17th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 2024b
Old Testament – 2 Samuel 11:1-15
New Testament – Ephesians 3:14-21
The Small Town Sin
INTRODUCTION: In his famous epic poem The Divine Comedy, Dante finds himself at one point making his way through Purgatory with his faithful guide Virgil.
And after passing through the first terrace or level of Purgatory, which is for haughty and pride-filled people, the two men move to the second terrace, which is dedicated to those people who were envious in life.
Dressed in penitential gray cloaks, the envious also have their eyes sewn shut with metal wires as punishment for their harmful and covetous glares when they were alive.
What’s more, the air around Dante and Virgil is also filled with the voices of various unseen people who, like those in the penitential cloaks, have also been sentenced to the second terrace of Purgatory for their begrudging ways.
One such voice, which Dante claims sounds like rolling thunder as it moves from place to place, is that of Cain from chapter 4 of Genesis. Turns out Cain’s real sin isn’t so much murdering his brother Abel, as we might expect, but rather the envy he harbored inside which eventually led to him committing such a horrible deed.
Because of that, Cain’s voice can be heard repeating again and again his own words from Scripture , “Everyone that findith me shall slay me. Everyone that findith me shall slay me.”
But the blind in their penitential cloaks are also far from being silent. In fact, at one point Dante engages a man named Guido del Duca in a conversation.
And eventually del Duca describes his jealous life this way: “My blood was so inflamed with envy that, had I seen a man becoming joyful, thou wouldst have seen me overspread with a hue of spite.”
Such remarks by del Duca remind me of that old bit about what it means to be a Puritan. “A Puritan” goes the line “is a person who has an unshakeable fear that someone somewhere in the world might actually be happy.”
ONE: But that’s the way it goes with envy, isn’t it? For envy, after all, is always more than just a simple longing for your neighbor’s goodies.
It’s also to wish and hope, and in worse case scenarios even deliberately seek, to separate your neighbor from his or her good fortune.
Or as one person has put it, envy is the sin “that looks with grudging hatred upon other [people’s] gifts and good fortune, taking every opportunity to run them down or deprive them of their happiness.”
No wonder the story of David and Bathsheba, like Cain and Abel, is also frequently considered a classic example of envy and the detrimental effects it can have on our lives. David’s desire for Bathsheba, after all, is only just the beginning of what eventually turns into a sad tale full of calculated deception, lying, and finally even murder.
Given all that David has, given that he is a favorite of God who has risen to become King of Israel, one would think it would be easy for him to be content and satisfied, but that hardly ends up being the case, does it? Gazing upon Bathsheba one day as she bathes, David’s starts thinking old Uriah must have it pretty good and before long he’s using his position as king to find out for sure.
And let’s be frank. Interpretations over the years that have sought to also place some of the blame on Bathsheba are simply off base. For in the Hebrew, David just doesn’t send his servants “fetch” Bathsheba as the usual translation goes. A better translation is to say that David sends his servants “to take” Bathsheba - to take her by force if need be. So to try and excuse David’s pitiful behavior by placing some of the blame on Bathsheba just doesn’t seem to be part of the storyline. Nope, the blame, it seems, rests with David and David alone.
And of course, as we all know, by the time David is done, the story has taken on the appearance of some Shakespearean tragedy, hasn’t it? Lives have been ruined, families and loved ones torn apart, and the ground soaked with blood.
And all because David had convinced himself that the grass on Uriah’s side of the fence was a whole lot greener than his own.
Why, we can almost hear that 10th Commandment being echoed as a constant, cautionary refrain in the background of the story: “You shall not covet. You shall not covet. You shall not covet.”
TWO: Well, given David’s behavior, perhaps that helps explain why one philosopher many years ago liked to refer to envy as “a small town sin” and that another also once wrote that envy feeds on “proximity” more than anything else.
After all, most of us hardly seem to envy folks that we barely know and who have been wildly successful in one way or another. It’s hard for me to be envious of, say, Warren Buffett - even though my yearly salary probably equals a day’s earnings for him every time the final bell for the stock market starts ringing at 4 pm! After all, I don’t actually know the guy. So it’s easy for me to be indifferent about Warren Buffet’s good fortune.
Ah, but my minister friend who just got that great new call to that big steeple church, which also includes a big, glossy-white, four door sedan to roll around town in from the church member who happens to own a car dealership, well that’s a whole different matter.
For that’s a whole lot closer to home than Warren Buffett, isn’t it? And because of that, it’s easy for me to begrudge my colleague's success or to try and detract from his good fortune.
Why, I might even opine about how serving such a large church can’t be worth it in the end: “Who would want the headaches that come with serving a church that large!? I sure hope he has plenty of pepto-bismol on hand, because he is going to need it.” Or even, “Well, that was a pretty important church to serve a 100 years ago, but the mystique of that place sure has worn off.”
One well-known minister and writer tells of the time a professor, upon hearing that a colleague of his had just won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, reportedly replied, “Sweden is such a pitifully small country, don’t you think?”
And so it goes with envy. It’s a small town sin, not because it’s a trivial or insignificant sin that none of us need worry about, but rather because it strikes so close to home.
News comes to us that a friend or colleague has garnered some great recognition or achieved some kind of marvelous success, and more often than not it’s easy to start throwing barbs and zingers.
“Sweden is such a pitifully small country…”
THREE: Of course, the real problem with envy is that it ultimately prevents us from being generous with our lives, right?
After all, since envious people can always find someone else with more, since they can always find someone else in need of catching and equaling, well, they naturally find it hard to be generous as a result.
Because to do so, to be generous and kind, only puts the envious person that much further behind the co-worker, or the neighbor, or even that fellow church member they’re so intent on trying to catch.
No wonder the virtues of kindness and charity are considered to be the cures for envy. For to practice such virtues by definition requires us to let go of our unhealthy longings for more so we might instead focus on giving and sharing what we already possess.
There is the story of the young married couple who were just starting their life together. “Honey,” says the husband, “I’m going to work really hard so someday we can be rich just like everyone else!”
“Oh dear,” replied the wife “that’s very sweet of you. But don’t you realize we’re already rich since we have each other. Perhaps one day, with hard work, we’ll have money too.”
For an envious person, the world is always full of blessings – except none of the blessings are ever theirs since they can only see what others have. No wonder in Renaissance paintings envy was often depicted as a sickly woman holding her heart in her hands while gnawing on it; hence, the phrase, “Eat your heart out!”
A kind and charitable person, on the other hand, cares little for the blessings of others since they’re too busy deciding how to best share their own. Rather than gnawing on their own hearts, generous people are too busy giving themselves (and their hearts!) away to worry about what others have in comparison to themselves.
Or as another figure in Dante’s Divine Comedy puts it when summing up the effects of envy on her life, “I rejoiced far more at other’s hurts than at my own good fortune.”
CONCLUSION: Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?
Rather than find joy over other people’s hurts and losses because of our envious cravings, we can instead seek to give thanks. We can give thanks not only for our own blessings, but even for those enjoyed by others. Instead of eating our own hearts out, we can give them away in gratitude and love.
For love, after all, is always more than just a warm fuzzy emotion we get to have. No, it is also a way of being in the world. Or as someone else once famously put it in a letter penned about 2,000 years ago, “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.”
To the God of all grace, who calls you to share God’s eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever! Amen.