt discontent at her own failure. What should she do?, she had asked.

  “This is an urgent question,” I said, “because the woman in question is actually with us today, here at Grace Church.”

  Everyone fell silent and stared at me. No one stirred.

  “In fact, she may be sitting next to you right now.”

  I could see them trying to remember what the person beside them looked like without actually turning their heads.

  “What should we say to her? What would we advise?” I said quietly into the microphone. “This is important for us as members of Grace Church.”

  I waited. For a long time.

  Then I spoke again.

  “Because this woman is Grace Church.”

  The congregation seemed stunned.

  In a few sentences, I laid out the dilemma of the gap between how we earned our money and how we spent it, how we invested our dollars and how we invested our time. I asked the congregation to raise the question, and I asked the leaders to answer it. For in that place, we were standing in front of Jesus just as much as the rich young ruler had been two thousand years before. I offered a prayer that we would make the right decision.

  There I stopped. I picked up my pages and climbed down from the pulpit, steadying myself on the railings because I was shaking. As I moved back to my seat, I glanced at the rector, whose face was a wall of fury. When I sat down, a member of the choir turned to me and said, half in admiration and half in fear, “Well, that took guts.”

  At coffee hour the congregation registered their mixed emotions. Some embraced me with tears in their eyes. Others went quite far out of their way to avoid talking to me. When I went back to my apartment, Dana said that maybe I shouldn’t have taken up such a controversial topic when I had only a few months left in my time at the church. I reflected on the reactions and decided, That’s it. I will be fired within the next three days.

  I was not fired, but I learned later that I had come close. The rector and some of the leaders of the church were deeply unhappy, and complained about my insubordination and arrogance. At the same time, a large portion of the church agreed that this was a problem that needed to be addressed, and they let the leadership know. Eventually the rector decided to let the clock run out on my contract. We rarely spoke after that.

  And, sadly, the aftermath was similar to what happened at Ivy Club. Many people said they agreed with me and would work to do something about it. A few members of the vestry said that my rash actions had crushed the little seedlings of reform that had just broken through the surface. The rector maintained his stony silence.

  Later that spring, after months of searching and application, Dana and I learned where we were headed next. She was within a few months of completing her doctorate, and she was hired to teach at Boston University’s School of Theology. Instead of returning to the Yale School of Management, I had applied, as an experiment, to the doctoral program at Harvard Business School. I figured that if I was going to do all the coursework in business and economics, I might as well write a dissertation and be able to teach. To my utter astonishment, I was admitted with a full scholarship and told that I would also have to complete the first year of the MBA, the business school equivalent of boot camp.

  In 1984, in the sweltering heat of mid-August Manhattan, Dana and I packed up our rust bucket of a car, bounced over the potholes, and crossed the city line, heading north to Massachusetts. In the months ahead, the question of the Grace Church endowment sputtered fitfully from time to time. The church eventually decided that it needed to protect the building more than it needed to worry about the portfolio. Over the next ten years, the parish lost much of its vibrancy, dipped regularly into the endowment of its principal, and gradually saw that sum shrink to insignificance. I am not sure what the perfect answer would have been for that community, but in the end the contradiction—and their inability to act—seemed unhappily to lead to a fading of both their fortune and their faith.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Up AND Down

  The campus of Harvard Business School was built to inspire awe. The first time I walked around the campus in the fall of 1984, I looked at its massive and elegant buildings, its manicured lawns and pampered flora, and I thought of the Book of Exodus, as Moses stood before the burning bush and heard a voice that said, “Come no nearer; take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

  On the fourth day of classes my marketing professor, Mark Albion, invited the members of Section F to introduce ourselves to one another. After all, he said, we were going to be spending an entire school year together in the same seats in the same room and we might like to know who our section mates were. As we went around the eighty-plus students, I counted two lawyers, eight consultants, nine accountants, seventeen engineers, and twenty-three bankers. Twenty-five of my classmates had gone to Ivy League schools, and thirty-five had majored in economics or business administration. Of those who had worked for large corporations before business school, four had worked for oil companies, three had worked for Procter & Gamble, three had worked for IBM, and two were currently on leave from General Motors. One fellow had been a captain in the Coldstream Guards and had led a platoon in Northern Ireland; another, a Marine Corps lieutenant, had served in Beirut at the time of the 1983 airport bombing. Also among our ranks were an architect, a Canadian ski instructor, and an Australian veterinarian. I was the only minister.

  I barely remember what happened during those first weeks of school. Suddenly I’d been propelled from the Gothic halls of Grace Church and dropped into the world of business school, with its perplexing courses in marketing, accounting, managerial economics, and organizational behavior. Instead of relying on the language of theology, I was abruptly required to speak with an entirely new vocabulary, which consisted of phrases like depreciation tax shield, cumulative probability, distribution curve, product cannibalization, net present value, and subordinated convertible debenture. I also found myself designing a consumer and trade promotion campaign for Vaseline petroleu
m jelly.

  The business school relies exclusively on the case method to teach its skills in the first year. This means that you are confronted with a detailed account (including reams of numbers and charts) of some business problem an executive is facing. You must begin by figuring out what’s going on (often the most difficult task), then somehow derive a solution, and finally prepare a few remarks so that you will have something to say if you’re the hapless student chosen at random to make the opening presentation the next morning. This analytical process is repeated with little variation approximately four hundred times during the school year, giving rise to a famous school adage: “First they scare you to death, then they work you to death, then they bore you to death.”

  After I had been at Harvard Business School for about six months, I realized that as much as I enjoyed everything I was learning, I needed a counterweight. While I was discovering new things about competition, I wanted to remember old themes from my life about cooperation. While I was becoming fascinated by the power of action, I wanted to recall the strength of contemplation. And while I was soaring upward into new realms, passing through all the grand hallways of Harvard and everything they represented, I wanted to stay rooted in a life attached to the ground.

  I started looking for a spiritual home, where I could not just listen but also participate. In most regions, bishops maintain a list of “supply clergy” who are available to serve as stand-ins whenever a local minister is on vacation or needs to be away for personal reasons. I put myself on this list and soon found myself accepting invitations to visit different parishes around Massachusetts, from pocket Gothic churches in the suburbs to decaying wooden structures in the industrial cities and towns.