Comparison – The thief of joy
Readings: Luke 13. 1-9, Isaiah 55. 1-9
In our Gospel reading today a group of people come to Jesus with a current news story, almost expecting some sort of comment from Him about it. Perhaps hoping that Jesus will assure them of their moral goodness, and yet Jesus offers no such assurance, instead offering a warning and the promise of God’s mercy.
Pilate is a rather nasty character, he’s cruel and merciless, the day he decides Jesus is innocent and wants to free him he must have been feeling unusually generous, because all testimonies point to his cruelty, his lack of care for people. And in our reading we hear that he’s sent soldiers to kill people when they’re making their sacrifices. These are Galileans, so we presume they’re in the Temple for some key festival such as Passover. So they’re going about slaughtering their animals for sacrifice and Pilate has sent soldiers to slaughter them in the same way. This is typical Pilate, no respect or care for people, treating them the same as animals, and no respect for their worship, killing them in the Temple in the midst of their worship.
And so a group come to Jesus asking for his take on this, and Jesus gives one, but not the one they would have expected. In that culture, at that time, the assumption is that if things are going well with you God is blessing you, if things are going wrong then you must have done something to anger God and He is punishing you for it. Perhaps we can identify with that impulse. If things are going well we’re blessed, if things are going badly we must have done something wrong. Or, and particularly these day, if things are going well it’s all down to our hard work, our brilliance, when they go wrong, well, we’re looking for someone to blame.
Life is, of course, a bit more complicated than that. But how familiar does their response sound? What did they do wrong to deserve that? And running underneath it all the assumption that we’re doing alright because that hasn’t happened to us. How quick are we to compare ourselves to others? I wonder how your Lenten fasts are going? How familiar does this sort of conversation sound?
‘How’s giving up chocolate going?’ you ask the person sitting next to you ‘are you finding it hard? I must admit this morning I was feeling weak and ate a crème egg’. ‘That’s nothing’ they respond, ‘I ate 6 before breakfast’.
It makes us feel better doesn’t it, we’re doing great compared to that person, in fact, we’re doing so well we can probably reward ourselves for doing so well with another one. But how would you feel if they said that, ‘well, it’s been tough but I’ve managed to resist so far’? We may say how impressed we are, but inside we probably feel pretty rubbish that we caved when they didn’t. We came seeking validation that our little hiccup was just that, and that everyone else had done the same so it didn’t matter. Comparison will steal our joy.
Or did we start Lent by asking everyone what they’d given up for Lent? We may have just been curious but the second people start answering we start grading how dedicated they are, and therefore how dedicated we look by comparison. ‘Oh you’ve given up chocolate? I’m definitely doing better than you’. ‘Oh you’ve gone vegan? How are they doing that? I can’t even go a few days without meat’. Comparison will steal our joy.
Incidentally, this is why Jesus tells us to keep our fasting a secret, so that we can’t big ourselves up for doing better than others, and so we don’t knock our brothers and sisters down who aren’t pressing forward in the same way as us. Our fasting is between us and God, when we start telling everyone else about it we start knocking down or bigging up either ourselves or others.
Moving away from Lent for a moment, when we see someone else gossiping or talking about someone behind their back in rather negative terms, do we take that as an excuse that if they’re doing it, it must be ok for us to do it too? Do we start using others’ failings and sins as an excuse to jump into them ourselves? ‘If they’re doing it, it can’t be that bad’, using others sins as the excuse for our own.
We want the validation that we’re a good person, that our failings are minor and everything is completely fine. But this scramble to the top doesn’t really sound like the sort of abundant life God talks about through Isaiah. ‘All you who are thirsty, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come, buy and eat’. He’s talking about the free gift of God, how God satisfies our deepest needs. That doesn’t sound compatible with keeping an eye on everyone else just to be sure that we are doing that little bit better than them. If we’ve had a crème egg, that searching for someone who has had two, so that we’re back on top. But not only will comparison steal our joy, it will also give us a rather false impression of our own goodness, our own holiness.
Jesus’ message to those who come to Him for validation that they are doing better than those other people, those killed by Herod and those whom the tower fell on, is this. They’re no worse than you, if you think everything is great with you because that’s not you, you’re wrong, and worse than that, you’re in just as much danger. Repent, turn around and take the narrow road, or you will perish too.
Because here’s the thing, our scale is off. Let’s say our scale for good and bad actions and people is about the length of this church, we’re all somewhere on this scale with the best people at one end and the worst at the other. I’d imagine we’d probably all place ourselves somewhere around 2/3 of the way up. But whilst we are all scrambling around, comparing ourselves on this little scale and jostling for position we’ve missed the fact that God’s standard, the one He is measuring us against, the worst might be that back wall, but true goodness is somewhere far beyond that East window. We’re so concerned with getting better on our understanding of what the standard is, we risk missing the true standard.
And here’s the other issue, we can’t fight our way through that wall at the top of our scale, we can push everyone else down and out of the way but that isn’t going to work on that East wall. Jesus confronts our comparison with one another with the cold waters of reality, none of us, no matter how good, how much better than others we are, truly measure up.
But there’s good news too. We don’t have to fight our way through that wall, God brings us through as a gift, unearned and undeserved. Through Christ’s death on the cross God brings us to that standard, if we’re a Christian, trusting in Jesus, we’re wrapped about in Jesus’ righteousness, we’re clothed with him, and he meets that standard.
Salvation is the gift of God, our right relationship with God has nothing to do with any good we’ve done. Perhaps we know that for ourselves, but do we act like it? Or are we comparing ourselves to our brothers and sisters. Wow they really know their Bible, God seems to answer their prayers all the time, they have this fantastic gift that they bring to the Church, look at the amazing work they’re doing for God. Why isn’t that me?! I wish I was like that, I wish I was them. Why do we do this to ourselves when it’s all a gift. We’re saved by grace, it’s grace all the way down, so why do we then try and earn it after the fact by scrambling over our brothers and sisters, pretending that we are still on this internal scale?
And not scrambling to do the very best we can, no, in many ways that would be commendable, but no, instead putting in just enough effort that we are just ahead of everyone else. ‘I’ve read in the Bible that we shouldn’t do this, but they do it so it’s fine’. Or we know we’ve messed up? Well, they messed up too that little bit worse so it’s fine, we’re still ahead. We can’t rejoice with our brothers and sisters when they’re walking the right path because we need them to mess up to make us feel better, to validate our own messing up. This isn’t the Christian life.
When we stop scrambling, when we sit back and remember that it is by grace we are saved, that there was nothing we did to earn God’s love, and nothing we can do for God to love us any more or any less, that’s where freedom is found. And from that place comes deep thankfulness to God for all He has given us. We are suddenly free to stop comparing ourselves to others, we’ve all fallen short, we all need to repent and turn back and go God’s way, yet as Christian’s we’ve all been saved through Christ’s death and resurrection in the same way.
That isn’t to say nothing we do, good or bad, matters, that we can do as we wish, God still has his standard, his call to us to live in holiness and obedience, God’s gift isn’t given to be abused as we carry on doing whatever we like. As Jesus reminds us, we’re meant to be bearing fruit, the fruit of faith and righteousness and goodness and obedience. And as he reminds us, he reminds us too of God’s mercy, his patience with us when we’re slow to bear fruit. How he will give us all we need to bear it.
Our salvation means we should be bearing fruit, living differently, but it’s no longer so much about the rules, it’s about our love for God, our longing for him that means we live the way he calls us to. Loving obedience, not cold rule following. And as we start to live in the loving trust and obedience of faith, we bear fruit, start to blossom and bloom as God longs for each of us to do.
We’re not freed from rules, rather given freedom, among other things, to not have to keep them to earn our salvation, but rather keeping them in thankfulness to God for salvation already received, and in doing so we can stop comparing ourselves with our fellow Christians. Which means we can stop scrambling over each other to be doing that little bit better and start lifting each other up. To help each other when they stumble, not using it as an opportunity to big ourselves up, to give ourselves a quick pat on the back for not doing whatever it is they did, but to respond with love in helping them back to their feet as we walk in God’s ways together.
My brothers and sisters, comparison is the thief of joy. Let us not use one another’s failings, their worst moments to quiet our consciences or assuage our guilt, using them as the standard for Christian living. Let us instead look to Jesus, who is the author and perfecter of our faith, let us turn from sin and trust in his mercy and forgiveness, knowing that we have nothing to prove, as God has done everything needed for our salvation. Push on towards the goal, knowing God’s spirit is at work within us to help us. For when we’re no longer looking either side of us to get validation from others that we’re doing a little better than them, we can look ahead to God, who has given us so much, who loves us exactly as we are, our failings and all, and press on towards Him, growing in holiness and righteousness of life, rejoicing in Him, just as He rejoices over us.
Amen