Pride

 Friends, we’re now in the first Sunday of the season of Lent. This season means a number of different things to different people depending on what kind of church you went to growing up, and what the folks around you did during Lent. For some of y’all, “Lent” means “no more chocolate”, and thus great sadness. For someone like my Dad, “Lent” means “Oh dear, that means we’re eating fish every Friday until April.” My Dad doesn’t like fish, so that’s bad news to him. For some of you, though, “Lent” means “go get a fish dinner every Friday at the Avon church,” which is good news! Because you like fish! To each their own. To some of you, “Lent” might not mean very much, because you don’t do much different this time of year. For others still, “Lent” means engaging in a book study, or daily scripture readings, or more prayer. 

Whatever Lent means for you, I hope that, over the next six weeks, we can shed what doesn’t help us grow, and deepen in what brings us closer to God. As for me, today begins a sermon series inspired by my spunky gal pal Jessica, a Methodist Deacon serving in Buffalo, about none other than the Seven Deadly Sins. 

Hopefully that woke you up. First up: the deadly sin of pride.

Generally speaking, Protestants don’t spend a ton of time on the concept of the seven deadly sins, the history of that idea comes from our Roman Catholic friends. This notion started with a Fourth Century monk by the name of Evagrius Ponticus. He suggested that there were eight fundamental “evil thoughts” that create all other evil thoughts. Two hundred years later, Pope Gregory I narrowed the list of evil thoughts from eight to seven. Then, in the Thirteenth Century, a friar and theologian named Thomas Aquinas expounded this idea at length in his work the Summa Theologia, and nerds like me are deeply indebted to his brilliance. Aquinas defined the seven deadly sins as “capital sins”, the heads of all sins. They aren’t necessarily the very worst sins a person could ever commit, but, rather, they are the beginning of all the trouble. All the sins of the human world devolved from these seven evils. These seven sins–pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth–represent a person turning away from God’s good gifts and toward our basest impulses, our lowest natures. He further believed that sins of the heart and spirit–like pride and envy–were deadlier than sins of the body–like gluttony and sloth. But the good news for us comes from Aquinas’ conclusion: humans may spin out, turn down the good things God wants for us, and go down these seven bad roads. But all we have to do to atone for these sins is repent, or stop and turn around, and find corresponding virtuous paths.

The sin we’re focusing on today, pride, is one of those spiritual sins that Aquinas found deeply troubling. Aquinas described pride as “vainglory,” as rejecting the wholeness that simply comes from being beloved children of God in favor of the temporary gratification of obsessing over our selves and our images and believing that we’re superior to others. The road away from God begins when we get so obsessed with the face in the rearview mirror that we aren’t even looking out the windshield to see where we’re driving anymore. The road back to God comes from humility: the peace of putting our own worth in context. We don’t have to lift ourselves above others. And not lifting ourselves above doesn’t mean placing ourselves below. Humility means understanding that we’re a small part of a huge picture to God, and the big picture is a beautiful mosaic when we all take our places.

With that in mind, we look at this well known Gospel story from Matthew, the same one the lectionary suggests for us every year on the first Sunday of Lent. Matthew chapter 4, and Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. According to Matthew, Jesus’ immediate reaction to being baptized and hearing God call him a beloved son was to walk right out of town to a remote wasteland to go hungry and thirsty to the point of delirium for a month and a half. It doesn’t get much more humble than that. Jesus perfectly exemplifies humility and self-denial. 

His counterpart in this famous story goes by a number of names depending on your Bible translation and your own preferences: the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephestopheles, Prince of Darkness, or 666. Now, I’ve shared this with y’all before, but I don’t believe in the literal existence of a supernatural baddie. He’s not named in the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, and the UMC recognizes a diversity of thought around the existence of a Lord of the Underworld. John Wesley believed in the devil, but folks who think more like me are inclined to look back at the Hebrew word that “Satan” comes from in the first place: ha-satan. The adversary. The thing that’s against you.

Even though I’m not inclined to think this way, it’s worth taking a look at what both our Roman Catholic and Muslim friends teach about the devil, because if Jesus perfectly embodies humility, Satan is so prideful it oozes off of him like slime. Our Catholic friends teach that the devil was made to be a good angel, but he got full of himself and decided he was better and prettier than all the other angels. As punishment for being so obnoxious, God kicked him out of heaven and put him in charge of H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, along with his friends who were starting to get too big in the head. From there, he has power, but never as much as God, and he’s condemned to spend all of eternity chasing glory he’ll never have. Our Muslim friends, as an alternative story for you, teach that the devil started out as a jinn, a morally neutral spiritual power (“jinn” is the root from which we get the word “genie”). And his name is Iblis. Allah commanded Iblis to bow to Adam, but Iblis refused, because Adam was made from dust, and Iblis insisted he must be superior to anyone made out of dust. That didn’t make Allah too happy, and now Iblis skulks around whispering naughty things in your ear–the devil on your shoulder, if you will.

So, maybe the devil’s name was Lucifer Morningstar, and he decided he was too cute to hang out with ugly angels. Or, maybe the devil’s name is Iblis, and he thinks you’re dirt. Or, maybe the devil has horns and a tail and a pitchfork for poking you all day because he’s the ultimate bully. Or, maybe he’s hiding somewhere in you. Maybe, in Shakespeare’s immortal words, “hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Maybe the devil is a euphemism for your own worst impulses, your lower nature, the shadow side of yourself.

In any event, that brings us to this morning’s story: Jesus, the voice of humility, facing off in an hour of desperation against the voice of pride. Jesus is away from his parents for the very first time in all his 33 years. He’s separated from his friends, and his home. He’s away from his old day job as a carpenter. He hasn’t changed his clothes or had a shower in weeks. He’s starving, thirsty, lonely, and exhausted. He’s never been this stripped down and vulnerable. While his defenses are at their lowest, the devil drives up in a red Ferrari, the radio blaring “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. He gets out of the car, his designer shoes shielding his feet from blisters and his sick sunglasses protecting his eyes from the blazing sun. He condescends upon Jesus, who’s on his knees in the sand, and tells him, “if you’re really Jesus, turn those pebbles into a Big Mac and a shake.” Not just big temptation, but temptation based on Jesus knowing he’s important, and powerful. Is he too important to stay the course and obey God? Jesus counters by quoting Deuteronomy. The Law of Moses. He doesn’t live on carbs, he lives on God.

Then the devil tells him, Well, you should be having more fun out here. Why don’t you jump off a cliff and go hang gliding! You’re Jesus, you can do it! And the devil even throws some out of context scripture at Jesus, because the baddies do that. And again, Jesus counters by quoting Deuteronomy, the Law he’s bound by: “don’t listen to guys who tell you to jump off of cliffs.”

Then, one more time, the devil tries to corrupt Jesus, and he shows him Park Avenue in New York City, the Upper East Side. See that penthouse, Jesus? That could be your place! They call that neighborhood “Billionaire’s Row.” Doesn’t that sound like a nice place to live? See those sky scrapers? You could snap your fingers and make a bag full of money to buy all of them! You could be the richest and most powerful man in the world! And you’d never be hungry, dirty, or tired again. Don’t you want that? One last time, Jesus goes to Deuteronomy: shiny toys are for babies. He only needs God.

Our culture rewards us for thinking like the devil, for giving into temptation, for being the worst version of ourselves. Our culture teaches us that pride, or vainglory, is not only justifiable, but necessary. If you don’t think you’re the most important thing in the world, if you don’t act like the universe revolves around your needs and wishes, if you don’t single-mindedly pursue nothing but what would make you feel like the King or Queen of the Universe, then other folks will. They’ll treat you like you don’t matter, and you’ll be left with nothing, out in the wilderness.

Jesus is very radical in this story, but he teaches us how wrong all of that is. The world doesn’t revolve around any one of us. Jesus didn’t even think it revolved around him. Being the Son of God still made him a person who needed to follow the rules and take his place. And his rules are found in the Bible right alongside everyone else’s. If he took his appropriate place as a beloved child of God, and followed through by abiding by the Law as taught by Moses, he’d find his way to safety, sufficient food and shelter, and wholeness. Because humble folks who listen to God don’t ignore one another’s needs, they take care of one another.

In this season, while people with big mouths and bigger egos give us terrible advice, let’s remember that we’re our strongest, most powerful, and most glorious when we love our neighbor, and that if we all give a neighbor a boost, everyone gets lifted up.

Amen.