Proper 17B’24 The Seven Deadly Sins: Lust
1 September 2024
Song of Songs 2.8-13; Mk.7.1-23
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Amen. –
From The Confessions of St. Augustine
Before I begin today, I would like to offer a disclaimer and warning that the subject matter of my sermon might not be suitable for children who are here today or who may be watching by YouTube or Facebook. Parental discretion is advised.
There’s been some energy around the subject of my sermon series on the seven deadly sins. In fact, according to our office manager and volunteers they have taken several calls from folks asking which sin I was going to preach about on the upcoming Sunday. I don’t know if it was so they could be sure to make it or to make sure to miss it! Well friends, I have certainly saved the best for last – today’s deadly sin is Lust! Don’t you wish had gone to the lake instead of coming to church? Hopefully not!
A rabbi was giving his Friday night homily on the subject of the Ten Commandments and started with this: “Moses trudges down from Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand, and announces to the assembled multitudes: “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is, I got Him down to ten. The bad news is, ‘adultery’ is still in.”1 Former Bishop of Arkansas Larry Maze, often posed a question that will work with just about any subject, his question: “What’s the good news the church has to share for all the bad news the world has to offer?”
How about we start with the bad news first!
The average person of today has been exposed to more explicit media than all of the last four generations of ancestors combined. They would be aghast at the things our children are able to access on the internet, it’s everywhere! One day I walked into a shopping mall and upon entering I was immediately confronted by a 15 by 20ft wall with a black and white image of an attractive human person clad in their delicate underwear. It was advertising for a lingerie store that’s named after a Queen. Me, along with every man, woman, boy, and girl was exposed to this glaring and intrusive image without our consent. This kind of imagery and much worse is easily accessible by children on on-line streaming platforms, with well over 700 different channels to choose from. Various sources estimate that up to 30% of the entire bandwidth of the internet is taken up by pornographic websites. Back in 2015, an on-line dating service for married people had their client list published listing the names of thousands upon thousands of individuals, many of them well known all the way down to local folks right here in central Arkansas.
Well, I think that’s probably enough of the bad news.
Like all of the deadly sins, lust promises to meet a deep need of the soul for love and connection, Lust promises a world full of excitement but delivers a firestorm full of misery. The writer Frederick Buechner noted that, “Sex is sinful to the degree that, instead of drawing you closer to other human beings in their humanness, it unites bodies but leaves the lives inside them hungrier and more alone than before.”[2]
A final note of bad news, the Church over the centuries has not been a lot of help, in fact some of its theology has contributed to the problem. Pope Innocent III (who turned out not to be quite so innocent) said back in the 12th cen. that “the sexual act was intrinsically evil.” Certainly, anyone serious about being a follower of Christ had to remain celibate and abstinent of all physical relations.
Later on, the Puritans came across the Atlantic bringing to America their prudishness, and scarlet letters, hunting for sin, and were particularly fixated on sexual sins. This spirit of judgment has continued into modern times with fundamental and evangelical Christians, hosting ‘Purity commitment ceremonies’ for their youth, publicly pledging their vow to total celibacy before marriage. In my past life as a Professional counselor I can tell you many of them got older, they wound up in therapist’s offices trying to work through all of their emotional hangups, sexual confusion, and anger at God for their failed marriages – where the magic promises hadn’t worked out so well. Getting it sooo wrong while trying to get everything sooo right!
The good news is that the God who created everything including passion, beauty, and sex, knows how it all operates. From the garden of Eden onwards, sexuality and love have been intertwined; while the world constantly tries to separate the two. As one popular songwriter sings, “Your body is a wonderland” and goes on to compare intimate relations with going to an amusement park. Have you ever read the cover of some of those magazines in the grocery store check-out line? Here’s one of my favorites: “Get Your Sexy On: Hair, Skin, & Fitness. Tricks to Try Today!” A recreational activity, a physical mechanism, a contact sport! Is that all it is? Our culture has divorced sexuality from the bounds of a committed relationship and apparently that doesn’t work!
Perhaps a return to the One who wrote owner’s manual on the subject is a good place to start. Genesis shows us the beauty of the creation. After each day of the process of creation God would conclude “this is good!” But on the sixth day when humans were made, God said, “this is very good!” As you may recall prior to the fall in the garden Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed.” God made thought all this good stuff up and sewed it all together with love. But the forces of darkness sought to distort its importance and to separate the sexual act from the commitment of love. Our first reading this morning comes from the Song of Solomon, a book that is unabashedly erotic, the language is beautiful as it describes the wholesome physical and romantic relationship between two lovers who are committed to each other with love: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in the land. The fig tree puts forth figs, and the vines are in blossom: they give forth their fragrance. Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Take out your bulletin and take a glance at this piece called The Sleeping Congregation. Although most all of the congregation is sleeping besides the preacher, the deacon is clearly awake and his eyes are free to roam, let’s just say over to the fair maid on his left. A small detail holds the solution to all those who are weary or trapped by lust. It’s the open bible where it is opened to a passage from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 11 v. 28-30:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” – from The Message translation
The Good News for all the bad news is that the God who knows us best loves us most and wants to give us a life filled up with all his good things where our souls can rest from the constant seeking for love in persons, places, or things where it can never ever be found.
1 Cathcart, Thomas & Klein, Daniel, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes