03-25-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE SUPERFICIAL SAGA: PART VII

    My family and I moved to Meadville in November of 2003.  Prior to that, I served a church in Salem, Ohio for about seven-and-a-half years. I believe it was near the end of September of 2003 when I formally announced to the congregation that we would be leaving Salem.  I was surprised by how fast the news spread in the community.

    For example, it wasn’t more than a few days after I made my announcement in church that I was approached on the street by a young man I knew from the gym.  His name was Dominic Panzott.  Dominic approached me and said, “I hear you’re leaving town.”  I said, “Yes.  We’ll   be moving to Meadville, Pennsylvania.   It’s a tremendous opportunity and I’m really looking forward to it.”  He said, “Meadville.  Isn’t that where Allegheny College is?”  I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”  He said, “Oh.”

    I was puzzled by his response, so I asked him, “Are you familiar with Meadville?”  He said, “Yeah.  I went to Allegheny College for a year.”  Then I asked him, “Well, what did you think of Meadville?”  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Pretty boring.”  I said, “Dom, I’m raising three kids.  Boring is exactly what I want!”

    Now, those of you who’ve been paying attention know that the subject matter for today is supposed to be gluttony.  Thus, you’ve got to be wondering, “Why on earth I would begin my sermon with a story like that?” What has the relative boredom or excitement of Meadville got to do with gluttony?  Just keep that thought in mind. Hopefully it’ll all make sense by the end of this sermon.

    This is the seventh in a series of sermons entitled The Superficial Saga.  It’s a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. We poke a lot of fun at sin these days.  Truth be told, I don’t think we take sin very seriously.  Yet God takes sin seriously.  In fact, God takes sin so seriously…that he sent his Son to die on a cross in order to overcome it. Sin is not a matter to be taken lightly, as though a person could saunter into God’s presence at any time, in any mood, with any sort of life behind them…and at once perceive God there.   No, the sense of God’s reality is a progressive and often laborious achievement of the soul; the soul that takes sin seriously and earnestly tries to dispel it.

    Like I said, The Superficial Saga is a sermon series on the seven deadly sins.  The seven deadly sins are: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.  Yet along with the seven deadly sins there are what we call the seven holy virtues or the seven cardinal virtues. The seven holy virtues are meant to counteract the seven deadly sins. For example, the opposite of pride is humility. The opposite of envy is love. The opposite of wrath is forgiveness.  The opposite of sloth is diligence.  The opposite of greed is charity.  The opposite of gluttony is temperance, and the opposite of lust is chastity or purity. You see, the only way to conquer sin…is to replace it with something better.

    Five weeks ago, we examined the sin of pride. There we determined that pride is a sin basically because Jesus said it was. The secret to overcoming pride is humility. We determined that the key to humility is to approach God not as the big, self-sufficient, and self-reliant adults we pretend to be.  Instead, we approach God as little children: frail, empty, dependent…needing a gracious and loving God in the worst possible way.

    Four weeks ago, we examined the sin of envy.  We determined that envy is cold-hearted and

cruel. From a theological standpoint envy is basically our own sense of dissatisfaction with the way God created us.  The secret to conquering envy is love.  And the secret to love…is to wish what’s best for someone else.

    Three weeks ago we examined the sin of wrath or anger. We determined that anger is a normal human emotion that needs to be expressed.   Yet that anger needs to be expressed in the form of an offering to God.  In other words, we express our anger to God in prayer…and then leave it in God’s hands to rectify the situation.  The secret to conquering anger is forgiveness.  Forgiveness then breaks the cycle of anger that peace might rule the day.

    Two weeks ago we examined the sin of sloth.  We determined that sloth is essentially a spiritual apathy that stems from a sense of hopelessness about the world. The key to overcoming sloth is to remember that we work for God, not for anyone else. We are called to remain diligent in our tasks, and in our belief, that God’s kingdom will come to pass when all the world comes to serve God.

    Last week we examined the sin of greed.  We determined that all that greed gets us is a whole lot of stress and a much shorter life.  Greed says, “I want, I need, I’ve simply got to have.” Charity says, “Thank you, God, for what I do have.”  Thus, perhaps charity is just as much for us…as it is for whatever charitable institution to which we choose to give.

    Today we examine the sin of gluttony.  Gluttony is unique among the seven deadly sins in that it doesn’t seem to affect anyone but us.  I mean, if you happen to eat too much, who are you hurting besides yourself?  Of course, as we shall soon see, gluttony applies to far, far more than the mere intake of food.  But for now, let’s focus on the intake of food.  Eating too much these days is often perceived as a sign of the good life.  Case in point…where would the holiday of Thanksgiving be without the sin of gluttony? 

    Have any of you ever seen the television show, The Big Bang Theory?  Aside from the fact that – like far too many T.V. shows, it seems to be sex-obsessed – the writing is really quite clever.  It features three physicists with Ph.D.s, an engineer who only holds a Master’s Degree and a pretty girl across the hall who is an aspiring actress.  Leonard and Sheldon are two of the physicists, who happen to be roommates.

    In one scene, Leonard walks into their apartment with a large bag of Chinese take-out food.  He says to Sheldon, “I hope you’re hungry!” To which Sheldon replies, “Interesting. A friendly sentiment in this country, a cruel taunt in the Sudan.  It’s a lesson in context.”

    A lesson in context, indeed.  Eating too much in this country is often perceived as a sign of the good life.  Yet listen to what a woman named Francine Prose has to say about gluttony in a book entitled, Gluttony.  She writes:

One-third of all Americans, approximately sixty-three million people, are overweight. Fifteen percent of all American children are overweight.  Two hundred fifty thousand deaths can be attributed to poor diet and inactivity.  Fifty percent of cardiovascular disease is related to excess weight. We spend as much as fifty billion dollars a year dieting.  Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery has become the new status surgery for the rich; more chic than a face-lift.  That fifty billion for diets is more than we spend on education, training, employment and social services. We Americans spend more on dieting than the gross national product of Ireland.

    Maybe gluttony does affect more than just ourselves.  Thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas once said that gluttony was the devil’s bait for our first parents.  He’s referring to Adam and Eve, of course. As it says in Genesis 3, the forbidden fruit was a delight to the eyes and good for food.  Thus, tempted by the serpent, Eve took of the fruit and ate. Then she gave some of it to her husband, and he ate of it as well.  At that, sin entered the world.  Could we go so far as to say it was gluttony that brought about original sin? After all, Adam and Eve were tempted with food, and they failed the test.

    Now let’s consider the passage that Nancy read a moment ago from the gospel according to Matthew.  After Jesus was baptized, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  Note, however, that it wasn’t until after he had fasted for forty days that the devil came to meet him.  Hunger was the door through which the devil tried to enter.  “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  The devil knew that hunger would be Jesus’ weakest flank at this point in time…and that’s where he chose to strike. Yet unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus did not fail his test.  Jesus replied, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

    The passing or failing of temptation aside, I think these stories reveal what gluttony really is.

Gluttony is weakness.  And weakness is the door through which the devil always tries to enter.  The devil always worms in…right at the point of our most glaring weakness.

    I thought about this weakness as I read an article by Larry Peers entitled, The Problem Trap.  You see a quote from Larry Peers’ article in the Silent Reflection portion of your bulletin today.  He writes:

One of the primary kinds of stories that takes hold in a congregation and makes change difficult is what is known as the problem-saturated story, or one in which the focus is on who or what is or has been wrong.  You can recognize the problem-saturated story when you’re in a group where someone offers an example of how difficult or awful something is in the congregation, and before you know it the rest of us can’t help but chime in with more evidence for how truly bad and impossible the situation is. We can almost hear ourselves say – even if the words aren’t verbalized – “If you think that’s bad, let me tell you how it is even worse than that!”

    Weakness is the door through which the devil always tries to enter.  You’ve heard the term, “Glutton for punishment,” have you not?  How would it be if we coined another term here, because I think it truly applies.  How would it be if we coined the term, “Glutton for misery?” A desire to be miserable is a very strange weakness that a lot of us seem to have.  And the more we gripe and moan and complain, the more miserable we become…and the less likely we are to ever encounter a change for the better. It’s also the less likely we are to ever encounter God.    For you see, our incessant grumbling can quickly become a cancer.

    Such was exactly the case in the passage I read from the book of Jeremiah. The Hebrew people had been conquered by the Babylonians. Many had been deported from their homes in Jerusalem and forced to live in the city of Babylon.  The Hebrew people were none-too-pleased about that.  So what did they do?  They griped, and they moaned, and they complained.  And their incessant grumbling was quickly becoming a cancer.

    This is the situation Jeremiah was addressing. Speaking on behalf of God, he cried, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, to all the exiles whom I have sent into Babylon: Build houses and live in them.  Plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives, and have sons and daughters.  Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may multiply and not decrease.  Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

    Did you catch that last part there?  “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” In essence he was saying, “Don’t cave in to your sense of despair and hopelessness.”  He reminded them of who they were outside of the problem, and encouraged them to do what they knew how to do when they were not in exile.  These actions were the start of a new story.  Jeremiah was prophetically helping the people of Israel to re-author their story in the midst of exile.  In other words, bloom where you’re planted.  And you’re either a part of the solution…or you’re a part of the problem.

    I hear a lot of complaints about the church today.  I hear a lot of complaints about the city of Meadville, as well.  Why, it seems as though we truly are gluttons for misery.  Yet as Jeremiah said to the people of his day, so, too, do I think he would say to us: “Seek the welfare of the city and the church where I have sent you…for in their welfare, you will find your welfare.” 

    My old friend Dominic Panzott said that Meadville was boring.  To him, I suppose it was.  To me, it’s not boring at all.  In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what you make of it.  Amen.

 

03-18-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE SUPERFICIAL SAGA: PART VI

    Haddon Robinson is the Professor of Preaching at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston, Massachusetts.  He recently gave a lecture that somewhat highlighted the evolution of preaching.  More specifically, he said that the model for the preacher has changed.  For example, up through the 1940s and into the early 1950s, the model for the preacher was the evangelist. In other words, preachers were doing their level best to get people to commit their lives to Jesus Christ.

    In the late 1950s and on through the 1960s the model for the preacher became that of the Bible teacher.  Helping people to understand the Bible came to be the most important thing.    It’s interesting to note, however, that he never addressed the 1970s.  Apparently the 1970s was a lost decade of preaching.  In the 1980s and the 1990s, the model for the preacher became that of the therapist.  In other words…the task of the preacher came to be meeting the needs of people who were trying to be Christian, but who were still largely secular. 

    He is much more critical of preaching today.  He says, and I quote, “Sermons today are much more likely to be topical than expository…and many of the materials in the sermon come out of the behavioral sciences.  The aim of most sermons today…is not to explain the biblical text.  The aim of most sermons today is to connect with the listeners’ felt needs.” Then he adds, “The Bible is used as a way to get a divine imprint on what is simply good advice.”

    Ouch!  Is that what the preached word has become?  Is it simply good advice?  Or is the preached word still meant to be, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, the word of God to a lost humanity?  Is the preached word still meant to be, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, divine instruction on the way to live a godly life?  Is the preached word still meant to be, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, a means of grace by which one can draw closer to God?  Hey, I’m old school.  I still think theology is important.  Thus, I suspect you know what I think.   But just in case you don’t…let me tell you what I’m really trying to accomplish in a sermon.

    The goal, plain and simple, is communion with God.  All I’m trying to do is help you come to know God.  As John Calvin noted in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.”  Yet what do we see when we look at ourselves?  We see ourselves as sinful human beings and we see a great chasm between us and God.  Yet we also see a redeemer in the person of Jesus Christ: a redeemer who sets us right with God when we confess our sin and sincerely strive to repent, sincerely strive to live a better life, and sincerely strive to have a change of heart.  Perhaps John the Baptist put it best when he came to announce the arrival of God’s Messiah.  He cried, “Repent…for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  In other words, we need to change the way we are. Thus, the goal of preaching is not to make us feel good about ourselves.  The goal of preaching…is to inspire us to change.

    This is the sixth in a series of sermons entitled, The Superficial Saga.  It’s a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. We poke a lot of fun at sin these days.  Truth be told, I don’t think we take sin very seriously.  Yet God takes sin seriously.  In fact, God takes sin so seriously…that he sent his Son to die on a cross in order to overcome it. Sin is not a matter to be taken lightly, as though a person could saunter into God’s presence at any time, in any mood, with any sort of life behind them…and at once perceive God there.  No, the sense of God’s reality is a progressive and often laborious achievement of the soul; the soul that takes sin seriously and earnestly tries to dispel it.

    Like it said, The Superficial Saga is a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.  Yet along with the seven deadly sins there are what we call the seven holy virtues or the seven cardinal virtues. The seven holy virtues are meant to counteract the seven deadly sins. For example, the opposite of pride is humility. The opposite of envy is love. The opposite of wrath is forgiveness.  The opposite of sloth is diligence.  The opposite of greed is charity.  The opposite of gluttony is temperance, and the opposite of lust is chastity or purity.  You see, the way to conquer sin…is to replace it with something better. 

    Four weeks ago, we examined the sin of pride. There we determined that pride is a sin basically because Jesus said it was. The secret to overcoming pride is humility. We determined that the key to humility is to approach God not as the big, self-sufficient, and self-reliant adults we pretend to be.  Instead, we approach God as little children: frail, empty, dependent…needing a gracious and loving God in the worst possible way.

    Three weeks ago we examined the sin of envy. We determined that envy is cold-hearted and cruel. From a theological standpoint, envy is basically our own sense of dissatisfaction with the way God created us.  The secret to conquering envy is love.  And the secret to love…is to wish what’s best for someone else.

    Two weeks ago we examined the sin of wrath or anger.  We determined that anger is a normal human emotion that needs to be expressed.  Yet that anger needs to be expressed in the form of an offering to God.  In other words, we express our anger to God in prayer…and then leave it in God’s hands to rectify the situation.  The secret to conquering anger is forgiveness.  Forgiveness then breaks the cycle of anger in order that peace might rule the day.

    Last week we examined the sin of sloth.  We determined that sloth is essentially a spiritual apathy that stems from a sense of hopelessness about the world.  The key to overcoming sloth is to remember that we work for God, not for anyone else.  We are called to remain diligent in our tasks and in our belief that God’s kingdom will come to pass when all the world comes to serve God.

    Today we examine the sin of greed. Perhaps the most famous personification of greed can be found in Charles Dickens’ novel, A Christmas Carol.  I’m talking about Ebenezer Scrooge, of course. Why the very name “Scrooge” has become synonymous with the word “greed.”  In the novel, Dickens introduces Ebenezer Scrooge with these words:

Oh!  But he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!  A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire…secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

    When it comes to the sin of greed, perhaps there is no more appropriate description.  These days, we tend to view Bill Gates in a similar light.  I’ve heard it said that Bill Gates was once asked by a reporter, “How much is enough?”  To which Bill Gates replied, “You can never have enough.”  I’ve got to admit that I was unable to substantiate that comment.  However, I was able to substantiate a quote from one of Bill Gates’ predecessors in opulence…a man named John D. Rockefeller.  A reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller, “How much money is enough?”  Rockefeller replied, “Just a little bit more.”  That, my friends, is greed personified.

    I’m here to tell you, however, that it’s not just the Bill Gateses and the John D. Rockefellers of the world that suffer from the sin of greed. I recently heard the story of a girl who told her friend, “My mom is only happy when she’s spending money.  She went shopping every day until a thief stole her credit card.”  “Oh, my gosh,” her friend replied. “Did your father report the stolen credit card?”  To which the girl replied, “No.  He says the thief is spending less money than Mom did!”

    Now that’s not sexist!  That story is true of both men and women.  A recent survey indicates that the average American spends $1300.00 on credit for every $1000.00 they make. As someone once said, “People spend money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t even like.”  A lot of us suffer from greed.

    A lot of us may suffer from greed, but I don’t think anyone respects it or admires it.  Not long ago, woman named Kristen Clawbury announced to her friends that she was suffering from ovarian cancer. Her friends immediately rushed to her side to comfort her, to cry with her and to pray with her.  After a few months, she told her friends that the cancer treatments had not worked and that she was going to have to go out of state for experimental medical treatments that would not be covered by her insurance.  Her friends then got together…and held fundraisers that brought in more than $40,000.00.  Then they found out that it was all a great big scam.  The woman had cut her hair to make it look like she was undergoing chemotherapy.  She took the money her friends had raised and bought a car, went on vacation and had some plastic surgery.  At the ensuing trial, one of her friends said, “She had a disease even more deadly than cancer.  She had the disease of greed.”

    Is greed a deadly disease?  Consider the passage we read from the book of Acts.  It’s the story of Ananias and Sapphira.  Let me set the scene for you.  It’s shortly after that very first Pentecost and the apostles have established a church in Jerusalem.  As it says in Acts 4:32, “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.”  In other words, in the first century church, they were into communal living. Obviously it did not work, and that is why we do not do it today.  But in the first century church, they held everything in common.

    A man named Ananias, and a woman named Sapphira, were a married couple who belonged to this first century Christian community.  Ananias sold a piece of property that belonged to him.  What he should have done is bring all of the proceeds to Peter and lay them at his feet.  Or, if he needed to keep some of the money for himself, he needed to be honest about that.  Ananias and Sapphira plotted to do neither.  Ananias brought a part of the proceeds forward and laid them at Peter’s feet...but he told him that he was giving all of it.  Peter somehow knew better and he said to Ananias, “You have not lied to us, but to God!”  And at that, Ananias dropped to the floor and died.  Not long after that, Sapphira came in before the apostles.  She, too, was questioned about the incident.  She, too, lied about it…and she dropped dead as well.  

    And you thought greed was no big deal.  Look, I’m not saying that greed is going to make you drop dead, but perhaps it can keep one from communion with God.  Perhaps it can keep one from finding inner peace.  Listen to this. 

    Once upon a time, an ambitious American businessman was standing at the pier in a Mexican costal village. A small boat with a lone fisherman inside puttered up to the pier and docked.  The businessman noticed several large yellowfin tuna in the boat and complimented the fisherman on his catch.  He asked the fisherman, “How long did it take you to catch those fish?”  To which the fisherman replied, “Oh, it didn’t take long at all.”

    Puzzled, the businessman asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”  The fisherman said, “I’ve got enough here to support my family’s needs for the day.”  So the businessman asked, “Then what do you do with the rest of your time?”  The fisherman replied, “Oh,   I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife.  Then at night I stroll into the village, I sip a little wine and play the guitar with my friends.  I really have a full and busy life, senor.” 

    The businessman scoffed, “Look, I have an MBA from Harvard and I could really help you.  You should spend a lot more time fishing, and with the proceeds you could buy a bigger boat.  With the money you make from the bigger boat, you could buy a few more boats.  Eventually, you’d have a fleet.  Then instead of selling your fish to a middleman you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery.  You would then control the product,   the processing, and the distribution.  You would then need to leave this little village and move   to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise.”

    The fisherman thought about that for a moment.  Then he asked, “Senor, how long would all of this take?”  The businessman replied, “Oh, I suppose you could do it in 15 or 20 years.”  “And then what?” the fisherman asked. The businessman laughed, “That’s the best part. When the time is right…you announce an Initial Public Offering, sell your stock to the public and become filthy rich.  You could make millions.”

    The fisherman asked, “Millions, senor?  Then what?”  The businessman said, “Then you could retire. You could move to a small coastal village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your grandkids, and take a siesta with your wife.  At night you could stroll into the village, sip a little wine, and play your guitar with your friends.”

    So what does greed really get us?  A whole lot of stress and a much shorter life.  The holy virtue that counteracts the deadly sin of greed is charity.  Perhaps that’s the reason for the divine mandate of tithing.  You know, people often cynically say that all the church cares about is money. Yet maybe God calls upon us to give because he knows that charity is the only cure for our greed. So maybe giving to the church isn’t just for the church’s sake.  Maybe giving to the church is for our sake, as well.

    Greed says, “I want, I need, I’ve simply got to get.”  Charity says, “Thank you for what I have.”  As 13^th century German mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever said in your entire life was thank you…that would suffice.”  Keep that thought in mind the next time you see something you’ve simply got to have.  Amen.

 

03-11-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE SUPERFICIAL SAGA: PART V

    There is a man that I have come to know in this town.  He is big, he’s as strong as an ox, he is healthy…and he does not work.  He has two cars and he lives in an apartment here in Meadville. The owner of the apartment complex is a friend of mine as well, so I know what the rent for one of those apartments is, and it is not cheap.

    I was in my friend’s apartment one time and he proudly gave me the grand tour.  It was a hot summer day and his air conditioner was blowing ice cold air.  In his living room I saw a 50-inch flat screen T.V. The furnishings looked like they had come just come off of the showroom floor at Hovis Interiors.  I was thinking to myself, “Wow!  I don’t have air conditioning.  I don’t have a flat screen T.V.  And our living room furniture is falling apart!”  After the tour was over and I was walking out of the apartment, I saw it lying there on the kitchen counter. It was one of those little green Access cards.  What that means is that it’s our tax dollars that pay for his basic necessities.  He seems to be able to afford a number of luxuries, but it’s our tax dollars that pay for his necessities.

    It’s this kind of thing that has a lot of people up in arms these days.  Is this what we mean when we speak of the sin of sloth?  Is this what we mean when we bemoan the loss of the good old fashioned Protestant work ethic?  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.     

    This is the fifth in a series of sermons entitled, The Superficial Saga.  It’s a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. We poke a lot of fun at sin these days. Truth be told, I don’t think we take sin very seriously.  Yet God takes sin seriously.  In fact, God takes sin so seriously…that he sent his Son to die on a cross in order to overcome it. Sin is not a matter to be taken lightly, as though a person could saunter into God’s presence at any time, in any mood, with any sort of life behind them…and at once perceive God there.  No, the sense of God’s reality is a progressive and often laborious achievement of the soul; the soul that takes sin seriously and earnestly tries to dispel it. 

    Like I said, The Superficial Saga is a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust.  Yet along with the seven deadly sins there are what we call the seven holy virtues or the seven cardinal virtues. The seven holy virtues are meant to counteract the seven deadly sins. For example, the opposite of pride is humility. The opposite of envy is love. The opposite of wrath is forgiveness.  The opposite of sloth is diligence.  The opposite of greed is charity.  The opposite of gluttony is temperance, and the opposite of lust is chastity or purity.  You see, the way to conquer sin…is to replace it with something better.

    Three weeks ago, we examined the sin of pride.  There we determined that pride is a sin basically because Jesus said it was. The secret to overcoming pride is humility. We determined that the key to humility is to approach God not as the big, self-sufficient, self-reliant adults we pretend to be.  Instead, we approach God as little children – frail, empty, and dependent – needing a gracious and loving God in the worst possible way.

    Two weeks ago we examined the sin of envy.  We determined that envy is cold-hearted and cruel.  Envy is basically our own sense of dissatisfaction with the way God created us.  The secret to conquering envy is love.  And the secret to love is to wish what’s best for someone else.  Not an easy thing to do.

   Last week we examined the sin of wrath or anger. We determined that anger is a normal human emotion that needs to be expressed. Yet anger needs to be expressed in the form of an offering to God.  In other words, we express our anger to God, and then we leave it in God’s hands to rectify the situation. The secret to conquering anger is forgiveness.  Forgiveness then breaks the cycle of anger…in order that peace might rule the day.

    Today we examine the sin of sloth.  Webster’s dictionary defines sloth as a disinclination to action or labor.  It also defines sloth as a slow moving mammal that hangs upside down in trees, but that’s not the kind of sloth we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be looking at sloth as a disinclination to action or labor.

    Now back to my friend who seems to have a disinclination to work, yet who also seems to enjoy many of the finer things in life.  Is that what we’re talking about when we talk about the sin of sloth?  From a secular sense, we might be inclined to think it is.  Yet that is not the sloth that is described in the seven deadly sins.  The situation with my friend is the result of several generations of poverty.  It is a mind-set and a state of being we middle and upper-middle class Americans simply do not understand.  What’s more, I have a sneaking suspicion that God has placed such people in our midst just to see how we handle them. Are we compassionate and understanding…or are we condemnatory and judgmental?  Perhaps our passing judgment on such people reveals just about as much of our sin as it does theirs.

    So what, then, is sloth as defined by the seven deadly sins?  Let me begin by explaining how the seven deadly sins came to be in the first place.  The earliest Christian formation of the seven deadly sins came from a fourth-century monk named Evagrius.  Evagrius established a group of monks, who formed a hermitage in the desert, that they might separate themselves from the evils of the world, and draw closer to God.  The irony of this…was that in separating themselves from the rest of the world, they found that in living so close together, they often brought out the worst in each other.  It was a little bit like the struggle a college freshman has getting along with a new roommate.   The seven deadly sins were what these monks tried to overcome that they might live together in peace and harmony.

    Here’s where sloth came in.  The main meal of the day was served at 3:00 in the afternoon.  Long about noon, as these monks were in their cells studying and praying, they started to get hungry.  They started to get real hungry.  They got distracted in their prayers and their minds began to wander.   As their minds began to wander, the monks began to wonder, “What’s the use of all this holy effort anyway?”

    The Latin word Evagrius used to describe this feeling was acedia.  It literally means spiritual apathy.  Spiritual apathy occurs when the great goal of life, communion with God, is abandoned for whatever reason.  The French use the word ennui for apathy.  Yet perhaps the Germans put it best with their word, Weltsmerz.   It literally means, “pained by the world.”   And perhaps that’s when spiritual apathy really occurs. It occurs when we become pained by the world and we start to think, “What’s the use?”  There is so much pain and suffering in the world today.  What’s the use in turning to God?  What’s the use in worshiping God?  For far too many people it’s the pain of the world that leads to sloth…as a defense mechanism against the hopelessness of the world.

    There once was a man who was on fire for the Lord.  He decided that he wanted to serve the Lord as best he could.  So he spoke to the minister of his church and asked what he could do in the name of service. He got involved in a small group Bible study. He began serving on a church committee.   He came to worship every Sunday morning.   He threw himself whole-heartedly into godly service. And then he became, as he described it, burned out.  Apparently he didn’t feel as though his service to God was making enough of a difference in his life, and so he just dropped out.  He dumped his wife and his family. He began to pursue more worldly outlets for his personal satisfaction.  You see, it’s one thing to have a life-changing conversion experience. It’s another thing entirely to maintain the tenacity and perseverance God asks from us over the long haul.  That, my friends, is acedia.

    I think of the couple who raised their children in the church.  They wanted to ensure a good spiritual foundation for their kids.  And then their kids grew up and went away to college.  And then they, essentially, dropped out of the church.  That, my friends, is acedia.

    I think of the person who is on the rolls at the church.  They come and worship God if they’ve got nothing better to do.  But they don’t want to get involved.  They want to remain anonymous. They figure there’s someone else who can do the job much better than they.  That, my friends, is acedia. 

    You see, there are sins of commission, and there are sins of omission.  Sins of commission are things we do that we ought not to do.  Sins of omission are things we ought to have done, but did not.  Acedia is a sin of omission.

    Consider the passage we read a moment ago from the gospel according to Luke.  There we see a rich young ruler approach Jesus and say to him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus says, “You know the commandments.  You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal or bear false witness.” The young man replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.”  Then Jesus got to the heart of the matter.  “There is one thing you lack,” he said.  “Go, sell all that you have, and give the money to the poor.  Then come, follow me.”

    When the young man heard this, he became very sad, for he had many possessions.  Actually, I think I like the American Standard Version of the Bible’s translation even better. It says, “And his countenance fell at the saying, for he had great possessions.”  His countenance fell.  You see, he came to realize that he did not have what it takes to follow Jesus Christ.  This is closer to what acedia means than laziness is.  It’s more like a lack of commitment.  Call it, “a lukewarm faith.”

    Perhaps this is more theologically significant than we might notice at first glance.  Have you ever heard the term, “Protestant work ethic?”  It’s a term attributed to a sociologist by the name of Max Weber.  In the late 1800s, he observed how hard Protestant people worked at their jobs and in their churches. He noted how those of Lutheran or Calvinist heritage believed in the concept of predestination.  You know, people are saved by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone.  The catch is that it’s impossible to tell who is saved and who is not, except for one thing.  The notion developed that it might be possible to determine who was saved and who was not by observing the way they lived their lives.  Hard work and commitment – in life and to the church – were two important consequences to determining who was in and who was out. 

    Are you with me? What the Protestant work ethic is saying is that our diligence in serving God reveals the status of our salvation. We work not in order to receive salvation, rather, we work out of gratitude for what we have already received, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit that lives within us.   Thus, perhaps sloth is more than just sinful behavior.   Perhaps what it really reveals is whether God is at work within us or not.

    So how do we avoid acedia?  How do we avert that spiritual burnout that keeps us at arm’s length from God?  I think of a woman in my last church was elected at a congregational meeting to serve on the session. Someone actually said to her, “Now you’re going to see the church’s dark side.”  It really upset her.  But you know what?    The church isn’t perfect.  The church is imperfect people trying their best to imitate the perfection of God.  Sometimes we get it wrong.  But sometimes…we get it right.  And it’s oh, so good when we do.

    The point, however, is that that’s not what we should be observing.  You see, when we work   in the church, we are serving God…not anyone else. There will always be someone there to criticize us or to challenge us or to frustrate us. The point is that we don’t work for them. We work for God.  If God is pleased…we will find the strength to persevere. Who cares what anyone else thinks?  Amen.

 

03-04-2012 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE SUPERFICIAL SAGA: PART IV

    Will Willimon was once the chaplain at Duke University, and is now a bishop in the United Methodist Church.  In a book entitled Sinning Like a Christian, he addresses the topic of anger.  More specifically…he addresses the topic of how people deal with their anger.  This is what he had to say:

As a pastor, I have grieved over those people – usually women – who suffer some great injustice…and who handle it by turning that pain inward upon themselves rather that toward its proper object, the perpetrator of the pain. There are those who think that Christians are not allowed to be angry.  If you are Christian, you’ll always be all smiles.

 

I’m thinking of a woman whose husband left her without any word of warning after two years of marriage. She was terribly depressed.  I asked her as her pastor, “Are you angry that your husband has done this to you?”  “No,” she replied, “not really angry, just hurt.”

 

“Not angry?” I asked.  “I think you’ve got a right to be angry with him.  And maybe angry with God, as well.  After all, God told you to be faithful in your marriage vows,   and you were.  But the other side of the bargain wasn’t kept. I would think you would be angry!”  “No, just hurt,” she said.  I decided then and there that depression is often the result of anger turned inward, anger inappropriately expressed, anger suppressed. 

    Willimon suggests that suppressed anger can result in depression.  I suspect he’s right about that.  But I also suspect that suppressed anger can result in something much, much worse.  As many of you know, there was another school shooting in Chardon, Ohio – a community about sixty miles west of here.  A teenage boy, named T.J. Lane, opened fire in the high school cafeteria, killing three of his classmates. It’s a newspaper headline that’s becoming all too common in our country these days.

    What makes a person reach a point in their lives where they are willing to put their classmates to death? Many studies have been done over the years to try to obtain a psychological profile of school shooters.  Those studies have reached the conclusion that no one shooter fits a definitive psychological profile.  However, the studies did show that there were a few common denominators between the shooters.  According to Katherine Newman, a sociology professor at Princeton, school shooters are people who feel they have failed at social integration. Other common factors include a feeling of rejection by others, being bullied by their peers, and a sense of severely suppressed anger.  Like I said, suppressed anger can result in something much, much worse than depression.  Keep that thought in mind as we move on.

    This is the fourth in a series of sermons entitled, The Superficial Saga.  It’s a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. We poke a lot of fun at sin these days. Truth be told, I don’t think we take sin very seriously.  Yet God takes sin seriously.  In fact, God takes sin so seriously…that he sent his Son to die on a cross in order to overcome it. Sin is not a matter to be taken lightly, as though a person could saunter into God’s presence at any time, in any mood, with any sort of life behind them…and at once perceive God there.  No, the sense of God’s reality is a progressive and often laborious achievement of the soul; the soul that takes sin seriously and earnestly tries to dispel it.

    Like I said, The Superficial Saga is a sermon series on the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are as follows: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.  Yet along with the seven deadly sins there are what we call the seven holy virtues or the seven cardinal virtues. The seven holy virtues are meant to counteract the seven deadly sins.  For example, the opposite of pride is humility.  The opposite of envy is love.  The opposite of wrath is forgiveness.  The opposite of sloth is diligence.  The opposite of greed is charity.  The opposite of gluttony is temperance, and the opposite of lust is chastity…or purity.  You see, the way to conquer sin…is to replace it with something better.

    Two weeks ago, we examined the sin of pride.  There we determined that pride is a sin basically because Jesus said it was. The secret to overcoming pride is humility. We determined that the key to humility is to approach God not as the big, self-sufficient, self-reliant adults we pretend to be.  Instead, we approach God as little children – frail, empty and dependent – needing a gracious and loving God in the worst possible way.

    Last week we examined the sin of envy.  We determined that envy is cold-hearted and cruel. Envy is basically our own sense of dissatisfaction with the way God created us.  The secret to conquering envy is love.  And the secret to love…is to wish what’s best for someone else. 

    Today we examine the sin of wrath, or anger.  If it’s all the same to you I’ll be using the words interchangeably. Even though I believe there’s a basic difference between the two, I also believe that modern day semantics renders them synonymous.  Thus, today we examine the sin of wrath …or anger.

    In the stories we encountered at the beginning of this sermon, we saw that anger turned inward, or anger inappropriately expressed, or anger suppressed, can result in depression.  It can also result in something much, much worse. Thus, there is a simple and obvious solution to our problem, is there not?  Anger should not be bottled up inside.  Anger should be expressed.  To coin a phrase, perhaps we should let it all hang out and vent our anger at the drop of a hat. Now please, don’t turn your minds off just yet. I don’t want you to be saying to the police when they arrest you after you express your anger toward your spouse, or toward an aggressive driver, or toward some simple-minded sales clerk, that the minister at the Presbyterian Church said it was okay.  You need to hear me out a just a little bit longer.

    If you’re like me, you’ve heard it said that it’s okay to express your anger.  I mean, even   Jesus got angry. Look what he did when he chased the money changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem.  It appears as though he flew into a rage, and drove them out with a whip of cords.   In fact, that’s the very passage I read a moment ago from the gospel of John.  I mean, if Jesus was allowed to have a temper tantrum, then why shouldn’t we be allowed as well?

    I think there’s a difference between why Jesus got angry and why we typically get angry.   Let’s take a look at what was really going on in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The Passover of  the Jews was at hand.  Jewish pilgrims from all across the land would be making the trek to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices in the Temple.  They were required by Jewish law to sacrifice a cow, or a sheep or a dove…depending on their economic circumstances.  Of course, you couldn’t travel all those miles and drag such an animal with you.  No, you bought your sacrificial animal in the Temple courtyard.  Unscrupulous businessmen were there with livestock in hand, which they sold at exorbitant prices.  There were also what they called money changers in the Temple courtyard. The Temple tax – a lot like our per capita dues – was only allowed to be paid in Temple currency.  In other words, if you were a Jewish person living in Rome – and you came to Jerusalem for the Passover – you could not pay your Temple tax in Roman currency. You had to have Temple currency. The money changers were there to make the exchange.  The catch was that for ten dollars of Temple currency, it might cost you about a hundred dollars in Roman currency. Do you see the problem? Do you see why Jesus was so upset?  These unscrupulous individuals…were making a profit at religion’s expense. 

    Jesus was upset about the fact that they were taking advantage of the humble people of God.  His anger was aimed at protecting the powerless.  That’s not where our anger is usually aimed, is it? Our anger is usually aimed at protecting ourselves, or our feelings, or a perceived violation of our rights.  For us, anger typically protects the status quo of our egos. It’s far, far easier for us to get angry…than it is for us to trust that God will work things out.

    Perhaps, of all things, the passage that Scott read a moment ago gives us some insight on how to deal with our anger.  Let me set the scene for you.  The Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 587 B.C.  A group of people from outside of Jerusalem – a group of people called the Edomites   – delighted in the fall of Jerusalem. They encouraged the Babylonians to utterly destroy the city.  What’s more, when persecuted Jews tried to sneak out of Jerusalem during the siege, Edomites actually captured them and sold them to the Babylonians as slaves.  Now do you understand the Jews’ strong dislike for – and anger toward – the Edomites? 

    Listen to the last few verses of the 137^th Psalm. It reads, “Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, ‘Tear it down!  Tear it down!’  Happy shall be they who pay you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall be they who take your little ones and dash them against a rock!” 

    Happy shall be they who take your little ones and dash them against a rock?  That doesn’t exactly sound very Christian, does it?  But listen to this.  The psalm does not say that THEY are going to dash Edomite children against a rock.   The psalm simply says that if we have a just God who runs the world as he should, then God ought to even the score.  The Jews have been the victims of injustice…and they want God to set things right.

    Anger is a natural response to injustice in the world.  Anger is an acknowledgement that the world is not the way it is meant to be.  Yet that anger should be expressed in conversation with God.  As the apostle Paul wrote in the book of Romans, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”   Vengeance, acting out our anger or even our righteous indignation, belongs to God, not us.  In other words, our anger ought to be given to God as an offering when we come to that place in our lives where we are unable to fix that which afflicts us.

    But there’s one more thing.  Demitrius Hewlin was one of the boys who was killed in that awful school shooting in Chardon.  Phyllis Ferguson was Demitrius Hewlin’s mother.  In an interview with ABC News, she was asked what she would say to the shooter.  She replied, “I would tell him that I forgive him…because, a lot of the time, people don’t know what they’re doing.  That’s all I’d say.”  

    Anger is one of the seven deadly sins.  The holy virtue that counteracts anger is forgiveness.  Forgiveness prevents repercussions.  It leaves the consequences in God’s hands.  It keeps a person from reacting to the anger that seethes inside them, which clearly breaks the cycle of anger. You see, if Demetrius Hewlin’s mother lashed out, then someone else would lash out in return, then she would lash out again…It thus becomes a vicious and unholy cycle. Forgiveness breaks the cycle of anger.

    A little more than ten years ago, our nation was devastated by the events of nine-eleven.  Not long after that I preached a somewhat controversial sermon on forgiveness.  I said something to the effect that we should forgive those who hurt us.  Because if we retaliate we are likely to find our nation in a holy war that will not end.  I received a couple of unsigned, nasty notes after that sermon.  Someone clearly did not agree with me.  To them forgiveness, in that situation, was incomprehensible. 

    Then I remember how swept up our nation was in the aftermath of Charles Carl Roberts’ killing of those five little Amish girls in Lancaster County.   We were all amazed at how the Amish community forgave Charles Carl Roberts, and then invited his family into their circle of mourning. The Amish people forgave the killer of their children and it made national news. 

    You see, we believe in – and we admire – forgiveness.  It’s when it touches a bit too close to home that we object.  It’s when we are asked to forgive something ourselves that we become upset. Yet here’s the point. When we are wronged, and we lash out in anger, it only invites reprisal.  When we are wronged, and we forgive, we give peace a chance.  Give peace a chance.  Amen.