Psalm 146 and Matthew 13:1-9
What makes you jealous?
Maybe it’s when someone else has
something that you want… something beautiful or resources that make them appear
to have things easier. Maybe it looks like every opportunity is coming their
way, and it seems like no matter how hard you work for it, it’s just never that
easy for you. Why is it that some people seem to have no troubles… and others
seem to have more than their share?
When we’re feeling green with
envy, we’re not alone.
Being jealous is really as
old as the first humans we have stories about in the Bible… first, the seeds of
doubt were planted in Adam’s and Eve’s minds about whether God really cared for
them… and in the very next stories, one of their sons murders the other because
of jealousy. He felt like God liked his brother’s gifts more than his… so Cain
killed Abel. Everyone is left hurting and broken because of jealousy.
Other characters in the
stories of the Bible—Sarah and Abraham, King David, just to name a few— also
struggled with jealousy… it’s such a human struggle that nearly every one of
the 10 Commandments relate somehow but especially the first and last ones. The
first is… 1) I am the LORD your God, have no other gods before me…
Maybe that sounds like God is
a jealous God. In fact, sometimes the Torah and prophets say that about God. “God
is a jealous God.”[1]
That’s confusing, but a key difference between how God is and how jealousy
tends to work with humans is that God’s invitation is into relationship—and it
seems like our jealousies are always getting in the way of relationship.
At the end of the 10
Commandments are these rules for living together harmoniously: 9) Do not covet your neighbors’ family, and 10)
Do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Why not? Why shouldn’t we
want what others have?
Well… it seems like from the
very beginning, the root of brokenness is believing there’s not enough to go
around. We tell ourselves a story—there’s not enough love and favor to go
around. There’s only one person who could possibly bring happiness, and I can’t
be with him or her. I won’t be happy until these things or opportunities come
to me…
But today, more than ever, we
see how getting what we want often leads to another set of wants… and the
pattern of wanting what’s just out-of-reach becomes an unending path of
unhappiness.
So many faith traditions—not
just ours—point us to the wisdom of wanting less, letting go, emptying, so that
we can receive what we can’t get by grasping for it. But it’s clearly a hard
lesson to put into practice fully. If you are jealous about something today,
you are not alone… there are plenty of us struggling with jealousy. At the root
of jealousy is not being seen, not being valued—or at least thinking we are not
seen or valued.[2]
So, what kind of story might be an alternative?
On Friday, I officiated at a
funeral of a man whose dying wish was to have a Lutheran pastor do his funeral.
As a 22-year-old man, he was baptized in a Lutheran church, and although he had
not attended, he wanted his funeral to acknowledge that baptism. I was the
person that his wife found to do this, so in a very short time, I learned some
wonderful things about Dennis Morrison. His family agreed that the parable of
the sower that we heard from Matthew this morning was a great scripture.
Like the farmer in this story
of Jesus, Dennis abundantly planted… vegetables and sunflowers bigger than he
was in his garden. He planted lessons that his children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren and the Boy Scouts he mentored will take with them through
their whole lives. Dennis planted stories that they’ll never forget. It’s not
as if every seed he cast grew equally… sometimes, we’re more open to planting
and growth than others, but his wife described how her beloved created a
structure, a garden that helped people grow.
Sometimes, I think that when
we come to the end of life and have to say goodbye, we worry about if we really
did enough. Did we make the right choices? Did we learn everything we needed
to? Did we make enough? Did we give enough? Was our faith enough? Were our
doubts too big? It’s so much worry because of comparisons.
In this story from Jesus (the
parable of the sower), we get a glimpse of how our worries and fears about
whether there is enough can be erased by God who always has and gives enough—in
fact, God gives plenty, more than enough. This farmer scatters so many seeds
that even if birds eat some, thorns choke some, and the hot sun dries up some
new sprouts, still there will be enough for good seeds to find good ground to
root and sprout and grow… so we can know, it’s never too late. It’s never too
late to say “thank you” for the gifts that God gave you. It’s not too late to say
“I forgive you,” for anything that needs forgiving. It’s never too late to
replace jealous thoughts with words of love, care, and comfort to one another
as we make our way through the uncharted terrain of life now.
Maybe this is a story that
Jesus puts into our imaginations to be more powerful than our jealous stories.
There is enough. There is plenty, there is more than enough love, and care, and
attention to go around.
In Psalm 146, the singer
sings, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their
plans are done….
Put your hope in the Lord
your God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them…
Who keeps faith forever. Who
executes justice for the oppressed. Who gives food to the hungry…”
And on and on, the singer
sings…. Naming the stories that point us to the hundreds of reasons why we
might choose to praise God rather than give our hearts over to jealousy.
One more insight shared with
me about jealousy this week… a colleague said that she was once told “If you
don’t know what you want, pay attention to your envy and jealousy.”
What is the story we’re
telling ourselves? And are those stories really true?
This same colleague has been
practicing Centering Prayer. This is a practice of setting aside a certain
amount of time every day (or even twice a day) to be still in God’s presence,
open to what God wants to show us. For those of us who think we should be in
control, or have to engineer everything, this prayer practice may not be
relaxing, especially at first…(we’re not doing anything!) but over time,
Centering Prayer is a way to practice being open to God working within us.
I can imagine looking over my
jealousies with God. I can imagine God reminding me that I can’t see the whole
picture, kind of like that poem Walk a
Mile in His Moccasins.[3]
There may be tears in his soles that hurt
Though hidden away from view.
Though hidden away from view.
We do not know the
full story of others…we don’t know how our stories will unfold—either to judge
or to be jealous—and so we lean on God’s words and
God’s way to teach us how to open our eyes to the ways God is so extravagant
with seeds, with love, with a new story.
There is more than enough, not only for later… but
we have access to God’s abundance right now, on the way to whatever we’re
waiting for… You are seen by God, and “You are precious in God’s sight, and
honored, and God loves you.” (Isaiah 43:4)
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