Believe it or not, a week from today is Palm Sunday, and we begin our great Holy Week.  We relive the story through services starting next weekend and we move on.  Over this Lenten season we have looked at five virtues and five sins that get in the way of our being able to live the life to which God has called us.  I want to tell you that I gave Lloyd Ewert the animal symbols of each of those, and I have used them once.  He is going to show you today that the dog is symbol of envy.  It’s interesting to me that of all the different sins we have talked about during Lent, that the one that is most difficult to get a handle on is envy.  The reason for that is that we probably recognize envy in its more powerful forms.  Remember the child’s saying that she was mad when she was indeed envious?  I mean, we can recognize envy when it wells up in us passionately and grabs our attention.  The more subtle forms of envy that we have in our life do more to destroy our souls than the envy that we can recognize face on. 

Envy is an interesting game because we live in a culture that is competitive by nature.  And there are some things that are good about competition.  Competition can make us better people.  I had two aunts when I was growing up, and they were two of my favorite aunts.  Basically, they were pretty good friends, but there was a family joke that when one of them got something new, we all would take bets on how soon it would take the other one to get the same thing.  Not only that, but one would also compete with the other over getting a better price and a better brand.  When my Aunt Sandra got a dishwasher, my Aunt Barbara had a dishwasher in three days, and it was a much better bargain.  This was a new record.  Now we see that kind of fun, playful competition all the time.  When a school child sets a high mark either in sports or academic life, other children see that and they see what the child has, and they strive towards that mark.  In this way competition is not a bad thing; and as a matter of fact, in a sense something motivates us to move us on.  But a thin line exists between what is normal and healthy in what we see in others that we also desire.  And what becomes destructive is not so much the person that we are envious of the envy that we, ourselves, have.  I will remind you that somewhere in the Ten Commandments—like the seventh or eighth one—is the commandment that we will not covet (a good Middle English word) what our neighbor has.  And that good Middle English word “covets” means to be jealous and wanting to possess what belongs rightfully to another person. 

 We live in a culture in which we are overwhelmingly blessed with many, many good things—materially, spiritually, and relationally.  We find that in this culture that we are obsessed with what others have.  This obsession gets in our way as much as you would think it would in cultures that are much more impoverished than our own.  Take for example how the media treat people who are celebrities or people who get a lot of notice because they are extremely wealthy.  We watch their lives in minute detail, and we are waiting—waiting to see them crack, because once they crack we can feel like they are no longer up there somewhere.  Then we can feel like they are just one of us, and it’s important that we level them because we really don’t like that they are up there or somewhere else.  I will even make a political statement that is balanced.  Every President in the United States has left office with more gray hair than he went into it with.  And I will say that it’s not a partisan thing.  President Clinton and President Bush both have had personal attacks on them that were unbelievable.  In a democracy it’s fine, and we should vehemently struggle with the policies and the politics of our leaders.  That’s what a democracy is.  However, do we often we step across a line with these leaders and attack their personhood?  We say we do this for their politics, but really underneath, isn’t there some sense of jealousy over the power that they wield?  Are we envious because there are things that they can control and we can’t?

 On the other end of the spectrum, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t hear some comment about those people that are on our welfare roles or who receive some kind of government assistance.  I always hear that these people somehow don’t deserve such assistance.  In a country that is overly and abundantly blessed with many resources, how many of us find ourselves envious and jealous of those who are less fortunate because some aid is offered to them?  What is the reason for that?  Well, I think our thinking at the root level goes something like this: I go work hard every day, and here they are sitting in relative ease drawing a check.  Isn’t that what we are thinking?  Is this over our concern that our taxpayer dollars are being wasted?  Or is this about our own ability to look at others and be envious of something that they may have that we at least perceive is better than we have.  And I say “perceive,” because most people that are receiving some assistance from the government live lives that aren’t nearly as well off as the general populations.  We see that envy itself covers a whole gamut, and in some ways its more subtle forms find their way into the marketing world in which we live.  Much of marketing is based on looking at what someone else has and causing us to want it as well.   And if you don’t have it, aren’t you going to be less of a person because of that?  There are car advertisements that are meant for a mostly a male audience.  They show us cars that are sleek and progressive, and they move fast.  A lot of times they have a beautiful woman next to them.  And part of the sales pitch is somebody has that, and don’t you want it too?  I do remember a few years ago there was this hot Latin guy beside a car.  In this advertisement they were obviously appealing to women, just to give equal opportunity.  But much of our marketing and sales in this country is based on somehow making you feel like that if someone has something that you don’t have, you’re not going to be equal with them.  Proverbs reminds us that of all those things that can destroy our souls, jealousy itself is the prime motivator of destruction of our very souls that God has given us.  There are two steps, I think, to understanding jealousy and why it is such an innate part of our human nature.  We tend to be insecure by our very nature.  We are always comparing ourselves, and I want you to think back to when you were a child.  You know children have more honest and raw emotions than do adults.  Sometimes we mask our own more negative selves, so sometimes it’s good to think back to when we were children.  Do you remember a moment when you were jealous as a kid?  Was it a brother or a sister who was getting way to much attention from your parents?  Or was a friend at school that had something that you really wanted?  I want you to think about that, and I want you to think about how you felt at that moment.  Understand that somehow you felt like less of a person because of something someone else possessed.  And if the root of all envy is a lack of an ability to look and to see how abundantly blessed all of our lives are, it is at its very root a lack of gratitude for what God has given all of us.  There is not a person among us today who can’t look at his or her life and see much God that has given in the way of perhaps health, friendships, family, security, and the sense of God’s grace through Jesus.  How often do we begin every thought that we have with the overwhelming sense of gratitude for what it is that God has blessed us with in our lives?  I have a feeling that if our lives become centered on that kind of gratitude, then that envy or jealousy that we might feel towards someone out there that has something that we want will become less.  If we come and accept that grace, then it will simply flood out of our lives and into the world all around us.  May this Lenten season remind us of all that God has given us through Jesus.  We can chose to accept that over-whelming grace of God though Jesus.  There is so much of it! 

And we get to the next piece of the puzzle.  God has called us to love rather than to envy.  Love itself does not focus inwardly on what it is that I’m lacking.  It focuses out there on God’s children either in our immediate surroundings or somewhere down the road.  It focuses on what it is that God has taught us to share with them.  Now if we go back briefly to Matthew’s Gospel, I remind you again that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not an easy text.  It is the toughest of all the New Testament.  Matthew reminds us that the Kingdom of God for which we are being called to live is a narrow path.  Few will choose the narrow path because the broader path is much easier.  And that the narrow path requires a discipline that some of us just don’t want to have.  So Matthew raises the standard for us today, he says to love your enemies—even those who persecute you.  Somehow the life of a Christian is filled to overflowing with so much of God’s grace that it cannot help but flow out even to those who are our worst enemies.  Well, we think—who is our enemy today?  The easiest ones to name are people like Saddam Hussein half a world away.  Or maybe our enemy is our favorite or disfavorite politician only two or three thousand miles away.  I want you to think right now about whom one of your closest,  most intimate enemies are right now?   Who is a person in your life that just gets on your last nerve?  Could it be someone much closer to home?  I want you to think about what you think of that person.  At the same time I want you to think about what it means to live the life of the Kingdom and to know that your life is so overflowing with God’s grace that God has given you.  This grace cannot help but flood into the person’s life as well.  The Kingdom to which Jesus has called us is one that places high standards on our ability to struggle against those things in our life that would destroy our souls.  Easter for Christians is not just a holiday in which we have ham and deviled eggs, though I think that is a good part of it too.  It’s not just a day on the calendar.  Easter, as we look at the day now just two weeks away, is a way of living.  Easter is understanding that the new life that has been revealed to us though Jesus has come at the price of God’s willing to suffer and take on our broken humanity.  But in the end, standing in the midst of that great tragedy, is a redemptive love that gives us life, which is eternal.  And by the way, eternal does not only pertain to when we die, but eternal can be understood in the sense of the right now.  As we prepare to come to Christ’s table again, we are reminded that as we take this cup and we share this bread, the living and real presence of Christ is among us.  As God’s gathered family, may we know that grace and accept it into our lives.  We pray that our cynical, angry, and envious hearts melt away as we are so filled with the sense of God’s grace in our lives.  Then may we go out of this place ready to share the good news that Jesus has brought to us so that the world and others may be born anew as well.