Envy: That Burning Feeling
August 16, 2026
12th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. Dr. Wesley Avram
SCRIPTURE
Proverbs 23: 17-18; James 3: 11-18
Learning to Sin 2: Envy: That Burning Feeling
Proverbs 23:17,18; James 3: 11-18
There's a Jewish folk story about a certain storeowner who was visited by an angel. The angel offered the man a wish that would give him anything he desired. There was only one condition: his rival, whom he envied intensely, would receive double of whatever he received. After some thought, the envious man asked to be struck blind in one eye.
Envy.
Somewhat less cruel, but still inappropriate, is the prayer from Erma Bombeck (remember her?): "Lord, if you will not make me thin, then at least make my friends fat."
Still envy.
Or to put it even more simply: High school reunions.
~ ~ ~
It's said that of the seven deadly sins, envy is the least attractive.
It's always unpleasant.
Lust, gluttony, pride, laziness, greed, even anger, . . . all have things to be said on their behalf. They give some satisfaction, at least for a minute or two--and can even be put to a little good now and then. But in envy there is no satisfaction. And among these 7 sins David is preaching on these weeks, envy has a talent for hiding. It's slippery, and can take us by surprise.
We talk about being "green" with envy—not a Prius-driving kind of green, but the green of illness, which is how envy was imagined in Medieval times.
Ick.
When we use the term benignly—like when I tell David that I "envy" the joy he finds in ministry with you all—that's much gentler than the envy meant in this list of deadly sins.
~ ~ ~
So let's try to unpack the kind of envy that's on this list.
First, I'll try to define it. Then I'll tell you about a couple ways this envy is icky. Then I'll try some good news on you, with some antidotes to envy in the light of faith.
Definition. You'll need to go with me here, and let go of that more harmless way of using the word for a few minutes.
It's easy to get mixed up about the more dangerous kind of envy. We can confuse it with jealously, or with that other biblical word: coveting. But in Christian thinking, they're different.
Jealousy is a desire to keep something, or someone, we think we have against a perceived threat to our having--whether the perceived threat is real or not.
Jealousy's not always bad. The Bible says God is jealous for ancient Israel. God wants to keep its attention against idols that steal its attention away.
But the narrow band in which jealousy is not destructive can quickly go awry and jealousy can get ugly—as we all know. And it can start looking like envy. Like when trying to protect a relationship someone denies the freedom or particularity of who, or what, they're in relationship with—and in the name of what they think is love, they forget to actually love.
Coveting is a little different: it's wanting something you think you lack and someone else has; . . . not wanting something like what they have, but what they in facthave: you having it; them not having it. It's a precursor to stealing.
But our topic is envy:
Envy is also about lack. But it's not normally about things--even if we often think it is. Envy is about who you think someone else is and you are not.
You may covet your neighbor's new Land Rover, or the dress they were wearing when you saw them getting into it that Land Rover, . . . but you envy who she is, . . . or who you think she is, when she's in that dress getting into that Land Rover. . . . Or pick-up truck. Or boat. Or family. Or job. Or whatever.
It's about the resentment, or regret, or little bit of pain that can might well up inside you—sometimes by surprise.
Envy takes jealousy, and coveting, and makes them a condition, a way of being, a kind of stain.
It might start as simple emulation or admiration, but envy slips something else in—because envy's about us, not someone else. It diminishes our sense of who we are, and then tempts us to blame someone else for how we feel about ourselves.And as this all feeds on itself it can tempt me to think that the only way I can resolve my own envy is to get myself envied!
Maybe I can get a better something than what my neighbor has—until, of course, I think my neighbor's secretly upgraded—restarting the cycle again.
And it's a zero-sum game.
The Land Rover's a silly example, of course, but this stuff can touch many parts of our lives—and in deeper ways.
Aristotle called envy pain at the good fortune of others. (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk II, Chapter 10)
St. John of Damascus called envy "discontent over somebody else's blessings."
Immanuel Kant said that "envy is a propensity to view the well-being of others with distress, even though it does not detract from one's own. (Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals 6:459)[1]
And here's my definition:
Envy is that little feeling that quietly overtakes us when we suspect that our emptiness, or our lack, is bigger than someone else's and then blame the other, not for our lack, but for our feeling. The only way to feel better, then, is to somehow diminish the other.
And remember that this is an equal opportunity feeling.
All of us are prone, in small or big ways, in hidden or obvious ways, constantly or just once in a while: because envy is a spiritual condition we share.
Again, . . . ick.
~ ~ ~
So three things about this kind of envy.
First, it's dishonest.
Second, it's unsettling.
Third, it's sin.
It's dishonest.
This is probably because envy messes with our ability to see clearly. Like in a hall of distorted mirrors, . . . we lose perspective on both ourselves and others.
Think of that. Envy turns another person into a misshapen mirror in which we see a distorted image of ourselves—an image of what we fear about ourselves, or dislike about ourselves, or regret about ourselves, or yearn for about ourselves.
But to do pull that off, envy has to be a little dishonest about both of us—driven by comparison and competition: cooperation, community, conviviality pushed aside.
Comparison and competition are fine, of course, if we have a higher set of values to guide us through them. But if we don't, they can leave us desperate to win at all costs.[2]
It's the fuel that a lot of Hollywood runs on.
It's the fuel that a lot of social media run on.
It's the fuel that a lot of our economy, and politics, run on.
Any national leaders come to mind?
So envy is dishonest.
And that dishonesty is unsettling.
It pulls us away from the present moment—making it harder to accept who we are, and where we are, and how we're called to live in this moment. And it messes with how we think about tomorrow. This is because when we're driven by envy, the future can only be imagined as competition.
And when that's how we imagine the future, we can lose any sense that God wants something different for us: like love, patience, friendship, caregiving, enjoying accomplishment and discovery (our own and others'), living with the suffering that comes with life, encouraging each other in the midst of it all, and making something together.
Look right to the beginning of scripture, in the Book of Genesis, for the lesson:
Two brothers, Cain and Abel, the first siblings. They're farmers, one of livestock and one in the fields. They bring offerings to God, for divine favor.
Abel's offering is accepted. Cain's is not. . . . And off we go. . .
Genesis doesn't tell us why God favored Abel's offering over Cain's. Maybe that silence is deliberate, because the perceived injustices of life (that feed envy) often come without explanation (see Tomlin 65). A car passes you on the left going at least 10 miles an hour faster than you, and you get the ticket. You shake your fist at the sky.
But before Cain says anything to his brother, God finds Cain. Maybe that's because before envy is about our relationship with the one we envy, it is first about our relationship with God.
God asks Cain why's he's downcast, and God then cautions Cain to be careful, lest in his sadness Cain fall into sin.
But Cain says nothing to God at all. He heads straight out to plot his brother's death—deflecting his useless anger at God into anger at his brother.
Dishonest. Unsettling. Sin: turning our faces away from the Love that made us and still wants us. And that's the third point, of course, that envy is sin.
But that's actually good news, because sin can be redeemed.
The whole sweep of scripture is set toward that—revealing and repairing the ways we turn away.
How? you ask?
Well, as far as envy is concerned, since it feeds off emptiness, especially spiritual emptiness, we can starve it by letting peace, and patience, and the work of love fill our spirits.
This takes more than getting our thinking right or trying to convince ourselves that we're ok. It takes ways of living that teach us, and then remind us, and then remind us again that we're not bags without bottoms, that we have traces of love in us, and so we can treat ourselves and each other with appreciation and honor.
Acceptance of others replaces endless comparison.
Finding higher purpose in life replaces aimless competition.
And we can begin to see the world we're living in, and who we're living in it with, more honestly.
We can take responsibility for our feelings, and come to see, against every message we hear to the contrary, that our rise doesn't depend on someone else's fall. Our rise is from God, so we can lift each other.
And we can speak for decency, and generosity, and justice, and sacrifice, and love—to heal the social pain that envy sows.
Listen again to the passage read this morning from the book of James--in a modern translation:
Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced [dishonest].
You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. (James 3: 17,18, from The Message)
There's our antidote to envy.
I know it's not always easy.
But neither is envy.
~ ~ ~
And so as Cain's sin begins not in his feelings about Abel, but in his dealings with God, our own healing begins in our dealings with God. So question God. Wrestle with God. Pray to God and cry out to God. Ask God to come out from hiding. Learn of God, especially as we see God in Jesus. And, then, both in the end and all the while along, let God be God.
It's a life-long effort, this transcending sin stuff, and we never fully get there.
But as long as we're tending to God, and to God's claim on our lives, for good, we're on the way.
Envy free. Mostly.
I'll see you at the next reunion.
Amen.
[1] Graham Tomlin calls it a "gnawing aching pain eating away at our insides. It leaves us no peace and takes away all pleasure in things we might otherwise have enjoyed." (The Seven Deadly Sins, Lion Books, 56). Gregory the Great said that an envious person "so racked by another's happiness, that he inflicts wounds on his own pining spirit.' (Tomlin 56)
[2] Mark Twain said that "a man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied." (Tomlin 60). We become sadder, more critical, more needy, more petty, more dismissive, more angry. All emotions that can envy can hide behind.