The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy Richmond's First Baptist Church

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The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy Richmond’s First Baptist Church, January 19, 2020, The Second Sunday after the Epiphany James 3:16

For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.

Welcome back to this series on the Seven Deadly Sins! Do you remember what they are? Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Anger, and Pride. How do you remember?

By using the simple acronym I gave you last week: EGGSLAP. Why are they so deadly?

The monastics who came up with this list back in the Fourth Century identified these as

“originating” sins, claiming that all the other sins come from these seven. For example: anger can lead to murder; lust can lead to adultery; greed can lead to theft, etc. Why is sin itself so deadly? Because sin separates. It separates us from God and it separates us from others. You could think of it this way: that every sin is a brick in the wall. If you stack those sins in a circle around you, and if you build that wall higher and higher, you will end up “solo in a silo”—at the bottom of a deep, dark well, cut off from life and love completely.

And so we have to do something about sin. We have to name it and deal with it.

Last week we talked about the deadly sin of Pride, which puffs us up and makes us think we are better than everyone else. But I also gave you the cure for pride and the cure for pride is humility. Last week I pointed to Jesus as the ultimate example of humility, the

One who stood in line along with everyone else waiting to be baptized, the One who,

“though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form or a servant, and being found in human

1 form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil.

2:6-8). If we could crucify our pride, if we could learn some humility, we could also recover relationships that have been lost along the way and reconnect with God and others in a way that is life-giving and life-changing.

Today I want to talk about the sin of Envy, and it’s important to define it carefully. Because envy is not the same thing as jealousy.

. Jealousy is the resentment that rises inside you when someone else gets the

promotion that you deserved. It’s that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach

when a beautiful woman walks into the room and your husband’s head turns. It’s

the fear of losing something that’s yours or the resentment that comes from not

getting something that should be.

. Envy is not covetousness. The Bible says “You shall not covet your neighbor’s

house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or

donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” In Old Testament times all of

those were considered possessions. Covetousness is wanting someone else’s

things.

. Envy is not the same as admiration. Admiration has very positive overtones. It’s

when you look up to someone and want to be like them. Admiration can lead to

emulation, where you try to be more and more like that other person. It’s what we

mean when we talk about being “Christlike,” and surely that’s not a bad thing.

Envy is different. Envy is when you can’t be happy unless someone else is miserable.

Steve Shoemaker says, “Envy turns Paul’s instruction, ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice

and weep with those who weep’ (Rom. 12:15) upside down. We rejoice when others

weep and weep when they rejoice.”i There are several biblical examples:

. Cain and Abel both offered sacrifices to the Lord, but while Abel’s sacrifice was

accepted, Cain’s was not. From that moment on he began to plot Abel’s

demise. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your

countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not

do well, sin is lurking at the door.” But Cain did not do well. He took his brother

for a walk and while they were out in the field he killed him. Envy is like that.

. Jacob gave his son Joseph a coat of many colors. He loved him above all his

other sons, and all his other sons became envious. One day they threw Joseph

into a pit, and when some slave traders came by in a camel caravan they sold him

into slavery, took that beautiful coat, dipped it in sheep’s blood, took it back to

their father and told him that Joseph had been torn apart by a wild animal. Envy

is like that.

. Saul loved David as long as David sat in Saul’s palace playing his harp. But

when David went out to battle, and when he began to have success, and when the

women of Israel sang, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of

thousands,” Saul began to “eye” David. He didn’t see him the same way

anymore. He saw him as a threat and began to look for a way to destroy him.

Envy is like that.

In the New Testament there is that fascinating story about the laborers in the vineyard, from Matthew 20. The owner of the vineyard promised to pay them each a denarius and they agreed, but at the end of the day, when they saw that those who had

worked only an hour got as much as they did, they were furious. “This isn’t fair!” they said. “We worked all day and they didn’t!” But the owner of the vineyard said, “Look, I promised to pay you a denarius and that’s what you got: a denarius. Now, take what is yours and get out of here. Or are you envious because I am generous?” Literally, “Is your eye evil because I am good?” And that’s what it comes down to: the evil eye; the eye that looks around and compares itself to others. Because here is the truth: if it hadn’t been for those others the ones who worked all day in the vineyard would have been quite happy with their wages. Or if those others had been paid less, a fraction of a denarius, they would have been happy. But they weren’t paid less, they were paid the same; it just didn’t seem fair.

I listened to a Ted Talk last week by a woman named Parul Sehgal, a book editor for the New York Times, who is young and smart and beautiful, who looks as if she would be the envy of every other woman. But she said, “Envy, I think, is my favorite sin.

There’s something so private about it, and something so pernicious about this way of

looking at the world or looking at your neighbor and something in it that can be a catalyst

for very, very dangerous action.”ii And then she told this story: “So, when I was eight

years old, a new girl came to join the class, and she was so impressive, as the new girl

always seems to be. She had vast quantities of very shiny hair and a cute little pencil

case. Super strong on state capitals, just a great speller. And I just curdled with jealousy

that year, until I hatched my devious plan.

“So one day I stayed a little late after school, a little too late, and I lurked in the girls' bathroom. When the coast was clear, I emerged, crept into the classroom, and took

from my teacher's desk the grade book. And then I did it. I fiddled with my rival's

4 grades, just a little, just demoted some of those A's. OK, all of those A's. And I got ready to return the book to the drawer, when hang on, some of my other classmates had appallingly good grades too! So, in a frenzy, I corrected everybody's marks, not imaginatively. I gave everybody a row of D's and I gave myself a row of A's, just because

I was there, you know. Might as well.

“And I am still baffled by my behavior. I don't understand where the idea came from. I don't understand why I felt so great doing it. I felt great. I don't understand why I was never caught. I mean, it should have been so blatantly obvious. I was never caught. But most of all, I am baffled by [this]: why did it bother me so much that this little girl, this tiny little girl, was so good at spelling?”iii After watching that talk I asked someone else the same question, someone who knew some things about envy. I asked,

“Why did it bother her so much? Why did she have to bring that little girl down?” We decided that it was envy’s “evil eye,” the one that looks around and compares itself to others. “For example,” I said, “If you were standing on a pedestal that was ten feet high and someone else was on a pedestal twenty feet high you couldn’t be happy until that other person had been brought down. It’s not even that you would want your pedestal to be higher; you would want theirs to be lower.”

“Exactly,” she said.

Envy is that little thrill you feel when you go to your high school reunion and learn that the captain of the football team, the one who was so good-looking and so popular, is in prison for stealing cars, or that the head cheerleader’s beautiful blonde hair has all fallen out because she bleached it too much. To say it again but in a slightly

5 different way: envy is when someone else’s misery makes you happy. And that’s sinful, isn’t it? That’s sinful at a whole new level. That’s deadly.

You get a taste of envy’s poison when you look up the related nouns in the dictionary: malice, resentment, prejudice, hatred, spite, malevolence, heartburn, rivalry.

And listen to the verbs! Backbite, begrudge, crave, yearn, oppose, resent. It sounds horrible. It sounds like the worst kind of sickness. And it leads to the question: Is there any cure for envy? Any antidote once you’ve been bitten by that glittering green-eyed snake?

I was reminded of a conversation I had with a former church member. His name was Gordon, and he had Cerebral Palsy. He got around in a motorized wheelchair and communicated—slowly and with great difficulty—through a keyboard attached to the frame. One day we were having coffee and I asked him, “Gordon, how do you do it?” by which I meant, “How do you live your life without being eaten up with envy that everyone else has it so easy and you have it so hard?” And slowly, and with much difficulty, he began to type out the answer. “I don’t look around at everybody else,” he said. “I look at my own life.” As we talked further Gordon explained that, like everybody else, he had good days and bad days. His benchmark was down here somewhere; it took him two hours to get dressed in the morning. My benchmark was up here; it took me fifteen minutes, sometimes less. But Gordon wasn’t looking at my benchmark; he was looking at his. And as long as he looked at his, he was fine. “How was your day, Gordon?” “It was great! It only took me an hour and forty five minutes to get dressed!”

I think that’s the cure for envy: to stop looking around at everyone else’s life and

start looking at our own. To measure by our own benchmarks and not someone else’s.

Maybe the word for that is contentment. The Apostle Paul said it like this: “I have

learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know

what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being

well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:11-13). But it may go deeper than that. It may be a matter of not looking around, but looking up, and that’s what John the Baptist is doing in today’s Gospel lesson.

He’s been looking all around. He’s been looking for the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He says it like this: “I myself didn’t know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” And so he started looking up.

He started looking for that descending Holy Spirit. And then one day he saw it—he saw it descend and remain on Jesus. The next day when two of his own disciples were standing with him John saw Jesus walking by and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” And those disciples left him and followed Jesus.

If it were me, I might have been envious. If two of my church members were standing with me and I saw the new pastor of Grove Avenue Baptist Church walking by and I said, “Look! There’s the new pastor of Grove Avenue!” and they left me and started following him I might be envious. I might want to know, “What does he have that

I don’t have?”

But not John.

When he saw his disciples walk away he let them go. He knew where they were

going. I’m not sure they did. When Jesus saw them following and asked them what they

were looking for they didn’t have a good answer. They said, “Rabbi, where are you

staying.” He said, “Come and see.” They did, and I have a feeling they found what they

were looking for. Forever after they remembered that all this had happened at about four

o’clock in the afternoon, just as I remember that my first child was born at 4:32 in the

morning. It was one of those events that divided life forever into before and after.

Was John the Baptist envious of Jesus? I don’t think so. I think he knew that he

had his role and Jesus had his. When the religious leaders came from Jerusalem asking

him who he was he said, “I’m the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way

of the Lord.” And when someone later suggested that Jesus was becoming more popular

than John he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John knew his role, he knew

his place, and from that place he could be perfectly content. He didn’t look around, he

looked up, and as he did he saw the Spirit descending like a dove.

Who knows what we might see?

i H. Stephen Shoemaker, The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome (Nashville: Broadman, 1987), p.51. ii From a Ted Radio Hour podcast on the Seven Deadly Sins, hosted by Guy Raz (https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/378567196/seven-deadly-sins). iii Parul Sehgal, “An Ode to Envy” (https://www.ted.com/talks/parul_sehgal_an_ode_to_envy?language=en).