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Trinity Parish Church
20th Sunday after Pentecost – October 28, 2007
Luke 18:9-14
The Rev. Rachel Endicott
A few years ago in The Onion, a humorous online magazine, there was an article about a church bake sale. For an unknown reason, for the past few weeks it’s been posted in the sacristy where the clergy, acolytes and servers vest. Now whether or not the author has indeed been to church bake sales, he or she does a good job in poking fun at both the seven deadly sins and at church bake sales in general.The author writes: “The seven deadly sins – avarice, sloth, envy, lust, gluttony, pride and wrath – were all committed Sunday during the twice-annual bake sale at St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception Church. In total, 347 individual acts of sin were committed at the bake sale, with nearly every attendee committing at least one of the seven deadly sins as outlined by Gregory the Great in the Fifth Century. “My cookies, cakes, and brownies are always the highlight of our church bake sales, and everyone says so,” said parishioner Connie Barrett, 49, openly committing the sin of pride. “Sometimes, even I’m amazed by how well my goodies turn out.” Fellow parishioner Betty Wicks agreed. “Every time I go past Connie’s table, I just have to buy something,” said the 245-pound Wicks who commits the sin of gluttony at every St. Mary’s bake sale, as well as most Friday nights at Old Country Buffet.”1 And the article goes on showing how the parishioners exhibit envy, wrath, avarice, and sloth, not leaving out even lust as the parishioners lust over the shapely form of parishioner Melissa Wychoff or for the personable, boyish charm of Father Mark. Although done in jest, the author must have had a good Catholic upbringing as he or she knows her deadly sins. As accurately stated, Gregory the Great was indeed the precursor of Dante Alighieri in listing the seven deadly sins, known also as capital vices or cardinal sins. Although there are other scriptural and extra-biblical listings of sins, this particular grouping is the best known seven. And of the seven, for our modern world, we should note that pride “is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise.”2 Sloth isn’t the big one, ‘though this message comes through in a variety of cultural ways in our society. It isn’t lust, ‘though certainly sins involving lust make any newscaster’s day. It isn’t avarice (otherwise known as greed), and indeed in our capitalist society there are probably even those who would say the desire to accumulate great amounts of wealth is a good thing. It is pride, a desire to be more important or attractive than others, which is considered the most serious type of sin. As the ultimate example, pride is considered as the reason for Lucifer’s fall from heaven. And this is where we enter into scripture today. We have a short, but pithy, passage before us. Luke writes of Jesus telling a parable about pride and humility. In it there were the unnamed “some” who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. This is indeed pride. This behavior and belief indeed changes the relationship with others around them and even changes the relationship with God. Now one of these men, named as a Pharisee, says “God I thank you that I am not like other people”, and he even goes on to make a list of those he’s not like. Wow, where does one start with this sentence? First, as an original hearer of this passage, the Pharisee would not have been seen as a bad person. The Pharisees were looked up to for their “austerity, their animosity toward the pagan rulers, and their outward spirituality.”3 They were not the fundamentalists of their day and worked hard to make God’s word accessible. They were sometimes contrasted with the Sadducees. But – of course – in Jesus’ own way, the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are often placed in each other’s roles. Women and Samaritans elsewhere are the good guys and here the Pharisee is the bad guy. Secondly, this comment got me thinking about the ways in which we differentiate ourselves from one another. We turn the world into the “us-es” and the “thems.” We differentiate ourselves from others by all sorts of criteria, seen and unseen. We may put ourselves into categories by our type of work, skin color, educational achievements, or even by categories of behaviors we do or have done. That said, Jesus would remind us I am sure that we are all children of God, all loved, and yet we are all sinners. And even modern science reminds us that we are more like than not. From the journal Science, I’m led to believe that 93-95% of human genetic variation exists among individuals within populations, while differences among major groups make up less than 5 percent of the variation.”4 The way I read this means that even our visible differences result from a very small proportion of genetic traits. So much of what we carry at a cellular level is found in any given population. So, at both a theological level as well as a genetic level, we are like other people…we have all fallen short of where we are called to be and we are more like all the others that the Pharisee names than not. Jesus, in the parable, then shows what the opposite of pride looks like. It is humility, a sense of being humble. And in fact, that sense of humility, of being modest, not arrogant, and self-effacing is the model Jesus gives us in our prayer life and elsewhere. And it’s not only by Jesus that we are warned about being proud. Twice in Proverbs, the reader is warned about being arrogant and proud. In Proverbs 6, there is a list of the things that God dislikes, and while it’s quite different from the seven deadly sins, verse 17 includes haughty eyes, perhaps another way of talking about regarding others with contempt. Certainly, in some circles the words of Proverbs 16:18 is well known – “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty sprit before a fall.” So Jesus’ parable makes the point already included in Scripture. Now not to muddy the waters further, but for me, wrestling with these lessons also means wrestling with the fact that if I’m to be wary of the sin of pride, if I’m instead supposed to be humble, how do I effectively still live into proclaiming the Gospel? I do think it’s possible… First, being humble is easier when we thank God for what we have and what we’ve been given! It’s not what we’ve achieved in ourselves, but that which we have accomplished with God’s help. Second, when we tell the story of the Gospel, it’s not our story so much as it is a little piece of God’s story…how each of us plays into the coming of God’s kingdom. Thirdly, I’ve noticed that humble people often talk about how others facilitated their achieving amazing things. In almost every interview I’ve ever heard of folks who’ve started social service agencies, food banks and the like, they always talk about others who allowed or prompted things to happen. Lastly, humble in the biblical sense doesn’t mean inferior in station or quality which is one of the dictionary definitions. What it means is not arrogant, not being like the man praying that he was “not like other people”, by definition better than other people. What it means is allowing that we are all God’s children, all beloved by God. So be humble. Give others the positive due they deserve. Be in right relationship with others and with God. Humble yourself in prayer, in the sight of others, but – most importantly – humble yourself before God. 1 -----, “All Seven Deadly Sins Committed At Church Bake Sale”, The Onion,December 12, 2001, Issue 37*45.2 -----, Wikipedia, Seven Deadly Sins, 10/23/2007, 3.3 -----, “Faith and Pride”, The Living Church, October 28, 2007, 4.4 Author(s) unknown, “Genetic Study Reveals Similarities between Diverse Populations”, Science, December 20, 2002, as reported by Scientific American.com.
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