Lenten Sermon Series 2: “Simplicity”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Text: 1 John 2:12-17
A young couple, deeply in love, sat by a beautiful lake on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon and, in that beautiful setting, before they embraced, the young man looked at the girl who was the source of his adoration with the idea that this would be the day that he would propose to her. So, he stared her in the eyes lovingly and said, “Darling, I think you are the most beautiful creature on earth. I love you with my whole heart. I would like you to marry me. I know that I am not wealthy. I do not own a Rolls Royce. I do not have a yacht in Monte Carlo. I am not like Johnny Green! But, I love you with my whole heart and I pledge myself to you.”
In that beautiful setting the young woman paused for a moment, reflected on the beautiful sentiments and replied, “Darling, I love you also with my whole heart, but tell me more about Johnny Green.” Is there not, if we are honest with each other, just a little bit of us inquiring about Johnny Green? While we do not take this literally, do we not like that young woman, want to know a little bit more about those who have possessions or power or privilege or personality?
Do we not even in the face of the most glorious invitation and the greatest of loves in life still want to have that slight obsession with personality and possessions and power? Is there not a little bit of all of us in that young woman who sat by the lake that day? I think there is. I think that if we are honest with ourselves, we would all like to know Johnny Green. In our lives we are observing, sometimes with envy, sometimes with devotion, those who are like Johnny Green.
The danger is of course, that when we are obsessed with such things, when we are too captivated by possessions and privilege and power and personality, we overlook the love all around us. We do not see the things that are truly important. In our obsessions, we get distracted by the things that do not last. We might be obsessed with Johnny Green, but we lose the love that is right there in front of us.
This does not only apply to people, it applies to our relationship in our walk with God. It applies to our whole joy and understanding of human life and experience. When we become obsessed with secondary, rather than with primary things, we lose the real love that makes life meaningful and sustaining.
No one knew that better than the writer of The Epistle of John, written probably near the end of the first century to Christians who had weathered the storm of adversity, who had maintained their faith in God, and who were worthy of praise. He says of them that their sins have been forgiven, that they have been able to stand firm against the evil one, and that their fathers and their children knew God and know God.
There is also though a warning in his words of praise. John knew that some were starting to infiltrate the Church and causing people to move away from the faith that sustained them: The true loves that make life so important and abundant. They were detracting from what Christ had done for them.
This group had woven its way into the Church and was telling people that the pleasures of the flesh were important and that they did not have to worry about following their desires, that you could live a lascivious life, but at the same time be faithful to Christ; that you could have your sins forgiven, but you could still live a life of sinful excess. Those teachers who had come into that Church to whom John was writing, became immensely popular throughout the early Church. One John was an epistle that became universal. In this writing, there is this tacit warning: Do not become obsessed with Johnny Green!
Now, in this great passage there is a warning, and the warning has gone forth for 2,000 years. It simply says the following: “Do not love the world and the things of the world.” Some people read this passage and they misunderstand what John is saying. I must admit that this is one of those passages that as a preacher shake you to your core when you read it! Many times I have looked at it and thought, “Why should I preach on this text?” And always, I get this little inner voice saying, “No, leave it alone, it is too hard.” But then after a while, it comes back, and you have to address it. Do not love the world! What is he saying?
He is clearly not saying that we should not love creation. There is nothing here that prohibits loving creation and the world as an entity. There is nothing that is anti-cosmological in what is being said. Some people have misinterpreted it in that way, but that is wrong, for he would understand and appreciate the Book of Genesis that states when the world was created, it was good, that the world is a beautiful thing and a beautiful place. It does not mean that we should not love creation when he says “do not love the world.”
He is not suggesting either that we do not love our fellow human beings. On the contrary, throughout the rest of the Epistle he is echoing the words of Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” So much so that later on in the Epistle he simply said, “If you do not love one another, how can you say that you love God?” There is nothing here to imply that we mustn't love our neighbour or love one another.
Nor is there implicit in this a sort of dualism, as if there were two Gods. In Zoroastrianism for example, there is a belief that there are two competing gods: the “Ahura mazda” the God of light and the “Ahura mainyu” the God of darkness and there is a cosmic struggle between these two Gods and you have to choose which God you are going to worship in order to have eternal life. No, he is not suggesting that there is a cosmic struggle between two Gods.
What is he saying when he says, “Do not love the world?” He means do not love those things that are apart from God. Do not love the principles, the values and the ideas that run contrary to God. When he says, “Do not love the world” he means do not love worldliness; do not love the passions of the world that take us away from following the love of God. He is not saying do not love your neighbour, do not love the cosmos, and do not love the earth. He is saying do not love worldliness and the things of this world and do not let those become the passion of your life.
Last week, I suggested that we need to look at that great line in Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive?” I suggested that we have to take stock of the things that we have. This week is the other side of the coin. It is not to become obsessed with the things that we don't have. John goes on in this magnificent passage to talk about some very harsh realities, namely that he was worried about Christians becoming sidelined in their walk with God. He was concerned that if they embraced these things, they would turn their backs on the love of God, which had seized their lives and gave their lives true meaning.
The three things to be careful of I believe, speak as clearly to us today as they did to the early Christians at the end of the first century. The first of which are the desires of the flesh. What concerned John was that there was this tendency to love sensory things at the expense of eternal things. In other words, the belief that true happiness comes from fulfilling all the senses. When you have all your senses filled to overflowing, the more pleasure you will have and the happier you will be. The desires of the flesh are the desires of those things that feed our senses.
John is concerned that if we burn with desire for those things that give sensory pleasure above all else, we will lose sight of the important things that exist in our lives. He is concerned about gluttony, sexual promiscuity, hedonism and materialism. He is concerned about people living their lives believing that happiness will come if all their senses are pleased to the max, for he knows that that drive, that urge, which is in every generation, is at the core of our idolatry and sinfulness and drives us in such a way that in the end we love those senses more than we love God and righteousness.
There is nothing inherently wrong with meeting the needs of the senses. The problem is that when those sensory needs become so insatiable that we desire them above all else.
Many years ago, I took a course to become a lifeguard in Bermuda. Part of our lifeguard training was to go out in a small boat for a day with our instructor. One of the things that our instructor stressed to each and every one of us was this: if you find yourself capsized at sea, or if you find that you do not have power, or if you find yourself in the ocean and you are holding on to something to keep yourself afloat, there is one thing above all that you must never, ever do… drink the water!
We sort of laughed at him and said that surely that was not the biggest problem when you are out on the water with nothing around you and you are about to drown and there are sharks circling, surely drinking the water is not the most serious thing. He said, “It is!” He said that once he saw a man who he had warned not to drink water decide that he couldn't stand not to drink water anymore and drank the sea water. His thirst became insatiable, because as the kidneys take on the salt they dehydrate and they remove the water that is in them and the salt takes over, so the more you drink, the more sodium you have, the more your kidneys fail and the faster your life evaporates. He said, “Never, no matter the thirst, ever drink the water at sea.”
I think that is a wonderful example of what happens to the desires of the flesh. They might seem on the surface to provide a balm, a cure, a happiness, light, and they may seem to give fulfilment temporarily, but when it becomes an insatiable desire for them, they can kill you, because what they remove are the real loves in life, the most important things, the ultimate things. Do not love the world!
He also talks about the desires of the eyes. Here, I think John was very astute in this particular Epistle, that is also very powerful and that is that what the eyes see, what the eyes crave, can actually end up deceiving us and causing us to want and desire things that we neither need nor truly want. Nobody knows the power of the eye more than advertisers.
Really good advertisers will be able to borrow on the seven deadly sins and amalgamate those with images that cause us to be stimulated by things, so much so that we want them. And who has not succumbed? I have! I am a sucker for a pretty car! I am a sucker for anything! I am a sucker for anyone trying to sell me a video on soccer! I'll just buy it if I see it. We all have something that an advertiser can be able to point to and say, “Oh, I like that! I want that! Isn't that beautiful?” But, sometimes, what the eyes see can be a form of lust in such a way that you have to have it no matter what, no matter the cost.
This past week, I was talking to a professional who works with addicts of alcohol, particularly young teenagers and young people in Nova Scotia. She was telling me that something diabolical has happened. Now, in the liquor stores that she goes to they have created beautiful pink bottles, these pink bottles are so gorgeous to look at and appear so innocent that they look almost like a perfume bottle. She elaborated that these are attracting young girls well below the drinking age buy them and drink them because they want to have the bottle.
This is so seductive because it is deliberately targeting a particular age group to convince them to consume alcohol in order to get these beautiful things. It seems so innocent and it looks so nice - and it can be so deadly! What the eye sees, what the eye perceives, what the eye wants, can be very dangerous. John knew that the eye could seduce the soul. Jesus himself said just as much in the Sermon on the Mount when he said that if your eye causes you to sin and to lust, then poke it out. He didn't mean it literally, but he meant we should be aware of it.
Sometimes the love of these things that the eye sees can have a tremendous detrimental effect because we become obsessed with what the eye has seen rather than what one really needs. These are tough words!
John also says there is a concern about egoism, praise of yourself and pride of yourself above all else. He says that we can become the very desire of our own lives and that the wealth of our lives, what we accumulate, may become the most important driving force in our existence.
I was reading the writings of the great Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who was a successor to Plato and to Aristotle. He wrote about different characters, and these characterizations make a point about the human condition. One of the characters that he speaks about is Alazõn, a shipping magnate in Greece 200 years before Christ. He is the sort of character who likes to stand at the ports and look out to sea and point out to everyone all the different ships that he has sailing out there. He wanted everyone to be impressed with all the ships.
Then every week, he would go to his bank manager, if they had bank managers back then and he would say to him, “Are you aware how much credit I have in your bank and do you know how lucky you are to have me as a client?” Alazõn would get letters from famous people from all over the Greek world, great intellectuals, great characters, great people, and he would then show them off to his friends saying, “Look, I got a letter from Stephen Harper! I got a letter from David MacMaster! Look at all the famous people I have letters from!”
Then he would introduce people to his house and he had the biggest house in the whole of the Greek port. He would tell everyone after they had been impressed by his house about his plans to build a bigger one and that they will very soon be able to come into his brand new, extremely large house. Theophrastus says, “This Alazõn, he is a man who loved his (to quote Latin) luxuria, who loved the pride of his possessions.”
Hear this Toronto: how different are we from Alazõn? How much do we not emulate and love and have pride in those things that give us status and power and prestige? It is so human to do it! John warns about these things, and he says, “Do not love this world and the things of this world.”
So what is the answer? How then should we live? Do we just throw up our hands? By no means! This Lent, I want you to do an audit. As you do your tax returns, do an audit of the things in your life. Do an audit not only of the things that you have received and for which you should be grateful, but do an audit of those things that you know in your heart's desire you are always craving.
Richard Foster, a theologian and writer I admire greatly, suggests in his book on the spiritual disciplines that at the heart of the cravings of the flesh and the eyes and the ego is fear. Deep down in our hearts we fear losing things, therefore we crave them. We fear rejection, therefore we elevate ourselves. We fear death, so we try to find happiness in the senses that are around us. We fear not having, therefore we crave to have. Out of that fear, says Foster, we do not see things that we actually have. We do not enjoy the things that we have been given. We do not find fulfilment in the simple things, for we do not experience the life of God.
Foster suggests that the life of God, the forgiveness of God, the promise of the love of God, and the eternity of God make all those other cravings seem as nothing. It does not mean that the material is evil; it does not mean that some pleasures cannot bring us joy; it does not mean that life cannot find fulfilment. It means that true fulfilment can only be found in light of God. It is often the simple things: love, forgiveness, inner peace, our relationships with the other that provide fulfilment. It is our humble walk with God that in the end provides the greatest love.
But, if we are always searching after the other, if we always desire the cravings of the eye, if we are always malcontent because of what we do not possess then we will never have the peace and the love and the satisfaction of God. John says, “Do not love the world” not because he wanted to walk away from the world, but because above all he wanted us to love God first. As Jesus rightly said, “If you seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, all other things will be added unto you.”
All other things will find their proper meaning. But, seek first the things of the flesh and you will lose! Amen.