Lust March 1, 1998 - First Sunday of Lent, Cycle C Deuteronomy 26:4-10 Romans 10:8-13 Luke 4:1-13 (Father Larry is taking the seven capital sins during Lent. Today the topic is lust). Yesterday I did a retreat for confirmation and this afternoon I have one at St. George's. As I deal with my kids at Prep and as I go around giving retreats the sin I deal with more than any other sin, I would guess, would be lust. It isn't just the kids; it's the adults, too. When I do a parish mission, for example, it's lust. For some people nowadays it isn't a big sin. They don't consider it a sin. I have more arguments with people over the sin of lust than arguments over any other thing in my life. Let's start with the temptation scene in today's gospel Luke 4:1. "Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit then returned from the Jordan and was conducted by the Spirit into the desert. The Spirit of God led him into the desert for forty days where he was tempted by the devil. During that time he ate nothing and at the end of it he was hungry." What the devil is first starting him with was the temptation of lust, of his physical needs, of taking care of the body which in itself is a good thing. Right? From the Hebrew standpoint, the definition of sin is to miss the mark. If you're shooting an arrow and instead of hitting a bulls eye you just miss the mark a bit -- that's the Hebrew vision of what sin is. It's going in the right direction, but you settle for what is less than what God commands you. So, too, all sin -- food is a good. We all need food and yet we can make it something lustful. Instead of eating to live, we live to eat and then we change something good into an evil because now it becomes something selfish. Or sexuality, the greatest gift God ever gave us was our sexuality. In fact, sex was the first commandment of God. Right? Increase and multiply. The first commandment God gave to his people, Adam and Eve, right in the beginning was have sex for children. Right from Genesis the purpose of sex is to have babies. We deal with the reality of the holiness of sex, the holiness of our bodies. but we sometimes go off and deal with it in another way. A good way to talk about love and lust is love can't wait to give; lust can't wait to get. When we deal with lust it's something about me and there's selfishness. It's wanting to take care of myself alone -- the devil even trying to get Jesus in his humanity. "C'mon, you can eat. You haven't eaten in 40 days." We could rationalize that, couldn't we? You're right! I haven't eaten in 40 days. I can have a little bit of bread. But the Spirit led him into that desert for the purpose that he had to deal with and say no to his very self. And in all the things in our lives what Jesus calls each of us to do is to say no to ourselves, to die. And the struggle with that isn't an easy struggle because it takes death. We all need to embrace that cross. The reason the church asks us during Lent to deny ourselves is exactly that. People say, "Father, I don't give up things for Lent. I do extra things." Very nice. You need to deny yourself. You need to give something up. You need to let yourself die. Ooh,
don't you hate it! We have to die and the only way to do that is to give up things, to say no to my wants, to my needs and the wants and needs that are good in themselves. The wants for sex, the wants for food, the wants for prestige or whatever and deny myself a good because it's God's will for me. The thing we need to deal with first and what I want to deal with today is the sin of sexual lust because it's something that everyone deals with, especially men. I used to think it was only men, but no, men and women. The more retreats I give the more I see that everybody has them. With men it's more physical; it's what you see. Men are tempted with lust in their eyes; and women it's more a feeling like thing normally, I guess. I don't know because I'm not a woman. I had to give a retreat once to all women. It was quite interesting and enlightening to me. So where does all sexual lust begin? In the mind. Everyone of us is sexually tempted. Jesus Christ, and this is not heresy, Jesus Christ was tempted sexually. He had sexual temptations. He had sexual thoughts. Oh, Father! I can't believe it! Jesus Christ was because he was a man like us in all things but sin, and men and human beings have sexual feelings because that's who we are. It's good. He was tempted sexually in every way that you and are tempted because remember that temptation is not sin. It's what you do with it. That should give you hope. It gives me lots of hope to know that when I'm sexually tempted, Jesus Christ was sexually tempted. He had the power to overcome it. What did he do? It isn't the temptation; it's what you do with the temptation. I tell the kids you can let a bird fly over your head; you just don't want that bird to nest in your hair. So when you're sexually tempted, the best thing to do is to let it go. Oh, look at that. You don't say, "Come here. I want to spend some time with you." That's when we get into some problems. There is a story of a high school senior who went to confession and the priest asked him, "Well, Johnny, have you entertained any sexual thoughts and desires?" He said, "No, Father, they entertain me!" Oh, ho. Well, that's when it becomes sinful. It's when we take something in itself and we turn it around and we make it something for me. It's a selfish thing. Let's say it's a beautiful day at the beach today and your fantasy comes walking toward you and you say "Praise God for their beauty!" Is there anything wrong with that? No, you're saying, "God, you do good work. Go, God!" But then that same person comes toward you and you think what you can do with them sexually for the next hour. Is there something wrong with that? Yes. So when we think about lust the first place we have to do battle is in our hearts, in our minds. Sexuality is our strongest drive in us; it's a good and keeps our species going. But some people become so preoccupied. Father, I was tempted. Good. If you're not having sexual thoughts or fantasies, don't see a priest, see a doctor. There's something wrong. It's part of who we are. Don't be preoccupied with sexual thoughts and fantasies; deal with them and give them to the Lord. As it says in the Scripture, "I hold all thoughts captive to the Holy Spirit." So when a thought comes in, you have to put it under the authority of the Spirit of God and deal with it. We have to know that we have victory already in this.
Let's look at the Scripture. We have to do this because some people in dealing with sexuality say well, it's just who I am, but we have to deal with lust in our lives and rid ourselves of it. Let's go to Romans 6:12. "Do not, therefore, let sin rule over your mortal bodies and make you obey its lust." We cannot let sin rule us and make us obey its lust so that everytime I have a temptation I have to give in to it. No, you don't. My kids say, "Oh, Father, I'll burst! I can't handle it!" Sure you can. You have to invite Jesus into the midst of it. You can't let sin rule over you and make you obey its lust because then what do you and I become? A slave to sin instead of a slave to Jesus Christ. You and I are called to be slaves of Jesus Christ, not slaves to our passions and our sins. "So do not, therefore, let sin rule over you. No more shall you offer the members of your bodies to sin as weapons of evil. Rather offer yourselves to God as men who have come back from the dead to life and your bodies to God as weapons for justice. Sin no longer has power over you. You are now under grace, not under the law." Sometimes we say, well, I'm just weak and it's one of these things, I jsut keep falling. You are not a slave to sin. We have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and Jesus, since he was the first one to deal with this in his humanity -- how did he deal with it? The devil threw the word of God at him, and he took it and then he went deep into the word of God and shoved it down his throat. When he took the word of God and shoved it down the devil's throat, the devil left him. If we can start taking passages of Scripture and when we're tempted shove them down the devil's throat when he's tempting us, we can have great victory over temptation, especially over lust in our lives. That's the first part. Let's go to Colossians 3:5. "Put to death whatever in your nature is rooted in the earth: fornication, impurity, immorality, uncleanliness, passion, evil desires and that lust" -- and this is ultimately what lust is -- "that lust which is idolatry." Why? Because we become a slave to lust. And that lust becomes our god. I worship the creature rather than the Creator. I worship me, the flesh, my wants and desires rather than worshiping the Creator. "These are the sins which provoke God's wrath." I think God is trying to tell us that we need to deal with our sin of lust. They are the sins that bring down God's wrath. "Your own conduct was once of this sort when these sins were your very lives. You must put that all aside now." It's something we do by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let's go to 1 Thessalonians 4: 3. What is God's will in our lives? It tells us: "It is God's will that you grow in holiness and that you abstain from immorality, each of you guarding his member in sanctity and honor, not in passionate desire as do the gentiles who do not know God. 98% of the people who watch television every night do not know God. You can't even watch a commercial without being caught up into passion. That's why I give up TV for Lent. Give up television and you'll be surprised how much less temptation you'll have. Verse 7: "God has not called you to immorality, but to holiness. Hence, whoever rejects these instructions rejects not man or Father Larry, but rejects the God who sends his Holy Spirit upon you." So if you think well everybody does it, I can go for it you're not rejecting any person, or even the word of God. You are rejecting God. 1 Corinthians, 6: 9. (It's all saying the same thing, but I want you to see that we can have control over it). "Do you not realize that the unholy will not fall heir to the kingdom of God. Do not deceive yourself. No fornicator -- fornication -- let's deal with this briefly --
fornication is sex before marriage. Doesn't matter whether you're 25, 18 or 45. Well, I'm divorced so I can have sex with somebody. Un-uh. I can deal with kids. You know you're not allowed to have sex. But when it comes to adults who've been married and divorced it's well it's ok. No, it's still called fornication. Sex outside of marriage. The word of God says, "Do not deceive yourself. No fornicator, no adulterer, no homosexual pervert, no sodomite, no thief, no miser, no drunk, no slanderer, no robber will inherit God's kingdom." It can't be any more clear. It means they will not go to heaven. Now this is what happens if you are a fornicator, an adulterer or whatever, you can either cling to the sin or to cling to Jesus. Whenever you cling to a sin then you become that sin. I say to my kids, "Gentlemen, if you clinging to having sex with your girlfriend and you say this is what I'm doing and I don't care what God says or what you say or anybody else what you have done is you've now aligned yourself with the lust and the sin and now you are a fornicator. Then because God is a God of justice every sin must be punished or he would not be a God of justice. If you align yourself with the sin when God punishes the sin guess who is also going to be punished -- you!. But if you say, "I'm so sorry, Lord, I repent. Help me, Jesus, to follow you," and you then cling to Jesus and when God's punishment comes against the sin, his mercy comes upon you. What we need to do in all the lust in our lives is to make sure that we're not clinging to that and clinging to Jesus. What if a person struggles a lot and has been trying for years to deal with this? A good way to find out if you are clinging to Jesus or to this is if Jesus appeared to you and said, "I' will take this out of your life forever. Will you let me?" If you say, "Yes, Lord, please take it" then you are one who is clinging to Jesus. But if you're saying, "Oh, no, Lord, I like it." then you're clinging to the sin and you'd better be worried. Go to verse 11. This should give us all hope here. "And such were" -- it is something we can get over -- "some of you, but" -- and this is the biggest but in the Bible -- "you have been washed, consecrated and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." So God has washed us clean and it's his blood and his power that we can deal with all these things. Two more. Ephesians 5:5. "Make no mistake about this. No fornicator, no unclean or lustful person, in effect an idolater will have any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with worthless arguments" -- I love him! I love her! -- "these are sins that bring down God's wrath on the disobedient. Therefore, have nothing to do with them." I have my kids memorize this. I tell them the next time your girlfriend comes up to you and says "C'mon!" you look at her and say "Make no mistake about this. No fornicator, no unclean or lustful person... and I love you too much to put your soul in danger of damnation." That's what it comes down to. When I'm talking about lust, I'm talking about masturbation. That's impurity with yourself. I'm talking about idolatry when we're looking at pornography. There are good Christians who have pornography. There is no condemnation in this homily. Please don't think it is condemning. It's not! It's convicting. Conviction helps us to see things so that we can be set free from them. Jesus isn't here to condemn anybody here. We all struggle. We are sinful people, but the Spirit of God comes down upon us and convicts us of something so we can be set free from the sin and live as a child of God.
To bring this altogether, we'll end on Galatians. Notice that when Jesus went into the desert, it was the Spirit of God who led him. And it's the Spirit of God who will give us victory. Galatians 5:17ff: "The flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and the two are directly opposed. This is why you do not do what your will intends. But if you are guided by the Holy Spirit you are not under the law. Now it's obvious what proceeds from the flesh -- lewd conduct,impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, bickering, jealousies, outbursts of rage, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. And I warn you as I have warned you before those who do such things will not enter the kingdom of God." Very clear. "In contrast though the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and -- chastity." Purity. The Spirit of God gives us the power to overcome our lust. "Against such there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and its desires. Since we live by the Spirit let us follow now the Spirit's lead. Let us never be boastful, challenging or jealous of one another." We need to follow the Spirit of God's lead in our lives. Only when we have fully surrendered to the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and we have actively crucified the passion and desires of our flesh can we live in the power of Jesus Christ. So today we focus on the sin of lust, but we don't look at our defeats. We look at our victories in Jesus Christ for he has come to set us free. Just as he did, so can we and will we do. May each of you know his love today and forever. Amen.