Father John McGinn, Rector

Saint John’s Episcopal Church

Sandwich, Massachusetts

 

March 11, 2007                          Third Sunday of Lent

 

 

Newt Gingrich, who is possibly running for President, announced that while President Clinton was under scrutiny, Newt Gingrich was leading the charge to have him impeached for, among other things, infidelity.  What came to pass on all of this is Newt Gingrich admitted that while he was accusing President Clinton of infidelity, he too was having an affair.

 

This past week our presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori was talking about her visit to Tanzania with all of the Anglican Church primates.  She was talking about the difficulties our church is having and trying to be in dialogue with each other and she is going full speed ahead with the dialogue so that we can remain a part of the Anglican Communion.  At the base of all of that is sexuality.

 

This morning I hope that you will put on your seat belt as I try to talk about sexual immorality. 

 

There is a hilarious story about a man who is walking along a lonely beach, when he hears a deep voice say “dig.”  He looks around and no one is there. Then he hears the voice again, “dig.”  So he starts to dig in the sand with his hands and he finds an old chest with a rusty lock.   The voice says, “Open.” The man finds a rock to destroy the lock and when the chest is finally opened he sees a lot of gold coins and he hears the voice again; “To the casino.”  The casino is only a few miles away so the man walks to the casino.  The deep voice instructs, “Roulette.”  The man changes the gold coins in for tokens and heads to the roulette table.  The players gaze at him in disbelief.  The voice says, “27.”  So he puts all his tokens on 27 and the table is quiet.  The croupier throws the ball and it stops at 26.  People gasp. “Oops.” Says the deep voice.

 

Last week I preached about the wilderness with Abraham and how God promised him he would father a nation but Sarah was well past her childbearing years and barren.  Abraham wondered if he would hear the voice from the sky say ‘Oops’. 

 

This week we are with Moses and the children of Israel as told by St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians.  Moses obeyed God when he was told to confront Pharaoh and say “Let my people go.”  Now Moses and the children of Israel are in the wilderness where they will wander for forty years.  Surely in these forty years there are times when Moses thought he might hear a voice from the heavens saying “Oops.” But he did not.

 

Forty years is a long time to make a journey that should have taken him eleven days.  In the epistle for today, Paul writes to the Corinthians, about Moses’ story and he gives his own interpretation of that story.  The interpretation boils down to this: God was faithful to the children of Israel, but the children of Israel were unfaithful to God.

 

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed though the sea and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was Christ.  Nevertheless God was not pleased with most of them and they were struck down in the wilderness.  These things occurred as examples to us so that we might not desire evil as they did.” 

 

Paul goes on to cite such evil practices as idolatry and sexual immorality as reasons that God was not pleased with the people of Israel.  Now God had brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and sustained them in the wilderness with manna to eat and water to drink, and how did the people respond to Gods providence?  By holding on to some of the unsavory practices they had picked up during their time in Egypt.

 

God was faithful to them, but they were not faithful to God.

 

Paul cites this story because he sees the same things happening in the church at Corinth.  The church had experienced God’s grace in their lives, but was not living by the standards that one should expect from the followers of Jesus.  Paul was disturbed.  We need to remember that many of the converts in Corinth were Pagan before they met Jesus.  They were slaves to the immoral culture to which they belonged.  Old habits die lowly and it is easy to slip back to unsavory ways. So too with the children of Israel.

 

For 400 years they had been in Egypt and the Egyptian lifestyle had permeated their lives.  Perhaps God kept them in the wilderness hoping to purge them of their old ways.  Old ways die slowly

 

People talk about the culture wars of our own society, and there is a war going on in our society.  But is much broader than the conservative vs. liberal, left and right, red states and blue states.  Think about the things in our culture that are a challenge to Christians today.  The rampant materialism for one.  The children of Israel had their idols, and we have our plasma TV screens.  Of course I say that because I am envious.

 

 Doesn’t it worry you? 

 

Think of the homes that our parents lived in.  We had one bathroom.  I don’t have any nostalgia for my grandfather’s house that had just an outhouse!  We had one bathroom and a one car garage.  Some of our neighbors had carports.  Not a three car garage.  My parent’s home was 1200 square feet.  I walk around that have 3, 4 and 5000 square feet.  We had an unairconditioned car.  My father never owned a car with air conditioning.  Remember when people opened their windows manually, and not with a button?  How did they survive?

 

I am not complaining.  I love my air conditioned car and I enjoy the fruits of or affluent society.  Some people are paying a terrible price to keep up.  Children are neglected.  Why?  Because Mommy and Daddy have to put in long hours to sustain their lifestyle.  Relationships are under strain.  And what is the greatest stressor?  Not sex.  Money.  Some people are being left out all together, like the people with no health insurance.  But the greatest toll is spiritual.

 

“The love of money is the root of all evil.” Wrote Saint Paul in first Timothy. It would do us well to ask if high tech toys and luxury automobiles and large homes have not become out modern day idols.  I think for a lot of people, that is what they worship rather than God. 

 

Paul is also concerned about sexual immorality, and this should be a concern of ours as well.  This is where it gets difficult.  I do not want to be the kind of person who stands here and chastises the whole world because of sexual immorality.  It is difficult for the modern church and for modern clergy to speak with clarity on the moral climate of our time.  Things have changed so much and so quickly.

The sexual revolution had a profound effect on everyone.

 

The nineties became more than a revolution.  Sexuality dominates our thinking and discussions at home, school, church and the political arena.  Times have changed and television is a culprit in all of this.  Many of us are amazed at what is shown on broadcast television. There are shows that are shown during the family hour of 8-9pm that would have been banned in the late hours of the night just a few years ago.  We have become a sex and violence saturated society and the price on family life and human dignity is getting higher and higher.  Words like love, commitment, forgiveness, understanding, listening and steadfastness have practically vanished.  We are part of a culture that the bible warns against.

 

I am not trying to be a prude.  I don’t think that prude thinking helps at all.  I also don’t think I am out of touch.  This is an acknowledgement that sex is one of the most powerful drives we have, and it is misused in that if it is not used to show our deepest love for another human being, it can bring much harm. 

 

Inappropriate sexual activity has destroyed many people in our society.  Physically, emotionally and spiritually.   It has destroyed reputations and families, and anyone who does not recognize that simply has his head in the sand.  I believe in my heart that it troubles God to see humans debased and distraught because they disregarded their faith in this one area of their lives.  Now sin really is worshipping something else and not God.  I realized we have the tendency to blow sexuality out of proportion in our culture compared to prejudice and racism, but it is a problem that has brought much pain to many people.

 

Part of preaching is to talk about things that we need to think about or address, I think mostly preaching is about hope.   I think there is hope and it is found only in the grace of God.  It seemed to St. Paul that the people of Corinth were making the same mistakes that the people that Moses led from Egypt in Exodus.  Then he adds these hopeful words: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to others.  God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.  With the testing he will also show the way out so that you may endure.” 

 

We often excuse our misdoings by saying that we are only human.  That is true.  The CEO driven by excessive greed is human, when one in a partnered relationship is unfaithful they are also human, but there is another angle to being human.  We are able to choose.  We do not have to give in to our baser instincts; we can choose that which is right and that which is good.  If we turn to God, God will give us the ability to live our life to the fullest.

 

This is serious business because our souls are at stake, as well as the influence we have on others.  I do not know if you have ever heard of William Mulholland.  He was an engineer with many credits, but history remembers him for an unfortunate incident. 

 

A few minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928 a dam in San Fran Quito California gave way and 500 people lost their lives.  Water that reached a height of 80 feet destroyed everything in its path.  The bitterly sad fact is that the dam had been leaking since the day before and William Mulholland knew it, but didn’t think it mattered.  Mulholland meant no harm.  The Department of Water and Power just didn’t believe that the leaks they were seeing could result in the damage that occurred.  The leaks in the dam that holds our society together may one day overwhelm us.  I pray they will not.

 

Some of us are already overwhelmed.  The bible is clear on two things.  There is forgiveness and there is help for the people seeking to change their lives.  God will give us the grace for forgiveness and reconciliation if we have fallen and the ability to stay on the path of righteousness if we are being tested.  Whatever you needs may be, God’s grace is sufficient.  God was faithful to the people of Israel but they were unfaithful to god, and so they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.  You may be wandering as well.  There is hope, but only one hope, the grace of God.  AMEN

 

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