He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making all things new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
—Revelation 21:5
We’re not the same. My church, like just about everything else, has been changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s more than taking a break from congregational singing, missing friends who are still minding their social distance, and the presence of a camera in worship. You might even say that many churches have been hauled, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century. We have mastered new technology, found new ways to communicate, and grown adept at the use of social media. While much of what is familiar and comfortable persists, it’s a brave new world out there for churches. God is doing a new thing.
Recognizing that small churches need to change or will decline, the PC(USA) Synod of the Northeast has sponsored an innovative grant: Hybrid Outreach for Small Churches. Congregations in seven Presbyteries have been selected to work with a consultant for a year, who will coach them on reaching out in new ways. This church is blessed to be one of the seven churches chosen to participate.
Our consultant John Fong is a swirl of creativity, bold ideas, and encouragement. He also loves to laugh. John believes in evangelism for a new age that invites others to come along on our faith journey through simple acts of kindness and friendship.
If you are wondering what that might look like, consider our Palm Sunday Resurrection Gardens craft—church families and friends made table-top gardens that represent the events of Holy Week. Half of the people who made gardens at church or at home were members, and half were not, drawn into the life of the church through personal invitations and the power of Facebook. In fact, our Facebook post about the project went viral, reaching more than 2,000 people. Now, that’s some serious outreach.
I’m joined in our hybrid outreach work by Elder Chenelle Palyswiat and some of the church’s communication mavens—Peter Wilson, Anita Estling, and Duane Gould. We’ve got more projects in the pipeline, like a “Grow-a-Row” initiative to invite local gardeners to join us in growing veggies for the Food Pantry. We’re also planning a “Cookie Bomb.” Yes, it is just as exciting and delicious as it sounds. Just wait and see.
As we emerge from the chaos of pandemic, God is doing a new thing in and through us. It sounds like the work of the risen Lord, who promises to make all things new. May the Lord be doing new — and blessed — things for you and your faith community, too.
“Begin the Day”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“Begin each morning with a talk to God,
And ask for your divine inheritance
Of usefulness, contentment, and success.
Resign all fear, all doubt, and all despair.
The stars doubt not, and they are undismayed,
Though whirled through space for countless centuries,
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “An Idle Tale” Luke 24:1-12
I was warned when I first came to Saranac Lake that I should NOT expect a full church on Easter. At the other three churches that I have served, Easter Sunday is a lot like Christmas Eve with people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, belting out beloved hymns, and eagerly sharing “Alleluias!” But Saranac Lake? Not so much. Snowbirds have flown south for the winter to stay until May for fear of the dreaded Easter-snow. The two-week-long school break surrounds Easter, and families weary of winter and sick of mud season leave the North Country in stunning numbers to bask their alabaster flesh in the warm glow of Florida sun. The past few years have been complicated by COVID, sending us online instead of into the pews to celebrate the resurrection. On Easter Sunday, many of our friends are missing.
But this Easter, I’ve been thinking about those other people who are NOT in church—the unchurched. They may be like Brittney, a twenty-something young adult raised in church who never made an adult connection to a local congregation in her new community. On Easter morning, she is still in her jammies, reading a good book or facetiming with a college friend. The unchurched may be like Tim and Cindy, once faithful attenders at a Catholic Church until the clergy sexual abuse scandal shattered their trust in the institutional church. On Easter morning, they sleep in, read the New York Times, and have brunch. The unchurched may be like Mitchell. He has only been in church for weddings and funerals, occasions when he feels uncomfortable and out of place. On Easter morning, he is up early to watch soccer on tv. He wears the jersey of his favorite team, and from his man cave, his wife and children can hear the shouts of victory and the groans of defeat. For people like Brittney, Tim and Cindy, and Mitchell, Easter sounds like an idle tale—fantastic, mysterious, and hard to believe.
The women on that first Easter morning were accused of telling an idle tale. They traveled with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Passover. They hoped that Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel. Many of them had been helped and healed by his miraculous power. But on Friday they witnessed their rabbi being beaten, abused, and crucified. They heard his dying words. They saw the blood and water pour from his side. They watched while Joseph of Arimathea claimed the body, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a newly cut tomb. They retreated to the place where they were staying to prepare the spices and ointments. They prayed and wept all through the sabbath day. Then, early in the deep dawn, when the sun was just a rosy hint lingering below the horizon, they gathered their precious oils and walked through the streets of the city to offer a final kindness to the man they loved, anointing his body for the grave.
At the tomb, the women expected death. Afterall, they had seen it with their own eyes. But something fantastic, mysterious, and hard to believe, awaited them. The stone was rolled away. The body was gone. While they inspected the grave, bowed down with grief and confusion, holy messengers burst in upon them, reminding them of Jesus’ promise of resurrection and challenging them with the question “Why do you look for the one who lives among the dead?”
Amid the women’s puzzlement and grief, a certainty began to glow like a spark rising from the ashes: Jesus is alive. In the mixed joy and terror of that belief, they ran through the streets of the waking city and burst into the room where the disciples were still rubbing sleep from their eyes. All of them began to speak their truth at once, voices rising and falling, alleluias ringing, tears flowing, “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!”
Perhaps we can forgive the disciples for presuming that what the women had to say was an “idle tale,” stuff and nonsense, a fevered delirium. After all, the men had just woken up. And they lived in a world where what women had to say couldn’t be admitted as evidence in a court of law. And according to Luke, there were a lot of women saying the same wild stuff: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and all those other women who had loved Jesus, provided for him from their purses, and traveled with him throughout his ministry. All that joy, excitement, and hope that flooded in upon the disciples’ grief and shame made no sense whatsoever. So, the men failed to remember what Jesus had promised and they refused to believe. They hushed the women and went back to their dark thoughts and bleak world.
Even if we think that the disciples were embarrassingly clueless on that first Easter morning, we get it. We expect death. We have buried our parents and our dear friends. Sometimes on a day when the world turns black, we bury a child. We know the death of relationships. Marriages grow cold. Friendships end in nonsensical arguments. Neighbors disconnect over perceived slights or differences of political opinion. We know the death of opportunity. The promotion never comes. The degree is never earned. The pink slip arrives when we’re too old to start over. We know death writ large on the world stage. Russia invades Ukraine. Our wild world fails with mass extinction. Hunger walks the land in Yemen, Sudan, and Afghanistan. We expect death, preoccupied by our dark thoughts and bleak world. On some days, we can be just as resistant as the disciples to the truth that the women spoke, all those years ago.
On Easter morning, an empty tomb, two holy messengers, and a group of faithful women dare to tell us that death does not have the final word. Don’t get me wrong. Death is real. Pain is fierce. Loss can be overwhelming. Some days, we are bowed down to the ground in grief. Yet, God in a lonely tomb in the pre-dawn dark of Easter morning broke the power of sin and death. All the evil, grief, and sin of this world cannot keep Jesus down. Love wins the day. Jesus rises. The tomb is empty. God brings life out of death and reconciliation out of division. New beginnings spring from impossible endings. It is fantastic, mysterious, and on some days, hard to believe. But that’s what God does. Alleluia!
That news is so good that it can be mistaken for an idle tale. But the truth is proven in the living. When we join those women in saying “Yes!” to what God has done in Jesus, we find the possibility of new life. We are changed, just as the women were changed. We rise up with the courage to live with love and reconciliation in a broken and dying world. We move beyond our grief. We reach out a hand in forgiveness. We ask to be forgiven. We make a fresh start. We call for peace. We care for the planet. We feed the hungry. We become hope for the hopeless and food for the hungry of heart. The world is waiting for an Easter transformation. That can only take shape if we dare to speak our truth to those who may dismiss us as bearers of idle tales.
So, let’s do it. Let’s reach out to the Brittney’s we know, those twenty-somethings who haven’t been back to church since they left home. Let’s remind them of the love, connection, and encouragement that are such a special part of being a church family.
Let’s reach out to friends like Tim and Cindy, alienated by the sexual misconduct of those who had been entrusted with their spiritual care. Let’s remind them that God’s heart breaks along with theirs and there are other churches where the love of God is practiced sincerely in word and deed.
Let’s reach out to the Mitchells of this world. They may never feel comfortable coming to church, but they may see Jesus. Every time we share the love of Christ with fresh produce for the Food Pantry, shallow wells for Africa, or a prayer shawl in a time of crisis, we bear a quiet and powerful witness to the transforming, unstoppable love of God and the truth of Easter. Someday, people like Mitchell might even be a little like the disciple Peter. They could turn off the Sunday morning sports and venture forth to see for themselves, to look at the evidence and be amazed, even if they aren’t yet willing to accept the truth.
We’ve got a tale to tell, my friends. Some call it idle, but we know better. What are we waiting for? Next Easter, we might just have a few more people in the pews. Alleluia!
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Monsignor Charles Pope leads a weekly Bible Study at the White House for President Biden. In more than thirty years of parish ministry, Charles Pope has spent a lot of time in the confessional, hearing sins and prescribing penance. Father Pope says that greed is the most under-reported of sins. We tend to think that everyone else is greedy, but we never think that we make too much money or have too much stuff. Faith leaders in the Protestant tradition say the same thing. Rev. Tim Keller, the well-known author and longtime pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, relates that he once led a weekly Bible Study on the Seven Deadly Sins. The week that the study was least attended was the one when he taught about greed. Keller says, “Maybe the best sign of greed is that you aren’t willing to even admit the possibility that you are enslaved to it.”
Greed is the artificial, rapacious desire for and pursuit of wealth and possessions. Two of the Ten Commandments speak to greed: the prohibitions on stealing and covetousness. In the gospels, greed is the sin that Jesus most frequently spoke against, from his warning to tax collectors against collecting more than authorized (Lk 3:13) to his Parable of the Rich Fool, which reminds us that we can’t take it with us and we are truly fools if our worldly goods are more important than our relationship with God (Lk 12:13-21). Indeed, Jesus saw wealth as an idol, cautioning that we cannot serve God and Mammon.
Throughout the Christian tradition, we have been warned about the dangers of greed. Thomas Aquinas believed that greed is a three-fold sin. Greed is a sin against neighbor because one man’s riches cannot over-bound without another man being in need. Greed is a sin against the self because our “affections are disordered” by loving and delighting in material things. And greed is a sin against God because we scorn the eternal for our love of the temporal. Dante’s Inferno places greedy souls in the fourth Circle of Hell, where misers, hoarders, and spendthrifts eternally battle one another. Martin Luther was especially concerned with greed, calling those who are avaricious “money gluttons.” According to Luther, the greedy man “would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and everyone may receive from him as from God, and be his serfs forever.”
Our contemporary understanding of greed takes into account its destructive nature, as well as its acceptance. Psychologist Erich Fromm saw greed as “a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” We may be blind to our own greed and the greed of others, thanks to our cultural context. We are constantly barraged by marketing that tells us that love is revealed in the gift of a diamond that is forever or a brand-new car with a big bow on top delivered on Christmas morning. Who doesn’t want to be loving? Only 2% of Americans think we are wealthy “upper class” people, but on a world stage, we are wealthy beyond the imagining of most.
We also tend to confuse our wants with our needs, and so the more we earn, the more we spend. Not many of us are like billionaire Warren Buffet who still lives in the same home in Omaha that he bought in 1958. Instead, more money means more expense, whether we are socking it away in our retirement nest egg, driving a better car, or moving into that nicer neighborhood. Our growing affluence isn’t necessarily good for others. A shocking 2008 study discovered the radical generosity of the poor. Researchers found that 60% of Americans who live in poverty give their money and time to help others while only 32% of people who live above the poverty line are willing to share. Author, editor, and theologian Brad Littlejohn teaches that greed is spiritually dangerous because it leads to a false sense of security and an inward-focused self-absorption that allows us to ignore the needs of others.
Our biblical paradigm for greed is Judas. In today’s gospel reading, the Lord would soon be arrested, tortured, and executed. But that night, Mary of Bethany did something beautiful. She anointed Jesus with precious oil of nard, all the way from the Himalayas, purchased at great price. It was a decadent act of generous love. The indignant Judas denounced Mary before the disciples. Although he claimed he was advocating on behalf of the poor, Luke tells us that Judas was greedy. The money spent on that costly anointing could have lined his pockets. Within the week, Judas would betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. He is the poster child for greed, alienated from his better self, robbing the poor, rejecting the love of Christ, and denying the authority of God.
We’ll be relieved to hear that the remedy for greed is not poverty. It’s generosity, the virtue of being liberal in giving. Jesus expected his followers to be generous. He instructed them to sell their possessions and give to the poor (Lk 12:33-34). Aristotle taught that generosity is the noble and appropriate mean between two opposing extremes—stinginess and wastefulness. Aquinas saw generosity as a dimension of agape (charitas), the generous love that Jesus taught us, the love that always gives in the best interest of the other. Martin Luther encouraged generosity, saying, “Possessions belong in your hands, not in your heart.”
Our biblical example of generosity is the poor widow. You may remember that during Holy Week, Jesus took a seat in the Temple to watch folks deposit their offering in the treasury. Many costly gifts were given, yet the gift that excited Jesus the most was two small coins (copper mites or leptons), given by an impoverished widow. The Lord praised her generosity, because it was an offering of all she had and all she was—her whole self (Lk 21:1-4). We remember that Jesus was likewise unfailingly generous, sharing freely of himself to heal, help, and feed his neighbors. Truly, Holy Week reminds us that Jesus made the greatest gift of all, laying down his life in the ultimate object lesson of God’s generous love for us.
The bad news is that Americans are not as generous as we like to think. 2/3 of us believe that it is important to be generous, yet about half of us give nothing at all to charity. Only 17% of Americans give habitually, building it into their budget. Only 16% of Americans make generosity part of their long-term plans, like estate planning and legacy gifts. The definitive survey on Christian giving by sociologists Smith, Emerson, and Herzog learned that adults who do not witness generosity as children, do not practice generosity as grown-ups. They also found that if American Christians gave in keeping with their income, they would give between $46-85 billion more each year—a generosity that could forever change our communities, where churches remain at the heart of helping vulnerable neighbors and transforming lives.
The good news is that generosity can be learned, cultivated, and grown. Sociologists point out that being consistently generous involves planning. It’s a habit that we can intentionally build into busy lives. This could involve making a formal financial pledge to the charitable concerns that we wish to support, or it could also look like putting dates for volunteering on the calendar. Studies have found that giving, both in treasure and time, grows when it is routinized and becomes a habit.
The social scientists say that we are in the right place to become more generous: church. Local churches are consistent “climates of giving,” places where financial gifts meet known community needs. We get personally involved in ministries, missions, and volunteer opportunities that reinforce the “virtuous cycle” of generosity. We find that being generous is rewarding because we see the difference that we make in the world, and we become part of a supportive, giving-oriented web of relationships that grows with time. Within churches, our teamwork builds caring, friendship, and generosity.
Generosity is also grown when we practice it in families and teach it to our children and grandchildren. Generous parents make for generous kids. The family that talks about the importance of generosity and practices it together by using those fish banks for OGHS or participating in the Souper Bowl of Caring or walking together in the CROP Walk, these families create a home environment where generosity becomes part of our mental make-up. Those generous kids grow up to believe that they can and will make a caring difference that can transform the world through their personal generosity.
When we get the better of our greed by growing our generosity, not only does the world become a better and more equitable place, we also return to right relationship with God and with neighbor. Prof. Will Mari of Louisiana State University, reminds us that it’s not just our stuff that is not our own, it’s our whole lives. Truly, all we have and all we are is God’s gracious gift. We find ultimate meaning when we devote ourselves to a generosity and service that is “good, godly, and healthy.” Generosity poises us to live the life that God would have us live — open to what may come. C.S. Lewis in a letter to his dear friend Arthur Greeves in Dec. 1943 wrote, “The great thing about life is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things [that come along] as interruptions of life. The truth is that what I call interruptions are real life—the life God is sending me day by day.” What is the life that God is sending to us?
God is so generous to us, my friends. May we live with open hands, open hearts, and open hours, sharing generously of ourselves to the glory of God and for the good of our neighbor.
Resources:
Will Mari. “The Only Bright Spot in American Giving” in Christianity Today, Nov. 30, 2017. Accessed online at christianitytoday.com.
Marika Suval. “Just How Generous Are Americans Really?” on Wisconsin Public Radio, March 9, 2016. Accessed online at www.wpr.org/listen/892341
W. Bradford Littlejohn. “The 7 Deadly Sins in a Digital Age: 3. Greed” in Reformation 21, Nov. 24, 2014. Accessed online at www.reformation21.org.
Charles Pope. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed” in Community in Mission, April 2, 2019. Accessed online at blog.adw.org
12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
This is the fifth in a series on the Seven Deadly Sins.
For many people, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been unwanted weight gain. 42% of US adults have reported gaining an average of 29 pounds. What did we expect? We were homebound and stressed out. The gyms were closed, yoga and dance classes cancelled, and we stopped jogging with our buddy. We were ordering take-out and having groceries delivered. If only we hadn’t started baking sourdough bread and discovered the recipe for the Cheesecake Factory’s original cheesecake.
Obesity has been on the rise in the US for decades. In the year 2000, 30.5% of us were obese. By 2021, that statistic had swelled to 42.4% of us. All that weight puts us at increased risk for diabetes, stroke, heart attack, and cancer. The annual cost of obesity to our health care system is $147 billion. Weight loss is a growth industry, raking in $253 billion in 2021. According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, our weight problems won’t be improving any time soon. Unless we change, half of all Americans will be obese by 2029. One in four Americans will be severely obese, that’s more than 100 pounds overweight.
A parallel consequence of the pandemic has been an increase in world hunger. In 2021, 957 million people across 93 countries did not have enough to eat, a jump of 161 million people from before the advent of COVID-19. 239 million people are in need of life-saving humanitarian action. 21.3% of the world’s children suffer from stunted growth, due to chronic malnutrition. Hunger is a problem that cannot be solved by emergency food aid alone. We need a concerted global effort to develop sustainable food systems. There is more than enough food produced to feed everyone on the planet, but we have lacked the global will to ensure that everyone has enough.
Our Lenten consideration of the Seven Deadly Sins continues this morning with gluttony, from the Latin gluttire, to gulp down or swallow. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, taught that gluttony is the unrestrained desire for food that harms the individual and prevents human flourishing. The Roman philosopher Cicero saw gluttony as a matter of wrong priorities, saying, “It is necessary to eat in order to live, not to live in order to eat.” The influential medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas saw gluttony as a moral wrong, an inordinate desire for food that adversely affects our spiritual life. Aquinas cast gluttony as a form of idolatry in which our god is the belly. Within the Christian tradition, we have seen over-indulgence in food as particularly egregious when it exists side-by-side with the hunger of our neighbors. Dante envisioned a special Hell for gluttons, lying in filthy, cold slush amid a never-ending icy rain while watched over by a giant stomach with three worm-like heads. Eeeew!
Contemporary thinking on gluttony invites us to consider the social, psychological, and spiritual context of the sin. In her book Glittering Vices, Prof. Rebecca DeYoung of Calvin College casts gluttony as a sin of self-gratification, an ultimate expression of “Me” culture in which it is all about us. The social sciences invite us to see how our human relationship with food has shifted over the course of centuries. Once upon a time, only the elite could over-indulge in food, but with the rise of the middle class, a well-stocked table was seen as a sign of vitality, prosperity, and success. Somewhere along the way, that sign of prosperity and success went off the rails. We eat for any number of reasons other than necessity. We eat out of boredom, stress, tiredness, and anger. Overeating can just be a habit. Or, we may have never learned proper portion sizes. Who belonged to the “Clean Plate Club” as a child or was told that there were starving children in India or China or Africa who would love to have our dinner? Professor Graham Tomlin of Oxford University suggests that beneath those social and psychological forces that promote gluttony, there is a deep spiritual need. We mistakenly use food to try to satisfy the deeper craving within us. The craving for God. What a poor, dissatisfying substitute.
Our biblical paradigm of gluttony is Jesus’ story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The rich man feasts sumptuously every day, seemingly oblivious to the suffering of the neighbor who begs at his gate. Lazarus is poignantly described: starving, sick, too weak to keep the dogs from licking his festering sores. Death brings a great reversal. While the rich man suffers eternal torment, Lazarus is welcomed and comforted like a beloved child. We learn that the rich man was not unaware of his neighbor’s suffering—he recognizes Lazarus and knows his name. In life, the rich man simply chose to not see or assist his starving neighbor. Instead, he indulged his own lavish appetite. Jesus suggests that our unbridled consumption and our choice to be blind to the need of our neighbors creates a willful gap that allows suffering to flourish in this world, a gap that has eternal consequences for the life to come.
The remedy for gluttony is found in the virtue of temperance. Temperance is an antiquated word with negative connotations that spring from America’s failed experiment with Prohibition. Perhaps better words for temperance these days are moderation or self-discipline. Aristotle characterized temperance as finding the “Golden Mean”—doing the right thing in the right amount in the right way. Aquinas believed that we don’t need to abstain from the pleasure of good food, but we do need to make discerning choices about what and how we eat, shunning those pleasures that are “immoderate and contrary to reason.” In Paradise Lost, 17th century poet John Milton had the archangel Michael extoll the virtue of temperance which leads to a long and happy life.
“There is, said Michael, if thou will observe
The rule of not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eat’st and drink’st, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
Till many years over thy head return:
So mai’st thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop
Into thy Mother’s lap, or be with ease
Gather’d, not harshly pluck’t, for death mature.”
Nowadays, advocates of Positive Psychology, which focuses on individual and societal well-being, teach that temperance is one of six core virtues that increase happiness when we build upon them. Temperate people develop the capacity to handle the complexity of life. They choose to face things calmly and insightfully. Temperance allows us to control our impulses and delay our gratification in pursuit of future goals. For Christians, temperance equips us to weather difficult times with grace, because we see the long view and trust that God is with us and change can come. Temperance finds its expression in us when we find a healthy moderation and balance in life, creating the right environment for us—and our neighbors—to thrive.
Our biblical model for temperance is Jesus. His critics may have alleged that he was a glutton and a drunkard, but Jesus made choices about food to serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus chose fasting in the wilderness as an act of spiritual preparation. Yet, the first miracle of his ministry was one of feasting. In Cana, the Lord turned water into wine to save the day at a wedding banquet. Jesus used meals to build community. He welcomed to the table outsiders, like sinners and tax collectors, and insiders, like Pharisees and disciples. Jesus was concerned about hungry people. He fed multitudes with meager resources and miracles of multiplication. Jesus gave us a holy meal, the Lord’s Supper, to remind us of his great love for us and the ultimate sacrifice that he would make for our sake on the cross. Jesus liked to eat, just like the rest of us, but he made intentional choices about where, when, and how he ate in order to achieve his mission and give glory to God. Now that’s temperance.
How might we follow Jesus in practicing temperance? We can be informed by scripture. The psalmist affirms that food is God’s good and generous providence: all creation looks to God “to give them their food in due season.” By God’s generous hand we “are filled with good things” (Psalm 104:27-28). We have a role to play as stewards of that generous providence of God, not only for ourselves, but also for the world around us. We remember that when the disciples wanted to send away hungry people, Jesus stopped them with the words, “You feed them” (Mark 6:37). Our personal concern with food needs to be a global concern for feeding a hungry world, for ensuring that Lazarus does not languish at our gate while we feast sumptuously. Changing our thinking about food can draw us closer to God and closer to our most vulnerable neighbors.
Changing our thinking about food can also change how we understand ourselves. Learning and implementing temperance in our personal relationship with food may feel harder, but the behavioral science surrounding weight loss tells us there is hope. We can set dietary goals and be accountable, even if that means keeping a food journal or finding a trusted friend to encourage us. We can be aware of what tempts us most and take time to notice when the craving kicks in. We can practice some selective abstinence from foods that are most likely to sabotage us, whether we stop buying the potato chips or we take a break from sugar during Lent. We can make better choices, cultivating an appetite for healthier foods. We can also look to things other than food for our personal satisfaction, like a good book, music, fellowship, scripture, nature, creativity, learning, prayer, or exercise. Healthy change is possible with the help of temperance, the Holy Spirt, and some hard work.
So, let’s give temperance a try. What do we have to lose other than the 29 pounds we gained during the pandemic and the hunger of 957 million of our world neighbors?
Lesley Lyle. “Developing Temperance” in Positive Psychology, March 2013. Accessed online at thepositivepsychologypeople.com.
Gernot Laganda. “2021 Is Going to Be a Bad Year for World Hunger” in Food Systems Summit. Accessed online at un.org
Kaia Hubbard. “The Pandemic Has Worsened the US Obesity Epidemic” in US News and World Report, Sept. 15, 2021. Accessed online at usnews.com
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Accessed online at virtuescience.com.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Accessed online at newadvent.org.
Francine Prose. “Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony” from Gluttony (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2006). Accessed online at blog.oup.com.
CNN Staff. “Obesity in the US Fast Facts,” May 27, 2021. Accessed online at cnn.com.
Graham Tomlin. “Gluttony” in The Seven Deadly Sins (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2014).
Kimberly Winston, “Gluttony and the Seven Deadly Sins” in Religion News Service, Nov. 22, 2016. Accessed online at religion news.com.
Luk 16:19-31
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
This is the fourth message in a Lenten Sermon Series on the Seven Deadly Sins.
We don’t often talk about lust in church. Passion and sexuality are God-given gifts, part of our essential being, and key to God’s best hope for the creation. They can be the crown and ultimate fulfillment of our most committed and caring relationships. Yet, when misused and expressed as lust, passion and sexuality can have destructive consequences.
Consider adultery. Until a few decades ago, adultery was still a criminal offense in many countries where Christianity is the dominant religion. Adultery is technically illegal in 21 states in the US. New York is one of the few states that considers cheating on your spouse to be a sin. Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, among others, have felony charges against it. Most couples marry with the expectation of fidelity, and yet extramarital affairs persist. 22% of married men and 14% of married women have committed adultery. Adultery, as a breach of marital trust, is emotionally traumatic for both spouses. 17% of marriages that go through an incident of cheating end in divorce.
Lust among Millennials is expressed in hookup culture, which has replaced traditional dating on college campuses. In hookup culture, relationships are purely physical and very brief—a few minutes, a couple of hours, or overnight. Sexual intimacy is followed by no further communication or connection that could lead to attachment. Often, drinking is involved. One in three students characterize hookups as “traumatic” or “very difficult to handle.” One in ten students say that they have been sexually coerced or assaulted. Professor Lisa Wade of Tulane University says that hookup culture is “a punishing emotional landscape where caring for others or even simple courtesy seem inappropriate.”
The most prevalent expression of lust in our culture is pornography. More than 90% of young men report that they watch porn with some regularity. The world’s largest pornography website Pornhub reports that 90 billion videos are watched on their site every day by 64 million visitors. $3,000 is spent every minute. Research suggests that porn is bad for our committed relationships. A 2016 study by the University of Oklahoma found that divorce rates double when pornography enters the marriage. 56% of divorce cases cite obsessive interest in porn as a contributing factor.
According to Aristotle, lust is an irrational, insatiable desire for pleasure that increases the more it is exercised. Thomas Aquinas taught that lust is a “voluptuous emotion” that “unloosens the human spirit and sets aside all reason.” In his Inferno, Dante Alighieri portrayed unrepentant lustful souls in Hell, eternally buffeted and driven by the force of a whirlwind. From antiquity through the 19th century, artistic depictions of lust are typically female. Maybe we can blame it on Prudentius, who in the fifth century described the deadly sin of lust as “lavish of her ruined fame, loose-haired, wild-eyed, her voice a dying fall, lost in delight.”
In our modern understanding, we acknowledge the harmful unrestrained, sometimes escalating, sexual impulse of lust. Yet, we also recognize the interpersonal abuse of lust. Our Friday night hookup isn’t regarded as a person with social and emotional needs to be respected or reverenced. They are just a means to get our “rocks off” (as the Rolling Stones once said). Jesus understood this. That’s why he taught that when we look at others with lust, we have committed adultery in our hearts (Matthew 5:27-28). In lust, we dehumanize and objectify others, looking only for our self-satisfaction. Lust can also lead to the abuse of power. The #METOO Movement shined a spotlight on successful men, like Harvey Weinstein, who used their personal, professional power to coerce women into sex. In Old Hollywood, they called it the casting couch. Now, we know it’s rape.
Our biblical paradigm of lust is King David. While the younger men went off to war, the aging king let his eyes roam and his lust call the shots. He abused his power to use Bathsheba to gratify his needs. Then, when there were consequences, he hatched a series of plots to escape responsibility. Uriah was summoned home to sleep with his wife, but when the younger man proved too honorable, things got darker yet as the king engineered his death. David may not have shot the arrow that took Uriah’s life, but he was the murderer, nonetheless. History and Hollywood have suggested that Bathsheba was somehow to blame for the King’s lust. But we know better. I like to point out that the only sound we hear from Bathsheba in this terrible tale is her wailing of lamentation for the husband she loved.
We find the remedy for our lust in chastity. Chastity has gotten a bad rap, conjuring up images of prudish men and women with their shirts buttoned up and a withering gaze for anything flirty. So, perhaps I should begin with what chastity is NOT. Chastity is not abstinence, although in practicing chastity, we may make choices for abstinence at different times in our lives. Chastity is not sexual repression, pushing down within ourselves or punishing ourselves for our natural sexual impulses. Chastity is not refusing to think about or talk about sex, as if sex isn’t a normal, natural part of being human. Unfortunately, we tend to project all those unnatural, unhealthy qualities onto the virtue of chastity.
Aristotle taught that chastity uses rational principles to govern and bring into order our sexual desire. He saw it as a natural discipline to be learned and practiced, saying, “as the child should live according to the direction of his tutor, so the appetitive element (lust) should live according to rational principle.” In Christian thinking, chastity is more than just thinking our way past our sexual impulses. Robert Kruschwitz, a Senior Scholar at Baylor University, says, “Chastity is a habit of reverence for oneself and others that enables us to use our sexual powers intelligently in the pursuit of human flourishing and happiness.” I’ll break that down. In chastity, we are at peace with our bodies and our sexuality—we see their God-given nature. Then, we bring a loving reverence for ourselves and others to our intimacy. We honor ourselves as creatures made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), and we revere the image of God in others. We bring love and respect to our intimate encounters for the sake of the other person’s good and ultimate happiness. In chastity, those sexual impulses that we all experience are governed by Christ’s great commandment that we love God—and we love others as we love ourselves. When we get right down to it, chastity is a choice to live in love. To bring agape to our sexuality.
Our biblical model of chastity is Joseph, the youngest son of Israel’s Patriarch Jacob (Genesis 39). After Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers, he was bought by Potiphar, the Captain of the Egyptian Guard. Joseph served as Potiphar’s personal attendant, and the bond between the two men grew so close that Potiphar entrusted Joseph with his entire household. All was well that ended well until Potiphar’s wife cast her lusty gaze upon the well-built, handsome young Hebrew. She commanded Joseph, “Sleep with me!” Joseph refused the temptation, seeing that if he said “Yes,” he would betray the kindness and generosity of Potiphar and the love and goodness of God, who had blessed Joseph amid his misfortune.
We can push back against the harmful consequences of lust in our society by practicing the virtue of chastity. G.K. Chesterton taught that “chastity, like any value or virtue, is a positive thing that you gain, not something that you give up.” Indeed, this notion of chastity as a gift or quality earned after moral struggle dates back to the 13th century. Thomas Aquinas was said to have fought long against the temptation of lust. According to tradition, when Aquinas prevailed, the angels gave him a rope belt as a sign of his victory. Soon after his death, his followers began to wear chastity cords in hopes of a similar victory over lust. Aquinas’s chastity belt is preserved today at the Cathedral in Cheiri, Italy.
In the absence of Thomas Aquinas, chastity belts, and the intercession of angels, there are some steps that we can take to nurture our formation in chastity. We can acknowledge that lust and sexual urges are part of who we are. We can learn to recognize what our triggers are, whether it is loneliness, a work trip, porn, or a fraternity party with too much alcohol. We can be attentive to and mindful of our thoughts and physical state, and then we can choose not to act on those impulses. It helps to have a small circle of trusted, honest, confidential friends who can hold us accountable, with whom we can share our temptation and find encouragement. We can find role models who inspire us in the way of chastity at its best, whether it is Jesus or Thomas Aquinas or Captain America, who waited so long for his best-gal Peggy. We can also accept that chastity, like any other virtue, is one that we can fall from. Even Jimmy Carter admitted that he had felt lust and committed adultery in his heart. And yet we trust that even as we fall, the grace of our Lord Jesus is sufficient for us. We can begin again. Perhaps most important of all, we need to talk about lust and chastity with our children and grandchildren, who will one day find themselves in the midst of that emotionally punishing landscape of hookup culture.
Well, my friends, we’ve done it. We have talked about lust in church. The roof has not fallen in. Instead, we’ve taken an honest look at the world out there, where the God-given gifts of passion and sexuality have gotten misdirected into adultery, pornography, and hookups. Lust may abound, but so can chastity. Let’s choose chastity. Let’s make that reasoned, respectful, loving choice for ourselves. Let’s make it for the sake of others. Let’s teach it to our children. Amen.
Resources:
Lisa Wade. “The Rise of Hookup Culture on American College Campuses” in Scholars Strategy Network, August 25, 2017. Accessed online at scholars.org.
Alexandra Solomon. “What Hookup Culture Means for the Future of Millennial Love” in Psychotherapy Network, Oct. 5, 2020. Accessed online at psychotherapynetworker.org.
Content Team. “Adultery” in Legal Dictionary. Accessed online at legaldictionary,com.
David Schultz. “Divorce rates Double When People Start Watching Porn” in Science, August 26, 2016. Accessed online at science.org.
Content Team. “Porn Addiction” in Psychology Today. Accessed online at psychologytoday.com.
Robert B. Kruschwitz. “Chastity as a Virtue” in Christian Reflection, 2016. Accessed online at baylor.edu.
Adam Jeske. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust” in InterVarsity, March 15, 2014. Accessed online at intervarsity.org.
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Book 3, Ch. 12. Accessed online at virtuescience.com.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Accessed online at newadvent.org.
2 Samuel 11:1-18, 22-27
11 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3 David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. 5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
6 So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. 10 When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” 11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” 12 Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, 13 David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” 16 As Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant warriors. 17 The men of the city came out and fought with Joab; and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite was killed as well. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting; 22 So the messenger went and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us, and came out against us in the field; but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. 24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall; some of the king’s servants are dead; and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” 25 David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press your attack on the city and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.”
26 When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. 27 When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Wrath” Acts 7:54-8:3; 9:1-5
New York Police are investigating what looks like a case of road rage in Harlem on Tuesday. After a dispute between a motorcyclist and a driver, surveillance video shows motorcyclists surrounding the car and an argument ensuing. The 63-year-old driver and his 35-year-old son were pulled from the vehicle, thrown to the ground, kicked, and robbed.
Last week, Atlanta Braves outfielder Marcell Ozuna told his teammates he was sorry for an arrest last year on charges of aggravated assault by strangulation and battery after police officers said they witnessed him attacking his wife. Ozuna, who attended court-mandated counseling, says, “I learned how you treat a person, how you be a better person, how you be the best daddy, how you be a human being. You learn everything from that.” He hopes the public can forgive him.
In Fresno, a long-running feud between next-door-neighbors came to a head last month when a yard sale ended in violence. According to witnesses, the two men were having a heated argument outside their homes when one picked up a pellet gun and shot the other. When the police arrived, the shooter had walked away to cool down and the victim had broken his collar bone in a fall.
We all get angry. It’s part of how we are hardwired. Presented with threat, a part of our brain called the amygdala kicks into gear, telling us to fight or flee. Anger can get us out of dangerous situations or motivate us to change. Indeed, anger can be constructive, like Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple as a righteous protest against the exploitation of the poor. Yet, anger, especially when it is long-held, disproportionate, or explosive is destructive, for ourselves and others.
Theologians have long called our uncontrolled feelings of anger wrath. The Medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas wrote that anger is a good and useful passion, but becomes evil when the order of reason is set aside. Aquinas described the daughters of wrath as “quarreling, swelling of the mind, contempt, derision, clamor, indignation, and blasphemy.” Poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri said that wrath is “the love of justice that has been perverted to revenge and spite.” In his Inferno, Dante imagined the eternal punishment for the wrathful: dismemberment while still alive. 16th century painter Hieronymus Bosch in his painting “The Seven Deadly Sins” depicted wrath as two drunken neighbors violently quarreling. One has clearly been hit over the head with a chair. The table is overturned, hats and cloaks are cast off, blades are drawn, and a long-suffering wife tries to intercede.
Our Biblical example of wrath is Saul, that’s the Apostle Paul before his come-to-Jesus moment. Saul saw himself as the ultimate defender of the Hebrew faith. He once described himself to the church in Philippi as “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil. 3:4-6). When the followers of Jesus demonstrated a new interpretation of the Torah, Paul got angry, and then his anger grew into hatred and violence. First, Saul sponsored the execution of the deacon Stephen. Then, he rounded up and imprisoned followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and Samaria. Next, unwilling to stop with the elimination of Christians in Israel, Saul traveled to the Roman province of Syria to launch a new program of persecution there. It would take an encounter with Jesus himself to turn things around for Saul.
In our own lives, wrath has physical and relational effects. When we are in the throes of wrath, our hearts race, our blood pressure spikes, and our blood courses with adrenaline and noradrenaline. We lose our capacity to monitor our emotions and actions. We lack objectivity. We are incapable of empathy, prudence, and thoughtfulness. Wrath behind the wheel of a car can escalate to road rage, yet it is also seen in speeding, tailgating, and flipping off another driver. Wrath can explode in marriages with acts of domestic violence, yet it is also revealed in that same fight that we have over and over again for years. We’re a little like the late comedian Phyllis Diller who quipped, “Don’t go to bed angry; stay up and fight!” Wrath between neighbors can devolve into a feud, but it can also look like someone with their anger button stuck on, who takes exception to anything and everything that someone else does. We feel so self-righteous about it, too. But it’s like author Ambrose Bierce once wrote, “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
Although we all struggle with wrath, we have a powerful weapon for that spiritual battle: the virtue of patience. The Latin root of patience pati means to suffer or endure. According to Aquinas, a person is patient because she or he is able “to act in a praiseworthy manner by enduring things that hurt” without being unduly saddened or troubled by them. When we are patient, we keep control over the impulse that suddenly and naturally arises when something disagreeable happens to us. Patient people aren’t doormats or victims who allow themselves to be steamrolled in conflict. Rather, those who are patient choose to control themselves amid difficult circumstances for the sake of what is right – they trust that a way forward can be found with time and effort. You might even say that in patience we freely bear the small cross of facing someone’s anger and bad behavior for the common good that makes healing possible.
Our biblical model of patience is, of course, Jesus. Just look at his relationships with the two apostles who would become the lions of the early church. Remember Peter? Peter tried to talk Jesus out of the way of the cross. Peter would sleep through Jesus’ anguish in Gethsemane. Peter would resort to violence when the Temple guard arrived. And Peter would deny Jesus three times. Yet the long-suffering Jesus saw in Peter the gifts of leadership that the early church would need. With great patience, Jesus restored Peter to right relationship with the three-fold invitation to feed the flock that Jesus was entrusting to his care. Likewise, Saul, that Hebrew born of Hebrews, that greatest of persecutors, got turned around by Jesus on the Damascus Road. Thanks to the patience of Jesus, Saul was redeemed. Saul became Paul, the great evangelist to the Gentiles.
The bad news about patience is that these days there is less of it to go around. In 2012, UMass researchers Krishnan and Sitaraman determined in a study of 6.7 million internet users that we can lose patience in as little as two seconds. Buffering leads half of viewers to abandon videos in ten seconds. The faster our internet connection is, the more impatient we become. Scientists theorize that the rapid pace of technology is rewiring human brains to be less and less patient. Is it any wonder that road rage incidents in Texas have doubled in the last year? Jesus, take the wheel!
The good news about patience is that we can cultivate it. We can grow our capacity to stay patient amid all the experiences that can make us angry. A good place to begin is simply thinking before we speak. Whether we count to ten or we take a minute to gather our thoughts and make a reasoned response, a little time can keep us from responding in ways that hurt and escalate anger. We can also think about how we express ourselves. It’s okay to let people know we are angry, but we can do it in a non-confrontational way. Be clear and direct with statements that take personal responsibility for feelings. “I feel angry. . . I feel irritated . . . I feel frustrated . . .” Identify some possible solutions to the conflict and try to work toward a mutual agreement. Humor, not sarcasm, can deflate heightened tensions. “George, I’m angry that you chopped down the cherry tree. I may not ever win the Great British Baking Show, but you’ve set me back about fifteen years in my quest to bake the perfect cherry pie. What would you like to do to make this right?”
In addition to those strategies in the moment, we can use some simple skills that help us to manage the side-effects of our angry encounters. Take a walk. Give yourself a time-out. Listen to music. Write in your journal. Imagine yourself in a relaxing place. Not only do these practices relieve the physical effects of anger, they equip us to observe and reflect upon our own behavior. We begin to see that we can make different choices.
Finally, even when we are not able to successfully resolve our angry encounters, we can choose to not hold a grudge. The practice of forgiveness releases us from bitterness and creates the graced space where a relationship can find redemption. When we are clean out of forgiveness, we can always borrow some from Jesus, who had plenty of mercy for Peter, Paul, and for us.
Well, my friends, we all get angry. This week will bring a fresh batch of headlines about road rage, domestic violence, and community feuds. We’ll feel our hearts racing, blood pressure rising, and our tempers flaring when the car we are following stops dead at the intersection of Route 86 and Brandy Brook Avenue, or when someone forgets to put the trash out again, or when the neighbor hangs yet another banner airing their political opinions. But we can take a deep breath and have patience.
Resources:
CBS News Team. NYPD: Driver pulled from car, kicked and robbed by motorcyclists in possible road rage incident, CBS News, March 17, 2022. Accessed online at cbsnews.com.
Jake Seiner. “Ozuna addresses Braves after domestic violence ban ends” in AP News, March 14, 2022. Accessed online at apnews.com.
Nic Garcia. “Fresno man in hospital after being shot by neighbor, police say” in ABC30 Action News, Feb. 20, 2022. Accessed online at https://abc30.com
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Accessed online at newadvent.org.
Krishnan and Sitaraman. “Video Stream Quality Impacts Viewer Behavior,” Amherst: UMass, 2012. Accessed online at people.cs.umass.edu.
Adam R. Shannon. “The Sin of Anger” in The Seven Deadly Sins. Accessed online at deadlysins.com
Charles Pope. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Anger” in Catholic Standard, April 4, 2019. Accessed online at cathstan.org.
Christopher Muther. “Instant Gratification Is Making Us Perpetually Impatient” in The Boston Globe, Nov. 2, 2016.
Mayo Clinic Staff. “10 Tips to Tame Your Temper.” Accessed online at mayoclinic.org.
–. “Control Anger Before It Controls You” in Journal of the American Psychological Association, January 2005. Accessed online at APA.org.
Acts 7:54-8:3; 9:1-5
54 When the elders heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. 55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died. 8 1 And Saul approved of their killing him. That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison. Then, Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
This is the second message in a Lenten series on the Seven Deadly Sins.
Aristotle described envy as the pain we experience when we learn of the good fortune of others. We see the ability, resources, or excellence of our neighbor, and we want that for ourselves. Thirteenth century scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas characterized envy as an active, escalating resentment. Seeing our neighbor’s good fortune, we first seek to lower their reputation, perhaps through tale telling or criticism. Next, we feel joy at the other’s misfortune, or we feel grief at our neighbor’s continuing prosperity. Finally, over-focused on their success or well-being, we feel hatred. Augustine taught that envy is a truly diabolical sin because it seeks to minimize, end, or destroy what is good in our neighbor, and we, consequently, rob our community and world of that God-given goodness. Last week, I shared that C.S. Lewis characterized pride as the anti-God sin. Well, envy is the anti-neighbor sin. Envy stands in bitter opposition to that second half of Jesus’ Great Commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The root of envy is the Latin word invidia, which means unseeing or blind. When we are envious, we don’t see things as they truly are. We waste our time in over-focusing on the lives of others, and we fail to see and pursue our own unique God-given gifts and purpose. The Medieval poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri depicted the sin of envy in his Divine Comedy. The envious are second only to the prideful in their fall from grace. In Hell, they plod eternally under grey cloaks made of lead. In an act of poetic justice, their eyes are sewn eternally shut with metal wire, unable to see their neighbor or themselves.
That most essential biblical paradigm of envy is the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4). Cain, the farmer, brings a portion of his harvest as an offering to the Lord. Abel, the herdsman, presents to God the best of his flock—the firstborn with the choicest and fattiest portions. Abel gave God the best while Cain did what was adequate. Instead of learning that God deserves our first-fruits, Cain was filled with envy at his brother’s acceptance. Even after God cautioned Cain about the destructive power of envy, Cain met his brother in the field and murdered him. The world was robbed of Abel’s gifts and Cain was cut off from his family and even the land.
In the New Testament, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the Chief Priests and elders of the Temple handed Jesus over to Pilate for execution out of envy (Matt. 25:18-20). Then, they ensured that Pilate could not extend mercy by persuading the crowd to call for the release Barabbas instead of Jesus. Influence and money changed hands to ensure Jesus’ death. Envious of Jesus’ wisdom, gifts, and God-given authority, those Temple-insiders conspired to discredit him and rob him of his life.
We know envy when we see it. The legendary voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer described the experience of her family. They lived as sharecroppers on the plantation where they had once been enslaved. Thanks to the hard work of her father and mother and their twenty children, the family prospered. Her father was able to save enough to buy a team of mules to work more land. Their dreams crumbled when an envious white sharecropper poisoned the mules.
Envy is manifest in the realm of athletics. On January 6, 1994, U.S. Figure Skating Champion Nancy Kerrigan was brutally attacked as she prepared to defend her national title. Badly bruised, Kerrigan withdrew from the competition, and her rival Tonya Harding took the title. An FBI investigation ultimately determined that the attack on Kerrigan was prompted by envy. Harding with her husband and bodyguard conspired to take Kerrigan out of the competition and ensure Harding’s own bid for the Olympics.
Social theorists say that we live in an Age of Envy, which is fueled by social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Professor Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan says that envy is at an extreme today because we are constantly bombarded by photo-shopped lives. Barraged by images of the achievement and joy of others—the spectacular vacations, the joyful families, the workplace accomplishments—we feel envy. We resent others, and we feel bad about ourselves.
Envy manifests in our lives when we gossip. We defame the character of our imagined rival and undermine their standing in the community. We criticize and belittle their accomplishments. We refuse to acknowledge their gifts and abilities. We undermine their efforts to get ahead. We attack their expertise and sabotage their work. When I was an undergrad at Colgate, a top student in the pre-med program was caught spitting in the test tubes of his rivals to ruin their research. Our envious actions don’t make us feel any better. Instead, we are left dissatisfied with who we are and what we have, resentful about our lot in life, and unhappy with the world as we know it.
The remedy for envy is found in the virtues of gratitude and kindness. Gratitude is the feeling of appreciation for what we have been given and thankfulness for the generosity of others. Martin Luther taught that gratitude is “the basic Christian attitude” because God is the selfless giver of all good things, and we are all immeasurably blessed. Gratitude doesn’t forget or ignore the negative aspects of our lives, but it sees the good even amid the hardship. The 18th century prophet of the Great Awakening Jonathan Edwards believed that our gratitude is the clearest measure of our spiritual health, because gratitude reveals our awareness of the presence and goodness of God in our every day. Gratitude is the enemy of envy because we see and savor the goodness of God in our own lives, and we acknowledge that God is at work in others in ways that bless them and bless the world around them. Gratitude restores our right relationship with God—we become like that Samaritan Leper, who returned to give thanks to Jesus, falling down at his feet and praising the Lord (Luke 17:11-19).
Professor Robert Emmons of University of California Davis has been the preeminent scholar of gratitude for more than twenty years. His research has found that when we cultivate gratitude, it is good for us and others. People who keep a weekly gratitude journal by recording the ways they have been blessed feel better about their lives and are more optimistic. Folks who maintain a gratitude list—a master list of their blessings—were more likely to make progress toward important goals in school, work, relationships, and health. A daily time of focusing on gratitude increases our alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, and energy. The daily discipline of gratitude also makes us more likely to help others and offer our support.
That leads us to our second weapon in battling the sin of envy: kindness. Aristotle described kindness as helpfulness toward someone in need, not in return for anything, but to simply benefit the person whom we are helping. Kindness is the exercise of charity, compassion, friendship, and sympathy simply for its own sake. Studies at Yale University have suggested that kindness is inherent in human beings. Babies have the impulse to be kind, and we can all testify to the natural sympathy of children, to their innate desire to show concern for a peer who is in distress. Mark Twain reminds us that kindness is active. He said, “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see,” because we are out there doing it. One of the amazing dimensions of kindness is that in practicing it we often find that we are blessed. My seminary professors called this mission-in-reverse. Even as we reach out to help someone else, we find that our interaction touches our heart, expands our understanding, or makes a new friend. We often get so much more out of our kind impulses than we put in.
The biblical paradigm of kindness is, of course, The Good Samaritan (Luke 10). The Samaritan rises above prejudice to come to the aid of his wounded, vulnerable Jewish neighbor when no one else will. He cleans wounds, takes the man to shelter, and pays his way, all out of kindness. According to Jesus, kindness like this is what truly makes us neighbors. Gratitude and kindness are the antithesis of envy because they make us mindful of God’s incredible goodness to us and turn us to our neighbors with open hearts and willing hands. Thanks be to God.
I suspect that as we go forth into the Lenten season, we will experience envy. We’ll be scrolling through our Facebook feed and feel envy’s gut-punch as we read of our neighbor’s epic vacation. We’ll wear a forced smile when our friend tells us they are putting in a new kitchen. Our neighbor will retire early, and we’ll resent their leisure. Envy will rear its ugly head. But we can get the better of it. Count your blessings. Give thanks to the one who fills our lives with goodness beyond measure. Pay it forward. Reach out to the world with kindness. The world will be blessed—and so will we. Amen.
Resources
Becky Little. “How the 7 Deadly Sins Began as the ‘8 Evil Thoughts’” in History, March 29, 2021. Accessed online at history.com.
WJS Martin. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy” in Anglican Way Magazine, Feb. 14, 2016. Accessed online at anglicanway.org.
Charles Pope. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy” in Community in Mission, April 5, 2019. Accessed online at blog.adw.org.
Moya Sarner. “The Age of Envy” in The Guardian, October 9, 2018. Accessed online at theguardian.com.
Walter Brueggemann. Genesis. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.
Robert A. Emmons. “Highlights from the Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness” in Dimensions and Perspectives of Gratitude. Los Angeles: UC Davis, 2010.
Genesis 4:1-12
1 Now Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Pride” Luke 4:1-13, Luke 18:9-14
This is the first in a Lenten sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sinsand the Seven Heavenly Virtues.
Our Lenten season begins with Jesus in the wilderness. As the Lord fasts and prays, the Devil confronts Jesus with a series of temptations. “Use your holy power to turn stones into bread. Bow down and worship me in exchange for world domination. Put God to the test, reveal your glory, and be worshipped.” Jesus turns away from the tempter’s wiles with scripture quotations. He remains sinless. Unfortunately, we do not.
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly virtues are grounded in scripture. There are thirteen virtue lists in the New Testament, from 2 Corinthians to First Peter, and there are twenty-three vice lists, from Matthew all the way through Revelation. In the first centuries of our faith with the rise of asceticism, church leaders began to think systematically about those lists of sins and virtues. As Christian mystics and monks withdrew to the Egyptian desert to focus on God, they noticed that they had some big distractions. In the fourth century, Evagrius of Ponta identified a list of eight thoughts that could interfere with spiritual practice—these would become the Seven Deadly Sins. A century later, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens wrote a 1,000-line poem, “Psychomachia,” in which he identified seven heavenly virtues that corresponded to the deadly sins. Clemens argued that Christ our Lord helps us with “the jewels of virtue,” which he places within us to battle sin and delight wisdom. Augustine argued that the seven virtues characterize the new life in Christ and grow within us out of love—agape.
The Seven Deadly Sins and corresponding Seven Heavenly Virtues found renewed interest in the Middle Ages. In his 13th century opus Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas wrote that the virtues are habitual dispositions, “patterns of mind and heart,” that bring about good actions and curb our sinful impulses. In meditating on scripture, imitating Christ, and practicing the virtues, God’s grace deepens and matures in us. So popular was this thinking on the deadly sins and heavenly virtues that they became a favorite theme of Medieval art. Church walls were painted with murals depicting them. Countless medieval illustrated manuscripts of Clemens’ poem “Psychomachia” still survive, depicting the sins and virtues—in female form—doing battle.
These days, the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues are a helpful framework in our spiritual formation. We acknowledge that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, yet we realize that God’s grace deserves our response. In meditating upon scripture, in following the way of Jesus, we can look within. We can identify the sins with which we struggle. We can cultivate the virtues, those spiritual weapons given to us by Jesus. We can seek to curb sin and grow into virtue as we grow into the beloved people whom God created us to be.
We begin with the sin of pride. In his 2006 book Pride, Michael Eric Dyson of Vanderbilt University notes that pride has a favorable value in our society. We have school pride. We feel pride in our achievements wrought through long, hard work. We have cultural pride that ties us to our ancestors and celebrates what made them and us the people we are. This reasonable, appropriate regard for others and for ourselves is not what I am talking about.
We can chalk that up to the limits of the English language, in which we have a single word to describe the full spectrum of pride. Latin, on the other hand, uses the word superbia to talk about the sin of overweening pride, arrogance, contempt for others, self-righteousness, and the belief that we are not subject to God. C.S. Lewis taught that superbia pride “is the complete anti-God state of mind. It is ‘The Great Sin’ that leads to all other sins, because pride is the exaltation of Self above all authority, even God’s authority.”
The prime scriptural example of superbia is found in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18). Two men go up to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” The Pharisee clearly thinks he is better than his neighbors—those “other people.” He also imagines that he doesn’t really need God. His exceptional piety and righteousness are enough to justify him.
The tax collector presents a stark contrast. He knows his sin and feels completely unworthy. He stands far off, unable to lift his eyes to heaven. He beats his breast in mourning and prays, “‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” The tax collector knows that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on before God. In the punchline of the parable, Jesus cautions his listeners that it won’t be the Pharisee who is justified before God. It will be that scoundrel, the tax collector.
We know this sort of superbia pride when we see it. It prompted Hitler to annex the Sudetenland. It has driven Putin to roll his tanks into Ukraine. We see superbia in the racial pride of white supremacy that drives a speeding car into a crowd of peaceful protesters. Superbia is in the arrogance and utter disdain with which we belittle and trash-talk our rivals and enemies. Superbia pride seeks constant adulation and praise from an army of “yes-men.” Superbia kills our marriages and friendships because we believe that we alone are right—and everyone else is wrong. We see superbia in the context of our faith communities when we believe that we don’t need to practice confession, we don’t have to hear what the preacher says because we’ve heard it all before and we know it all, and we don’t really need church because we don’t need saving—we are just fine on our own. Woe to us when pride drives the bus.
Jesus saw the remedy to superbia in the virtue of humility. He followed that teaching about the Pharisee and tax collector with the words, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Humility is the recognition of who we are in relationship to God. In other words, God is God, and we are not. Humility submits to the authority of God and the guidance of scripture. Humility acknowledges that our personal abilities and resources are gifts from God that are to be used and shared to the glory of God and for the building up of our neighbors.
To comprehend humility, it helps to think about the origin of the word. The Latin form humilitas shares the same root as humus, the organic component of soil, formed by the decomposition of leaves and other plant matter by microorganisms in the soil. When we practice humility, we are down to earth, grounded, and aware of our limits and mortality. Yet, Martin Luther warned that even humility can lead to sin. As a monk, Luther sought humility. He wore hairshirts to mortify his flesh. He fasted, prayed, and slept on the floor. “I finally achieved humility,” Luther quipped, “and I was proud of it!”
Humility finds its scriptural revelation in Christ’s death on the cross. Although sinless, Jesus took on the burden of our collective sin and died a brutal, scandalous, shameful death to reveal God’s great love for us. Thank you, Jesus.
So, what does humility look like for us? Humility is knowing that we need God at the very center of our lives and our families. Humility is good sportsmanship—acknowledging our losses and our opponent’s better abilities on any given day. Humility is accepting responsibility for our mistakes and seeking to make things right. We say, “I did it. It’s my fault. Let me make amends. I am truly sorry.” Even if we are convinced that we are right, humility demands that we stay in relationship, listen, find common ground, and work through differences. Humility is identifying with the poor, the sick, and the despised people of our world. It’s seeking to make a caring difference because we know that they are worthy, deserving of our love and tender care. A world shaped by humility is blessed because it looks a lot like Jesus and anticipates the Kingdom.
So, my friends, as we begin our Lenten journey, let’s spend some time building that Kingdom by tempering our sins of pride with the virtue of humility. We can begin by noticing the ways that pride has separated us from God and one another. Then, we can find healing as we ground ourselves in humility, turning to the world with deep truth and abounding love. May it be so. Amen.
Resources:
Neal Conan. “Interview with Michael Eric Dyson” in Talk of the Nation, Feb. 13, 2006. Accessed online at npr.org.
Jerry D. Kistler. “The Deadly Sin of Pride” in The Montrose Press, March 8, 2019. Accessed online at https://www.montrosepress.com/.
Ryan Griffith. “The Seven Heavenly Virtues: An Ancient Framework for Spiritual Formation” in desiring God, November 1, 2021. Accessed online at desiringgod.org.
Becky Little. “How the 7 Deadly Sins Began as the ‘8 Evil Thoughts’” in History, March 29, 2021. Accessed online at history.com.
Luke 8:9-14
9 Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Mountain High, Valley Low,” Luke 9:28-43a
When Heidi Neumark was called to pastor the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx, she was in for a challenge. The recent seminary graduate came to a parish that faced daunting, even toxic, realities. The community was New York City’s dumping ground. Waste treatment plants managed the city’s sewage. A giant incinerator burned hazardous medical waste from area hospitals. A massive dump received the city’s refuse. The air was filled with toxins that fueled New York’s highest incidence of asthma. Arriving on Sunday mornings, Neumark would often have to clear away garbage. Broken furniture, old appliances, and boxes of worn-out household items were left at the church under the cover of darkness to avoid paying dump fees.
The social difficulties of Transfiguration Lutheran Church were every bit as daunting. 60% of neighborhood families got by on government assistance. 80% of children lived in poverty. Unemployment for the South Bronx was 70%. 20% of adults suffered from HIV. 28% of deaths each year were attributable to drugs, AIDS, and violence. The church’s neighbors were the extreme poor, those left behind when others moved away: addicts, prostitutes, abused women, single mothers and their children, and gangs. Those were overwhelming realities for a church that had seen its heyday in the 19th century and experienced a hundred years of decline.
When Neumark arrived, church doors were locked, except on Sunday mornings. A faithful corps of members persevered, gathering to worship God in the midst of that blighted community. Although it was a tough call for a new pastor, Neumark found hope in the church’s name: Transfiguration Lutheran Church. In Breathing Space, Heidi Neumark’s spiritual memoir of twenty years of service to that church, she writes that the transfiguration of Jesus could be “a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” The spiritual mountaintop of Transfiguration Lutheran Church was being called to the needs that awaited them in the valley of the South Bronx.
On Transfiguration Sunday, we join the disciples on the mountaintop with Jesus and watch as he is revealed in heavenly glory. Flanked by those titans of the Hebrew scriptures, Moses and Elijah, Jesus is transformed. His face shines. His clothes dazzle. This clearly is no ordinary rabbi and healer. This is no prophet. Jesus is the Holy One of God. Peter may have wanted to enshrine the moment with three permanent dwelling places, but God had other plans. In a theophany, a heavenly proclamation, God instructed Peter, James, and John, “This is my Son, the Chosen One; listen to him.”
Transfiguration Sunday also takes us to the valley. There another father calls for special attention for his beloved son. Although Jesus had given his disciples the power and authority to cast out demons and heal the sick, they have failed to provide relief for this boy. The anger and frustration that Jesus feels as he learns of the child’s suffering suggest that the disciples’ failure had nothing to do with ability and everything to do with willingness. Those disciples may have been daunted by the power of the oppressive spirit. Or, perhaps they feared the boy’s violent seizures. Or, it could be that they had been too busy. Or, maybe they doubted the very abilities that Jesus had entrusted to them. These disciples may have not been listening to Jesus, but the demon that possessed the child does. As the demon convulses the boy in a violent fit, Jesus steps in, rebukes the spirit, and casts it out. Freed from his suffering, the cured boy is returned to his father. Jesus’s healing and restoration transfigure the lives of father and son who are no longer held captive by the power of destructive evil.
Those two very different stories: the shining moment on the mountain and the convulsed chaos of the valley belong together. In reflecting on our transfiguration reading, Prof. Sharon Ringe, a New Testament scholar at Wesley Seminary, writes that “the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated.” That’s a powerful, world changing statement, “the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated.”
Indeed, in Jesus God enters into the world’s suffering and suffuses it with God’s presence. That’s what we see on the mountain high. And Jesus has the power to meet the world’s suffering head-on with healing, compassion, and love. That’s what we see in the valley low. The Lord hopes that his disciples will make his glory known, not just on the mountaintop of reverence, worship, and praise, but also in the valleys of sickness, powerlessness, and despair. When we listen to Jesus, when we bring his power and authority, compassion and love, to our neighbors, transfiguration happens. The world begins to change and so do we.
At the Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx, profound change began to happen for the church and the community when members brought the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of their broken world. They began by listening to their neighbors and pondering how they could respond to some of their most pressing needs. Then, they moved beyond Sunday morning worship, unlocked the church doors, and welcomed the community in. The church launched a food pantry which serves between 130 and 140 families weekly. They opened up their hall to twelve-step fellowships to support folks seeking recovery from addiction. They pondered how they could best help local youth and established the Community Life Center, an after-school tutoring program and job training center. They provided resources and healing groups to address domestic violence and help folks living with HIV. They even partnered with local police to host a gun buyback program to get illegal handguns out of homes and off the streets. Pastor Heidi got other churches involved, too, working to establish South Bronx Churches. This ecumenical fellowship provides mutual support and collaboration for pastors and churches as they seek to address the community’s needs.
As the church brought the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of their broken community, it wasn’t just the community that was transfigured. Transfiguration Lutheran Church changed, too. They attracted new people, some of whom had never set foot in a church before. They came for programs but got passionate about the church. They worshipped, prayed, and found the love of Jesus. They got busy cleaning and refurbishing. They tackled long-deferred maintenance. They stepped into leadership. Burnice was an addict who came to the church to pick up a Christmas gift at a give-away. She intended to trade the gift for enough drugs to take her own life. But she didn’t. There was something about the church that kept her coming back. With encouragement from the church, she got into recovery, earned her GED, and found a job. Once a neighbor to be feared and avoided, Burnice is now a pillar of the church and a community leader.
Despite their real challenges and personal tragedies, church members have worked together to help one another and their neighborhood. In shining Christ’s glory for others, they have been richly blessed with that glory themselves. Heidi Neumark writes, “I have learned that grace cleaves to the depths, attends to the losses, and there slowly works her defiant transfiguration.”
On Transfiguration Sunday, we hear a renewed call to bring the glory of God’s presence to meet the pain of a broken world. We spend our Sunday mornings on the mountaintop. We encounter Jesus in prayer and music, scripture and the word proclaimed.It’s glorious. Yet Jesus always sends us back down into the valley. We go forth to fathers who worry about their ill children and mothers who struggle to put food on the table. We go forth to a community where sisters and brothers wrestle with the oppressive spirits of addiction. We live in a place of middle-class homes, multi-million-dollar seasonal camps, tumble-down cabins, rusted out trailers, and hardcore generational poverty.
We may feel daunted by the power of those oppressive spirits. We may fear all that need. We may doubt the very abilities that Jesus has entrusted to us. But God’s transfiguration hope is that the glory of Christ may meet the suffering of the world through disciples like us. Transfiguration Sunday finds its fulfillment when we move from reverence to action. The world gets transfigured, and so do we. May it be so. Amen.
Resources:
Heidi B. Neumark. Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. “A Review of Breathing Space” in Spirituality and Practice, 2004. Accessed online at spiritualityandpractice.com.
Sharon Ringe. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 9:28-43a” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1, 2009.
Kimberly Miller Van Driel. Homiletical Perspective on Luke 9:28-43a” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1, 2009.
Luke 9:28-43a
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. 37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39 Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. 40 I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astounded at the greatness of God.
Sabbath Day Thoughts — Luke 6:27-38 “The Good Measure”
On October 2, 2006, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself inside the one-room West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County, PA. He had taken ten Amish girls, aged 6-13, hostage. He lined them up and bound their feet. As police sought to breach the schoolhouse, Roberts opened fire, killing five children and wounding five others before taking his own life. Later that day, when the parents of Charles Carl Roberts learned that their son had been the shooter, they were shocked. The husband Charlie turned to his wife Terri and said, “I will never face my Amish neighbors again.”
But face them he did. After the private funeral that the Roberts family held for their son, their Amish neighbors surprised them at the gravesite. About thirty Amish, some of whom had buried their daughters the day before, showed up, arriving in their buggies and walking across the fields. They surrounded the Roberts family in a crescent, as a sign of forgiveness and love. Charlie Roberts’s Amish neighbor came to his home and spent an hour with his arm around him, offering comfort. Ten months after the tragic attack, the Amish shocked the Roberts and the world again. Community members had contributed money to create the Roberts Family Fund to support the widow and three young children of the man who had taken the lives of five of their own.
Those gestures of mercy from the Amish may have humbled, puzzled, or even outraged us. We may have shaken our heads and thought, “Those people are better than I am. There’s no way I could have put myself at that gravesite.” Or we could have asked ourselves, “What’s up with that? How could you hold in your heart both the anguish of untimely, tragic grief and the possibility of compassion for a stone-cold killer?” Or we may just not have believed it. Vocal critics at the time argued that the Amish didn’t forgive. They simply went through the motions of mercy that had been imprinted upon them by their culture. Yet on the day of the shooting, a grandfather of one of the Amish girls turned his family away from hate, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Another father said, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he is standing before a just God.”
“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” The forgiveness and mercy of the Amish in the wake of the West Nickel Mines school shooting put hands and feet and hearts to those tough words that Jesus spoke to listeners when he delivered that Sermon on the Plain. For the disciples and others who had gathered to hear Jesus preach, those words would have felt impractical and unthinkable.
The Ancient Near East was a world driven by retributive violence. An accidental death could readily explode into the murder of an entire family. Blood feuds pitted neighbor against neighbor and nation against nation for generations. If you’d like to read a story of this sort of explosive, escalating, unstoppable violence, take some time to read Genesis 34. The sons of Jacob took retribution against Shechem, who had sexually assaulted and married their sister Dinah. To exact revenge, Levi and Simon came upon Shechem and his kin unawares and slaughtered all the men. Then, Jacob’s other ten sons plundered the community, taking for themselves all the valuables, livestock, children, and wives.
The covenant of the Torah, the Jewish law, tried to limit this escalating cycle of blood violence by teaching a tit-for-tat justice. Exodus 21 instructs that vengeance must be measured and reciprocal, “If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.” To help the people move away from blood vengeance, six cities of refuge were designated in Israel. There the perpetrators of accidental manslaughter could claim the right of asylum and await appropriate justice.
Yet Jesus broke even with this moderate teaching of measured retaliation by insisting that his followers exceed the standards of the Torah. Instead of pulling out their opponent’s teeth and blacking their eyes, Jesus’s friends were to love, do good for, bless, and pray for their enemies. It was a completely new ethic that flew in the face of everything that his followers knew and experienced. The love that Jesus enjoined his disciples to practice is agape, the love that God practices. Agape chooses to act for the good of the other, regardless of what our hearts might be telling us.
Love your enemies? Love / agape is a tough choice that we learn to make. We can only find the ability to practice agape when we consider the mercy of God to us. Those of you who studied the ten commandments with me a number of years ago will remember that disobeying the moral code that Moses imparted to us carries a death penalty. We are all deserving of Yahweh’s judgment, and yet God is shockingly merciful. Instead of judgment and death, God became flesh and entered into this world’s darkness. In Jesus, God chose to live for us and show to us the way of agape. Traditional enemies like Romans, Samaritans, and Canaanites were welcomed, helped, and healed. Clueless, fickle disciples and merciless executioners were prayed for and forgiven. In the ultimate act of agape, on a merciless cross, flanked by common criminals, Jesus revealed that God loves us enough to die for us.
It is in the enormity of God’s costly love for us that we begin to see another way. We begin to think that maybe we can move away from demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We begin to see that only love can heal hearts, transform an enemy into a friend, and make a changed future possible. With frail and feeble efforts, we begin to choose love. We fail often. And yet, we trust that God’s mercy is there to catch us when we fall. The grace of Christ is sufficient for us.
What might this transformational ethic of agape look like for us? It might be letting go of a long-held grudge. It could be letting bygones be bygones in a family feud. It might be giving a second chance to a friend who betrayed a confidence. It could be working hard together to mend a marriage that has endured infidelity. It is choosing to act always in the best interest of the other and knowing that we can borrow some of God’s love when ours is in short supply.
Jesus described the fruit of a life lived in agape. He called it the “good measure.” When you went to a first century marketplace for grain, the merchant filled a measure to the brim and then gave it a good shake to ensure that every nook and cranny was filled. The merchant then poured that overflowing measure into your apron to carry home. It’s a beautiful earthy metaphor for a life that abounds with goodness. When we practice and experience agape, the world gets blessed and so do we. As we haltingly live into agape, we show God’s Kingdom to the world and in some immeasurable and hopeful way, that Kingdom comes.
In the days following the terrible events at the West Nickel Mines School, Terri and Charlie Roberts, the parents of the shooter, considered leaving the area. Their grief, shame, and pain were so immense that they couldn’t imagine a way forward, but the Amish did more than forgive the couple, they embraced them as part of the community. That generous agape prompted the Roberts to host a summer picnic in their backyard for their Amish neighbors, nine months after the attack. They all came, including a little girl named Rosanna King, wheelchair bound, unable to speak or feed herself, the youngest of their son’s victims.
A few months later, Terri Roberts asked Rosanna’s mother if she could help with the girl’s care. Until her death from breast cancer in 2017, Terri spent nearly every Thursday evening at the King Family farm, bathing, reading, and attending to Rosanna until her bedtime. Terri Roberts remembered the evening that a father said to her, ‘None of us would have ever chosen this. But the relationships that we have built through it, you cannot put a price on that.” Terri believed that the Amish choice for agape, the decision to allow life to move forward with love, was profoundly healing for her and her family. Terri said that is “a message the world needs.”
“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”
Resources:
Colby Itkowitz. “Her Son Shot Their Daughters 10 Years Ago, Then These Amish Families Embraced Her as a Friend” in The Washington Post, October 1, 2016. Accessed online at washingtonpost.com.
Story Corps. “A Decade After Amish School Shooting, Gunman’s Mother Talks of Forgiveness” in Morning Edition, Sept. 20, 2016. Accessed online at npr.org.
Charles Bugg. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 6:27-38” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
Luke 6:27-38
27“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Joann White 
