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WHICH BROTHER PREACHES BEST?

Back in the decadent baby-boomer 1960s, humor columnist Art Buchwald wrote a cute article entitled “Keeping Up With the Joneses.” That’s been a cliché in American life for a long time, of course, but he wondered aloud how it must be to BE the fictional Jones family. And when he interviewed the imaginary couple, it wasn’t what it was all cracked up to be. This harried husband and wife were basically exhausted, trying to keep AHEAD of all their aggressively shopping, Diners Club card-toting neighbors.

“We were the first on the block to have two cars,” the husband confessed. “Then all the neighbors got two, so we had to get a third. Now somebody across the street has three, so we have to go out and buy a FOURTH. Where can we park ‘em all?” They had to have a swimming pool, of course, and a Jacuzzi – as soon as those were invented. They had to take lavish vacations neither one of them really enjoyed: white-water rafting, tiger hunts in Nepal. “Why can’t we just stay home?” the wife moaned. But no . . . America was counting on them to lead the way, to buy more, have more, display more, show off more. At the end of the column, the wife grumped to her husband: “I have a terrible headache. I’m going upstairs to take a Lasterperin.” “What’s that?” Buchwald wanted to know. And the husband proudly explained that it was the latest thing in headache powders. “Works seven times as fast as aspirin.” Even when it came to the medicine chest, the Joneses had more than all of their envious friends.

Our subject this week is pride – and is it possible that being proud, of having the most, of being continually admired, isn’t as much fun as we assume it will be? Rock stars make millions, and sometimes commit suicide. Sports figures have salaries that run in the eight figures – PER SEASON – and still are sometimes desperately unhappy people.

You know, Jesus might well have had the Joneses in mind when He gave this bit of wisdom in Luke chapter 12. Notice:

“Watch out!” He warns. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

We find the same thread of logic in the book of Ecclesiastes, where a rich playboy named Solomon informs us that having a Swiss bank account and even having 300 wives and 700 girlfriends isn’t the ticket to lasting peace. “There is never enough STUFF,” one theologian observed, “to fill up that God-shaped hole in your heart.”

We’re going to borrow a line here and a line there all week from a wonderful essay by C. S. Lewis, found in his book Mere Christianity. And in a chapter entitled “The Great Sin” – more about that later – he observes, rightly, that the sin of pride has competition built right into it.

“Pride is essentially competitive,” he writes, “is competitive by its very NATURE – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident.”

He uses, as an illustration, the sin of lust, or the sexual impulse. Two men may both decide they desire the same girl, and so they compete for that girl. But the competition is incidental; they could just as easily have wanted two different girls and gone down two separate paths to get to their respective finish lines.

“But a proud man,” he writes, “will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power.”

I remember seeing a car ad once where a man was parked at a red light, and he was sitting in an absolutely gorgeous new Mercedes. I mean, top of the line. The engine was humming quietly; the 12 embedded speakers were quietly filling the sanctuary of his car with stereo music; the genuine leather seats were gently enveloping his frame; the burnished walnut trim was elegant and subdued. And yet this man was looking out the side window with a look of desperate discontent on his face. And why? Because the guy next to him at that same traffic light was sitting there in a Rolls. And a Mercedes is no good at all when parked next to a Rolls – IF you’re a person trapped in the competitive spiral of pride.

Lewis adds a bit more to the story; see if this rings a bell:

“Pride gets no pleasure,” he writes, “out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richER, or cleverER, or better-looking than others.”

Have you ever sensed that in your own life? That THING, that trophy, that possession, could only really satisfy if you could show it off to others who haven’t got one too. This same Art Buchwald once wrote in comic sadness that it just wasn’t any fun having a swimming pool in his backyard unless he could show it off to neighbors who didn’t also have one. That was the only real joy, but unfortunately, he had too many so-called friends who were stealing all of his guests.

Proverbs 30:13 addresses this business of comparing, of getting joy from competition. Here’s how it’s rendered in the Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson:

“Don’t be stuck-up and think you’re better than everyone else.”

But how do we fight this? Because in the currency of this world, you probably ARE better than the next guy over . . . at least at something. No question about it: a Rolls beats a Mercedes, and a Mercedes beats a Tercel. A salary of a hundred grand beats fifty; I honestly happen to think that my wife Jeannie is prettier than a lot of the other wives out there. But what the Bible is telling us – and we touched on this yesterday – is that we mustn’t get our sense of worth or value from the fact that we have better things or ARE better things. Because when Jesus went up on the Cross of Calvary, He allowed those nails to go in on behalf of nice people and bad ones too. Rich guys and poor guys. Pretty people and plain. And the CORE of my identity needs to come from the fact that I am a Calvary-bought trophy. What I drive, where I live, who I’m married to, and how many listeners I’ve got on the radio all have to be diminished and folded into the tent of my Calvary identity. Every day of my life I have to look away from my resumé, look away from my bank account and from my mirror, and look at the Cross of Jesus Christ. I need to get my joy from my salvation, and not from my stereo or my suits or my stock portfolio.

Some of us here at the Voice of Prophecy are in the unique demographic of preaching FAMILIES. I have brothers who are preachers; my dad is a preacher. One of our staff members is a pastor . . . and all three of HIS brothers stand behind pulpits too. And you know, we can even get to the point where our self-esteem, our good feelings about ourselves, come when our sermons are a bit better than our own siblings, or when we get our name on a magazine article or book. You sit in church and hear your own flesh-and-blood preaching, and subconsciously think to yourself: “Huh. I could have REALLY nailed that point! He should have used my such-and-such joke right there; I could have really lit up the sanctuary with it.” And you know, I’ve had to stare at myself in the mirror and realize what an absolutely dead-end trap it is to want to beat my fellow preachers at preaching! Listen, I ought to rejoice anytime ANY fellow minister lifts up the cross of Jesus. If I baptize a hundred, and someone else baptizes a thousand, the only thing I ought to be thinking is: “Praise God! Eleven hundred new people came into Your kingdom!”

In his book, The Ten(der) Commandments, author Ron Mehl wonders aloud – as he dissects the tenth commandment, which sternly warns against coveting:

“Why would the Lord say these things? Because He knows what coveting and greed will do to a human life. He understands the devastation it will bring, and in His love He would spare us from that.”

In other words, God in His kindness wants to gently lead us away from the rat race, away from our competition with the Joneses or with the other Pastor Melashenkos of the world. God wants us to bask in His love for us, His treasuring of us . . . the same way He treasures the family that lives next door in the house that has just a slightly bigger floor plan than yours. Pastor Mehl quietly concludes:

“What God really intends for us is that we would be contented . . . contented with who we are . . . contented with what we have . . . contented with Him.”