David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: March 19, 2006

Speaking of Sin:
"Greed, Gluttony and Lust"

In our sermons during Lent we are following a series in which we are looking together at the list of what is called the seven deadly sins: pride and envy, greed and gluttony, lust, anger and sloth. For the past two weeks we have been looking together at pride and envy.

Pride, which makes us shun the small and pursue position instead of pursing being effective.
– You don’t necessarily need position to be effective in the Kingdom of God
– and shunning the small, well, God is interested in the small and the great.

We’ve looked at pride. And we’ve looked at envy.

Envy, which blinds us to the grace of God within our own lives: we’re so busy looking at other lives that we do not see what God has given to us, nor do we bear our responsibilities fully.

We’ve looked at pride and envy, and in the next couple of weeks we will look together at anger and sloth. We will look at sloth, by the way, only if I can get around to it(!) Which leads us today to focus on three sins that I am going to lump together:

Greed, gluttony and lust. Three sins that have a common connection with each other. Three sins which each have to do with a deep hungering within our lives and within our souls; with a legitimate hungering within our lives and in our souls. With a legitimate hungering within our lives and our souls that gets out of whack; that gets out of line; that gets out of control, and which, instead of leading to God’s intention which is our joy and our pleasure and our happiness and our health, leads instead only to pain and ultimately to emptiness –– nothingness, though we may have all we’ve desired.

Greed, gluttony, and lust: The limitless desire for stuff and for money.

Greed, gluttony, and lust. The unfocused desire for food and for nourishment.

Greed, gluttony, and lust. The chaotic desire for sex and intimacy; desires, which in their right place are vital, God given sources of life and joy and pleasure.

Too seldom, however, in its history has the church emphasized this.

Too seldom has the church emphasized and affirmed that God’s desire for us is to take pleasure in life: not only in "spiritual life" but in "physical life."

Too seldom have we said that.

We forget that our God is the creator of "stuff"; that God made everything that we see - every thing that we see. God made the material universe, and after making it, God looked at it all –– Genesis tells us – and said, "it is very good."

To get the picture you need to think of God as a teenager looking at some new electronic invention, a new gadget, and God says not, "it’s very good," but rather God says "It’s cool. It’s really cool; all this stuff that I have made, it is really cool."

We forget that God said that.

And we forget that our Jesus loved parties so much that he was accused, among other things, of being a glutton and a wine bibber. Do you think of Jesus in those terms? Is your Jesus someone who could be accused of that? Well, He was! – he was accused of that: being a glutton and a wine bibber. He loved to be at the center of the party not because he had to, but because he enjoyed it.

And we forget that God our creator is not only the creator of stuff but the inventor of sex: and in the Garden of Eden, in the second chapter of Genesis, the purpose of sex is not merely procreation but it is companionship. It is intimacy. It is pleasure for its own sake: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and become one flesh with another" – the fulfillment of intimacy, the opposite of "it is not good to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). And we forget that in the Bible there is a rather saucy book called the Song of Solomon - a book that affirms God’s blessing on sexual intimacy; a book, which is far too explicit for me to read from this pulpit here in church!

It is "R rated stuff, though today it would probably only be "PG." So maybe I could read it! My father-in-law used to suggest that "PG" stood for "pretty good." Which, I guess, is what the Song of Solomon is.

It is there in the Book: the Song of Solomon. It is in the Book that God has given us. But we have ignored these things, and we have forgotten these things.

And this ignoring of God’s affirmation not just of the spiritual life but of our physical life, this physical part of our being, has been a weakness in the church; and in particular and has been a weakness in the Presbyterian Church; and I hate to say it, it has been a weakness especially in Scottish Presbyterianism in which, for many Scottish Presbyterians, the idea has all too often been prevalent that "if it smacks of fun it can’t be right." If there’s pleasure in it then it cannot have anything to do with the Kingdom of God: we are all far too serious for that!

But how foreign to Jesus and how foreign to the Bible such a way of thinking truly is! And how foreign, too, to Jesus and the Bible is the state in which we find ourselves today at the beginning of the 21^st century in the western world: a state in which we have no limits and no boundaries. Indeed, a state in which we despise limits and boundaries.

A state in which we have material prosperity beyond anything imaginable to most people, most every place, and throughout history.

A state in which we have a food supply in which no one needs to go hungry, in which our super market shelves are stocked to overflowing and our main concern is we don’t bump into something and it all goes rolling somewhere else.

A state in which our attitude to sex is one in which we deem any regulation or restraint to be repressive or unhealthy or perverse or prudish. (And God help us for being accused of being prudish! Who wants to be accused of being a prude these days?)

This is where we are and we have reaped the consequences of it: this limitless, unfocused, chaotic way of life.

1. Look at the world of sex for a moment. Lust is rampant in our world: sex without moral boundaries, sex without relationship. Pornography is an issue that is massive and pervasive in our day especially because of the World Wide Web.

I don’t know if you know, but on the web it is deemed around the world to be a $57 billion industry and here in the United States $12 billion. That is simply huge!

It is estimated that 90% of eight to sixteen year olds have viewed on-line pornography –– 90% of eight to sixteen year olds: surely we are naïve about that.

It is estimated that some 10% of viewers become addicted.

And not unrelated, surely, are the number of rapes. In our nation 250,000 women a year. And that is probably an underestimation

Sexual transmitted diseases are common, the child sex trade –– this is truly horrible –– is booming. In our country is it estimated between 100,000 and 300,000 children are involved. How horrible.

2. And then there is the world of food. Not just the world of sex. Lust may be rampant, but so, too, is Gluttony. Just count the ads on television for food which want to make you water at the mouth. There are those ads, which encourage us to eat bad food –– junk food — and they are followed up by those that say, having done that, you now need to eat "healthy food." But whether bad food or healthy food they are there again, and then again! (And I do encourage you add them up –– see how many there are - again, again and again –– eat, eat, eat). And while 60% of us are overweight, according to the Center for Disease Control and that’s a problem, there is also on the other side the problem of anorexia and bulimia as well, which is also food related - a consequence of food "out of order" as well.

William Willimon used to teach at Duke University before he became a United Methodist Bishop last summer. Willimon once wrote,

"I work at a university where a large proportion of women undergraduates suffer at one time or another from eating disorders. Our moral censure is reserved for those with eating disorders make them too fat rather than too thin. We tend to feel compassion for those whose abuse of eating makes them too thin, and yet we feel condemnation for those whose abuse of eating makes them too fat. Go figure! I expect that what we call bulimia and anorexia both quality for what [traditional] Christian moralists call gluttony. Any time we make "the belly a god," [and he’s quoting the Apostle Paul here in Philippians 3], and obsess over it, worrying about it too much positively or negatively, this would be considered gluttony. Not only is it self-abuse but also it is an abuse of our relationship with God.

The point here is not to condemn, but to say that our approach to food, the place of food within our lives and our society, is out of control, and so in this realm, too, we reap the consequences!

And so, too, in the world of "stuff," where the temptation is greed. The truth of course is that all of us here today are fabulously wealthy. When it comes to stuff, we have plenty of it, and to spare. Maybe you have heard this way of thinking about the world –– where you shrink the world down to one hundred people. It goes like this: if there are 100 people in the world, then . . .

We have it but we just don’t know where to stop.

David Crum is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press and a couple of years ago (Detroit Free Press, April, 2004) while the nation was thinking about corruption in large corporations, he interviewed a man called Joseph Whal who heads a team of financial investigators in the Detroit area. Whal says this, that

"the greatest sport in American isn’t baseball any more, its fraud, and it has lead to an epidemic of white collar theft. . . In our line of work the most dangerous individual’s are college educated men in their 60's who work in management." The churning of a greedy mind as it cooks up a way to rationalize stealing is like a cancer. "Sometimes the motive is that the person has an addiction or builds that can’t be paid at home, but it often starts with someone thinking they were bypassed for a promotion. These schemes develop with rat like cunning and we’re talking about people we consider highly trusted individuals."

We have it, but we don’t know where to stop. And that is what greed is. And even if we do know where to stop, we find that it doesn’t satisfy. It just doesn’t satisfy.

One of the loneliest characters (and there are many of them) in the recent Oscar winning movie, "Crash," is the wife of the Los Angeles District Attorney. Her name is Jean Cabot, and in the movie the character is played by Sandra Bullock. (It is a good movie, by the way, but has lots of foul language in it). This person, Jean Cabot, has a fabulous car. She lives in a gorgeous house. She has a maid and a gardener. She has expensive art everywhere (and the camera pans in on it again and again). She has everything — but she has nothing. She is filled with fear and she is filled with loneliness. And in one scene, after her car has been stolen, she speaks to a friend on the phone. She is wandering around the house restlessly as she speaks to this friend on the phone. And she’s complaining about her maid, Maria. She says,

"I sent Maria out for groceries and that was two hours ago Carol," and Carol tells her to calm down and she speaks back to Carol, "you’re one to talk you go through, what, six housekeepers a year? . . . I’m not snapping at you I’m angry, yes, at them, at them, the police, at Rick, at Maria, at the dry cleaners who destroyed another blouse today, at the gardener who keeps, who keeps on over watering the lawn.

I just hoped that I would wake up today and I would feel better. But I was still mad, and I realize that it has nothing to do with my car being stolen. I wake up like this every morning –– I’m angry all the time. I’m angry all the time, and I don’t know why Carol, I don’t know why."

And she goes on and on. And then suddenly realizes that her so-called friend, Carol, has hung up on her. She has everything – but nothing – and no one. They are all gone.

Of course none of these stories, none of these statistics, none of these problems are new. They are, in fact, as old as the hills. And they are there in the scripture.

In the scripture we have greed, don’t we, in that lonely figure of the Zacchaeus the tax collector. Trapped by limitless quest for things, by greed, for a glimmer of more stuff. Just like Judas who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, Zacchaeus betrays his soul and becomes a tax collector and goes against his own people, and cheats them as well. (Luke 19:1-10)

And there, too, in scripture, as we just read in 2 Samuel 11, we have lust, in the figure of King David, righteous King David, the greatest King that Israel ever knew – who in a weak moment gave in to lust.

We all have weak moments whether it is lust or gluttony or greed, or some other sin, but it is a question of what we do with that weak moment –– whether we hang onto it or allow it to "hang on to us."

Well David allowed it to "hang on to him" and it took him captive, until he abandoned his leadership, abandoned his integrity all together. He had already begun to abandon his leadership–– he should have been out with his troops at the battlefront, but instead used his power of "leadership" to have Bathsheba, and then to have Bathsheba’s husband put to death, to get rid of the problem (Bathsheba’s pregnancy) that way.

And there, too, in scripture we have gluttony as well, not only greed and lust, but gluttony as well – in the tragic figure of Esau (Genesis 25) whose tricky younger brother Jacob caught him at a weak moment when he was hungry and famished. Jacob said, "Hey, listen I’ll give you what you want. I’ll give you this soup, this stew, in exchange for your birthright" (that is, in exchange for Esau’s future). And Esau does it! Food in exchange for his future! No restraint! No sense of proportion! It’s all gone away! He gives it away for a measly bowl of stew. Like a teenager throwing away his or her future for a measly can of beer and a drive in a car!!

But this is not just about teenagers. It is about us doing the same kind of thing at some point or another with one of these weaknesses or another:

• Struggling with limits to stuff or to food or to sex.
• Struggling with pleasure and stress and fear and loneliness and our own identity.
• Struggling with enormous hunger within our souls that seek to be satisfied and at times demand to be satisfied, and they so overwhelm us that we give in, in ways that cause us and others, and God - pain, and bring us no fulfillment but emptiness.

It is about us not someone else. Not just about the past either, but about us, today.

And it is about Jesus as well, who longs to help us at such moments as these.

Remember our story in John 6? Jesus, having supplied the crowd of 5000 people with their legitimate bodily needs (he took care of people and their bodies. He cares for the physical in life). Well, having fed the crowd of 5000 he told those who pursued him the next day, who wanted more and more bread –– more and more without limits –– he said, "folks you are looking for your satisfaction and your fulfillment in the wrong place: even if you get it, it will not satisfy."

And then in an astounding statement he says, "what you need is me. I alone can satisfy the deepest hunger of your soul and put all of these warring hungers into the right perspective within your life.

"Do not work for the food that parishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the son of man will give to you," They say to him, "Sir give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

"Blessed," says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount ((Matthew 5:6), "Blessed are those whose deepest hungering and thirsting is after righteousness." That is, hungering and thirsting for a right relationship with God, and a right and a just relationship with others, individually and in society. "Blessed are they, for they shall be satisfied."

In interpreting Jesus, I think it is St. Augustine who says it best, "You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."

Let’s say this together: "You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."

We are not alone. We are not alone with our greed or our gluttony or our lust (or our pride or our envy or our anger or our sloth for that matter).

And if we want to get a handle on all of this we need in a sense to handle it together: How desperately we need at least one other person to whom we can unburden our soul.

But more than that, we need Christ, and to know that Christ is the one above all else who satisfies our deepest hungers and longings.

This should be our prayer that God would give to us a passion for Christ that is stronger than every other passion. A passion for Christ that puts all those misplaced, limitless, unfocused, chaotic passions for what-is-good, puts those in order in our souls.

You know I am not a utopian. Once in awhile we get miracles in which everything is fixed all at once. But for the most part I believe we will struggle against sin, against these sins and others, all the way through our lives.

YET, I also believe this, and believe it with a passion: that when Christ becomes for us "the bread of life," when we hunger and thirst for such righteousness, then God places us on a road and a path in life in which we will find more satisfaction and fulfillment and joy than on any other path we can find.

My friends, never forget that these sins are nothing other than dead ends. Deadly sins, that leave us empty –– but Jesus Christ came, and comes, to give us lives that are filled and fulfilled.

Let’s bow before God in prayer.

Lord Most High, you know the depth of our hunger, our hunger for meaning and purpose and for value and for joy and happiness and pleasure. We pray that in seeking you we might find you and find more of these things than we ever dreamed possible. Where we are weak –– strengthen us; where we are strong –– humble us before your mighty throne, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen