PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Matthew 4:1-11                                         Seven Deadly Sins:  Covetousness/ Greed

Sermon for Lent I, February 10, 2008:  People's UCC, Dover, DE:  the Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            During the season of Lent I try to preach sermons that address basic elements in the practice of the Christian way:  elements like the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed.  This Lenten season I am going to be dealing with "The Seven Deadly Sins."  Since there are seven sins and we have only six Sundays in Lent, including Palm Sunday, I actually started this series in the Ash Wednesday service, where I preached on "Pride."  Today the subject is "covetousness."  The first problem is to understand what that word actually means:  we don't use "covetousness" very often in conversation, in novels, in the newspaper or on television; but we do use another word:  "greed."  There is another word you may also have heard, "avarice," which comes from the Latin "aveo," "to crave."  In Anglo-Saxon, we're talking about our "wanting."  Out in the desert for forty days Jesus fasted and prayed; and then his wanting was genuine.  But even his honest need became an occasion for temptation, and he was tempted. 

            What did Jesus know that we need to know?  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."[1]  He didn't condemn property, or business, or having a little comfort:  he readily accepted the hospitality of people who possessed things; but he warned:[2]

 

 

Ownership is tenuous.  Comfort is for a little while.  Your life is bigger than that, so to approach possessing things like a glutton actually reduces your life's greatness.  Greed is a gluttony of the heart that attaches itself to things, as if the things could fill the emptiness in your heart.  Kenny Rogers' car collection, or Mickey Rooney's wife collection, or Osama bin Laden's collection of what he perceives as righteous acts—these can't fill the heart.  The pack-rat of the heart lives a miserly life and ends up with a cramped soul.  But the things we pack away can easily become false gods, as Paul wrote:  "Put to death … covetousness, which is idolatry."[3]  So covetousness is a gluttony of the heart. 

 

            Jesus used some interesting pictures to talk about covetousness.  Greed is like a moth.  It's egg hatches in the closet and the larva catches a whiff of the wool sweater you got for Christmas.  You put your sweater in a plastic bag to protect it from dust, but the larva just drops through the hole in the top and finds an edge to start working on.  A warm spring day comes along and you pull your sweater out of the closet, looking forward to wearing it in the light spring breeze; but when you look at it, the ends of both sleeves are shredded, there's a gap in the weave at the collar, and there's a hole in the left pocket.  You've never worn it, but now you'll only wear it at home.

 

 

            "Rust" is literally the result of the oxidation of iron.  Rust is the reason the planet Mars looks red:  all the iron has oxidized—a whole planet.  I went to seminary in Pittsburgh—"Steel City."  Steel is a form of iron in which carbon atoms have been introduced at a certain density, and boy did we find that out in Pittsburgh—in the Pittsburgh winters.  The snow was beautiful, and our children loved it.  The streets department spread thousands of tons of salt on the streets every winter and just left it there until the spring rains washed it away.  Our 1969 Ford Maverick rusted.  Our 1972 Pinto station wagon rusted so badly that you could see the side of the road through a hole in the door.  Everybody in Pittsburgh washes their car a lot, but you can't wash everywhere.  Eventually the salt becomes impacted up under the wheel wells and along the seams.  Then you have another job to do.  I didn't have a sand blaster, so I went over to John Beam's house and borrowed his; and I took my can of Tiger Hair with me.  I sand-blasted as much of the rust as I could, and then I began building up the holes; because if your car had any rust holes it wouldn't pass state inspection.  You could do that two or three times, but eventually your were patching over patches, using window screen to hold the Bondo in place; and that's when Bondo fell off and you could see the side of the road through the bottom of the door.  Rust. 

            Your whole life can be like that:  it can rust away because you keep packing away the salt like a miser of the spirit.  It's a form of covetousness, avarice, greed, that gets into the seams of your soul and turns your heart to red dust.  Jesus says, Don't put your real treasures where that can happen to them.  Covetousness is a rusting of the heart.

 

            The picture of a thief breaking in and stealing is actually more graphic in the original language:  "Where thieves dig through and steal."  Most people's houses back then were made of mud-bricks, and they had to be repaired and the walls resealed every year after the rains ceased.  So nothing you put in your house was really protected.  While you were out in the field, or at the market, anybody who wanted to could punch a hole in the wall of your house, reach in a grab a kettle or a bottle of nard or a colorful cloak, and be gone quickly. 

            But it doesn't take a thief:  the stock market can do something similar; a bad fall can rob you of your health; a family argument can rob you of the closeness you once enjoyed.  The thief is a picture of the fragile nature of your life.  If you place all your treasure in such vulnerable places, you can lose both what disappears and your peace of mind.  Yet we keep pouring our treasures into life's will-o-the-wisps, when God has invited us to make an eternal investment of our hearts.  Why would we prefer the perishable?  Covetousness—if we can see it, touch it, be with it right now, we want it.  And we don't want God to "fix our wanter."[4]  Covetousness is a gluttony of the heart. 

 

            Two brothers once approached Jesus with a request.  Their father had died and they were arguing over the inheritance—who gets what.  They asked Jesus to sort the problem out.  Jesus answered:[5]

 

 

Figuring out who should inherit what is not the problem:  wanting is the problem.  To nail down his point Jesus told a parable about a farmer whose land produced extremely well—so well that his barns were too small to hold the produce; so he kept the produce anyway.  He built larger barns.  It made him feel secure finally to have "enough" stored away:  he could relax and enjoy his life.  Jesus continued:

 

 

            This is not a comfortable picture to look at.  After all, living in a society where everyone is expected to take care of themselves and save for retirement, this looks like a criticism of 401k's and pension plans.  But let me ask you:  Do you have a retirement program, or do you worry about a retirement program?  Where's your soul in all this?  Are you pulling your share of the economic load in our society, or are you acting out a secret sort of greed—maybe out of fear:  the emotion could be anything, it's the act that reveals whether it's greed.  How is it with your heart? 

            A security guard in a department store wrote to the Reader's Digest and told this story.  A woman came in just about closing time and picked out several garments she might like to buy.  She looked around and then asked the guard, "Why aren't the dressing rooms open?"  He answered, "They close fifteen minutes before the store closes."  He expected her to explode and give him a hard time, but instead she breathed a deep sigh of relief and said:  "Well, thank goodness!  You just saved me a hundred dollars!"[6] 

            Covetousness is a gluttony of the heart.  "Beware of all covetousness:  your life does not find its content in the abundance of your possessions." 

 

            It was interesting to me to find out that Asia and Europe have two very different views of what a dragon is.  In China a dragon is a great, joyful beast who brings good things into people's lives.  That's why Chinese parades have dragons dancing up and down and the people greet them with laughter and joy.  The dragon is a giver.

            But in England dragons are a very different thing altogether:  in England they're evil.  Western dragons are misers who steal gold and maidens and keep them locked up in caves that they protect with vicious fire.  They prevent the women from marrying, and they don't circulate the money in the economy.  They just keep it.  Dragons impoverish the kingdom and cause multiple sorrows in the countryside.  So the king has to find a hero to slay the dragon.  But when the hero slays the dragon he doesn't keep the gold:  he shares it with the people and prosperity returns.  He also doesn't keep the maiden:  she is set free to marry and have a family and a whole new life. 

            What kind of dragon lives in your most secret heart?  A giver or a miser?  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  And covetousness is a gluttony of the heart.

 

            The opposite of covetousness, Luther said, is generosity:[7]

 

 

So Martin Luther.  The opposite of covetousness is not refusing to  spend:  it is good administration of what God has placed into your hands, good "stewardship" of money, land, health, the earth, everything.  It is to administer with love what God has entrusted to you for the time being.  But covetousness, greed, avarice will destroy you from within your own heart. 

            During this Lenten season, let us pay attention to our cravings and guard our hearts against greed.

AMEN