Robin McGonigle
University Congregational Church
March 6, 2022
“The Virtue in the Vice: Worthiness not Pride”
Proverbs 16:17-19
Once on a day that has been forgotten, in a long-forgotten room, among poverty and despair, a 16-year-old girl gave birth to a little boy. She did not name him. Perhaps she meant to give him a name, but just did not get around to it. There was no father to ask about it. Truth be told, she was not certain who the father was.
The nurse asked when filling out the paperwork what to put in the line for the child’s name. The mother replied, “He ain’t got no name.”
“We have to put something on the birth certificate,” said the nurse.
“Look, I’m tired,” sighed the mother. “I’m going back to sleep now.”
The nurse reluctantly wrote in “No Name” on his birth certificate, along with his mother’s last name – Maddox. Along with this name was the child’s inky little footprint. That is how this boy’s life started: as No Name Maddox. And when his mother remarried, he became No Name Manson.
When he turned nine or ten, he realized that his mom was really a prostitute. As a child, he laid in bed and heard the tell-tale sounds of her evening activities. No one had to tell him the truth. He just figured it out. Sometimes his mom sounded happy and sometimes she sounded fearful. Her son, listening in the night, was not always certain which was which. Now, as an adult, he still gets fear and happiness confused in his mind. As soon as he was old enough, he disappeared into the streets and stayed unknown for a long time.
Eventually, he resurfaced on the West Coast and had a name he had given himself: Charles. Charles Manson, who ran all over California, seeming to try to kill someone like his mother.
As a minister, I want to ask people like Charles Manson’s mom, “Weren’t you made for more than this?” So many times, I want to ask a person that question. “Weren’t you made for more than this?” It is because I genuinely believe that each of us is imprinted with God’s holy spark of divinity. We are made in the image of God. But I am jumping ahead of myself.
Today, we are starting on a new journey. The journey of Lent. As Paul told you in the Children’s Message:
• Lent is a 40-day journey leading us to Easter Day. Those 40 days represent the time Jesus spent in the wilderness before he started his public ministry.
• Lent started last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) and ends on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter).
• Lent is a time of preparation, penitence, and fasting. Often, people “give up” something for Lent, such as meat or sweets. I have also encouraged people to “add something” for Lent – such as meditation, prayer, exercise, or reading.
• Lent started being practiced after Jesus’s death but was formalized in 325 CE.
• The day before Lent starts is known as Fat Tuesday and is celebrated with pancakes or Mardi Gras!
At UCC, our theme for Lent is focused on the seven deadly sins AND the 7 Life-Affirming Virtues that correspond with them. At the end of the service today, you will receive a small charm of a scale of justice to remind you that we strive for balance in our lives. Please use this scale of justice throughout the Lenten season to remind yourself of the balance required in your spiritual life. We are all sinners; and we also have proportionate opportunities for life-affirming virtues which enhance our souls. We will be using Robin Meyers’ book “The Virtue in the Vice” as a guide for these sermons. I taught Christian ethics at Newman
University for sixteen semesters, so I will be using my experiences from those classes as well.
Let me tell you a bit about how the seven deadly sins list came about! Long ago, before most humans could read or write, church leaders produced a list of sins so that people would know what NOT to do. This list is not in the Bible, per se. It was a list of the medieval church, and it was said that these were the worst of the worst things you could do that would keep you separated from God. The top seven were:
• Pride
• Envy
• Anger
• Lust
• Gluttony
• Greed
• Sloth
Along with these deadly sins, the church listed answers: the seven virtues:
• Humility
• Kindness
• Patience
• Chastity
• Abstinence
• Liberality
• Diligence
You might ask “Why Seven?” Remember that seven is a holy number: there are 7 days of the week; 7 days of creation; etc.
We could argue that there would be more grievous sins that the seven chosen by these early church leaders. Nietzsche, for example, argued that cruelty, savagery, indifference to human suffering, tyranny, ethnic hatred, religious persecution, and racial bigotry, were all more deadly than the ones listed. I would like to suggest that any list of ethical dilemmas set by a human or groups of humans consistently has a political element to it. In other words, the social situation of the community is reflected in the ethical concerns brought to the forefront of any discussion.
Today’s sermon will focus on the sin of pride and the virtue of humility… or saying it in a positive way: worthiness. When the early church leaders put together the list of sins, pride came first on the list. Pride elicits idolatry and even worship of ourselves. The English synonyms for proud include arrogant, haughty, conceited, egocentric, narcissistic, insolent, presumptuous and vain. The Greeks called it hubris (thinking oneself superior to the gods). To be proud, in the classic sense, is to be out of place in the order of things, and not know one’s proper relationship to God. Our traditional text for today speaks of this sin:
The highway of the upright avoids evil; those who guard their way preserve their lives. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit among the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud. Prov. 16: 17-19
Going back to the story of Charles Manson… the problem his mother had was not pride, but a lack of pride. She had a feeling of worthlessness. She had forgotten that she was precious in God’s eyes; that she was God’s masterpiece. That she was made for more than this.
Last year while I was on sabbatical, I traveled to Savannah Georgia. Whenever we went out to eat in what they call the Low Country, they brought a dish of fresh hot hushpuppies to the table when you sat down. These were not anything like the hushpuppies I have had in other places! These were warm, fresh out of the kitchen, delicious little bits of heaven in your mouth. Full of cornbread, spices, butter, and homemade goodness, these little fritters melt in your mouth! Just when you get to the end of the bowl, they bring more. You do not order them – and you cannot do anything to stop them. They just come to your table. They are free – they come when you sit down, whether you are just there for a drink or a meal!
That is the way it is with worthiness. You cannot do anything to earn it…. It just comes. Take a moment to look at the front of your bulletin. On it is a picture of a
father with his 2-month-old child. The unconditional love passed between them is what I am talking about. This child will grow up knowing she is worthy – not because of anything she has done, but because she is loved just by being.
Self-esteem has to do with talent and merit; we compare our abilities with the abilities of others and how we measure up to the standards of our society. Self-respect, on the other hand, has to do with the inherent value and dignity of all persons and is, by nature, noncomparative. The answer to the sin of arrogance or wrongful pride is knowing one’s self-worth; knowing that we are God’s own beloved.
Tuesday night, I was at Fiddler on the Roof at Century II. Many of you know the story. The Jews are kicked out of their beloved hometown, Anatevka. They are dispersed to various places around the world where they will have to make a new life, without their family and friends. It ends in sadness as they leave one another. This is representative of the Hebrew story over the millennia. Knowing that I was preaching on “worthiness – not pride,” I thought about how they played into this story of the chosen people in the Hebrew Bible.
Outside Century II after the play, my friend noticed a homeless person sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag. As the theater crowd passed by, the homeless person seemed oblivious. S/he did not move or beg for money. Apparently asleep in the sleeping bag, the homeless person slept through the crowd passing by. My thoughts turned again. Did this precious soul know his or her worth in the eyes of God? Did the crowd notice? Did we recognize that the tears we shed for the people of Anatevka in the theater (who were pushed out of their hometown because of their race and religion) were connected to the plight of this person? That all of God’s children have inherent worth? That all of them were made for more than this?
When faced with the sin of puffed-up pride, the answer is often to learn our inherent worth as a beloved child of God.
Resources Used:
Meyers, Robin R. “The Virtue in the Vice; Finding Seven Lively Virtues in the Seven Deadly Sins”. Deerfield Beach Florida: Health Communications, Inc. 2004