Sunday, July 2, 2023
/The Fifth Sunday after Pentacost
Genesis 22: 1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12 -23; Matthew 10: 40-42; Romans 6: 12
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
I begin with a confession, and this is it: this sermon was not easy to write - nor is it easy to preach – because of its theme. The theme of this sermon is Romans 6:12 which reads “Therefore do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passion.”
This is why I don’t want to preach – I am talking about sin, and how it affects us daily. Yucky topic, but we are going to talk about it openly. The Greek word for sin is hamartia – a term used for archery. Hamartia – sin – means to miss the mark, as an arrow flung from a bow misses its target. Sin occurs when we miss our target, where we veer wildly off course from God’s clear purpose for us. It is when we put our minds on auto pilot and allow our bodies and desire for pleasure to drive our behavior.
Freud called this the “pleasure principle” – that human behavior is largely motivated not by what we should do or what is right, but rather our behavior is governed by what will bring us the most pleasure. The author of Romans is saying that if we allow pleasure, or sin dominion in our mortal bodies, we are way off target.
What does this look like in our lives? I will give two examples from mine. Example #1 that I am off target and am driven purely by pleasure seeking motives and allowing sin dominion in my mortal body occurs the moment my car enters the Whataburger drive through line. If my car is in that drive through line, I am very likely craving salt, I am craving high fat food, and I want that high that comes from fast food – especially something sweet like a chocolate milkshake. (Although Chick Fil A has the best drive through milkshakes – trust me I speak from experience). There is nothing wrong with Whataburger, or Chick Fil A. But if I allow Whataburger dominion over my life, if I were to eat it daily, I will eventually have significant health problems and you all will need to build a larger pulpit.
Whataburger is a playful example, but here is an example of greater consequence. Example #2 of me going way off target actually occurred when I came to this church nine years ago. At that time, I had very little idea how to be a Rector, even though I had been a priest for nine years already. I had never been a Rector before. When I got here, I was not prepared for contentious committee meetings, disagreement, and the pressure of making decisions whose outcome would upset people. I was a people pleaser, and when not everyone liked me, I did not have a healthy way to process that.
As a result of church – related stress and pressure, I developed a problematic coping strategy that involved an overuse of alcohol. Rather than talking through my feelings and confronting my stress issues face to face (which is what most healthy people would do) I instead numbed myself. At first this was not problematic; it wasn’t a big deal. I did not notice any health -related issues emerge from this behavior. But over time, as my dependence upon the substance grew, so did my problems. And this was my core problem: I purposefully allowed alcohol (instead of God) to dominate my mortal body. It got to the point where the first thing I thought of in the morning upon awakening was not God, but when I could have my first drink.
Today, my life is very different. Alcohol is no longer part of my life. I am committed to a program of recovery. The only time I am close to alcohol on a consistent basis is when I am at the altar, holding a chalice of communion wine which I choose not to drink from. I daily ask God to have dominion over my mortal body. My life is not perfect, and I still have a lot of spiritual work to do. But it is much better than it was when I first came to St. Andrew’s.
Does sin have dominion over your body? Does sin have dominion over your soul? These are not easy questions for us to answer. And most of us would prefer to ignore them entirely. Jesus, the great healer of our souls, gives us strength and courage to face whatever it is that has dominion over our lives, but we must be disciplined in asking him for it. We must abandon the fantasy that God will deliver instant results without us having to do any real work. God is not a fast-food drive through. We must put in the work, daily, and it is hard. But God will work beside us, always. AMEN.