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WEDDINGS

Anger we can understand– who doesn’t get angry? Probably for good reason. Gluttony, lust, pride, we can all fall for these without too much effort. Sloth is easy, greed is everywhere, but envy– that’s the deadly sin with the worst excuse.

For the other sins, you can probably find a self-help group, not for envy. You tell someone you’re angry, you can get anger management. If you tell someone you’re envious, they’ll probably say– get over it! As Rochefoucauld put it: Envy is so shameful a passion that we never dare acknowledge it.

Because envy is so shameful to admit to, it can hide in the dark recesses of our soul. We can end up envying someone or something without realizing it– which would almost never be the case with lust or anger.

Envy is dwelling on what you don’t have; it is pretending that the world is unfair to you because someone else seems to have it better. If you stop and think about it, there can be much to be envious about.

Someone is always stronger, better looking, richer, more famous, happier, paid better, or drives a better car than you do. Advertising in all its forms reminds us of this again and again and again.

You can even envy things you might not really want once you had them– the beautiful lover, whose mind is as a dim bulb; the great job, that would destroy your free time. But envy doesn’t have to make sense.

Men & women envy in different ways. Women may be envious of other, more beautiful women in a room, or envious of another woman who seems to have a better life, or even envious of another woman’s children who seem to have accomplished more than her own children.

On the other hand, men can envy great sports figures even when they themselves are total couch potatoes. Men can envy rich men, even when they themselves have no interest in business. Men can envy political leaders, even as they hate politicians.

Envy happens pretty early on in the bible. There is the story of Cain killing his brother Abel, because God seemed to like Abel’s offering more than he liked Cain’s.

Of the 10 commandments, the sixth speaks most directly to envy: “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.

To covet means to want to have something very much, in this case, what belongs to your neighbor– in other words, pure envy”.

In our reading from Genesis this morning, we heard about the brothers of Joseph, he of the coat of many colors. The brothers got sick and tired of all his dreaming about how the moon and stars would bow down to him.

They were envious of their father’s attention to Joseph. They thought to kill him, but they ended up selling him to some passing merchants. They wanted to take something away from him they thought ought to belong to them instead.

My neighbor, my office mate, my co-worker, my brother-in-law, that geek swerving through traffic– they may have something I do not have, that in fact, I would like to have. Envy asks: Why?

If the world were really fair, if my superior worth were really recognized, then I would be the first among unequals.

Joseph Epstein, author of a book entitled, Envy, puts the question this way: “Why should that guy over there have a bigger house, nicer car, sweeter wife, better job than me? The answer is clear: he, the son of a [gun], should not.”

For envy to work, we have to be convinced the other fellow doesn’t really deserve what he’s got. Convincing ourselves that we deserve it is the easy part. Of course we do! Isn’t that what all the TV commercials say?

If the other fellow is really undeserving, then it becomes a justice issue. The world begins to seem out of joint because that block head has something that really ought to be yours. It’s only just to make it so that this inequality stops, right?

Here’s where envy can become malicious & vengeful. Malicious envy has to do with destroying the advantage of another.

A genie appears to an Englishwoman, a Frenchman, and a Russian. The Englishwoman says her friend has a charming cottage in the Cotswolds, and she’d like the same thing, but with two more bedrooms and a 2^nd bath.

The Frenchman says his best friend has a beautiful blond mistress, and he would like such a mistress himself, but with longer legs and more chic.

The Russian tells of a neighbor who has a cow that gives a vast quantity of the richest milk, which yields the heaviest cream and the purest butter. “I vant dat cow,” the Russian tells the genie, “dead.”

Epstein says that:

Studies... have shown that people would agree to make less total money so long as they make more than their neighbors: that is, they would rather earn, say $85k a year where no one else is making more than $75k instead of them making $100k where everyone else is making $125k.

H.L. Mencken once defined contentment in America as making $10 a month more than your brother-in-law.

So, envy has to do with not only coveting what someone else has, but wanting to do them out of it. And when envy gets really vicious is when it infects the geo-political stage too. In fact, it would be tempting to say most wars are caused by national envy of one sort or another.

Even American politics might be seen as the clash of two of the seven deadly sins against restraining forces. My uncle, the Reverend Scott Simer says the G.O.P party of the Republicans ought to be called not the Grand Old Party, but the Greedy Old Party.

Surely, Republicans with their tax cuts for the rich personify the essence of Greed for some on the left hand of the political spectrum.

What’s been the charge against liberals? Bleeding hearts? They’re too soft? They love people too much? They are just weak? Doesn’t seem like much of a charge does it?

But I’ve come to think there is something else at work here, if we can talk about the excesses of the Left, and that is envy. If Greed is the not so secret sin of the right, then perhaps Envy is the not so secret sin of the Left.

The question then becomes: maybe some on the right really are greedy, but maybe some on the left are simply envious?

Consider Socialism: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” So what does it mean if someone has way more than they need? As Epstein puts it:

The doctrine of Marxism is many things, but one among them is a plan of revenge for the envious. How else can one view Karl Marx’s central idea, the perpetual class struggle, ending in the defeat of [all the other classes except] the working class? (52)

Putting aside the left and the right, envy becomes political when it becomes generalized. But let us consider a whole people who have been envied in the worst way– the Jews.

Consider these rough statistics from the Vienna of 1936, a city that was 90% Catholic and 9% Jewish: Jews accounted for 60% of the city’s lawyers, more than half its physicians, more than 90% of its advertising executives, and 123 of its 174 newspaper editors.

And this is not to mention the prominent places Jews held in banking, retailing, and intellectual and artistic life.

The numbers 4 or 5 years earlier for Berlin are said to have been roughly similar (60).

Did the big success of these assimilated Jews lead to extra brutality from the Germans and Austrians who tortured them? Perhaps these Jews had succeeded too well, and now, perversely, not only did they have to be killed, as there fellows had been killed by Russians, Poles, or Arabs, but they had to be humiliated first, then killed. And why the Jews?

Perhaps because they are the “chosen people,” people chosen by God. Jews are to maintain their separateness, which they have done in many ways, through food, through clothing, through religious ritual.

Outside of Israel, Jews are always immigrants. Immigrants, it seems have two choices, both of which cause problems. Like my great grandfather– an Irish immigrant– they can choose to try and become totally assimilated.

But when they try this, they can be discovered and rejected. Or they can maintain their separateness, for which they are likely to be hated anyway.

The philosopher John Rawls notes that society does well when it tones down envy. This can be done through even-handed justice, equal opportunity, and voluntary institutions like clubs, unions, and churches, which bring people together. It also helps if the well off don’t flaunt their good fortune.

I’m beginning to think for many of us, most envy is probably job or wealth related. In his book, Epstein talks about a particular group of people. See if you recognize them–

“They feel themselves simultaneously, greatly superior and vastly undervalued, above their countrymen yet isolated from them and insufficiently rewarded and revered by them. They have about them a perpetually disappointed air: one senses they feel the world has somehow let them down.

“Sometimes this will reveal itself in a general sourness; sometimes it takes the form of hopelessly radical political views. These political views, it does not take long to recognize, usually feature a complex shifting and reorientation of society so that people like themselves will be allowed a justly deserved role of power” (80).

Epstein is not talking about religious liberals, but university professors.

The philosopher Robert Nozick points out that university professors were people who grew up doing well in school. They were undoubtedly told how smart and accomplished they were. There’s 12 years of public school and perhaps another 8 of graduate school where all this is getting reinforced.

They remain in this environment, ready to reap the rewards of all their hard work, and surely they deserve it, because they’ve been told and can see their own accomplishments.

What happens then?

They see salesman who aren’t as smart as they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They see dull people they didn’t think would amount to anything are now physicians who have a vacation home near a lake.

Former bullies in the school yard are now racking up large gains in the stock market. All those A’s and a couple B’s don’t seem like much reward anymore, and it seems very unfair!

This is how an academic might think–

“Why does some ignorant lawyer have enough money to buy a villa in Tuscany than[I], who know so much, much more about the art of Italian Renaissance?

What kind of society permits this state of things to exist? A seriously unjust one, that’s what kind.” (81).

Envy hasn’t been a major pot hole in my life. Just a frown every once in a while. As Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts put it: Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is. Edward M. Kennedy, U.S. politician. Speech, Gridiron Club, Washington, D.C.

As a kid, I knew there were other kids who were better looking, better coordinated, taller, beefier, smarter, had bigger houses, better toys, went on more interesting vacations, and so forth.

Never mind that I didn’t feel like going to work out at the gym or run around the track or take on a job or actually do something to bring me closer to what I felt might be missing.

So, as a kid, it didn’t really nag at me most of the time.

Here is something I don’t like to admit to. My first church, straight out of seminary, was considered something of a plum for someone who just graduated. It was 175 years old, in a little building, in a quaint town.

As it turns out– unlike a lot of UU churches– the members there were mostly very wealthy. As in “don’t have to work anymore at age 40" wealthy.

I didn’t think this would be an issue. After all, I had been raised middle class, I had been both poor and well off. For a brief while, I’d been homeless in Manhattan for a few months.

And later in life, I had been rather well-to-do. I had been single living in a beach condo in Santa Cruz, California doing computer sales.

But once I had been in Connecticut for a few years, it began creeping in. Resentment, Envy. Bonnie and I lived in a 2 bedroom condo with our two girls– Kaylie was born there. We didn’t live in a slum, but it definitely was not the good part of town.

We had no yard. We had a gigantic rock next to the driveway and our neighbors were okay but they were fundamentalist immigrants who didn’t speak much English.

Anyway, I had all these very wealthy parishioners. Most of them were swell folks but there were several who frankly didn’t support charity or their church in the way many of you do. I think at the time Connecticut was 49^th in a list of states of the most generous Americans.

It began to rankle me. I knew if I were wealthy, I’d give away at least 2-5% of my income. Bonnie and I do that now.

There was one guy in particular– he was my age, and in some ways we were a lot alike. He was too embarrassed to talk about money, so I don’t know if he had a patent, inherited it all, or was an ex-drug dealer, it really didn’t matter. I would go to his house for some event.

I could see that the garage was bigger than the condo I lived in, and definitely had more green space.

He would give me a brochures about a ski lodge. He’d tell me about his trips to Cannes or Aspen, and then ask where we were going for Spring Break.

I was tempted to say, for spring break we’re getting a dining room table, thank you very much.

It bothered me not that so many of my Connecticut parishioners were fabulously wealthy, even by American standards, it bothered me that I wasn’t closer to them in my own situation.

I didn’t mind not going to France for spring break. I’ve been to France. But I minded the very real possibility that I would always be a condo renter and never make enough to afford a home of my own.

I didn’t mind living the life of a minister, but I minded the idea that my children would hold it against me– because all their friends– particularly at church– had so many more possessions and opportunities than they did.

I had thought I was resentful because this particular parishioner was so cheap with the church. And of course, where did my resources come from?

I thought at the time, that some of it came from him. He was holding out on me. He should give more. Oooh, that’s not very pretty, is it?

Then I had a twinge– I had felt this way before. My father held out on me. He should have loved me more. Oh for Pete’s sake!

I knew feeling envious was foolish, I knew it was selfish. Like the university professor, I knew that I had freely chosen my vocation, but I still felt resentment.

Awakening to this reality, it loosened the bonds of envy. Now, I know that I am responsible for my financial health, I will not pin that responsibility on anybody else. But that’s not the way I felt back then.

Like greed, for me the antidote to envy is through two activities: self-honesty and counting my blessings. They way to root out envy– which likes to hide in the dark & secret places in our soul– is by rigorous self-questioning and honesty. Who chose my life? Who is choosing my life? I am.

Then it is time to count our blessings. We don’t count what’s missing, you count what’s there.

Your blessings may be counted in your work or in your spouse; they may be found in your children or your parents.

Your blessings may be found in your having a house, and food, and clothing, and enough money to get by with. If your blessings aren’t in one basket, they are probably in another.

Seek the essence, hold the essence, let the essence carry me– out of envy and into gratitude– this is the way to the Satisfaction that envy refuses to acknowledge.

Let us rise and sing, shall we?

Find A Stillness, #352

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