“What are You So Proud of?”
Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the 7 Deadly Sins
Pride ( inspired by Bishop Williman’s book of the same name)
Rev. Marti Zimmerman
Smoky Hill UMC

(OT) Proverbs 16:18 (New International Version)
 18 Pride goes before destruction,
       a haughty spirit before a fall.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)
To some who were confident of their own righteousness
and looked down on everybody else,
Jesus told this parable:
“Two men went up to the temple to pray,
one a Pharisee and
the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—
robbers, evildoers, adulterers—
or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
 “But the tax collector stood at a distance.
He would not even look up to heaven,
but beat his breast and said,
‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
 
“I tell you
that this man,
rather than the other,
went home justified before God.
For everyone who exalts himself
will be humbled,
and he who humbles himself
will be exalted.”

Let us pray.

Sunday school was back in session.
The teacher was all prepared
to talk about God’s mercy and grace.
So she asked her class of 8 year olds,
“ What must you do in order to be forgiven?”
The class sat quietly for a moment,
then one hand shot up.
“I know, I know!”
“Yes Luke.”
“In order to be forgiven,” the young man shouted,
“you have to sin!”

That brothers and sisters
is the essence of why
we gather each week to sing and preach and pray.
There is sin in our world.
And there is sin in our lives,
and we stand in the need forgiveness.
In fact, Mack had a friend
who used to say,
“God and I are best friends.
God loves sinners
and I love to sin.”

How about you?
Sound familiar?

Today we begin our new series,
taking a new look at some old sins.
Seven deadly sins.
Can you name them?
Turn to your neighbor and name them
or try to list them in your bulletin.

Pride, anger,
envy, greed,
sloth, gluttony,
lust.
How many got all seven?

Seven,
when Christians hear that number
it’s a sign of something holy.

Sin, well that’s where we start isn’t it.
Karl Barth, a famous German theologian,
once said that only Christians really sin.
Doesn’t seem quite fair.
What he meant was that as babies
we start out demanding
the world meet our needs
for food and
comfort,
sleep,
stimulation
and don’t forget to change me!
Sin- it is all about me.

In Greek and Hebrew,
sin literally means,
“missing the mark.”
A relationship with God is the bull’s-eye,
sin is our life
heading off course.
Off the mark,
stuck in the ground
wondering what went wrong.

We gather each week to think about what went wrong.
And here we are again,
seated together,
yet somehow separated in different degrees
from the Holy One that loves us
and calls to us
and even searches for us like lost sheep and missing coins.
Here we sit, “Missing the mark.”

The early church fathers called them
deadly sins.
Envy, greed, anger.

I don’t know all about you,
but I like it better
when sin is a big deal,
like murder,
or rape,
or a bank robbery, something worth an action movie.
But these so-called deadly sins
seem pretty tame to me.
What kind of blockbuster can there be about sloth?
Gluttony, lust, & pride.
What’s the big deal?
Maybe that’s why
this morning’s gospel lesson
just irritates me.
The so-called seven deadly sins
seem pretty puny in my eyes.
In fact much of our culture sees the deadly sins as worthwhile.
But Jesus doesn’t and that makes me look deeper.

I remember a wonderful sculpture
suspended by a string
in the Cottey College art museum.
A clay figure had a large log in his eye
even while he had his arms outstretched
trying to pluck a twig
out of his neighbor’s eye.

In fact, I like the Pharisee.
I understand the Pharisee.
I probably am a Pharisee.
He tries hard to be good.
He tithes, giving ten per cent of his income
just like the scripture requires.
He prays
and fasts,
and does his best to follow
all the rules
that will help him come closer to God,
rules that Moses laid down
back with the commandments.
No swearing with God’s name,
honor your father and mother,
tell the truth,
don’t commit murder.
Worships only God,
not your Lexus nor your job,
nor your neighborhood nor your school,
nor your stuff.
So if he is following all the rules
why does he seems to be the bad guy,
the “worser” sinner,
the one farthest from the mark
in relationship with God?

Meanwhile, the tax collector was a scum bag.
He stole from his own people,
taking more tax than the Roman Empire required,
maybe a bit like Nachio took from the Qwest employees,
so that he could live a pleasured life.
He turned his back on the poor
even though the Bible tells us over and over
and over and over,
to care for the needy.
The tax collector was like a baby,
“I wanna talk about me.”
But the tax collector,
was ready to look deep into the heart of God
and see his own miserable reflection.
The Pharisee just wanted to look down on the low life.

In the top seven sins list,
pride wins the prize.
The list comes to us from early Christians
who fled the sin and temptation-filled city life,
seeking peace with God
and harmony with one another
in the early desert retreat centers.
But instead they found more sins lurking in the heat.
When all the noise and temptations where gone,
these seven deadly sins,
made life together difficult.
You see these seven sins
are about the way Christians
treat themselves
and each other in community, in family.
Their ugly heads,
keep good people with good intentions
trying to do good works,
in bad shape
and a long ways from God.

Jesus spent time in the desert.
Right after his baptism.
There he faced his own demons,
looked at his own soul,
the temptations called to him,
not to kill nor rob,
but voices that said, “you can do it alone.”
It seems to me that the Son of God
should have been able to count on special forces
to beat back those temptations.
Jesus would have known the scripture from Proverbs 16:18
“Pride goes before destruction,
       a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Maybe Joseph said it in the carpenter’s shop
or Mary at the market.

Any of you like to gamble?
Just checking.
Did you know that gamblers
usually have their greatest losses
just after their biggest wins?
Richard Thaler, studied this in his book, “The Winner’s Curse,” and discovered that those on a winning streak
began to believe they were lucky,
even brilliant,
so they bet bigger and lost bigger too.
There are some business leaders this week
who did the same with hedge funds,
gambling other peoples’ money and mortgages,
believing themselves to be lucky or brilliant.
The losses are staggering.
The sin is pride, trusting in one’s own skill.

And that’s the trouble with the Pharisee.
And he stood before God,
he trusted in his own eyes,
not Gods eyes.
Ecclesiasticus 10:15 of the Apocrypha says,
“Pride is the beginning of all sin.”
Pride waits, said Thomas Aquinas,
“for good deeds to destroy them.”

Pride is not appropriate self-knowledge, valuing the gifts and call God has for you,
but pride is misdirected love.
Pride built the tower of Babel.
”Come let us build ourselves a city,
and a tower with its top in the heavens
and let us make a name for ourselves…” (Gen. 11:4)
A project begun
to reach for relationship with God,
becomes a project
to make themselves known in all the earth.
Pride is an arrow missing the mark.
But even way word arrows
can be shot again.

There is a painting called “The Presence in the Midst”
by J. Dale Penrose.
Our attention is drawn to the interior of a great cathedral,
first to the alter
where bright candles show those coming forward
for communion.
But in the corner,
in the shadows,
is someone kneeling, praying, weeping,
someone having looked so deep into their own life,
they dare not come forward
to receive God’s mercy
in the gifts of bread and juice.
And there
in the shadows
is Jesus,
at the side of the one with remorse.

Like the little boy said, “You must sin to be forgiven.”
Our parable reminds us,
Jesus is looking to find a place
in the shadows of our lives
when we look deep within,
with humility not humiliation,
and not at the lives of others.
Confession is our attempt to hit the bulls-eye.
Pride can blow us off course.
Confession gives God room to work
with forgiveness and mercy
so that we can once again try to live the lives
God wants for us,
not trusting in our own strength,
but in God’s amazing grace.

(Becky begin playing, MZ begin singing
p. 357 “Just as I am….

 

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