"The Commandment About Happiness"

First Presbyterian Church
November 19, 2006
Peter S. Buehler
Exodus 20:1-2, 17; Romans 7:4-12

All day long the wicked covet,
but the righteous give and do not hold back.
-Proverbs 21:26

We don't use the word "covet" often, so if we substitute "desire" for "covet," we understand why this Commandment is so hard to keep.

Actually both words are used in Deuteronomy's list of the Commandments: Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife.
Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house, or field, or male or female slave, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
It's unthinkable today that any human being could be seen as property, spouse or slaves, but that was not the issue 3,200 years ago. The issue was coveting, desiring.

"Covet" in the Old Testament implies a desire that leads to an action; the Hebrew word for "desire" focuses on the emotion itself. Either way, what's at issue is wanting what isn't ours and wanting it badly.
And being bothered not only that we don't have what others have but that they have it at all. Coveting's close cousin is envy, and as one writer has said, while most other sins provide at least some gratification, for envy there is no gratification, just self-torment (Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today, p.61).

The 10th Commandment gets personal. It is a Commandment that invites us to do our own list, our own creative version of coveting. So today it might read: Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house with the view of both the ocean and the mountains, or their new kitchen with the beautiful cabinets and the high-end appliances.
Neither shall you desire your neighbor's yard with its low-maintenance landscape plan with drip irrigation; or their really nice new car with the all-leather upholstery; or their huge flat-screen HD LCD TV with surround-sound; or their state-of-the-art Play Station 3 video game system, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

It's material things that are coveted generally, but as William Barclay, the late Scottish New Testament professor, points out, we can desire other things too. We can covet a person -- the Commandment about adultery after all begins with desiring. We can covet another person's status or happiness, their reputation, or fame, or power, or lifestyle.
Or their children. Or health. Or looks. The 10th Commandment is all-inclusive and up-to-date and highly personal: anything we see others having that we want because we aren't satisfied with what we have is on the list.

Which is why this Commandment is so hard! Most of the others are about actions, but the 10th Commandment is about emotions, and how can an emotion be prohibited? If we think we've gotten through the other Commandments unscathed, it's guaranteed that number 10 will get us. Because it's one thing to not kill, or not steal; it's one thing to honor our parents and to not stray from our marriage vows, it's quite another to not ever feel envious, to not ever want what another person has. Jesus, of course, points out the hypocrisy of those who keep the other Commandments outwardly while inwardly they're wandering, but he doesn't revise the 10th Commandment one bit.
He doesn't need to say, "You have heard it said…but I say to you."
He doesn't need to, because the Commandment about coveting goes straight to the truth, straight to our humanness, straight to our frailty, straight to our brokenness, straight to our need.

Because as long as we're convinced that if we had what that neighbor of ours has, or if we were what he or she was, that then we'd be truly happy -- as long as we remain under the spell of covetousness, we will not know the happiness God wants for us.
Which is exactly why we need the Commandment! This is the one that points out our need for God. On our own, we will always want what others have. We catch ourselves all the time. We struggle with envy -- not just over material things.

I imagine that for most of us it's not material things that concern us most. I imagine that what a lot of us struggle with is the larger issue of contentment. That our life could be better if… we can fill in the blank.
We're ashamed to admit it, because we know we ought to be grateful for the privileges we enjoy, the community we live in, the blessings that are ours. Nevertheless, things would be better if only…

We identify with the nun who joined the convent with the rule of silence. She was advised by the mother superior that she would be permitted to say only two words a year. The first year, she came to the mother superior and said, "Bed hard." The mother superior thanked her for her input, and promised to get her a softer mattress.
The second year, the nun came to the mother superior and said, Food cold." Again the mother superior thanked her, and said she would look into the matter. The third year the nun came to the mother superior and said, "I'm leaving." The mother superior said: "I'm not surprised. All you've done since you've been here is complain, complain, complain."

We wonder if that's not what God hears too much of. Really it's God who speaks to us through the 10th Commandment, inviting us over to the mirror to look at ourselves and our wants, our lack of contentment with our lives as they are.

Paul in his Letter to the Romans says that he would never have known what covetousness was if it weren't for the Law, the Commandment You shall not covet. He wouldn't have had the insight into his life, his discontentment. But Paul also claims that the law, while not causing him to sin, somehow led him to sin: coveting wasn't what he did in spite of its being prohibited, he did it because it was prohibited. It was the forbidden fruit, like St. Augustine confessing how as a boy he couldn't resist stealing pears from his neighbor's tree, armfuls of them, even when they weren't nearly as good-tasting as the pears from the tree in his parents' yard. It was the law against stealing that made stealing so irresistible.

How to deal with this? "For I do not do the good I want," writes Paul, "but the evil I do not want is what I do." Have you ever felt this way?
To my mind, Paul could just as well be saying "For I do not occupy my mind with God's blessings as I want, it's the discontentment I do not want that I feel and find myself thinking about." Complain, complain, complain -- it just feels good!

And frankly our world discourages contentment. It practically preaches covetousness, it surrounds us with messages that what we have isn't good enough. If it's not the latest or the fastest, it's old and it's slow. With all the time we are saved by high-tech machinery you would think that we would all be more patient, more relaxed, and more content -- but it isn't so. We go to the ATM machine and it gives us cash from our account in no time flat; yet if there's ever a glitch, or the machine is off-line and we have to go find another machine it's such a bother, we're so inconvenienced and our day is thrown totally off-track.

Yet can we really expect our world to make us more content, either with what we have or with who we are? Next year's cars and computers will be carefully designed to make what we now have seem old; the success stories we will hear from our friends and neighbors will cause us to wonder about our own success, our own well-being. We need the Commandment because it reminds us that fixating on what others have leads us off in the opposite direction from God's desire for us. In our hearts we know it's true: coveting diminishes our spirit; we feel cheated, we feel we have a right to complain. The keener our vision of what others seem to have, the more blind we are about ourselves and all that we have been given.

And so the 10th Commandment leads us back to Jesus. John Calvin, the Protestant Reformer, said that even those "in whose hearts the Spirit of God already flourishes and reigns" have use of the Law -- all of us are called to grow in our understanding of what the Lord's will is for us. All of us need to examine where our treasure is, what is most important to us, because that is where our hearts are also. Are we content? Are we grateful?

We prepare for Thanksgiving by making sure we have all the ingredients we need for the big meal: the turkey and stuffing; the potatoes and yams; the cranberry sauce and fried onions for the green bean casserole; the pumpkin pie, the apple pie, the chocolate cream pie, the mince meat pie, the strawberry-rhubarb pie, the pecan pie. The vanilla ice cream for the pie.

But there is another kind of preparing we can do. It begins with hearing again what has been done for us, our year-round reason for thanksgiving. In the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews there is an amazing statement: that we disciples are called to run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Somehow for him even the journey to the cross spelled joy, because he was close to his Father. And his obedience, his sacrifice, his love is the assurance that God forgives and empowers us; God does not dismiss or reject us; God is nearer to us than our own breath. What happened on Good Friday changed everything. And while we shudder at the thought of Christ's sacrifice, it is also the most encouraging word we can hear, for when we are doing what we are called to do -- no matter how it is going, no matter how successful or unsuccessful we are -- when we are content with our lives, happy to be the people God has made us, despite our flaws; when we rejoice in our faith, no matter how far we have come or how far we have yet to go, we can know God's love, and in that love we know happiness. Jesus on the cross is the end of our coveting.

Which sets us free. So many of us believe that we shouldn't ever be satisfied, that we're not entitled to be satisfied, until we have reached our goal, our purpose. And we're never quite there, it seems; we're never quite finished; there's always something we can do better. Yet, as one believer has put it, "The amazing beauty of God is that he doesn't even make it necessary for us to reach any goal to be happy. It's entering into the struggle to reach the goal that brings us happiness" (The Monks of New Skete, In the Spirit of Happiness, p. 311). For it's not just in reaching the destination that we find satisfaction, but in the journeying that we find what we are looking for. In what we do each day. Finding happiness in small things; recognizing Christ in unlikely places and in unlikely people. Being patient with trouble; being ready to forgive others' mistakes, and to accept forgiveness for our own.
Being ready to be generous, especially with those who are poor.
The righteous give and do not hold back, says the Old Testament book of Proverbs, so we check our impulse to covet what others have by giving of what we have and not holding back.

The Commandments, each one, bring us to the God who gives and does not hold back. The message of the 10th Commandment, the Commandment about coveting, about wanting what others have, is not that we should want less, but rather that we should want more.
More happiness, not less. More life, not less. More beauty, not less.
More love for others, more mercy, more generosity, more peace,
not less.

The 10th Commandment is about the God who doesn't ever hold back. The verse of the Psalm is the truth we discover again and again: You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore (16:11).