In my sermon on Ash Wednesday, I said that the central aspect of our keeping a good Lent is our awareness of our own sinfulness because without that, we won’t feel or show the penitence and repentance that the season calls for. I also said that, one of the things we can use to help us gain an awareness of our own sinfulness is the list of things that are hateful and abhorrent to God that we find in the biblical Book of Proverbs. That’s a list that seems to suggest that there are six things that God hates all of which lead to the most hateful thing of all, and that is discord between people, damage and even a breakdown of relationships all of which reveal a lack of love between us and our neighbours. And in my sermon this morning, I want to look at the first of those things which Proverbs tells us is hateful to God, haughty eyes.
To be haughty is to be arrogant towards other people, to think of ourselves as superior to other people and so, to have haughty eyes is to look down others because of our own pride. That fits very well with the Church’s list of seven deadly sins, because pride is the first sin in that list. But the Book of Proverbs tells us that the worst sin of all is damage to our relationships with others and so I think it’s reasonable to ask whether pride itself is the problem, or what pride can lead us to do that’s the real sin? Is the sin to be proud, or is the sin to allow pride to give us haughty eyes?
To be proud is simply to take pleasure or feel a sense of satisfaction in achievement. And when someone’s achieved something good and noteworthy, especially if they’ve worked long and hard to do it, we say that they can feel rightly proud in what they’ve achieved don’t we? And perhaps there’s nothing wrong with being proud in that sense, as long as that’s as far as it goes. Perhaps we can be proud in that sense without our pride being sinful, and that pride becomes a problem, and a sin, when it affects our relationships with other people.
And pride can do that in lots of ways. But even so, we have to be sure that it is our pride that’s causing the problem. We might, for example, like to talk a lot about our achievements, we might go on a lot about how well we’ve done, and that might damage our relationships with others. But in that case I think the damage is caused because we’re being a bore, we’re tiresome to others because we’re always going on about ourselves and we never change the subject.
And if we have done well, and can be rightly proud in what we’ve done, the damage to our relationships in this case, might be caused not so much by our pride, as by the jealousy of others, which is their sin, the sin of envy.
To be clear about the sin of pride, I think we have to look at this list in the Book of Proverbs; pride is a sin when it leads us to do what is hateful to God, and that is when pride causes us to have haughty eyes. In other words, pride is sinful when it causes us to think that we’re better than others, when it causes us to be arrogant and feel superior to others, to take an ‘I’ve done and you haven’t, therefore I’m better than you’ attitude towards others. And pride is sinful when it causes us to look down on others and be dismissive of their achievements and their abilities.
And we can allow pride to damage our relationships in other ways too. We can be proud of what someone else has done, and that can damage our relationships with others because it can lead to favouritism, or at least to the feeling in others that we do have favourites. This can and does happen in families. Parents can be proud of their children’s achievements but if one child achieves more than another, parents can be proud of that child but view another as something of a disappointment to them. It happens doesn’t it. And when it does happen, it can lead to favouritism, or in the minds of those children who haven’t achieved so much that their parents do favour one child over another. And how much damage has been caused to family relationships by situations and feelings like these?
So allowing pride to give us the haughty eyes that are so hateful to God, can cause us to do something which is even more hateful to God, and that’s damage our relationships with others. But if having haughty eyes can damage our relationships with other people, it can damage our relationship with God too.
As Christians, we believe that all things come from God, and that includes our talents and abilities. But, when we’ve achieved something noteworthy, something of which we can be rightly proud, how often do we remember to give thanks to God for having the ability to have achieved that thing? Aren’t we far more likely to simply pat ourselves on the back and think that we’ve achieved what we have by our own hard work and ingenuity? We might have been clever and inventive in achieving what we have, and we might have worked very hard to achieve it, but didn’t God play a part in our success too? We might have been clever and inventive and worked hard to achieve our success, but where did the raw ability and talent that we’ve worked so hard to put to good use come from in the first place? And if we say, as so many people do, that they had no natural ability at something but rather had to work hard to learn how to do what they’ve been so successful at, still, where did their ability to learn come from? We can be so self-congratulatory when we’ve achieved something of which we can be rightly proud that we forget to thank God for the ability, and opportunity, to have been able to achieve what we have. And in that case, our haughty eyes are directed towards God himself, and we damage our relationship with God because our pride cause us to be unthankful to God.
So while pride, in itself, may not necessarily be a sin, the haughty eyes that pride can give us is a sin because this is hateful to God and leads us to something that is even more hateful to God, damage to our relationship with him and with our neighbours. But if we want a better way, a way we can be rightly proud but without succumbing to the sin of having haughty eyes, we can look for inspiration to the relationship between Jesus and his Father.
Our Gospel this morning is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. This happens immediately after Jesus had been baptised and at his baptism, Jesus was revealed as the Messiah, the Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and by the voice from heaven which declared,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Don’t those sound like the words of a proud parent? But, if Jesus was the Father’s beloved Son, a Son with whom he was well pleased, does that mean the Father loved his other children, in other words us, any less? No, he very reason he sent his Son into the world was because he loved us so much. So if we’re ever tempted to think more highly of one person than another because their achievements have pleased us more, we might want to remember the story of Jesus’ baptism. Or the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration when the Father was heard to say the same thing of his Son.
And as we read this morning’s Gospel, isn’t the way in which Jesus resisted temptation something of which he, as a human being, could have been rightly proud, perhaps in the way we might feel rightly proud at Easter for having stuck to our Lenten discipline through the whole of Lent? But as we look at this Gospel, we see that at each temptation, Jesus turns to God.
Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding so no doubt he could have turned stones into bread too. He could have turned stones into bread and been quite happy and self-satisfied, but he didn’t, he turned to God;
“‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Jesus could have shown the people of Israel exactly who he was and achieved their faith and obedience in a very dramatic way that would have drawn attention to himself and saved him the agony of the Cross. But instead he turned to God;
“‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And Jesus could have lorded it over the world and all people, but again, he turned to God;
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”
And so, if we’re ever tempted to let pride turn into something worse; if we’re ever tempted to let something we can be rightly proud of give us haughty eyes towards God or anyone else, we might want to remember the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We might want to remember Jesus’ example of putting God first, of remembering the part God plays in everything we do, including the things we can be rightly proud of. And we might want to remember too Jesus’ example of not letting what we’ve done, and have the ability to do, damage our relationships with our neighbour by leading us to think of ourselves as better than others and looking down on them, but of loving them even if that means playing down what we can do and the achievements of which we can be rightly proud.
Jesus, had a lot to be rightly proud of but he never showed haughty eyes to anyone. In fact, Jesus humbled himself before God his Father and before his neighbour, even those who showed haughty eyes to him, those who thought they knew better than him, those who dismissed his achievements, those who thought they were better and greater and more powerful than him. And he did all that simply so that their relationship with God could be put right. So, as we go through Lent, let’s try to think about how our own pride might have damaged and be damaging our relationships with God and our neighbours and then let’s try to be less haughty in the way we look at them.
Amen.
Propers for Lent 1 26th February 2023
Entrance Antiphon
When he calls to me, I will answer; I will rescue him and give him honour.
Long life and contentment will be his.
The Collect
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s) Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7
Psalm 51:3-6, 12-14, 17
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
RCL (St Gabriel’s) Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 