The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey
September 26, 2010
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Introduction to the Scripture:
Andrew
Lloyd Webber popularized this story in his famous musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. But as you’ll hear
in this story, the coat plays a pretty insignificant role. It’s not even all
that colorful, as the legends have come to tell it. The coat itself isn’t
important as much as what it signifies—a father’s love for his son that
Joseph’s brothers come to envy profoundly.
But
while their envious scheming may land Joseph in a world of hurt, in time they
will end up hurting themselves even more.
Scripture: Genesis 37:2-8, 12-20
2This is the
story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph,
being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was
a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph
brought a bad report of them to their father.
3Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of
his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long
robe with sleeves. 4But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his
brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
5Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it
to his brothers, they hated him even more.
6He said to
them, ‘Listen to this dream that I dreamed.
7There we
were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright;
then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.’ 8His brothers said to him, ‘Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?’ So they hated him even more because of his
dreams and his words.
12Now his
brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13And Israel said to Joseph, ‘Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at
Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.’ He answered, ‘Here I am.’ 14So he said to him, ‘Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with
the flock; and bring word back to me.’
So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.
He came to Shechem, 15and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, ‘What are
you seeking?’ 16‘I am seeking my brothers,’ he said; ‘tell me, please, where they are
pasturing the flock.’ 17The man said, ‘They have gone away, for I heard them say, “Let us go to
Dothan.” ’ So Joseph went after his
brothers, and found them at Dothan. 18They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they
conspired to kill him. 19They said to one another, ‘Here comes this dreamer. 20Come now, let us
kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild
animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.’
Sermon:
“I’m not an especially materialistic person,”
I told her seriously as I settled into the expensive leather sofa in her
office. “My real interest is in spiritual things, not the junk that we tend to
surround ourselves with.”
My seminary faculty advisor might have
thought I was referring to her couch and taken insult, because she immediately
quipped, “That’s a really nice pair of shoes you’re wearing, Seth. Must be
expensive; I mean, for someone who isn’t especially materialistic.”
Taken aback, I had to admit to myself that
she was right—they really were a
great pair of shoes.
But in all seriousness, I am more vulnerable
to the seductive wiles of material things than I would care to admit. So as you
can imagine, I can get rather jealous from time to time when I see someone else
in possession of something that I want for myself. There’s a fine line between
greed and envy, after all.
As my colleague, Pastor Lillian, pointed out
a couple of weeks ago, there’s also a difference between envy and jealousy. The
jealous person covets the possessions, the qualities, or the blessings of
someone else. The jealous person is consumed with a craving for something that
you’re fortunate enough to have, whether it’s your sports car or your
unassuming good looks, your career or your devoted spouse.
But the envious man is a lonely creature of
raw spite. He knows he can’t be with your wife, so he’ll revel in your soul-crushing
divorce. He stands to gain nothing from your loss, but enjoys it just the same.
Now, few of us would be willing to put ourselves in that category; but haven’t
you ever felt that fleeting feeling of satisfaction upon learning of someone
else’s misfortune? It’s an ugly thing, a shameful business, but something we’ve
all felt in passing, I think, towards the people that we envy. That’s why
everyone likes to hear about celebrities who put on a few pounds or get tossed
in jail or drug rehab facilities—because we envy their success, and we rejoice
in their failure. Who among us didn’t stifle our cruel laughter when the
supermodel, Fabio, got hit in the face with a Seagull while riding on that
roller coaster a few years back? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
But even though I am haunted by the
occasional feeling of jealous longing or envious spite, I can honestly say that
I’ve never taken steps to actually rob anyone of their good fortune. I can’t
recall trying to make anyone suffer for the sake of it, nor have I stolen or
destroyed anyone’s property out of spite.
I’ve always had better reasons.
My wife, on the other hand, recently told me
a rather amusing story from her childhood that bears all the markings of pure
envy. When Angela was just a little girl, her older brother Tony had the
opportunity to travel to Disneyland. But due to some complicated circumstances,
she couldn’t go with him. Needless to say, this didn’t sit well with little
Angela at all, and so she waited for an opportunity to take her revenge.
Several days later, Tony returned to Illinois
with a suntan and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, raving about his magical holiday in
the land where dreams come true. He brought a shirt back for his little sister,
too, but this gift did nothing to mitigate the envious spite that had been
infecting tiny heart for days. And so before she went to sleep that night, she
stole his Mickey Mouse t-shirt and
hid it underneath the one he had given her, wearing them both as she crawled
underneath her blankets to hide her terrible secret.
Meanwhile, Tony and their mother searched the
closet for his souvenir in an increasingly panicked state. Angela listened as
they turned the house upside down looking for the thing, pretending to be
asleep but grinning with satisfaction at the result of her spiteful
machinations.
Fortunately, she’s much easier to live with
these days. But now that I think about it, I have had some things go missing from the laundry.
***
In the book of Genesis we find a similar
story, although the stakes here are much higher. This young man named Joseph is
his father’s favorite son—and all of his brothers know it. To make matters
worse, he flaunts his enviable position remorselessly, insisting that someday
his brothers will bow down and worship him. And not unlike that Mickey Mouse
t-shirt that came to embody so many hard feelings, Joseph strolls around in “a
long robe with sleeves” that his father had given him. I guess sleeves were a
pretty big deal in those days.
Needless to say, all of this pompous behavior
arouses a dangerous envy in his brothers. They all want their father’s love and respect, and to see it squandered
on this show-off is more than they can stand. As for the long robe with
sleeves—which has since been remembered as the infamous Technicolor Dream Coat—they
could care less. They don’t want it for themselves, but they don’t want Joseph
to have it either. Rather than following their own ambitions, they focus their
energy on shattering his, declaring spitefully, “Then we shall see what will
become of his dreams.”
If you’re at all familiar with the story,
then you probably know how it ends. In a bizarre twist of fate, Joseph becomes
a high ranking officer in the Egyptian government, and he uses that power to
demand fealty—or at least an apology—from the men that tried to kill him.
This story does not end well for the envious.
And while it’s true that Joseph may come off
as an arrogant jerk to his brothers, their spite for him turns them into
something far worse—treacherous cutthroats and would-be murderers.
Sometimes it might seem as though the people
around us are blessed with all the good fortune in the world, and we’re
condemned to see our own fortunes lost. But in our failure to be content with
what we have, in our poisonous determination to see another’s dreams destroyed,
we are condemned to the worst misfortune of all.
The envious heart throbs with poison in its
ventricles, beating to the rhythms of the damned.
***
One of my favorite novels is Dostoyevsky’s
dark comedy, Notes from Underground, a
fictional 19th century memoir in which he writes beautifully about
the consequences of envy. Dostoyevsky’s
gritty narrative begins with a bold declaration: “I am a spiteful man,” he writes,
“a mean man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.”
This character envies the people around him
intensely, if for nothing else than their ability to lead normal lives,
untainted by the angst that consumes him daily. And in spite of his ailing
health, he refuses to see a doctor out of sheer spite for the medical profession.
At every available opportunity, he spends his
time at the promenade that runs along the riverside, bristling with envy at all
of the people passing by. In particular, he is keenly aware of the classism
that plays out along the riverbank. As the aristocrats and generals stroll
along on their merry way, all of the peasants and middle class bureaucrats step
aside to let them pass. He moves aside with the rest of them in his shabby
clothes, and he resents himself fiercely for it.
But of all the people in this scene, there is
one man in particular that becomes his obsession. This other man is an officer
in the military—a tall, good looking, well-built man of average intelligence
and well-meaning virtue—in other words, he is everything that our detestable
protagonist is not and wishes he was. He passes the officer every day along the
promenade, and simply cannot stand the sight of him, looking so smug and
self-assured in his officer’s uniform. For two years he lies awake at night in
an envious fit. So he finally decides to do something about it.
His plan is beautiful in its simplicity,
laughable in its absurdity.
First, he asks his boss for a substantial
advance on his wages, which he uses to purchase the finest clothing he can
afford. And once he’s all dressed to the
nines like a true man of privilege, he lies in wait for this officer, this man
who has aroused such a terrible envy in his heart. Now, once he sees the
officer walking towards him in the opposite direction, he will refuse to step out
of the man’s way. His aim is to bump shoulders with the guy in the crowd in
some pitiful attempt to put them on equal footing in the eyes of society. For
once in his life, he will not step aside. But as the fateful moment arrives,
our man loses his resolve. In his cowardly desperation to avoid a collision
with the broad-shouldered officer he nearly falls on his face. And to add
insult to injury, the officer continues on his way without as much as a glance
in his direction.
Living like this, it’s no wonder there’s
something wrong with his liver.
***
Envy is a grotesque parasite that feeds on
the deepest longings of its host, poisoning the heart and mind. And the
instigators of that envy—the people we’re so envious of—are usually oblivious
to it.
In this bad economy, you can bet that a lot
of people are envious of the ones who manage to keep their heads above the
water. It’s like a Petri dish of jealousy, a cesspool of spite. Some Americans
are buying new cars, while others can’t afford to fix the ones they have. Some
people are in the market for a new home, while others can’t pay for the one the
live in, or even sell it at a loss. Some people are getting promotions, while
others are losing their unemployment benefits. For those hit the hardest, it’s easy
to look around and feel a little resentful towards those with better luck.
But we aren’t doing ourselves any favors by craving
someone else’s good fortune. I once knew this woman who became envious of her
friends, who lived in bigger, more luxurious houses than hers. She looked
around at their sprawling hardwood floors and their stainless steel appliances,
their marble countertops and four-car garages and marveled at them with longing
in her heart. In time, she decided to put her own house up for sale in the
hopes of trading up for something more glamorous. Now some months later, she
was perusing the real estate ads in the Sunday paper and found something that
leapt off the page at her. The description was brief, but promising—a
good-sized house in a respectable neighborhood with plenty of space and,
according to the advertisement, a few “luxurious features.” The price was
right, too, so she called her real estate agent and told him she wanted to see
the place right away. To which he replied, “I’m sorry ma’am, but that ad is for
your house.”
Sometimes we get so caught up in other
people’s stuff that we forget how much we already have. That’s what jealousy
does to us. But real envy goes even deeper, corrupting the soul more
profoundly. Envy drives us to hate those who succeed where we fail, to somehow
blame them for our own broken dreams. Why do we equate someone else’s happiness
with our own misery? Why is it so hard for us to be happy for people when they
achieve something, especially when it’s something that we wish we had?
Maybe it’s because we aren’t content with
what we do have. Jesus taught us to
treat one another as we would be treated, and to love one another as we want to
be loved. So why should we hate someone for achieving their dreams—especially when
their dreams are the same as our own?
***
I once heard a fable about a vulture with an
envious heart. Every day he looked to the sky and saw a large eagle that soared
through the blue at heights that the vulture could never reach. The vulture
seethed with hatred for the eagle, and sought the aid of a hunter to bring him
down from his lofty heights. “Why don’t you kill that eagle up there,” the
vulture told the hunter. “He would make a magnificent trophy.”
“I gladly would,” the hunter replied, “if I only
had a feather for my arrow.”
Wanting nothing more than to see that
self-righteous eagle get shot down, the vulture plucked a dark feather from its
back and gave it to the hunter. But the eagle was flying at such a distant
altitude that the hunter’s arrow missed its target. Frustrated, the vulture
gave him another feather. Arrow after arrow missed the eagle, and the vulture
sacrificed feather after feather out of sheer spite. Before long, the vulture
had no feathers left to give. He could never fly as high as the eagle, but now
he couldn’t fly anywhere at all. And with no means of escape, the hunter slew
him, settling for a lesser trophy.
In another life, another story, perhaps the
vulture could have befriended the eagle and learned the secrets of the sky. And
perhaps Joseph’s brothers could have talked to their father, told him how they
felt neglected and unloved, tried to work it out instead of trying to kill Joseph
to get him out of the way. And maybe we
can learn to appreciate the blessings that God has given us, instead of wishing
that God would take them away from the guy next door.
We gain nothing by trying to bring someone
else down. As Jesus once said, “What profit is it to a man if he gains the
world but loses his own soul?” And if we behave like Joseph’s brothers, envying
other people and spitefully wondering what will become of their dreams—then I
shudder to think what has become of our own.
Amen.