Texts: Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21
Matthew 13:24-30

Prayer:
Lead us, O God, into your truth and your justice, so that by our lives we may reveal your goodness. We pray in Christ. AMEN

The 10th Commandment says:
"You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or his manservant or his maidservant, or his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour's."

We don't have to go far to discover evidence that the 10th Commandment is hard to keep. Our newspapers are full of it.

At the current trial of former Premier Glen Clarke we are learning about the risks some people seem willing to take to gain more than they have earned.

In the USA, the great Enron Corp. scandal makes clear that bankruptcy is not only a financial matter. Yes, billions evaporated and the financial future of countless larger and smaller investors is in jeopardy. But equally troubling is the ethical void revealed by this amazing epic of coveting what is not yours.
Enron makes us wonder about shared values and whether some people in Boardrooms and Executive Suites are willing to uphold these values for the common good - even if laws allows dubious activities.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a millionaire pharmacist pleaded guilty last week to 20 counts of endangering the lives of clients by watering down cancer drugs. He made hundreds of dollars per dose extra as he diluted chemotherapy drugs. For his coveting, he earned for himself 17½ to 30 years in federal prison.

But we don't have to go to the news media for evidence. We need look only inside ourselves - when we look honestly, we realize how susceptible we all are to coveting and desiring what is not ours to have.
Can we avoid self-righteous hypocrisy by acknowledging how perilously close we frequently are to acting on the desire to take from another what is not ours?

Covet:
the desire to have for oneself what belongs to another - property, goods, status, prestige, power, and always money. The scope for coveting is limitless.

Let's look at how the 10th commandment is worded for a moment. In the commandment, wives are lumped in with houses and slaves and domestic animals and other possessions. What you have here, of course, is evidence of the deep-seated patriarchy of the Bible.

It is crucial always to read the Bible with glasses that reveal that the scriptures were written from the vantage point of men.
So from our perspective in time, we always need to read the text led by the Spirit of Christ to remember that both men and women - female and male are created in the image of God.
In the Christian understanding, men do not own women and women are not subordinated to men.

So when the 10th Commandment says: do not covet your neighbour's wife after it talks about the neighbour's house, it is clear that our Hebrew forebears took for granted that the wife was one of the male neighbour's chattels and might be coveted like other property.

Today we readily reject that notion, though in the traditional wedding ceremony used till recently, we still have a remnant of that idea.
You remember, the minister would ask the father of the bride:
Who gives this woman to be married to this man?
Here at Shaughnessy Heights Church and other churches which recognize the oppression of patriarchy on both women and men,
we no longer ask that question, because we believe that God created male and female in God's image equally.

The 10th commandment speaks against desiring and attempting to take for oneself what belongs to another.
Not far from coveting is envy: if I can't have what you have, then I'd just as soon destroy it.

That's what our Gospel reading is about. Begrudging the successful farm neighbour, the person filled with envy sows weeds to destroy and contaminate the harvest.
It's a metaphor of course for so much of life. Canadian poet Irving Layton once wrote: "Envy, not death, is the great leveller." [The Whole Bloody Bird, 1969] and a Danish proverb tells us that "If envy were a fever, all the world would be ill."

With both coveting and envy, what the other person HAS becomes the focus of my heart.
That's of course what advertising wants to convince us of. It wants to awaken desires in me, push me to acquire the things that will get me the good life, that satisfy my lusting heart -
no matter the cost to our budget, to the environment, to the common good, to my own integrity, or to relationship with others.

When we covet, when we envy - our heart is captured by objects, by things. That is a disease. We know that the heart is intended to be in relationship with others: to love God and love the neighbour is the law of life.

But the druggist valued his profit more highly than the health of his clients.
The Enron crew appear to have elevated their own power and wealth over their fiduciary responsibility to people.
Personal gain too often pushes aside public trust.

When we covet, relationships are undermined.
Coveting what belongs to the neighbour puts us well on the way to declaring that the neighbour is less important than the things we desire. We degrade the humanity of the other.

When we desire the power of God in our world, and we have the arrogance to think we can become like God, then we damage our relationship with God. It doesn't take long then to decide that we can do without God altogether.

When our coveting is not challenged, then the object of our desires becomes a yearning. And this yearning we recognize as the beginning of idolatry.
When we can't stop desiring what belongs to another and our lives are focused on acquiring and possessing - then we know we are well on the way not only to
dehumanizing the neighbour,
and abandoning God,
But also well on the way to idolatry.
Our obsession means for us that God is dead and we have committed our hearts to idols.

The most common form of idolatry is, of course, the worship of money.
Every generation, every human is tempted to make money god.
This idolatrous disease is particularly virulent in our time and today economics too often serves as its "theological" support.

But idolatry can involve many other things as well. Whatever gives us status, make us popular, makes us cool,
whatever thing awakens our desire can become our idol - cars, fashion, looks, intellect, home, power. There is no end to what we can covet and no end to potential false gods.

The Gospel teaches us that we will find no peace in coveting and envy.
To find peace we need to seek the well-being of the other.
The Koran teaches that "true wealth is not abundance in property, but a generous heart"
That's not an easy lesson for any of us to learn - especially given the scope of the disease.

What would be an antidote to this disease?
Perhaps when we find ourselves harbouring envy and coveting our neighbour's success or wealth or status or car or whatever - that would be the time to carry out intentional acts of kindness and generosity.
To counter covetousness, we might try blessing the neighbour or giving an anonymous gift or do for them an unrequested favour.

If every time our hearts were filled with envy, we gave of ourselves to the neighbour or to some good cause - imagine what kind of world this might become.
We would be resisting the sin sprouting in our heart
with the love and kindness God plants in our hearts and
there might come a harvest of goodness.

The Gospel also teaches us that peace and joy - abundant living, eternal
life - come from loving God. True joy comes from the living God and not the little, unworthy gods that inflame our envy and destructive desire.

I like to use the word covet in another sense. For example, I will say to another: I covet for you good health; or I covet for you friendship with that person. Suddenly the word "covet" take on a form of prayer and blessing.

So I would covet for all of us not to diminish the neighbour, and not to usurp God,
but to live in communion, in relationships that are whole -
I covet for all our lives the love that comes overflowing from God - the love that we remember and share when we break bread and drink from the cup.

If that kind of coveting became widespread, it might even save the world. May it be so!
Thanks be to God.

Prayer of Intercession (after sermon)

God of all the world
We pray for your human family -
We long for the day when all your children north, south, east and west, will gather round your festive table to eat and drink and enjoy your love freely given and live in peace with their brother and sister.
Bless the work and the struggles of all who persist in drawing your family together - the peacemakers and peace keepers, the healers, the mediators and the advocates, the community builders and the prophets, the maintainers and administrators, the teachers and the mentors.
We bless you that there are so many who contribute so much to make your justice real in our world - this week we especially remember the life and witness of Harry Rankin and his commitment to the vulnerable and poor of this city.

We pray for those longing to be healed, living in grip of illness.
Keep them in your care. Bless those who are grieving: we think of Gwen Koenigbaur and her family
Bless the little children and the very old of our community; bless the teenagers just learning about their powers; gentle the adults worn down by worry and stress; strengthen parents, encourage grandparents.
Be our steadfast God so that we can be your faithful people, for we pray in Christ.

AMEN