(OH NO! Looks like I never hit “publish” on last week’s post. So, this week I’ll leave both the 6/15 AND 6/22 posts up.)

Dear Friends,

Frederick Buechner has quite a way of cutting to the chase: “Envy,” he writes, “is the consuming desire to have everybody else be as unsuccessful as you are.”

I mentioned WASPLEG in yesterday’s sermon and I’ve been thinking about those so-called “deadly” sins ever since. In the context of yesterday, I’ve thought how each one has not only an impact on me, but also an impact on my neighbor. I might get frustrated with myself, for example, but my wrath is aimed at somebody else most every time (and that “most” is only there because I am occasionally furious with myself).

Envy is probably my go-to deadly sin. And I expect we’ll discover that this coming Sunday’s text - Psalm 73 - arises as a result of envy. So, I’ve been noodling over this green-eyed monster.

First stop, why the color green? WebMD (yup, WebMD!) offers an answer that’s based in the ancient theory that an imbalance of bodily fluids caused mental and physical illness. “You may have heard that you can turn ‘green with envy.’ This phrase dates back to the ancient Greeks, who believed jealousy could trigger your liver to make more bile, the yellow-green liquid that helps break down your food. This, in turn, was thought to make your skin slightly green. Although that's not true, ‘turning green with envy’ is still used today.”

Second stop - one that I didn’t think of until I read that WebMD bit - is to wonder how envy and jealousy are distinguished from each other. Same WebMD page suggests envy is about what one does not have but does covet; jealousy is more about what one does have but fears losing. I’ll buy that.

Third stop, what about envy versus greed/avarice? I expect the Buechner quote at the top of this post helps with this distinction. Avarice is to want what my neighbor has; I’d say envy is resenting what my neighbor has, even if I wouldn’t necessarily want it. For example, I might envy somebody’s multi-million-dollar house even if I don’t actually wish I had a similar home. If Buechner’s right that “Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else be as unsuccessful as you are,” well, underneath it all, it’s not really about what my neighbor has at all, is it? It’s really about what’s lacking in me. Ouch.

Where do you live most of the time, at least where WASPLEG is concerned? (In case you need a reminder, that’s Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony.) And how does that deadly sin shape you and your relationship with your neighbor? Wonder how that deadly sin worms its way into your relationship with the Triune One?

See you Sunday!

Peace,

Lisa

Photo credit: Tolga Ulkan on Unsplash.

(Hard to find a picture for “envy,” but this cat, seeming to cut her emerald-green eye, nails it, huh?)

Dear Friends,

The barest of Google searches will tell you that the Golden Rule - “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” - is present in some form or fashion in many, if not most, religious traditions. So, in a sense, I suppose there’s kinda nothing new here. (I’ll leave you to Google for yourself if you want to explore some of the parallels. Note, too, that there’s a so-called “Silver Rule” corollary that conveys the inverse of the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.” Good to know.)

Now, if you have a general sense of the way my brain works, you might have anticipated that simply observing that “there’s kinda nothing new here” got me wondering what might be unique or at least different about Jesus having taught this to us. If the plain sense of the Golden Rule (and its inverse Silver Rule) is pretty much the same across all the traditions, perhaps there might be something particular about why Jesus taught this or maybe how he taught it?

One short answer came to me immediately because Jesus offers a why right after he states the Golden Rule. The whole verse at Matthew 7:12 goes like this: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” Or, in other words, do this because the Bible tells you so. Somehow, though, I expect other traditions can probably point to sacred texts and find a why, too, so I think there’s more than that.

Beyond that surface observation, Jesus seems to teach us to go well beyond the baseline of the Golden Rule. For example, elsewhere in Matthew (at 5:43-48) he sets this expectation: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Interestingly, Google’s AI overview added a “Platinum Rule” that goes like this: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” Jesus pushes us yet farther than that: “Treat others better than the way either you or they think they should be treated.” Wow! (Note for other data nerds: as of this writing, gold futures are trading at $4,363.50 and platinum futures are going for $1,794.70. Has nothing to do with anything, but I was curious, so there it is.)

Now, I haven’t familiarized myself with each of the teachers in each of the traditions that incorporate some version of the Golden Rule, but instinct tells me that Jesus might be a unique teacher of this principle because of the way he lived it. In John’s gospel (15:12–13) Jesus takes “Do unto others” even further: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Hmm. That’s a sobering teaching, coming as it does from the One who did, indeed, lay down his life for our sakes. “Do unto others” almost sounds frivolous by comparison, huh? I suppose the very least we could do is to treat others as we’d hope to be treated.

I won’t “See you Sunday” this week because I’ll be tending a friend in her early days of recovery from hip replacement surgery. George Spransy will be in the pulpit at NRPC (Thank you, George!!) and I’m sure you will be a blessing to him just as I am sure he will be a blessing to you.

Peace,

Lisa

Photo credit: Jon Tyson on Unsplash.