A Bear And Some Bees
I'm going to tell you a story about a bear and some bees . . . but it
is not my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh story, nor is it a nice story at
all. This being rather the story of Beary, a little toddler's teddy
bear and constant companion. And this is the story of Edie, the
little boy's oh-so-jealous and envious big sister, and how she one day
conceived of the perfect way to get her revenge upon her little brother
for having been born into the same family as her and thereby, unknown
to him, vying with her for her mother and father's affections, and by
virtue of his oh-so-cute babyness, winning the contest hands down.
I don't know when or how exactly the diabolical plan for revenge
entered 6-year-old Edie’s mind, but I do believe I know when the seed
of the desire for revenge was planted. It was planted when J.B., the
oh-so-cute new baby, came into the apartment for the first time and
three year old Edie realized that all eyes were on him. The great
amount of attention she had once enjoyed as an infant and a toddler was
now being given freely to the new baby, not her, and it was then that
one of the seven deadly sins took hold of her heart – envy – and she
could no longer look out of her eyes without envy's ugly film coating
her view of the world and distorting it horribly.
Now what is envy exactly? It is a pretty horrible state. We
all know what it is to be sad when something bad happens to someone we
love. That makes sense. And we all know what it is to be sad when
something good happens to someone we hate. Sure. But envy is way more
complicated and so much yuckier than that. Envy is when we feel
miserable because something good has happened to someone we love.
Did you get that? (Repeat).
Did I love my little brother? – Yes. As a 3 year old, 4
year old, 5 year old, 6 year old, I would regularly defend him from
other children, and I'd rock him and put him to bed as a baby. I
even got to change his diapers and feed him. I read him stories. All
that stuff. Did I envy him? Are you kidding!!!! Of course I did. I'd
watch him with a new toy, having a ball, and I'd be miserable. I'd see
him cuddling with my mama, and I was wanting to scream and cry.
Pretty hard to justify such an emotional state, isn't it? And
yet, we do. We justify it, we hide from the harsh reality of it,
all the while nurturing and nourishing a terrible inner state known as
envy. It is not innocent. It is not harmless. It is
among the most harmful inner states there is – harmful to the one
consumed by it and harmful to the people around her.
So I don't know when or how she got the idea. But one beautiful spring
morning, 6 year old Edie took 3 year old J.B.’s soft, cuddly and
well-handled teddy bear from his bed while he was sleeping and brought
it outside to a hole in the ground where wasps had made a nest. She
carefully laid the little bear over the wasp's hole. And then, when her
little brother awoke in a panic and cried, “Where is Beary?” She led
him to the scene of the crime and watched as he grabbed his teddy bear
and ran back to the house followed by angry wasps.
Hard to come up with a good reason for that, isn't it?
So when her mother asked, “Why did you do that?” she couldn't really
say. She was not yet as clever as an adult, who can come up with
all sorts of justifications and ways of hiding from admitting simple
meanness to herself. She knew it was mean, and she was actually
horrified to see it all play out, just as meanly as she had imagined it
would.
So she dreaded the ultimate punishment, which her mother often meted
out. “Go to your room and think about what you've done.” A
spanking, a week of extra chores, no supper for a month, any of these
would have been so much better. But no, it was “Go to your room and
think about what you've done,” and there she was alone with the picture
of her baby-brother running from the angry wasps in his pajamas. Yuk.
I told that story one summer at Camp Mitchell when working with 8 – 10
year olds. I had asked them to talk about something they had done
that they could say was really wrong – something about which they felt
remorse. And they were coming up with some silly stories – as if not a
one of them had ever committed an immoral act in their lives. And I
knew that wasn't true. So I said, look, here's a story from my
childhood, here's something I did. And I told that story.
When I finished, I looked and saw 5-year-old Brendan staring wide-eyed
at me. A little brother with a big sister himself, he was
horrified by this. “You did that, “ he said! “You did that to
uncle J.B.!” And I had to say, well, yes, yes, I did.
Months later I was driving and Brendan and Rachel were in the car and I
said, “Oh, my brother's birthday is next week. I'd better get him
something – a book of poetry or something.” Brendan's voice sounded
somberly from the back seat. “You had better get him a new teddy bear
is what you had better get him.”
Restorative justice – not a bad concept. Making amends, a very good idea. I was proud of my son for making the connection.
However, my brother was not amused by the bear I sent him in the mail.
The experience with the wasps still stings, and I'm not so sure he'll
ever really forgive me for it. But that does not mean that I haven't
been forgiven, nor does it mean that I can't turn away from envy now
and be changed.
The good news of the Gospel is that there is forgiveness, divine
forgiveness, and there is even more than that, there is the possibility
of transformation if we can learn to see these sinful states and how
they disfigure and distort reality, and then make the choice not to
feed them any longer. Then God can send us nourishment for the
transformation of our very beings. We can in fact be changed.
But we cannot be forgiven, nor changed if we pretend. If we believe the
lie that we know better, that we are always in the right, that every
misfortune in life is because of other people's having victimized us,
then God can't really help us. If we are the only people on earth to
escape having done wrong or been consumed by envy, jealousy, and other
obsessive states, then, in the words of the Apostle John, “the truth is
not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just,
will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
God does forgive, and also, by his grace, transforms us, changes us,
makes our minds new and our hearts clean, when we dare to face the sin
that disfigures us and turn away from feeding it with our thoughts, our
deeds, our clever justifications and defenses.
Back when I was doing prison ministry over 20 years ago in Boston,
there was a man employed as a drug rehabilitation counselor in one of
the prisons who had served time in that same institution. The
first time he came through the cafeteria line as an employee, one of
the guards, who had been a guard in the prison back when this man was
an inmate, stopped him and refused to let him get his food. “You were a
punk then, and you're a punk now,” he said.
People often cannot forgive. They hold onto a negative judgment
of someone else like a trophy and refuse to let go, no matter how the
person may have truly changed. This is because they are unaware
of their own sin, usually, and don't want to look. It is so much easier
to be consumed with negativity about someone else than to look
realistically at ourselves. Self-knowledge tends to make us more
truthful, more transparent, and more compassionate. A judgmental,
critical attitude is a good sign of our blindness and ignorance.
There is one basic rule of thumb here. We cannot really critique
anyone for anything that we have not honestly seen in ourselves.
(Repeat).
And when we know the distorting power of sin in ourselves, we will be
realistic, and truthful in our critiques, but not judgmental. We will
know it is not our place to condemn, for we ourselves have not been
condemned, but forgiven and allowed to change. If God has not condemned
us, how or why would we think we could condemn one another? If God is
working to transform us, how or why would we think that others could
not be changed?
The gardener knows. The gardener does not condemn the fig tree
that has born no fruit for years and years, stunted in its growth. But
the gardener sees that there is still a possibility for growth, no
matter how small we have become, how puny in our love. The gardener is
always at work, looking for the root of the problem, and seeking to
work the soil and promote the growth of love and truth in us, which
bears fruit worthy of repentance. Thank God for that. It is good news.
The Rev. Edie Bird
Third Sunday in Lent
March 11, 2007
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