Choosing Love Over Envy

Good morning.

I’m so glad you’re here for this message. We’re talking about love.

The first week we looked at how love is what matters above anything else.

If you win at love, you will not fail at life.
If you fail at love, you cannot win at life.

Everything without love is nothing. That’s what Paul said.

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Then last week we looked at how love is patient and how hurry is the great enemy of love in our day. You can’t love people in a hurry.

So all week we’ve been working on slowing and noticing — living in relaxed, unrushed, unfrenzied, patient love.

How has that gone for you?

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Someone asked me, “Impatience is so deeply rooted in my life, can we have one more week to work on it?”

Of course the answer is “No.” We have to get through this series, so keep up.

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Paul says, “Love is patient. Love is kind.”

These are teachings from the most revered, cherished, often quoted, influential description of love in the history of humanity: Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth — 1 Corinthians 13.

A lot of people think of these words only as beautiful poetry to be read at weddings.

They think of these words as being soft, like something you might find on a Hallmark card. And that the church at Corinth probably got a really warm fuzzy feeling as they heard this chapter being read to them.

But I want to suggest that by the time Paul got to the words of this beautiful chapter we’re going to look at today people at Corinth would have responded just the opposite.

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What we’re going to look at this week — these words were actually a quite deliberate, quite provocative slap in the face to the church there.

And they’ll be a challenge to us as well.

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Now, what prompted Paul to write to the church at Corinth (and this is quite common in the letters in the New Testament) is that there were real serious problems going on. People at Corinth were messed up.

They were indulging in attitudes and behaviors — the way they would treat other people, the social climbing and going after status and money, and so on (Corinth was really big around that). It was wrecking community.

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There were three problems in particular that Paul kind of hammers them for.

He writes, for example, in chapter 3, to the church, “You are still worldly.” Those are fighting words.

To be worldly means to be opposed to God and his kingdom and his way.

For since there is envy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? (1 Corinthians 3:3)

He has a lot to say about how envy led them into rivalry and factions and ego and then into a second related problem that he talks about numerous times.

“So then, no more boasting about human leaders!”

Or he asks a question. “…why do you boast…?”

Or he makes this statement: “Your boasting is not good.”

The word boast is used 37 times in the New Testament, but Corinth is kind of like ground zero for boasting in the ancient world, to the extent that Paul uses the word for boasting in his letters to Corinth more than it’s used in the rest of the New Testament put together.

So there’s a huge amount of envy, a huge amount of boasting, and all this reflects a third problem, a deep inner problem that Paul describes with using an even rarer word.

This word is used only when he writes to Corinth in all of the New Testament, but he uses it in this letter repeatedly.

He talks about how when they become spiritually mature then they will not be puffed up, but because they’re not mature some of them have become puffed up.

To make it really clear: And you are puffed up. (1 Corinthians 5:2)

Then he says: But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Puffed up is a really colorful term in the Greek in which Paul wrote.

It’s like inflating a balloon that wants to look really big and impressive on the outside but inside is just a bunch of hot air waiting to get popped.

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Envy is something you do.
Boasting is something you do.
Puffed up is something you are.

Paul hits them with these problems, these words, over and over and over in this letter — “You envy. You boast. You’re puffed up. You envy. You boast. You’re puffed up.”

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Now we come to this beautiful, inspiring, feel-good, lollipop passage called the Love Chapter.

Paul says:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. (1 Corinthians 13:1-4)

To everyone at Corinth, these are beautiful words. They’re just basking in them.

Then he puts the hammer down when he talks about what love is not.

He says, “And here’s what love does not do.”

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (1 Corinthians 13:4)

In other words, “What is love not like, Corinth? Well, it’s not like you. In fact, love is the opposite of you.”

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There was an old TV sitcom called Seinfeld, and there was a character in it named George Costanza.

Anyone ever know a George Costanza?

He’s like this loser, such a loser that he realized one day, “My life is nothing like what I wanted. My every decision is wrong. My every instinct is wrong. It’s all wrong.”

So he lands on a new life strategy called “Do the opposite.”

Just whatever you would normally do, do the opposite.

It works out great. Beautiful women are attracted to him. Finance and success begin to come to him, just from doing the opposite.

Paul is not being subtle here. Paul is saying to Corinth in this chapter, “You are like the George Costanza of churches. You are like the opposite of what love is supposed to be.”

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In case anyone misses it (not likely), the next two items he has chewed Corinth out for are that they are self-seeking, egocentric (he uses that precise term), and then that they dishonor one another because of all this ladder climbing.

The next two items in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is not are:

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking. (1 Corinthians 13:5)

In other words, deliberately…not once, not twice, but five times…Paul says, “Love is not like you, not like you, not you, not you, not you.”

Paul is saying this in love.

He’s saying this not in spite of, but because of the fact that he loves the people of Corinth, loves them too much to let them wallow in the misery of an unloving life.

Love is not primarily about making people feel good.

He doesn’t want them to miss out on what matters most, which is growing toward the people God intended them to be and building a community that is the opposite of the way our world apart from God works.

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That’s going to demand a strategy of “Do the opposite.” That’s kind of Jesus’ message — “Do the opposite.”

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So, for the rest of this message, I want to focus on that first great not —

“Love does not envy.”

Here’s why.

Envy in many, many ways is not just a sin; it’s kind of the opposite of love.

A person of love feels enhanced by the well-being of others; a person of envy feels diminished by the well-being of others.

When I love someone, I constantly want to build them up. When I envy someone, I compare myself to them and actually want them to be torn down. I want to outdo them.

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No one can get rid of envy by trying really hard not to envy. That’s never the way of spiritual transformation.

Envy can only be gotten rid of as it’s replaced with the power of love. When love is present, there’s just not room for envy to grow.

The place to begin is ruthless honesty.

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How many people here really wrestle with envy?

Okay. That’s what I thought. Hardly anyone at all.

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One of the great things about living in the Bay Area is that, thank God, with the help of technology and education we have basically defeated envy. People never compare themselves with other people. Not here.

There’s no concern about appearance or image management or being smarter.

People here live with modest spirits and contented, quiet hearts. Thank God!

In the Bay Area, given our vast education and technology and vocational opportunities, we have defeated envy, just demonstrated by this room right here.

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But that’s not my story. I have a rich history of envy.

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Usually people who do a lot of study on this will tell you we don’t envy distant famous people who are part of another world; we envy people in our own world, people we’re close enough to that it hurts us when we see them doing better than us.

That has been true with me.

I will, just for your own amusement, give you a list of some of the people I have envied.

People who are more athletic than me.
People who are smarter than me.
Guys who are better looking than me.
Guys who had cuter girlfriends than me (actually, just had a girlfriend at all).
Weight lifters, for obvious reasons.
Football players.
Musicians.
People who are more extroverted than me.
People who are better pastors, better speakers, better writers, better leaders than me.
Parents of perfect families with perfect children and perfect pets who go on perfect vacations and move from success to success.
People who get tan.
People who are great at confrontation, who never pout or use the silent treatment when they’re mad, they just get more articulate.
Movers and shakers with perfect hair and perfect résumés and perfect clothes and seem to do it all effortlessly.
People who never break a sweat.
People who have it all together.

If you’re here today and you don’t have a problem with envy, I envy you too.

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I envy, but then because I’m puffed up inside I deny my envy. I pretend like I don’t envy. I pretend like, really, I’m above envy.

I boast, but I’m careful to disguise it because I’m a pastor. I try to do it in clever ways that make it look like I’m humble, but I’m really not.

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I was talking to a friend some time ago about how a very well-known person in my line of work, someone in my profession, was, in my point of view, really badly misbehaving — just a bad guy. I was going on and on about this in quite severe ways.

Finally, my friend said to me, “You know, Matt, I’ve found that when I find myself feeling judgmental toward someone, usually underneath the judgmentalism is envy. I judge them to make myself feel better, because deep down inside I envy them.”

I said, “I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

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Love does not envy.

It’s really important to understand Paul in this passage is not giving a series of commands. He’s not saying, “Do this. Don’t do this.”

He’s describing what love is like.

Envy is the opposite of love in a way that even most other sins are not.

Greed is a sin. I might be greedy. I may want just as much money as you have, but if I envy you I don’t just want me to have more; I want you to have less. I want you to be diminished. I want something bad to be true of you.

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Samuel Roberts was a nineteenth-century British poet, and he was in a gathering of people who were all praising a duke they knew because he had good looks and talent and wealth and a promising future.

In a brief pause Roberts said, “Thank God he has bad teeth.”

That’s envy. — “If you have everything else, I hope you have bad teeth. I hope you have bad something.”

The wrong kind of competitiveness creeps in so quickly.

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We’re in a series on love, and I was thinking about this adventure for our church — that we want to be a loving church.

No kidding. My first thought was we should make it our goal to be the most loving church in Pleasanton.

But then, of course, we’d have to compare ourselves to other churches, and if any other church got more loving than us, that would threaten our status as the most loving church in Pleasanton.

Envy is such a sneaky thing.

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In some ways, envy is incredibly contemporary in our day.

There’s a researcher, Alexandra Samuel, who has documented the impact of social media on envy.

Because we now have more access to more successes by more people, people like us, than ever before in history and they all seem to be recording their triumphs — it seems like everyone has better jobs, better ideas for decorating, better vacations, better kids, better dining experiences.

The more time people spend on social media the more envy they experience.

Envy is such a miserable thing, yet we do it to ourselves.

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At the same time, envy is so old and so subtle and so central that the first time the word sin is mentioned in the Bible it’s a story about envy.

It goes so deep. It’s the opposite of love.

Cain and Abel were the first brothers. God invented family, brotherhood, for love, but Cain did not love his little brother.

We’re told in a very compact passage they both bring their offerings to God.

Abel apparently brings the best that he has, the choice portions, the firstborn of his flocks and herds, and Cain is apparently going through the motions.

So Abel knew a spiritual intimacy with God, favor with God, that Cain did not, and that was painful for Cain, but the pain did not prompt Cain to look at his own heart or his own motives, which it could have.

He decided that his problem was not him; his problem was his brother.

Every time he looks at Abel, he feels bad about himself, so the thought occurs to him, “What if there was no Abel?”

God tries to help him. It’s such a fascinating passage. God says to Cain:

Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. (Genesis 4:6-7)

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In John Steinbeck’s book East of Eden, which is a kind of contemporary retelling of the Cain and Abel story, there’s a fabulous passage where these ancient Chinese scholars discover this passage, and they pour over it and finally come to the conclusion that there is in it a great offer to the human race.

Sin is crouching at your door. It’s like a beast. It’s like a living thing that wants you, but you must rule over it.

You might not. It’s not inevitable.

But it’s possible.

God gives us the freedom, and he poses these questions to Cain. “Why are you angry? Why are you downcast?”

Then it’s so fascinating. Cain is silent.

If Cain had answered God, if he had confessed his envy, just confessed it to himself and to his brother and to his God, he could have been saved, but the silence of Cain was his doom.

Envy destroyed his soul and his brother.

God said in an unspeakably poignant and painful passage after the murder:

The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground. (Genesis 4:10)

You think of the heart of God. Of course, God made the ground and God loved the ground and God made his brother Abel and God loved Abel.

The ground was not made to receive the blood of one of God’s children, but it has been receiving that for a long time now.

God says, “The blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground.”

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What must it be like to be God? What must that pain be like?

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From Cain and Abel, a green thread of envy runs all the way through the Bible.

If you know the Bible, you will know some of these stories.

Sarah, the very beginning, the mother of the people of God, envies Hagar.
Isaac, the promised son of Abraham, and his brother Ishmael is a story of envy.
Then Jacob and Esau, the next generation.
And Leah and Rachel.
And then Joseph and all of his brothers.
And then Miriam and Aaron are jealous of their brother Moses.
Ahab covets Naboth’s vineyard.
Paul says some people preach the gospel, for crying out loud, out of envy and rivalry.

That goes on today. I know about that.

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One day, a man named Jesus started a community where his plan was to do the opposite of envy.

Of course, the people who are following him don’t know about that.

Two of them, James and John, come up to him one day and say:

Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory. (Mark 10:37)

In the gospel of Matthew, we’re told they actually had their mommy ask for them.

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“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“We can,” they answered. (Matthew 20:22)

The other 10 disciples hear about this, and they’re furious, not because James and John did something wrong but because they thought it up first, and now they’re thinking, “Man, that’s where I wanted to be.”

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Jesus shuts them all up.

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Not so with you.

So strange.

Instead, whoever wants to become great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first must be last —

Who teaches that? Not Corinth. Not Rome.

just as the Son of Man did not come to be served

Great people do that.

but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-28)

In other words, “Hey, guys. Here’s the plan — do the opposite. Your every instinct is wrong. It’s not working really well for our earth. The blood of every brother and sister cries out from the ground.

So let’s do something opposite — make our lives a joyful exercise in trying to serve, enhance, ennoble, equip, give to the lives of other people.”

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You can’t stop envying by trying really hard to stop envying.

Spiritual maturity is not envy management.

It’s not through gritted teeth, repressing and stifling feelings so I’m miserable inside.

But envy can be removed by love.

Where love is present, there’s just no room for envy to take root.

It has to put down roots in the human heart, but a loving heart just has no place for envy to get rooted.

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A little picture of this.

A couple of weeks ago (some of you may remember), my friend Steve taught here at Blue Oaks, and last week someone came up and said, “Your buddy Steve is a great teacher.”

Do you know what I said? I said, “Thank you.”

Why did I say that? I didn’t write that sermon. I didn’t deliver that sermon. It had nothing to do with me. I had nothing to do with it.

It’s because he’s a good friend, and when he wins, I feel like I win. When he does well, I feel proud.

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Someone came up and said, “We wish he could speak more often. In fact, we’d rather hear him than you.”

And it made me happy inside, because I love Steve.

If everyone were my close friends, I would be enhanced by the well-being of everyone, and I would not be diminished or envious of anyone.

You see, that’s the plan. It’s not that we try really hard not to envy; it’s that envy is just uprooted by love.

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You could think of it like this.

All of us experience this to some extent.

There are people in what might be called my circle of oneness. It could be my family or really close friends or people I admire a lot, people I identify with.

In some deep way it’s like we’re one. They do well, I automatically rejoice. They hurt, I suffer.

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Then there are people in what might be called my circle of rivals.

With them it’s the opposite. If they do well, I feel diminished. If they go south, have problems, I kind of feel a little better about myself.

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Jesus’ plan is just take those people who are currently in your circle of rivals and bring them into your circle of oneness.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

It’s that simple.

So, this week, love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy.

Don’t look at other people in your life as rivals for you to outdo.

Practice, with God’s help, looking at the people in your life as people Jesus loves. “How could I help? To whom may I show kindness?”

Do the opposite.

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A family therapist named Jim Roberts was visiting his son’s fourth-grade class when the teacher initiated a game called “balloon stomp.” Simple game.

Each child had a balloon tied to their leg, and the object of the game was to protect your balloon while trying to stomp on and pop everyone else’s balloon.

It was a very Darwinian game — survival of the fittest, every man for himself. Except for a few timid souls who knew they could never win and committed balloon suicide by popping their own balloons first.

The whole game was over quite quickly with the biggest, toughest, strongest, meanest kid winning.

Then a disturbing thing happened.

Another class, this one of students with special needs, was brought in to play the game.

Balloons were tied to their legs, instructions were read to them, and Jim Roberts said he started to get a sick feeling in his stomach at what he knew he was about to see.

Then the strangest thing happened.

They understood the idea that balloons were to be popped, but they got the “dog eat dog” part of it wrong.

They went about methodically, happily, joyfully helping each other pop the balloons.

One little girl carefully held her balloon in place while a little boy popped it, and he held his balloon down so she could have a turn.

When the last balloon was popped, everyone cheered. Everyone won. They just did the opposite.

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So, which game are you going to play this week? How are you going to keep score?

I think what Jesus would say is keep score by “How many people am I able to help?” Just that.

Who could I encourage to shine?
Who could I thank or compliment or recognize?
Who could I brag about behind their back to other people?

This week, just to make it really concrete, pray for your competitor to shine.

A competitor is anyone you compare yourself to.

You see their success, their blessing, and it automatically irritates you. You feel inferior or jealous, so you want to do better than them.

This week, identify someone who’s a competitor like that and commit to praying for them to flourish.

Now you may not feel like you want them to flourish, but you can’t control feelings. The great thing about prayer is I can control praying for someone.

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You’ll find a strange thing. I was challenged on this by a teacher a long time ago, and it struck me how liberating it was.

There was a student in a class with that teacher who was smarter than me, and in my mind this student became my rival. Every time he outdid me on a test (and that was every time), I felt bad.

I realized instead of wishing he were to fail I could pray that he would soar, and it actually felt really good to pray that way.

There was a guy ahead of me on the basketball team, and he became my rival. I realized that instead of wishing he could fail I could pray that he would soar, and it actually felt good.

After Kathy and I had dated a while, we broke up and I found out she was dating another guy, and he became my rival. I really didn’t like him.

Then I realized that instead of wishing he could fail I could pray he would fail. And he did, and it felt really good. But I digress.

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This week, pray for your competitor to shine and ask God in you to replace the toxic weed of envy with the flower of love.

That’s the plan. That’s the community Jesus came to start.

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We’re going to move to celebrate communion now so would you grab the elements you were given on your way in.

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I want to end with a word about the cross and envy.

On a human level, envy is why the cross happened.

We’re told Pilate saw it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. Cain and Abel all over again.

Jesus was loved and followed. He had charisma and power and authority, and he could heal and he could teach.

Religious leaders, people a lot like me, took no joy in him but felt diminished, less than.

In their envy, they formed a plan to kill him, but Jesus had a plan to destroy envy.

Jesus decided, “I will be the object of the worst that envy can do. I will put myself in the place of Abel. It will be my blood spilled. But when your envy is spent, I will still be loving you. I will ask God to forgive.

“This very cross where you think you’re defeating me is where I will be defeating envy by the power of love, holy love.”

Jesus did not do what anyone else would do. He did not protect himself. He did not avenge himself. He did the opposite. That was his whole life.

God became flesh, King in a manger, Savior on a cross. The whole crazy story, the whole message of the Bible is just the opposite.

He was crucified, lifted up, came into his kingdom with one condemned man on his right and one on his left.

“Can you drink the cup?”

Envy claimed one more victim. And he died and was buried.

Normally, the earth keeps its dead. Normally, their blood cries out from the ground.

But on the third day the earth did the opposite. The tomb was empty, and love triumphed.

Now you and I are invited into that circle of oneness at great cost. We don’t have to be puffed up. We’re loved.

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Heavenly Father, thank you for your love for us. Thank you especially for Jesus and the gift of the cross.

Help us now as we celebrate communion, as we share in the bread, the body that was broken, and the cup, the blood that was shed, for us to be so flooded with love that there’s just not room for anything else.

Help everyone in this room not to leave it until by some touch, by some word, by some thought they know, “I’m loved. I’m loved. I’m loved.”

I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.