2nd aft Trinity ’10 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a;
Twente, Arnhem Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3
Greed, Gifts, and Grace
Three sermon topics emerge from today’s readings: Greed, Gifts, and Grace.
Greed is inescapable: it rears its ugly head in our installment of the Elijah story in 1 Kings 21. Greed is a compelling subject. Not for nothing is greed one of the traditional 7deadly sins. It may not be worst of the 7: that may be pride, which opens the way for all the others. But greed is one which tempts all of us from time to time. It is so easy to go from ‘I want’, to ‘I need,’ to ‘I must have’, isn’t it? Even if we want things that we should not want, things which are not rightly ours to begin with.
So we can, once again, perhaps identify with King Ahab’s sentiments, if not his methods. He covets a prime piece of real estate owned by one of his subjects. And actually, he offers Naboth the Jezreelite what seems a perfectly reasonable exchange for the land he wants. Naboth is quite plucky, though, to refuse to turn over his land to Ahab.
Why does Naboth refuse? Because he is unwilling to give up his ancestral inheritance to someone who does not worship the Lord. As a devout Jew, Naboth saw the earth as God’s property, and not his own. Naboth saw himself as a steward of God’s creation, and his own land as something for his family to look after on God’s behalf. So Naboth could not just renounce it to Ahab, even if Ahab was his earthly king. Ahab was guilty of apostasy (wandering from the faith), so Naboth might rightly have wondered if Ahab would also honor God in caring for the land.
These issues are ancient and contemporary. To make money, we often seem quite ready to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. An ancient people was led into a Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey. Today, people seem so bent on defending what they’ve got or grabbing more, that the hospitality of Abraham (to strangers) risks becoming obsolete. Most wars are fought over land. The final commandment, against coveting what is not ours, is in the top 10 for good reason.
Greed and coveting do not have to be for material things like money and property. One can be greedy with power, with status, with talents.
Peter Shafer’s play – Amadeus – about Mozart, captures this. Shafer exaggerated the rivalry between the brilliant young Mozart and the established court composer Antonio Salieri, but his play is insightful.
Salieri has it all: power, wealth, and status. He’s worked very hard and made great sacrifices to get where he is. He feels he deserves what he’s got. But he wants more.
But then, along comes the virtuoso Mozart, who has more God-given talent in his little finger than Salieri has in his whole body. Strong words those, because actually Salieri’s music is quite good, indeed, excellent by any pre-Mozart standard. The problem is the childish prodigy Mozart appears in Vienna, and Salieri is at once intrigued and irritated. Salieri is drawn like a moth to the flame of Mozart’s musical genius. Salieri is at once humbled by and hates Mozart’s giftedness, because Salieri does not have it. Salieri knows Mozart needs money to support his family, so Salieri plots to work the ailing Mozart literally to death. He dies writing his own Requiem. Salieri has eliminated his rival, but not his own sense of inadequacy. And Mozart’s music lives on.
The story of Amadeus is one of greed, as well as pride, envy and abuse of power. Not unlike Ahab, Naboth and Jezebel. Ahab does not get Naboth’s land, the gift that is not his for the taking. He goes home and sulks. Crafty wife, Queen Jezebel conceives a plot to do in Naboth. Greed, pride, envy, and abuse of power. The pages of literature and history are filled with similar cases: whether we’re talking the MacBeths, or wicked kings and queens of fairy tales, or Ceaucescus or Marcoses or ….
What is God’s answer to these things?
Well, we mentioned the 10th commandment. But also, God occasionally sends a prophet along to question the ways of the world. God sends Elijah to remind to Ahab of a few other commandments: ‘Thou shalt not murder’; ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ And Elijah pronounces God’s judgment on Ahab’s actions: ‘You, too, will die a horrible death.’
That is Ahab’s fate. But it is not God’s desire for us or anyone. Ahab made his own choice. God seems to prefer we live by his grace.
We all fall short of God’s desire for us, in the choices we sometimes make. This is why, as St Paul found out, it is no good us thinking we can try to do better, let alone be perfect, without God’s help. Ahab had given up trying. But what about those who do worship the Lord, and, try as they might, fail to live up to God’s will for them. No show of hands is needed. We offer our confession at least once a week.
But St Paul wants us to recall that without the gift of God’s grace, we can do little to help ourselves. St Paul had been there, as a Pharisee. He’d been the most motivated sort of Boy Scout for God. He’d kept all the rules. But it had not made him either good or right with God.
St Paul realized that even though he was no Ahab, he could never be right with God by working harder than everyone else for it. That was Salieri’s mistake, too. He could note enjoy his own immense gifts, which he had worked hard to hone, or the greater gifts of Mozart. And Salieri, at least in the play, hated God for that.
What Paul learned is that he had to allow God to put all that kind of thinking and being to death. Pride, wrath, envy, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust – all of them human temptations – and the feeling that we can be virtuous and righteous on our own effort—all those things had to be nailed, once and for all, to the cross.
Only then would new life, true life, in Christ, be possible:
‘I have been crucified with Christ; 20and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.’
Paul knew the depths of his own sin, his own failure. So he all the more rejoices in the gift of God’s forgiving and saving grace. The women who bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears also knew how much she owed Christ.
But God’s grace is just that: a gift, an offering. We cannot earn it. We cannot steal it. It is an offering. I guess the one thing we can do, if we must do something, is to begin by being grateful.
A poetic prayer from George Herbert:
Thou hast given so much to me, [Lord]
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
Amen.
