Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Sin of Mrs. Howell and Gehazi

by Dave Wilkinson

Luke 12:16-21, 2 Kings 5:1-27

June 24, 2001

The Seven Deadly Sins Theme

Tune: Gilligan's Island Words: James Mitchell

Here is the ad from the February 18, 2001 issue of the Los Angeles Times: "The all new LS430. As it turns out, the world actually does revolve around you. You may now take your rightful place at the center of our universe, specifically behind the wheel of the all new LS43 ...Could this make you feel too, dare we say, self-centered? We think not. After all, isn't it a long-standing belief that before you can love others you have to love yourself? Visit your Lexus dealer today."

Do you know who that ad is aimed at? It's aimed at greedy people like me.

This summer we are looking at the seven deadly sins -- pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. These are the sins that have been recognized by the church as particularly deadly because they are originating sins -- mother ships for other sins. All other sins flow out of these seven.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins because it is, at heart, idolatry. "You shall have no other gods before Me," the commandment declares. Greed replaces God with things money can buy.

According to scholars, each character on Gilligan's Island is an archetype of one of the 7 Deadly Sins. So far we've looked at the sin of sloth through Gilligan himself. We've looked at envy through the example of Mary Ann. We've looked at anger through Mr. Howell. Today, greed is modeled for us by Mrs. Howell.

Was Mr. Howell greedy? Who else but a greedy person would seek to gain her self-image through the accumulation of stuff? Who but a greedy person would bring all those clothes on what was supposed to be a three hour tour. Ginger had one slinky dress. Mary Ann had a cute outfit. But Mrs. Howell had a wardrobe. She didn't need a Lexus 430 to know the world revolved around her -- though she would have loved one.

And Mrs. Howell finds her Biblical counterpart in a greedy man named Gehazi.

Now Mrs. Howell was stuck with Mr. Howell. But Gehazi had it better. Gehazi was the servant and companion of the "man of God," Elisha. However, despite his daily fellowship with one of the best and noblest men who ever lived, all Gehazi did was to win for himself a loathsome disease. He got leprosy from a man named Naaman. It's not what he wanted, but it's what he got.

Naaman was the leader of the army of the King of Syria; "a great man with his master and honorable,....a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper." His leprosy was making rapid headway. Before long it would have ended his life or driven him away from the king's court. But in his household there was a Hebrew girl who had been taken captive. She knew the pain of her mistress because of Naaman's leprosy. So she said, "Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria for He would cure him of his leprosy." Naaman's wife persuaded him to go to Samaria and try this cure. Maybe this famous prophet could heal him. So Naaman, with a great company and with costly presents, ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of clothing, sets out for Samaria.

Naaman does not like Elisha's reception of him. Instead of coming out to speak with him himself, he sends Gehazi. He also doesn't like Elisha's prescription, which was to wash in the Jordan River seven times. But the better counsel of his friends prevails. Naaman washes himself in the Jordan and his flesh becomes as clean and fresh as that of a little child.

The grateful soldier and prince drove back all the way to Samaria to give thanks to Elisha and to confess his faith in the God of Elisha. Then he asked Elisha to let him give him a gift -- the silver and gold and fine garments that he had brought with him.

But Elisha refused to take a single silver or gold coin, or a single new suit. This was because he did not wish Naaman to get the idea that it was Elisha who had healed him and not the God of Israel. Naaman then waved goodbye to Elisha, and set out for Damascus.

Gehazi sees the interview between Naaman and his master. His eye catches the glitter of those gold and silver coins and the flash of those stylish Syrian garments. He is utterly unable to understand why Elisha refused to take a present from Naaman. "What a fool," he thinks to himself, "If he doesn't want it for himself, then why not take it and divide it among his loyal followers and friends -- like Gehazi? I could make good use of some of that money myself." Quickly, the spirit of greed turns into action.

"Behold," Gehazi says to himself, "my master has spared this Syrian, Naaman, in not taking anything that he brought with him. But as the Lord lives, I will run after him and take something from him. He's nothing but a Syrian, ayway; a heathen and a foreigner."

His feet made swift by greed, Gehazi soon overtakes Naaman, who when he sees him stops his horses and gets down from his chariot. Fearing that something had happened to his benefactor, Elisha, he asks, "Is all well?" Then Gehazi told his crafty lie. "Two young theological students had come to visit Elisha. Elisha had sent Gehazi to ask Naaman if he would give him for the benefit of these young men a talent of silver and two changes of clothes. Naaman, no doubt wonders how Elisha could have changed his mind so quickly. But he presses Gehazi, who probably needs little persuasion, to take two talents instead of one. The money is counted out into two bags, which were laid upon the back of two of the servants of Naaman, and Gehazi starts back with them to Samaria. When he reaches the city he takes the men, not to the house of Elisha, but to the tower, some sort of a storehouse that he had. There he deposits the money and says goodbye to the servants of Naaman. Congratulating himself on a good day's job and his smartness in hoodwinking both Naaman and Elisha, Gehazi goes to report to his master.

When Gehazi came in Elisha says to him, "Where are you coming from, Gehazi?" Startled, but well controlled, Gehazi replied, "Nowhere." But Elisha, fastening his eye upon him, says, "Didn't my heart go with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is it a time to receive money and garments, and the things that money can buy--sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants? When I am trying to call Israel to repentance and to bring the people back to God, have you no thought except money and what it can buy? Liar! Hypocrite! Thief! You coveted the gold and silver; but from this day forth you will have something else that Naaman had -- his leprosy!" And Gehazi went out from Elisha's presence a leper as white as snow.

Gehazi lied to get what wasn't his. And we would never do that -- right? Which means that we don't have a problem with greed -- right?

Wrong.

Greed is epidemic in our nation and greed shapes how we live, how we work, how we buy, how we measure the worth of others and our own selves.

Greed is all around us.

Take professional sports -- please. One of new York’s leading newspapers carried an interview with the wife of a New York Yankee’s ballplayer who had just signed an $89 million dollar contract. He had held our for a long time before signing, hoping that the management would match the $91 million dollar offer of another team. The Yankees did not budge. His wife later said, "When I saw him walk in the house, I immediately knew that he had not succeeded in persuading them to move up from eighty-nine to ninety-one million. He felt so rejected. It was one of the saddest days of our lives."

There's hardly anyone like Ted Williams anymore. When Ted Williams was forty years old and closing out his career with the Boston Red Sox, he suffered from a pinched nerve in his neck. "The thing was so bad," he later explained, "That I could hardly turn my head to look at the pitcher". So for the first time in his career he batted under.300, hitting just .254 with ten home runs. He was the highest salaried player in sports that year, making $125,000. The next year the Red Sox sent him the same contract.

"When I got it, I sent it back with a note. I told them I wouldn't sign it until they gave me the full pay cut allowed. I think it was twenty-five percent. My feeling was that I was always treated fairly by the Red Sox when it came to contracts. I never had any problem with them about money. Now they were offering me a contract I didn't deserve. And I only wanted what I deserved. Williams cut his own salary by $31,250!

Talk about old fashioned. That's not the way we're taught today.

Our society has built its economy on the production of things that people are conditioned to want, but do not really need. Many of the consumer goods we spend so much to buy did not even exist a generation ago. We buy these things because we have been manipulated into wanting them through advertising and peer pressure.

We are willing to work two jobs in order to satisfy these artificially created wants. We are willing to take time from our families so that we can buy those things which we are assured will express our love to our loved ones more than our mere presence ever could. We are willing to reject biblical principles of living in order to buy the consumer goods which the media prescribes as essential for the "good life." And when there are threats to the affluent lifestyle that has become synonymous with America, we stand ready to fight and, if need be, to die to protect it.

Genuine needs are fixed and limited, but artificially generated wants know no limits. Just when we get what we think we want, we see some new and "better" things. God has provided enough to satisfy all our needs, but not enough to satisfy all our artificially created wants. Of the getting of things, there will be no end.

Tony Campollo writes: "Greed motivates people to buy things just for the sake of having them. It gives the possessors a deluded sense of superiority. Somehow we think that we are better than other people if we have more things than they do. In our materialistic society, children get sucked into this delusion from their earliest days. At Christmastime, they are taught that the better a person is, the more that person gets. Therefore, each child tries to point out how many more things he/she received from Santa than were delivered to the homes of playmates.

"We failed to realize that we could never have enough, because there would always be someone else out there with more. It did not occur to us that we would never be content until we had more than everyone else. Greed can never be satisfied. The more the greedy get, the more they want; and the more they want, the more discontented they are with what they have.

Some people do not outgrow the greediness they learned in childhood. Greed can linger on in disguised form, concealed by politeness, but eating away like a cancer at the joy of life.

In our New Testament lesson from Luke 12:16-21 Jesus concludes with the words of God to the rich man with his barns: "You fool, this night your soul shall be required of you; whose shall those things be, which you have provided? So is he that lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God"

Jesus establishes clearly that the greedy accumulation of things is an attempt by people to evade dependency on God. The one who greedily hoards possessions in order to establish security for the future lacks the faith that Jesus expects of those who follow Him. Our security, according to Jesus, is in our relationship to God in whose hands lies our future. Because of the uncertainty of life, it is ridiculous to be greedy hoarders of things. The will of God is that each of us should have enough and then be willing to offer up our surplus to others in the name of God.

Today about fifty of our Senior Highs and their adult advisors are returning from building houses in Mexico with Amor ministries. I am excited about this program for many reasons. One is the great, positive impact on the Senior High group itself -- the increased cohesiveness and mutual care that develops. Another is the sense of accomplishment they gain. The third is that I believe that exposure to life as lived by many, many people in the world is essential for our youth to grow in sensitivity and appreciation of what they have.

This is so important for young people who grow up in relative affluence Otherwise, they can be clueless. Westminster Presbyterian in Westlake also builds houses with Amor. Dale Ridenour, the associate pastor there, told me about picking up some of the kids and driving them back through Tijuana after they had been there for a week. And, as they passed by the cardboard slums, one young Westlakian seriously observed, "I've noticed that B.M.W.s and Mercedes aren't as popular here as they are at home." He wasn't being a wise guy. He was genuinely unaware.

When I was in seminary I worked for two years as the Junior High Director at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. Each Wednesday during the summer I took a group of fifteen or so away from the crest of Muholland down to the flat lands of Encino to visit older people in a rest home. Some of the dementia cases there were pretty hard to take but the kids handled it well and created special friendships as they visited each week.

Well one afternoon I got a phone call from one of the moms. She had called to tell me that her beautiful daughter Bryn had contracted a mild skin disease. The doctor was surprised because this disease was very rare in anyone under the age of 70. He told the mom, "Your daughter must be spending time with old people and hugging them a lot."

I had all sorts of expectations of what she was going to say next -- most of them having to do with complaints to the pastor for me exposing her teenage daughter to such things -- or maybe a lawsuit for hurting her modeling career. What she actually said, floored me. She said, "Dave, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart." She was sincere. She meant it. She knew the dangers her daughter faced living where she lived with all of the advantages she enjoyed. She was grateful for a sign that her daughter was having the opportunity to show care for people who could be of no benefit to her.

That's something we all need to learn. For there is one primary way to overcome greed, and that is to discover the joy and contentment that comes from self-giving -- the giving of time, talent and treasure.

The nature of sin is that it blinds us to the truth that we have been designed in the image of a giving God and that we therefore fulfill the purpose of our Creator by giving away what we are and have to others. When we are called upon to sacrifice, it is not only that others might benefit from our self-giving, but that we ourselves might know the joy that God wants us to have. If we do not experience a sense of wondrous fulfillment in our giving, then the Lord would rather that we reconsider what we do and why we do it. But it requires a miraculous conversion experience for most people to escape the belief that getting things is what life is all about.

My prayer for you and my prayer for me -- and my prayer for the Senior Highs who are heading through Tijuana right about now -- is that sooner or later we will learn that and live it.