So here, at the end of this Ten Commandment sermon series, we come back to where we started. We come back to a matter of the human heart.
For the First Commandment—"You shall have no other gods before me"—stakes God's claim to our hearts' allegiance. And this Tenth Commandment—"You shall not covet" (Heb. lo' tachmod)—stakes God's claim to our hearts' desire.
At the beginning of this series, way back on January 29th, I cited the very first question in the catechism that for more than three centuries stood at the heart of Presbyterian education, "The Westminster Shorter Catechism." And its very first question is this (please pardon the 17th-century language): "What is the chief end of man?"—that is, "What is the chief goal for a person's life?"
And of course the catechism's answer to that question is not "to become rich"; nor is it "to gain power and dominion over others"; nor is it "to gratify our sexual desires."
No, as I learned and memorized way back when, in my youth, the chief goal for a person's life is "to glorify God and to enjoy [God] forever." To glorify, praise, worship, and adore God forever—that is to be our response to the First Commandment; and to reserve for God our deepest desire and to find in God our deepest joy—that is to be our response to this Tenth Commandment.
Around the year 400 A.D., at the very beginning of his book The Confessions (I.1), the great theologian Augustine addressed God by saying, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." Then, in the 11th century, Anselm, an abbot who later became Archbishop of Canterbury—Anselm offered this prayer, "O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire You with our whole heart, that so desiring You, we may seek and find You, and so finding You, we may love You." And in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas observed that the reason why human desire is so boundless is because it is meant to find its goal in the infinite God (see, for example, Summa Theologica I.44.4).
Yes, our hearts' desire, when directed toward God, is rest-bestowing and joy-imparting and life-empowering, as it leads us into an ever deeper love for our Creator and an ever fuller obedience to God's will. But our hearts' desire, when misdirected toward the accumulation of wealth and possessions, is anxiety-producing and sorrow-inducing and life-depriving, as it leads us instead into an ever deeper ignoring of our Creator and an ever fuller exploitation of our neighbors.
So, we have been created with desire, but whether the desire we choose to nurture within ourselves serves us well or ill depends on that toward which we direct our desire. Or to put this matter simply and directly, to desire to know and enjoy God forever—that's good; to desire to love one's neighbor by sharing the abundance of God's creation and accepting as adequate one's own fair share of God's bounty—that, too, is good; but to desire to accumulate more than one's equitable portion of the world's resources—that is bad, that is "coveting."
We were created to desire God. We were created to desire the goodness and beauty of God's creation. We were created to desire to share that goodness and beauty with our neighbor. But sin originates when we choose to misdirect God's gift of desire.
The biblical commentator J. Gerald Janzen (Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997], pp.156-157) reminds us that when God created the Garden of Eden for the benefit of the first human, God made every tree (quote) "desirable" (Heb. nechmad; Gen. 2:9). The very sight of these trees was meant to make that first human's mouth water! Yes, desire is a part of our selfhood that God has created in order to draw us into a deep enjoyment both of our Creator and of the world that God has created. But our desire for the Creator must never become subordinate to our desire for the things of creation. So right from the start, in the Garden itself, God imposed limits on our hearts' desire for the things of this world by declaring one of those delectable trees to be off-limits and by insisting that humankind had to live within those limits.
But here's the thing of it. We humans have chosen not to live within God's limits; we humans have chosen instead to indulge in covetous behavior, behavior that destroys human community rather than upbuilding it. We have chosen to nurture within ourselves forms of desire that do not serve, but rather damage, the kind of relationships in which we are being called to live—a loving relationship with God and a sharing relationship with neighbors.
For example, our American economy is based not on the generous communitarianism of distributing creation's abundance equitably but rather on the acquisitive individualism that characterizes free- market capitalism. We Americans are just 6% of the world's population, yet we consume 25% of the world's annual energy supplies. That's four times our "fair share." Yes, there's no way around it. We are a covetous people. And as a result, we find that today our relationship with the other peoples of Planet Earth is, to say the very least, "strained." Indeed, at no other time have we Americans been more deeply disliked throughout the world than we are now.
The author of this morning's lesson from the Letter of James was, of course, writing to first-century Christians. Yet I think his audience could just as well have been modern Americans, for it seems to me he's speaking pretty directly to us, both corporately and individually, when he asks: "Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts." (4:1-2a) The bitter envy and selfish ambition that are inscribed upon your hearts certainly do not come "from above," from God. No, this envy and ambition within you, which lead to covetousness and conflict—they are really quite worldly and unspiritual—indeed, "devilish." Were you truly living in communion with God and in harmony with God's wisdom and will, then you would be very different people. You would instead be ones who are "peaceable, gentle, [and] willing to yield." (3:14-17) Thus writes the author of James—to us!
The Tenth Commandment is indeed what James calls "wisdom from above." (3:17; cf. 4:2) And God spoke this commandment in order to remind us all that the proper focus for human desire is love for God and sharing with neighbor. God spoke this commandment in order to remind us all that grasping for what rightfully belongs to others trespasses a limit that God has placed on human desire.
Now, one of the assumptions that underlies God's giving of this commandment, following our eating of the off-limits fruit in the Garden of Eden, is that human appetites and desires can in fact be reeducated, retrained, and reprogrammed into greater conformity with God's will (Janzen, p. 157), so that our principal desires will once again become "to glorify God and enjoy [God] forever" and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And of course modern advertising is based on this same premise, for it is designed precisely to refocus and retrain our desires. Yes, "a good ad" is meant to do more than simply inform us of a product's existence. "A good ad" is meant to create within us a desire for its product.
So I think of the advertising sections in the Sunday New York Times as a veritable "garden of desire." To read through these sections is to encounter a temptation to covetousness on almost every page.
Let's see. In today's paper, there's a thirty-page full-color advertising supplement for a certain manufacturer's kitchens, most of which seem to be larger than the whole of an ordinary New York City one-bedroom apartment. Yet, one of these, on pages 7-8, is to be found in New York City. It's in an unoccupied 90th-floor penthouse, which, for the purposes of this photo, is being presided over by Donald Trump, eating pizza and drinking cola like the "common man" he is! Then there's today's 158-page, full-color New York Times Style Magazine. In case you're interested in knowing, my votes for the most desire-inciting ads in this week's Style Magazine go to those on pages 10 and 95. I'd love to know your votes when you've looked at it.
But let me focus in greater detail on today's New York Times Magazine. On page 11, you'll find an offer for half- and full-floor apartments at 995 Fifth Avenue starting at $10 million. Now, out of the one million or so readers of this magazine, how many do you suppose will be expressing an active interest in this offering? Not very many, I bet! So here's an ad that's just seeking to foster in us a desire for wealth, covetousness pure and simple!
Or take the pullout ad that follows page 31. This one offers us a somewhat literal return to those desirable trees in the Garden of Eden, for it portrays the natural beauty of God's own white tea bushes. But the ad's purpose is, of course, to make us want to book a room not in the Garden of Eden but in one of those terribly upscale hotel and resort chains. Still, this ad does win my award for this week's most alluring, with its lush photography and an absolutely "divine" lift-up aroma flap. Yes, this is an ad that uses the natural beauty of God's world to invite us to desire worldly luxury.
And finally, let me point out the six-page fashion spread that begins on page 56. Let's see. It features $865 denim trousers, a $3,200 top and pants, a $3,500 black silk kimono and black silk satin pants, a $6,500 three-piece suit—all of course presented with the accompaniment of a model's sexually provocative poses. Desire, desire, desire, desire! But certainly not desire for God, and not desire for an equitable distribution of Earth's resources!
Yes, our desires are being trained each and every day, both by print media and television, but in quite the wrong ways. For we are being bombarded from all sides with stimuli to covetousness. We are being educated every day by those who are seeking to lead us to desire a surfeit of goods rather than by those who are seeking to lead us to desire God and the equal well-being of our neighbors.
Still, the success of advertising does make it abundantly clear that the real question is not whether our desires will be refocused and retrained but by whom our desires will be refocused and retrained—by Madison Avenue or by the Bible.
So, if the desires that this Tenth Commandment declares to be off-limits "stir within us, we have the choice of allowing those desires to enter the spacious room of our thoughts and play themselves out in delectable fantasies, or we can politely but firmly ask them to leave [while we] redirect our thoughts" to our Creator and to our Creator's will for humankind. (Janzen, p. 158)
As Gerald Janzen reminds us: "Our willingness to engage our appetites and to reeducate them in conformity with God's covenant claims [up]on us is one measure of our willingness to participate as co-workers in the redemption of the world." (p. 158)
In this context of ours—a Madison-Avenue society and an acquisitive, individualistic, free-market capitalist economy—the commandment "You shall not covet" is indeed one that's radically countercultural.
Yet, in baptism and in our confirmations of baptism, we have pledged that we will seek to focus our desire on God and on sharing well-being with our neighbors, for it is such desire as this that is rest-bestowing and joy-imparting and life-empowering. Dear people of Rutgers Church, may we use the days remaining to us in this season of Lent to reeducate, retrain, and reprogram ourselves so as to make God and the sharing of Earth's resources our hearts' desire.
Let us pray:
O Lord our God, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." " [G]rant us [the] grace to desire You with our whole heart, that so desiring You, we may seek and find You, and so finding You, we may love You" and share equitably with our neighbors. Through Christ Jesus we pray this. Amen.