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Lust
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 2nd November 2008. All Saints
Revd. Matthew Vernon
There's one topic that is a significant part of our lives, but you don't hear much about in sermons:
• s.e.x.
The reasons are obvious, though not convincing.
So this morning…
Unfortunately we don't have very long, so I'm going to focus on one aspect: lust.
The Saints were human, how did they handle lust?
Jesus was fully human, how did he handle lust if he was a 'real man'?
He famously said "everyone that looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart".
Which makes me wonder whether he really did know what is was like to be human.
Cut us some slack!
The topic also gives me an opportunity to say more about the book I preached on last Sunday:
• "The Year of Living Biblically – one man's humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible." by A.J. Jacobs.
That seemed to go down well, so I thought I'd stretch it out one more week.
To be clear from the outset, despite what women might claim lust is not just a male issue.
In his book, A.J wrestles with lust and refers to the verse in 1 Thessalonians 4:
• the will of God is that "each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honour, not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not now God."
A.J offers several strategies for dealing with lust that he has picked up during his year of living biblically.
He has a chance to road test them when his friend invites him to the fashion show of an Orthodox Jewish designer.
A.J imagines there'll be "lots of bulky, shapeless, earth-toned dresses. Perhaps a scandalous glimpse of exposed ankle. I could handle that."
However on arrival he sees "there is a sprinkling of Orthodox Jews, but mostly its gorgeous twenty-something fashion types with back tattoos and bare shoulders/midriffs/thighs."
One strategy for handling lust is for men:
• think of the woman as if she were your mother.
This dates back to the medieval rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra.
It could of course be adapted for women:
• think of the man as if he were your father.
Gay and lesbian people can choose accordingly.
This strategy works very well for A.J when he's confronted with a woman at the fashion show "with a small leopard-skin skirt, small bustier and very large cleavage."
He thinks of her as his Mom and hey presto, problem solved!
Another strategy is reciting Bible passages to yourself.
Men or women can do that.
A.J applies this strategy during the fashion show when despite the designer being an Orthodox Jew, the models wear "alarmingly skimpy outfits that look like kimonos during a fabric shortage."
This strategy comes from an evangelical Christian who found that memorizing large sections of the Bible gives him a safe mental focus when tempted.
Reciting a paragraph or two strengthens his spirit and clears his mind.
A.J finds it works for him.
It distracts his mind from the models in skimpy outfits.
Whether the saints used this technique I don't know.
The Saints certainly lusted.
St. John of the Cross, for example, was attracted to one woman in particular.
One of his admirers was a particularly beautiful and wealthy woman who one day came to his monastic cell and offered herself to him.
He turned her down,
• but told a friend it was the most difficult choice he had made in his life.
Apparently, afterwards the woman came to church dressed less glamorously.
A third strategy for handling lust comes from a sermon about lust by a Unitarian minister:
• do not objectify.
The minister suggested that you battle your urge to objectify the woman (or the man) by focusing on them as a complete person:
• what was their childhood like?
• what might there favourite book?
• does she use a PC or a Mac?
This strategy is particularly relevant in our times when we are surrounded with objectified, idealized, fictional images of men and women.
Women are particularly objectified.
But men are too.
And these images affect the way we all view other people.
I imagine this strategy brings us close to the way the saints dealt with lust,
• or perhaps why saints lusted less than the rest of us.
The saints learnt to see people as God sees people.
And God sees the whole people, not just someone's physical appearance.
The saints also learnt the values of the Beatitudes and had them written in their hearts and lives
"Blessed are the poor… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart…"
These are the values of God.
The Beatitudes don't say "Blessed are the beautiful and blessed are the glamorous. Or blessed are those dressed in Gucci… Blessed are the drivers of Mercedes…"
The media says that, but Jesus did not.
Society trains us to judge people, and ourselves, according to certain values.
God's values are different.
We can develop the habit of looking at people through those values,
• of seeing the whole person rather than objectifying them.
A final strategy for dealing with lust comes from Richard Harries who was until recently the Bishop of Oxford in England.
Some years ago he wrote a book about prayer in which he suggested that when we see a beautiful person, rather than lust after them, we might give thanks to God for beautiful things.
It's a good suggestion, but I love the idea of a Bishop using it as an excuse for going round ogling people.
Blessed are they that can control their lust, for they will see as God sees.
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