Pride: "I Alone"

Pride: "I, Alone"

Seven Deadly Sins Sermon Series—Envy
February 17, 2008
I Kings 21:1-10, 15-21

Later the following events took place: Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel,
beside the palace of King Ahab of Samaria. And Ahab said to Naboth, ‘Give me your
vineyard, so that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; I
will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in
money.’ But Naboth said to Ahab, ‘The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral
inheritance.’ Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the
Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, ‘I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.’
He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat.
His wife Jezebel came to him and said, ‘Why are you so depressed that you will not
eat?’ He said to her, ‘Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, “Give
me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it”;
but he answered, “I will not give you my vineyard.” ’ His wife Jezebel said to him, ‘Do you
now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard
of Naboth the Jezreelite.’

So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal; she sent the letters
to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his city. She wrote in the letters,
‘Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly; seat two scoundrels
opposite him, and have them bring a charge against him, saying, “You have cursed
God and the king.” Then take him out, and stone him to death.’
As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to
Ahab, ‘Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused
to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.’ As soon as Ahab heard that
Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to
take possession of it.

Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Go down to meet King
Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has
gone to take possession. You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD: Have you killed,
and also taken possession?’ You shall say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD: In the place
where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.’
Ahab said to Elijah, ‘Have you found me, O my enemy?’ He answered, ‘I have found
you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, I will
bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or
free, in Israel;

There has been an email going about the internet—you know, one of those forwarded
emails you get from friends who want to share something with you that they think is
inspirational, or thought-provoking, or just simply funny—there is this email called The
Seven Deadly Sins of Gilligan's Island you may or may not have seen, but it’s just
perfect for our purposes, for my Seven Deadly Sins sermon series. The theory is that
each of the seven characters on the Gilligan’s island represents one of the seven
deadly sins, and so last week we had the sin of pride, and who do you think that sin is
represented by? (THE PROFESSOR) Just look at the front of your bulletin, and give it
your best try. How about Mrs Howell? (SLOTH). Mr. Howell (Greed). Ginger (LUST).
Skipper (ANGER & GLUTTONY).   MaryAnn (ENVY). Gilligan (SATAN, because he
keeps them trapped on that island). Now, this week, I want to back up and focus on
MaryAnn, or the sin of envy that she represents, because, of course, she always
envies the fact that Ginger is so glamorous. What MaryAnn has is not enough—what
she wants is what Ginger has, and though you might think that MaryAnn embodies
greed as well—and she does—envy is different because whereas greed just wants,
wants everything, more and more of something, envy what wants you have, wants
Ginger has, and so the struggle is different, because it is so personal, so human, and it
effects others so clearly, more clearly than even the sin of greed. It’s not just about
wanting a Porsche like the one you have, but wanting to have YOUR Porsche, your
luck, your job, your gifts, your skills, your spouse, your house, your life. And not only
does envy resent that you have something it wants, it wishes that you didn’t have that
house, that gift, that spouse, that job, that life…its so pernicious, so deadly, because
envy is so localized, so personal, this desire for someone’s else’s garden, so to speak,
something we’ll explore later in the Biblical text we have before us today.

But before we go there, let’s dig a little deeper, if you will into MaryAnn’s sin, our sin, at
times in our lives. “Thou shalt not covet” is one of the Ten Commandments, and there
is a reason why it is included in the top things one shouldn’t do in this world. One of
those reasons is the nature of the particular sin itself. Jan Ciabattari writes in an issue
of Psychology Today, that “Envy is not a gentle emotion. It's not "I want what you have,
too." It's aggressive: "I want what you have, and I want you not to have it. I want to take
it away from you, and if I can't do that, I'll spoil or destroy it." Envy is unlike jealousy,
which is based on love and focuses on possessing the loved object and removing the
rival. Envy originates in hate and can be all-consuming, even murderous, in intensity.
Envious people live in a perpetual state of anxious, competitive comparison, focusing on
what others around them have and what they themselves lack.” ("Will the '90s Be the
Age of Envy?" Psychology Today, December 1989, 48). The article I just quoted from
was actually written in the late eighties, and it asked the question, “Will The 90’s Be
The Age of Envy?” Looking back, I don’t think she was that far off, because the
nineties was also the era when the gap between rich and poor grew wider, and the era
when Madison Avenue’s put a relentless push on us to desire more and more stuff,
especially stuff we needed if we were going to keep up with the Jones. It seems as if
the growing gap between the have and have-nots increased the advertising industry’s
desire to remind us of what we don’t have and how we needed more and more of what
we don’t yet possess. To be successful in this world became more and more defined
as having more stuff than the Jones’.

And yet, its not just Madison Ave that preys on our desire for what others have—its just
part of many of our personal natures—we’re competitive, we want to be the best, and
we don’t want to be second best—we alone want to be on the pedestal, with that Gold
Medal around our neck. And if you were here last week, and not many of you were
because of the bad weather, you remember that I said that Pride was the root of so
many of the others sins we struggle with this in this world—certainly that is true of envy,
because you can easily the thread that binds the pride to its sister sin, envy. In a book
called Envy by the author Joseph Epstein, the author notes this truth: “Studies…have
shown that people would agree to make less total money so long as they make more
than their neighbors: that is, they would rather earn, say 85K a year where no on else
is making more than 75K instead of them making 100K where everyone else is making
a 125K. H. L. Mencken once defined contentment in America as making $10 a month
more than your brother-in-law.”   The story goes that a genie appears to an
Englishwoman, a Frenchman, and a Russian. The Englishwoman says her friend has a
charming cottage in the Cotswolds, and she’d like the same thing, but with two more
bedrooms and a 2nd bath. The Frenchman says his best friend has a beautiful blond
mistress, and he would like such a mistress himself, but with longer legs and more chic.
The Russian tells of a neighbor who has a cow that gives a vast quantity of the richest
milk, which yields the heaviest cream and the purest butter. “I vant dat cow,” the
Russian tells the genie, “dead.” That exactly shows the deadly side of this particular
sin—I don’t just want what you have—I want you to have less, or nothing at all, if at all
possible.

Now, I have to say that this particular sin is one that most people find very hard to admit
to, because we instinctively know how negative it seems to be, how unflattering it is to
our soul, our personality—even greed and pride sound OK, compared to something so
awful as wanting more, and yet also hoping that others have less. But I’m going to get
the truth-telling started here today, and admit to you that I really, really struggle with
this sin sometimes. And what I find is that what I envy the most is those fellow ministers
who can do what I am doing at this moment—giving a sermon—much better than I can.
I really appreciate a good sermon—hopefully, all ministers would do the same—but I
really envy those that can do it much, much better than I can, and there a lot of good
preachers out there, and to be perfectly honest, I struggle with every one of them. I
once worked as an associate pastor at a large church with a minister who was also a
very gifted preacher. I’ve rarely seen anyone else move a congregation as well as he
did; he could hold a room like few preachers I’ve ever seen. And each Sunday I got to
learn from him, and that was the good side, but when I did get to preach before that
same congregation, I clearly paled in comparison, and you could see it in the eyes of
the church members who got to hear that kind of great preaching every week, and then
had to put up with the rest of us good, but not great preachers on the off weeks when
the senior minister wasn’t in the pulpit. I wanted his gifts, his great skills as a preacher
and orator—but—and this where the sin of envy is so deadly—I also wanted him to be
less gifted, less powerful in the pulpit because it made me look just OK, good, but not
great. And this is the sinister side of envy, beyond the pride I had invested in my
preaching—in my sin of envy: I would have rather robbed the congregation of a great
preacher than to have to deal with being the second or third or fourth best preacher on
staff—to be honest, I was probably on the lower rung of the 7 associate ministers who
worked at that church when it came to preaching, and, believe me, that’s not false
humility on my part, much to my chagrin. Now, I didn’t simmer with envy every time this
gifted man preached, because I too learned under his preaching, as a Christian, and
as a fellow minister, but, well, there were moments, every once and awhile, when it just
hit me. You see, envy makes you selfish, and it becomes solely about you, and you
would hurt others for the sake of your wants…not only do you want something like their
gifts, their garden, but you want those very gifts, that very garden, and, if we were to be
perfectly honest, we would rather them not to have their own gifts, their own garden.
Not all the time, maybe not even most of the time, but every once in awhile, in our worst
moments, you know…

Other people’s gardens, of course, is the one of the points of this story we have before
us from I Kings 21. We may or may not remember the story from our Sunday School
days, but it’s a good one, full of a couple of really bad folks, whose envy of other’s
people stuff, other people’s gardens, really drives them to do some evil acts. King
Ahab wants a garden that is not his, and he wants its simply because its convenient—
even he admits that it is not the best garden, because he offers Naboth another better
garden somewhere else—he simply wants that particular garden, the one adjacent to
his property, and when he doesn’t get it, he goes off and sulks. Old Queen Jezebel,
that infamous other party in this duo of criminals made royalty, reminds him of who he
is, a king, and in her mind, because he is king, he is allowed all things, and if he wants
something, he should have it. It’s interesting that even Ahab recognized a boundary
here, but not her, not Jezebel. Jezebel sets a plan into motion that eventually rewards
Ahab with Naboth’s property, free and clear, though, of course, Elijah, God’s prophet
has something to say about it. Such selfishness, such evil, to rob a poor man to enrich
oneself—nothing disgusts God more, Elijah seems to be saying, and it is Ahab’s envy
of what Naboth owned that makes him commit such a sin.   Envy makes Joseph’s
brother throw him down a well to die, because he had a close relationship with his
father that the others brothers were jealous of, and it is envy that caused Cain to kill
Abel, it was envy of the approval God gave Abel’s offering and not Cain’s gifts, that
made Cain kill Abel. The boundaries get crossed, madness ensues, when we let envy
have its way, and as the writer from Psychology Today reminds us, envy has its roots
not in love, but in hatred, deep hatred, that obsesses over other people’s gifts, other
people’s beautiful gardens—if I can’t wander in its paths, that person’s beautiful
garden, then no one else should be able to do the same.

Having said all that, and also honestly noting that envy can be something that clarifies
what we want in this world—see the included article in your bulletin this week—the
reality is that there is an opposite to this sin, to the sin of envy, and it surprised me
when I researched into what the tradition of church said was positive counterpart to
envy. The opposite of envy is actually love, which kind of surprised me, but it makes
sense if you think about—if the root of envy is hate, certainly the opposite of hate is
love. Those who are envious of others want what they do not have, but those who are
grounded in love only want the best for the one with some many gifts, the great
preacher, the woman with the beautiful garden, the beautiful bride surrounded by
single bridesmaids, the newly employed man by his unemployed friends. To love is to
want the best for the other, even if you are not included in that good news, even if the
good news is not YOUR good news. I remember years ago finding out that a person I
had once loved deeply in college but who did not return th had found the perfect
person for them, and I was actually, truly happy for them, and I realized in that moment
that I really did love them, because to love someone is to want them to be happy, even
if that happiness means a life without you. Paul writes that “love is patient, love is kind,
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way…”
(I Corinthians 13:4-5) Love means being happy when other people’s gardens flourish,
and not needing to own or posses that garden for yourself—to love is to be happy that
there are such things as beautiful gardens in this world, and your friend, your loved
one, your mentor, your brother, your sister, has such wonderful things going on in their
lives. It is to look out of your own castle, and see the beautiful garden next door, and
simply be happy that such beauty exists in this world, without having to possess it. That
is love, and yet there is more, of course, there is more…

Frederick Buechner, in one of the most memorable passages from a memorable book,
The Magnificent Defeat (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), writes these words
about love: The love for equals is a human thing ... of friend for friend, brother for
brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less
fortunate is a beautiful thing ... the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor,
the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the
world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing...to love those who succeed
where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the
rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is bewildered by its saints. And
then there is the love for the enemy...love for the one who does not love you but mocks,
threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It
conquers the World. It gets better, love does. It doesn’t just stop at being happy for
those who are happy, to love those who succeed where we fail, to use Buechner’s
words—it goes farther, and loves the ones that no one is expected to love, people like
us, in our worst moments, when we wish for other people’s gardens, other people’s
gifts, when we not only wish for what they have, but that they didn’t have what they
have…Love loves us even in that moment, God’s Love does. To love the more
fortunate, and then to love the ones that break our hearts, and sometimes our bones,
well, that is something beautiful all together, something God does, and something God
asks us to do, to love as God loves, as best we can. I hope I get to the point where
other’s people’s gardens are something I can celebrate easily, at least more easily than
now, but I think the beginning point of such a transformation is when I tend to my own
garden, whatever it may be, whatever seeds God or the universe, or whomever,
planted in its rows. The gardens before us, the gifts we have been given, the ones that
others don’t have…well, focusing on our OWN gardens will free us from wanting what is
not ours, and what we cannot have, because it is not our gifts, it was never our
garden. After the party celebrating your good news, after being happy for your good
fortune, well, its time for us to get back to work in our own gardens, the ones given to
us by our ancestors, and their ancestors, and at the end of the line, the gardens, the
particular gifts given to us by God. To till in what has been given to us, the garden
given to us—and us alone—that will ultimately set us free from the sin of envy. Amen.