Sinning Like a Christian
A New Look at Envy and Greed
Smoky Hill UMC
Rev. Marti Zimmerman

Scripture

Exodus 20:17 (New International Version)
from the Ten Commandments – the last and only one repeated!
 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey,
or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
1 Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have a faith that can move mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,
but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy…

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 Love never fails.
 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Prayer
****************************************
Two friends met in the street. One looked sad and almost on the verge of tears. The other man said,
“Hey my friend, how come you look like the whole world has caved in?”
      
 The sad fellow said, “Let me tell you. Three weeks ago, an uncle died and left me 50-thousand dollars.”
      
 “That’s not bad at all.!”
      
“Hold on, I’m just getting started. Two weeks ago, a cousin I never knew kicked-the-bucket and left me 95-thousand, tax-free to boot.”
      
“Well, that’s great! I’d like that.”
      
 “Last week, my grandfather passed away. I inherited almost a million.”
      
 “So why are so glum?”
    
 “This week - nothing!”

That’s greed – a desire to acquire gone haywire,
out of control.
Greed is about never having enough–
enough money in particular.
So what is enough?
Greed is about never being satisfied.
Greed can produce a vicious cycle:
The more you have the more you want.
No matter what you got for Xmas last year,
the catalogs will soon be out and you will need,
or at least want something more.
Socrates once wrote the luxury is artificial poverty.
You have a nice watch,
but you see a co-worker or and add or a nicer one,
you want it,
you got to have it.

David Goetz in his spiritual guide “Death by Suburb”
confesses to suburban parking lot envy…
at church
when he found his little car
surrounded by huge SUV’s.
He was tempted to park at a distance
because he felt his small car unworthy.

This week we look at Greed –
a desire to acquire gone haywire and
envy
that feeling of wanting
someone else’s good thing for ourselves,
coveting their stuff,
resenting their good fortune,
even wanting their failure.

We are three weeks into our series
“Sinning like a Christian”
thanks to the writings of Bishop Will Willomen.
I hope you’ve been to the bookstore
or on the web to get your own copy and
can go deeper than we are able on Sunday morning.

Remember from the first week,
how a little boy when asked in SS
what must we do to be forgiven?
Reminded us,
“we must sin!”

And sin is just another word
for missing the mark in our relationship with God and
with each other,
like an arrow headed for a bull’s eye
but stuck instead in the ground.
Off the mark, out of bounds.

Forgiveness
is God’s willingness
and ability
to pull that arrow out, no matter how stuck,
hand it back
if we are willing to ask
and let us try again.

Now some of you have told me
that you thought the seven deadly sins
were just for Catholics.
My grandma thought the same in her small Illinois town.
Back then only Catholics drank and smoked and danced,
at least in front of each other,
which for grandma
was the paved road to hell.

But the early church leaders knew better.
Back in the 2nd century those who yearned to follow Jesus
they identified seven attitudes and habits
that get in the way of deepening our relationship with God.
Help me name them.
The first and the worst according to the ancient mystics was -
Pride –
“Pride is the worship of self that leads to many other sins,”
Says Rev. Don Burns of the The Harbor Church.

Last week Dan dealt with _________(anger).
Next week If I get around to it
we’ll deal with sloth,
then gluttony and
finally lust.
But today our focus is on greed and envy.

There was a very rich man who was just about to die
and he wanted to take some of his wealth with him.
So he started negotiations with God about the matter.
God was not sure
as it had never been done before and
he did not want to set a precedence.
Finally after long talks
God reluctantly agreed
to allow him to bring his wealth to heaven.
      
      Just a few days before he died
the rich man converted all his money into gold bullion.
He died and the funeral home made sure that the suitcases
containing the gold bullion went with him.
When he arrived at the Pearly Gates with his suitcases
St. Peter told him he could not bring the suitcases into heaven.
The man explained he had already spoken to God and
he had said it was OK.
Peter got on the God phone and
sure enough
it was true.
Peter curious
as to what was so valuable asked,.
“Could I look in the suitcases?”
      
The man opened the suitcases and
Peter exclaimed,
“OK, more paving stones for heavenly roads!”

In the 1987 movie, “Wall Street”,
Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas,
exclaims that “greed is good!”
And remember the movie Jerry Maguire
famous more than a decade after its release
due to memorable quote,
“Show me the money!”

But Jesus wants you to show him your heart.

Need is normal.
Desire is a gift of God.
It is legitimate hunger.
We need to eat,
to have a safe place to sleep,
to be healed when sick,
to have clothes to wear,
to belong.
Need is human.
Greed is sin
because it is desire for stuff and money,
out of control,
a life that gets out of line and off purpose.
Enron, Qwest.
the dot.com boom and bust.
the sub-prime loan market,
all fueled by envy and greed.

Jesus worried about greed
because he knew the desire for more and more and more
kept folks from a deep life with God.

A man named John tells of his grandmother
a woman who loved a particular china pattern.
For Christmas, her birthday or any special occasion,
her family would pick out and give to her
place settings of this beautiful hand-painted china.

John’s grandmother took it and put it in a box.
It never again saw the light of day.
It was placed up in the attic.
Not even her own daughter was aware she had the stuff.
She looked at that stuff as being so important to her,
she didn’t think she could share it with anybody.
It became so important to her to cherish the gift,
the gift was never used.
The sin of greed hordes.
The forgiven share.

Remember comedian what George Carlin says about stuff:

“That’s all your house is-a place to keep your stuff.
If you didn’t have so much stuff,
you wouldn’t need a house.
You could just walk around all the time.
A house is just a pile of stuff
with a cover on it,
and when you leave your house,
you’ve got to lock it up.
You wouldn’t want to somebody to come by and take some of your stuff.
That’s what your house is-
a place to keep your stuff
while you go out and get more stuff.
Sometimes you’ve got to move-
got to get a bigger house.
Why?
No room for your stuff anymore.”

We have stuff.
And the truth of it is,
compared to most of our world,
we are fabulously wealthy.
(show slide clip here.)

The sins of greed and envy
keep our focus on what other’s have that we don’t,
not on those we could help.
Yet research shows stuff doesn’t make us happy.
Stuff doesn’t satisfy.
Remember Sandra Bullock’s character in the recent film Crash?
The wife of a district attorney,
she has a fabulous car,
a beautiful home, a maid, a gardener,
a closet full of clothes and jewelry.
But when her car is stolen and she needs a friend,
there is no one there.
She had nothing of value.

Zacchaeus the tax collector knew that emptiness.
He too was trapped by greed.
He had nothing of value.
Greed, envy,
a life of coveting our neighbor’s car
or at least the ones Oprah gives away,
our neighbor’s size 2 clothes like we see on every female TV character,
our neighbor’s vacation cruises.
Greed and envy are signs of a legitimate hunger out of control,
meanwhile real hunger, children dying of malnutrition
is also out of control.

Jonathon Swift once wrote,
“nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches
as to conceive how other can be in want.”
Jesus reminded his community in Luke 12:15,
“watch out,
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed:
a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

The good news is
the opposite of greed and envy
is gratitude and generosity.
Zacchaeus treed by greed,
responded to a relationship with Jesus with gratitude and generosity.
Jesus was willing to forgive him for past mistakes
and encourage him to find a place in the community.
His response to this gift of grace?
Gratitude and generosity,
especially to the poor.

Ted Turner owns cable and media companies
and is the largest landowner in the US.
Awhile back he pledged 1 billion dollars of his fortune
to the UN to work take care of children, women and the environment.
When asked why he said,
“I’ve been learning how to give.
It’s something you have to keep working on,
because people like money
the way they do their home and their dogs.”

Gratitude and generosity.
Have you spent time today counting your blessings?
Rev. Dan O’Connell knows the day and time
he moved from greed to gratitude.
It was the day his plane landed,
after a flight through a terrible spring storm
when all souls on board thought the end was near.
With rental car keys in his hand,
and ground below his feet,
he noticed the air thick with honeysuckle,
and the sun and the fields in bloom.
And he gave thanks!
Life was now “enough.”
Death, faced head on now put life in order.

You don’t have to wait for a crash landing,
or a cancer diagnosis to put your life in order.
If greed and envy are sins you struggle with,
write down a hundred things for which you are grateful.
And when you do what you have will be enough.
Greed will disappear.
And what you have will be enough to share.
And when you share,
your focus turns from those who have too much,
to those Jesus loves in refugee camps and nursing homes,
and invites us to care for.
Envy is conquered by generosity.
Like Zacchaeus,
gratitude and generosity can be our faithful response to grace.
Love does not envy, nor covet.
It is life-giving not self-seeking.

Amen.

Resources for this sermon
*Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins. William H. WIllimon.

*Death by Suburb: How to Keep the Suburbs from Killing Your Soul. David L. Goetz

*The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed
A sermon preached for the congregation
at Eliot Unitarian Chapel in St. Louis, MO
By the Rev. Dr. Daniel Ó Connell
On December 5, 2004

[ Back ]