Pentecost
17 B, Proper 20 September
20, 2015
James
3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark
9:30-37
Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be
honest now, kids: who enjoys getting their brother or sister in trouble? They’re
just asking for it, aren’t they? They get way more
attention than they deserve. You just want to get your fair share once in
awhile, right, even if it’s at their expense? Maybe you can identify with the big
sister in Judy Blume’s book, The Pain and
the Great One:
"[My little brother’s] got to be first/ To
show Mom his schoolwork./ She says ooh and
aah/ All over his pictures/ Which
aren’t great at all/ But just ordinary/ First grade stuff…. And I would really
like to know/ Why the cat sleeps on [his] bed/ Instead of mine? Especially since
I am the one/ Who feeds her./ That is the meanest thing of all.”
Or maybe you feel for the little brother
as he fusses about his big sister: “She thinks she’s great/ Just because she
can/ Play the piano/ And you can tell/ The songs are real ones … My sister
thinks she’s so great/ Just because she can work/ the can opener. Which means
she gets to feed the cat./ Which means the cat/ Likes her better than me/ Just
because she feeds her.”[1]
I’m not so sure that the cat really loves
one child better than the other. But I can sure identify with these kids just
the same! Can’t you? Even as an adult, I always have my eyes on other people,
just to be sure that nobody has it better than I do. And when I convince myself
that they do have it better—boy, does that turn me bitter and unhappy inside!
Look at that colleague with every church pew full every Sunday! He has bad
theology, and one day he’ll get his comeuppance. And the lady on the treadmill at
the gym who runs for 30 minutes while I get tired just walking? It sure served
her right when she pulled her hamstring. And the neighbor who just got back
from the Bahamas while I was working and shoveling snow from my driveway every day?
I’m just going to dump all my snow in front of his mailbox so he can’t get his
mail. He’ll never guess it was me, and that inconvenience will sure take him down a peg. Yes, grown-ups
and kids alike suffer from the sin of envy: “dissatisfaction with our place in
God’s order of creation, manifested in begrudging [God’s] gifts to others.” [2]
Sometimes, we're just coveting. Coveting is wanting things: We covet somebody’s
designer purse, or his fancy car. When we envy, however, we are worried about
how we measure up with someone else. We feel bad about ourselves, and so we don’t
want anyone else to have it better than we do. We want to make them miserable,
too. My favorite joke about envy goes something like this: An Englishwoman and
a farmer find a bottle with a genie in it. They are each given one wish. The woman
tells the genie about a friend of hers who has a beautiful cottage. “I want one
like that,” she says, “except with an extra bedroom and a fancier garden.” The
farmer tells the genie about a neighbor who has a cow that produces rivers of
rich milk, milk that makes tons of wonderful cream and delicious butter. “I want
that cow,” says the farmer “… dead.”[3] The farmer suffers from
envy.
Envy, because it is so filled with
bitterness that it seeks the harm of the other party, is a dangerous sin—one that
can result in hatred, murder, and violence. Recall the story of Joseph
in the Hebrew Scriptures. His older brothers think that their father loves
Joseph better than he loves them. They envy his position in the family. But
they don’t just rant about it. They lure him into a pit in the desert, where
they leave him to be stolen away as a slave in Egypt. In today’s Epistle, James
warns us sternly about the dangers of envy: “For where there is envy and
selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind,” he
writes.
Jesus’ disciples aren't any better than we are when it comes to envy. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is trying
to tell them important things about his approaching death, and they aren’t
listening. They can’t concentrate on what their teacher is saying, because they
are too preoccupied with their own ambition and envy. Like the brother and sister in Judy
Blume’s book, they might have been grumbling things like: “Peter thinks he’s so
great and strong just because Jesus calls him The Rock. It so served him right when
Jesus yelled out, 'Get behind me Satan!' the other day, when that 'Rock' dared
to protest the strange talk about our Lord dying. Maybe now Jesus will think
that I’m the strongest one?” Or “Could you believe it back there in that town when
somebody recognized Matthew as a former tax collector and started throwing
rotten garbage on him? I thought that I would fall down, I was laughing so
hard! Maybe now that Matthew has been disgraced, I’ll get to have more respect
around here from the others.”
And what does Jesus do when he
overhears his disciples arguing and putting one another down in order to raise
themselves up? He grabs the nearest child and takes her up in his arms and says
to his envying band of followers: "Whoever welcomes one such child in my
name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent
me." What does he mean? Why a child? Why not a leper, or a blind
beggar?
Children, I need a volunteer to help
me now. I need at least one child to come up here so that I can welcome you in
Jesus’ name! [I will have arranged beforehand to get at least one child up
here!] …. OK, so if I’m going to truly welcome
_______, if I’m really going to make her feel God’s love right now, what
am I going to have to do? If I stand straight and stiff up here and stick out
my robed hand and pat her on the head, that’s not a real welcome, is it? If she’s
going to feel wanted and loved, I’m going to need to get down here on the
floor, aren’t I? [Sit down on the floor and make a production of it]. I’m going
to have to climb down out of my fancy perch in the pulpit, and bend my creaky
knees, risking getting stuck down here or sliding around ungracefully on our
nice new hardwood floor. I’m going to have to put away the safety of my
manuscript, and look her in the eyes on her level if I’m going to welcome her.
In choosing a child, Jesus lifts up to
us the silent ones, the least and littlest, the vulnerable outsiders. But he
does more than that. He also forces us to change our positions. We cannot truly
welcome the vulnerable unless we ourselves become vulnerable—unless we bend
down low, unless we lay aside our rigid frameworks about how the world works
and move outside of our comfort zones.[4] [send kid/s back to seat.]
On Friday, I joined about a thousand other
Louisvillians at the River Road Islamic Center, where unidentified vandals had
spray-painted hate-filled red graffiti across the back wall of this mosque. Having
read today’s lessons, I wondered how many of our hate crimes are at least partly fueled by
envy. Doubting that we have a place in God’s creation, we want to be sure that
no one else has one, either. Doubting that we matter in this world, we want to
let everyone know that some other group doesn’t matter, either. Empty and
bitter, we lash out secretly in ugly words and destructive acts. As I stood
there in the hot sun, getting bit by mosquitoes and listening to
politicians instead of working on my sermon, I could imagine myself being drawn
down onto my knees. I wasn’t bending down to welcome a child, but I was bending
my comforting routine. I was bending the stiff joints of my Friday schedule. I
was looking at the world from behind a mosque, a foreign architectural form. I
was standing with Jews and Muslims, black and white, in a common cause that was
outside of the formal structures of my own religion. The day wasn’t about me;
it wasn’t all about my church, my religion, my special causes. It wasn’t all
about any one of us standing there. It was about the love of God for each of us. The
outpouring, unending, overflowing love of God for each of us, just the same.
The
sin of envy dogs us when we do not believe that we are loved. If Jesus loves a
child, a child without accomplishments, without status, then Jesus loves each
of us for who we are deep within, not for what we do. There is nothing that we
have to do in order to earn that love. There is nothing that we can do to lose
it. In order to feel that love, all we have to do is to bend down, lay down our
armor, put away our red spray paint, and hold out our hands, too, to the least
and the last, to our brother and to our sister. In our mutual gaze, we will find envy replaced with love, as we
look into the very face of God.
[1]
Judy Blume, The Pain and the Great One (New
York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).
[2]
Rebecca K. DeYoung, Glittering Vices (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press), 51.
[3]
Ibid., 48.
[4]
For the idea of bending down, thank you to the Rev. Dr. Brad Wigger in his
Convocation address, “A Little Child Shall Lead Them,” Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary, February 6, 2014. Found at http://www.lpts.edu/docs/default-source/about_us-chapel_sermons_text/wigger2-6-14.pdf?sfvrsn=2
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