GREED, GLUTTONY AND LUST
Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Mustang, OK
March 8, 2016
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke
There was a rich man who, having had a good harvest
from his land, thought to himself, “What am I to do? I have not enough room to
store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I will do: I will pull down my
barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I
will say to my soul: “My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many
years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.” But God said to
him, “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this
hoard of yours, whose will it be then? So it is when someone stores up treasure
for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord
Homily
Greed or “Avarice” as I learned it in school
is not so much the love of possessions, as it is the love of possessing. It is
the buying of things we do not need, more even than we need for our pleasure or
entertainment. It is possessing for its own sake. At the risk of offending
someone in here, I’m going to tell this story on myself. I was hunting for a
parking place at my dentist office last week. There were none. Right in the
middle of the parking area there was a Humvee sitting across three parking
spaces. As I was walking across the street from an empty lot some distance
away, the owner of the Humvee came out and very cheerfully greeted me. Making
great effort to hide my annoyance, I asked: “Why do you have a vehicle like
that?” Using everything restraint I had to keep from saying: “and take up three
parking spaces.! With obvious innocence she said: “Because I can.” Opened the
door, climbed up and drove off leaving three full sized parking spots and me
standing there……..”Because, I can.”
Avarice! The issue is not the
vehicle obviously; it is the reasoning and the decision.
Just down the street from my last parish, a
large construction site is very busy these days. It will be the largest climate
controlled storage unit facility in the country. Avarice! I am not here talking about theories this
week. I am talking about evidence that we are in the grip of sin. This is not
an idea, it is actual behavior. Evidence of these deadly sins is everywhere you
care to look, not in others but within us all. This Avarice is not an old
fashioned sin even though it is an old fashioned word. It is alive and well.
The evidence is crowding the cars out of our garages and sagging our ceilings.
We set our security systems when we are away, rarely when we are inside because
they are not there to protect human life from danger, but to get a lower rate
on our home owners or apartment renter's insurance premium.
Our language betrays our sin. We say and we
hear others say; “I must have that.” Of course, it’s about having it, hardly
ever about needing it. We have more clothes than we need and way more
accessories. The very word “accessory” tells you what it’s all about. “For the
man who has everything…” the saying goes! Then why give him more? Avarice! It
might all seem trivial and harmless until we begin to measure what it is doing
to us. I think of Mrs. Buckett in this regard. You know that lady on the
British comedy series that airs on PBS?
She is possessed by her possession, and they speak for her more than
herself, and her attention to her husband is as though he were a possession she
has to put on her show. It’s as though those things were her --- Avarice.
A wise Greek writer reminds us that wealth
consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.
We live in a culture where Greed is not just
considered good. It is considered Gospel. It is the way to do thing, the way to
get ahead, the way to achieve success. Never mind that Enron was just the tip
of the iceberg when it comes to corporate crime sweeping America America
As a priest of forty-eight years, I have come
to the most amazing observation. You can talk about anything from this pulpit,
and most people will glaze over, and on the way out they’ll wave and say:
“Great sermon, father.” But talk about
money, and the eyes tighten up, and everyone slips out the door without a
glance. We never talk about it. It is the big secret. It is considered rude to
ask what someone makes or how much something cost, but yet we will talk
casually and simply about the most intimate and personal matters!
It’s not as though there is anything wrong
with desire. Desire is a form of energy. It motivates us about many good things,
the desire for peace, the desire for love, the desire for justice; but the sad
truth is that we are taught to want without limit. Enough is never enough. If
you thought you were going to get out of here without another bumper sticker,
you’re wrong. “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”
The problem, as I said at Mass this weekend
is that “line.” I quoted Chesterton who said that morality like art consists of
drawing a line. No one is drawing any lines. There is no longer a line that
says and means, “That’s enough.”
Every November, a profoundly sad thing
happens in this country. I have met few people who are as touched and
profoundly saddened by the news reports as I am. People have been killed and
many are injured after staying up all night to be the first through the door of
stores for Pre-Christmas sales. The media shows people in a shopping rage
tearing toys and games out of one another hands with hatred. Avarice has
overtaken us. If you were not in the mob but were not the least bit appalled by
the scene, Avarice has taken us captive.
What virtue we need then is a clear
understanding of when desire is good, elevating life or when it is bad and an
obsessive vice. Wanting Wisely is the virtue. Some things are valued because
they are instruments for getting more, and other things are valued in and of
themselves. We have to know the difference, because if we don’t the confusion
transfers to people. Friends ought to have value in and of themselves not
because they help us get something. We have all been used by someone, used by
other people, and we know how it feels. Greed brings us to sacrifice what’s
really important for the sake of what is not.
There is a television show about Greed in
this country. Now this sin is becoming entertainment no longer shocking.
Avarice is in control. I call it sin. To want something wisely is to want it
for reasons other than status. The desire parents have to give their children
the best possible education and make sacrifice for it is wanting something
wisely. On the other hand, enrolling a child in the most elite and expensive
private school to put them on the fast track to fame and fortune is Avarice.
Those who succeed in this world and become
wealthy are not all immoral, but they all have a moral responsibility to give
something back to a world from which their riches came. The rich are always the
most indignant about paying taxes yet the civilization created by those taxes
is what made the rich in the first place. So now that they have it made, they
want to shut off the system that gave them opportunities. Avarice. No
redistribution of wealth is a world without roads, school, and hospitals. There
is a sign on a freeway outside Oklahoma
City
For Christians, the answer to this matter is
simple. It is Stewardship: a way of life, a witness to faith, the response of a
grateful heart. The embrace of that life style will be the end of Greed.
Silent Reflection
Reading
two (1
Thessalonians 4: 3-7)
My brothers and
sisters,
God wills you all to
be holy. He wants you to keep away from sexual immorality, and each one of you
to know how to control his body in a way that is holy and honorable, not giving
way to selfish lust like the nations who do not acknowledge God. He wants
nobody at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in this matter. God
called us to be holy, not to be immoral; in other words anyone who rejects this
is rejecting not human authority, but God, who give you his Holy Spirit.
This is the Word of
the Lord.
Homily
Lust is not a sin of the flesh. It
is a sin against it. It is in our flesh that we are present to
the rest of creation, and particularly present to each other, revealing, and
exposing, sensitive to others and even vulnerable to them, open to hurt. This
then is the problem, the paradox of lust, because Lust is not interested in
partners, but only in one’s solitary pleasure. If there is a hint of concern
for the other, it is simply an ego concern that one did well, performed well,
and of course is then adequate and desirable. Lust then accepts any partner for
a moment, and then they’re gone.
To begin with, we ought to be honest. Sex is
the most powerful human hunger next to survival itself, yet it has now moved
largely out of the realm of sacred mystery and into the realm of commerce. It
sells everything, and like greed, there is never enough. Oddly enough, the
message of most modern advertising is that sex appeal builds self-esteem, but
in our society the opposite may be true. Beautiful women in particular learn to
distrust compliments and to be suspicious of even the most ordinary acts of
kindness. Our children are the most vulnerable to this image building/image
destroying consumer abusing stuff. It may sell a pair of jeans, but the
innocent who buy those jeans will never look like the model in that add, and it
only eats away at their developing and fragile self-respect and self-image all the
more. We hunt flesh, but what we really crave is intimacy. Our
culture’s addiction to sex is like our addiction to fast food: more of it never
really satisfies, and it can be more than just unhealthy. The truth is, our
sexual addictions are more rooted in ego than in physical desire. Our insecure,
self – absorbed culture has begun to using sex to satisfy emptiness,
insecurity, loneliness and self-doubt. The pandemic of internet sex is at the
heart of this. Why live in the real world? Escape into fantasy! That body on
the screen will never reject us. There is a huge issue of ego in this behavior.
Self-absorbed and insecure, people sit wide-eyes in front of a computer screen
pretending: pretending because the truth and reality are too hard. All the
while, minutes and hours of one’s life are gone forever. Intimacy is what we
crave, and it has never been found in a chat room or in pornography. It’s all
anonymous – empty, and it leaves the victim even more empty and alone. The only
thing that responds to our longing and need for intimacy is love; and it
doesn’t take long to figure out that love
is not something you “make.” It is something you are. Like all the
sins, lust makes us solitary. It is lonely, empty, and fleeting. One of the surest signs of its presence in
our midst is pornography. It’s big business. There is money in loneliness, and
the clever have discovered it.
Pornography is always something used in
secret, alone. A private matter indulged in at late hours by lonely people.
Pornography is a substitute for involvement with another person. It is another
way of condemning ourselves to solitariness. There is a deep and widening
sadness hanging over contemporary culture that is made all the more unbearable
by casual sex. There is the illusion that one can be physically intimate
without being emotionally responsible. In the vernacular, we call that being
used. Lust will not get involved, and so it is absolutely contrary to love.
Ultimately it is about desire which is
not at all evil unless it is selfish. The desire that sets it all in motion is
the desire for intimacy, and this is what I propose as the virtue or the
antidote to lust. “Holy Intimacy”. It is something that rests on trust which
makes possible a kind of holy vulnerability. Yet the widespread disinclination
to become involved, the great fear of commitment I spoke of last night lays the
trap for Lust. In no other sin does one feel so much of a void, and this void
is not only inside, it is also outside in our society. There is a profound failure
of our society to make continuing individual relationship seem part of the much
wider social bonds that tie us to them. Marriage and family are still the basic
units of our society, but they are weakened, and we tend to regard them today
as a matter only of interpersonal relationships, rather than as fundamental
elements of the social order. This changed attitude to marriage has resulted
inevitably in a changed attitude to other personal relationships. So, if I
don’t get anything out of it, I’m not going to do it. Relationships
that rest only on one’s own self-justification are not sacred and holy ground
upon which one may encounter the divine. There is no covenant.
What comes between a couple when one of them
is unfaithful is, not the other woman or man, but what now cannot be shared by
them. He or she knows almost at once that something has been withdrawn, that
there is something that the other is unable to bring and share. Love requires
some effort, but our age encourages us to avoid it by refusing to get involved
and when involved to escape from it.
All of us have seen it, and many of us have
experienced it. It comes with that early stage of infatuation with a bit of
curiosity. It happens when there are no words, or words seem too trivial. Use
your imaginations or your memory. Two people are close together, across a table
on a couch, in a car. They look at one another and nothing is said. It is a
matter of attention. We know it from music, from art, or even a poem. We have
to concentrate and give it full attention. So, there they are, gazing. We need
to “gaze” not peer or stare, but simply to gaze and let the eyes bring in the
other, and let the other eyes draw us out and into a presence that is peaceful,
loving, and totally our own. We are doing that in here before this sacrament.
It is the gaze of love, the gaze of affection, the gaze of trust, the gaze of
faith, and most of all the gaze of holy intimacy.
Love at its best is here before us. Love in
the flesh is the gift of marriage. But the adventure of marriage is learning to
love the person to whom you are married….love does not create a marriage;
marriage teaches us what a costly adventure love truly is. This holy intimacy
is for a lifetime. It knows that age can add more in tenderness than it takes away
in virility. Sex when we’re young is all about the body, hormones and pleasure.
Then suddenly you’re not young anymore, and sex becomes a feast of reciprocity
and intimate tenderness because the solitary emptiness is filled with a
spiritual presence which is the gift of fidelity and a promise fulfilled.
Silent Reflection
Reading
three (Luke
14: 15-21)
A reading of the Holy
Gospel according to Luke
“When evening came,
the disciples went to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and time has
slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy
themselves some food. Jesus replied: There is no need for them to go: give them
something to eat yourselves. But they answered, “All we have with us is five
loaves and two fish. So he said, “Bring them here to me. He gave order that the
people were to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two
fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. And breaking the loaves
he handed them to his disciples, who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as
much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps left over, twelve baskets
full.”
The Gospel of the
Lord
Homily
In the last couple of years, I have come to a
curious realization about myself and my appearance. About ten years ago, I had
serious heart surgery, and in the process of surgery and recovery, I lost about
thirty pounds. As time has passed, I have found what was lost; and I did not
have to pray to Saint Anthony. Just after coming back to the parish when I was
on the light side of the ordeal, people would come up to me and will say:
“Father, you don’t look so good.” As time went on they began to say: “Father,
you’re looking good today.” What I have come to realize is that this is all a
code message. “You don’t look so good” means I’m down to size 34. “Father
you’re looking good” means I’m back up to 38! Or, more crudely stated: “Father,
you’re getting fat.” At which point I run home and get out the South Beach
It may not be politically correct to say it,
but while much of the world is starving, Americans are busy eating themselves
to death. At last count, 60% of us are overweight, and the numbers just keep
rising. Chronic obesity in children is an alarming public health issue.
Meanwhile, there is a multibillion-dollar diet industry in place. Yet despite
endless new diet schemes, and any conceivable piece of exercise equipment
available for three easy payments, we keep getting fatter. But never fear,
there will soon be a pill to fix it all.
To call this a sin would be to imply that
someone is responsible, but in a culture of blamelessness we have decided that
it’s a matter of genes or slow metabolism or a sweet tooth that runs in the
family. That all sounds better than the truth which is that most of us eat too
much and do too little by way of exercise. What makes matters worse is that
chronic obesity may be more psychological and spiritual than physiological,
especially in a culture that idolizes food. Other than the Bible, the only
other kind of publication that is growing beyond leaps and bounds is cook books
--- check out Barnes and Noble if you don’t believe me. It’s a bigger section
of the store than history.
The super market is the temple of excess with
music, lighting and an ingenious array of visual seductions all designed to
prompt us to buy more than we need, especially things we shouldn’t eat. How
many of us go into the super market with a list and come out with just exactly
those things and nothing more? Last Monday I spent $27.00 for a quart of milk!
Two bags! Yet we live in a time when pleasures are regarded as an entitlement,
and anyone who thinks otherwise is a prude or a closet hedonist. The whole idea
of choosing to live a measured life where less is more and austerity is a
virtue sounds almost subversive in our consumer culture.
Gluttony strikes us as sad rather than
deadly. What’s a little overeating, after all, when compared to lust? It
troubles me when my brother priests get together and I notice what shape they
are in. Congregations seem to take pride in getting Father another piece of pie
or another donut.
When the early church Fathers made the list
we’ve been considering and named the sins we are searching for in ourselves,
Gluttony is always placed next to Lust. They are connected. Too much of a good
thing is never a good thing. A few weeks ago, I ran into someone from the
parish who had been bitterly complaining about their tuition in our school. I
was a guest in a very expensive restaurant, and I noticed that the complainer
sitting behind me was well known by the restaurant staff leaving me to suppose
that they frequently dined there. We claim to be over taxed and underpaid, and
so school children go without textbooks and paper. Yet our national restaurant
tab could fund them for a decade. We are raising the tuition All Saints School
this year. The actual cost of that increase passed on to the school patrons
means one less trip to McDonalds each month!
Eating is a “zero-sum game.” The food supply
at any one moment is finite. The more you eat, the less food is available to
some else. What that really means is that our tendency to waste food, quite
literally steals bread from the poor. That story of Lazarus the beggar we just
heard suggests that the two of them, the rich and the poor existed only a few
feet apart, but they might have been living in separate universes. In some
cities, not mine because we hide them under the freeway, you can walk down a
street to an expensive restaurant and step over the homeless hungry. If they
beg for something, we feel offended, embarrassed, and frightened; then we buy a
bottle of wine that would feed them for a month. Gluttony is not just
irrational. It is immoral. And it is pointless.
Yet, here’s the paradox. The most constant
and frequently used metaphor for the kingdom
of God
In a world that continues to hammer away at
us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less
is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to
think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton
cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating
here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat.
So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories
and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is
someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a
person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.
We live in a fast food world, eating on the
run or eating alone with the microwave beeping. Sacramental living requires
something else. It requires a table at the center of the family life. TV tables
and card tables will not do. Nobody eats in hurry, and no one eats and runs.
There is no running from communion for believers. There is too little of it
anyway.
Some of us probably grew up in homes where
you cleaned your plate. It was a “waste not or want not” life. These days with
“all you can eat” restaurants and a belief that “if a little bit is good, then
a lot must be better” bringing immense portions and larger plates to the table,
there is a conflict and it is costing us. Cleaning your plate has its roots in
gratitude, and the virtue of not wasting is virtually impossible to exercise.
Too much of a good thing is exactly that, and it brings no health and no life.
I often remember that one of the temptations Jesus experienced in the desert
concerned food and using food for power. We face that temptation all the time,
and we’re not making a lot of progress. World hunger is not a
political/economic issue to be resolved by diplomats. It is a moral issue.
The glutton usually eats alone and in
silence. Sin always seems to isolate us. Those who share food in communion on
the other hand pass what’s on the table before helping themselves. There is an
unspoken rule that the portions must be adequate for the number of guests
present, lest the food run out before all are served. So we start with small
portions and discuss leftovers later. We take turns chewing and talking, we do
not eat with face down inches from the plate gulping and gorging. We talk and we
listen. Sometimes a toast is raised and we look one another in the eye and
express our hopes and encouragement that converts nourishment of the body into
nourishment of the soul. It is then not what we eat, but why we eat and with
whom we eat.
Even the person who eats alone can be in a
sacramental experience because they begin with a blessing and the spirit of God
is the unnamed guest. A prayer before the meal even though unheard by others
establishes the meaning of the food and the undeserved grace of having it
available. Having all this food reminds us that we are among the privileged in
the world. The most powerful antidotes to gluttony are community and gratitude.
They turn eating into communion and every table into an altar. As a sin,
gluttony makes us solitary. Communion brings us together. Gluttony teaches us
to devour. Communion teaches us to savor.
Since 2001 I sit at a table every day and
wonder how it is that we have the funds and the anger and the enthusiasm for a
war on terror but no interest at all for a war on poverty and hunger when the
truth is, poverty and hunger are breeding the terrorists while our gluttony for
oil makes it all possible. Gluttony takes life. Communion gives life. Since
I’ve been sick, I have come back with a new sense of food, eating, and even
dieting: eat less, more often, with more friends. I remember mom’s advice, chew
slowly, pause to speak, and laugh with those at table. It takes half as much
food and it’s twice as good. That kind of eating feeds the body and the soul. A
hangover is God talking. The message is simple: you are gulping when you should
be sipping. Take, Eat. This is my body, broken for you. This is the bread of
heaven; this is the cup of salvation. It isn’t much, but it’s more than enough.
Now, for three nights we have gathered
to reflect upon the pervasive power and presence of sin in our lives, and in
the society in which we live because of it. I have proposed to you antidotes to
those sins which we might as well call virtues. The virtue we possess and must
nurture in our lives is bred from the habits of a lifetime. These virtues are
more than ideas; they are a way of life. The movement from understanding them
to living them is the very stuff of conversion.
1. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Pride is insecurity. Proud and Arrogant behavior compensates for
deep misgivings about one’s true value. When we believe that we are worthy,
that all human life is worthy, there is a deep reservoir of living water on
which to draw. No need to be the center of attention, because we have been
attentive to our own center. No need to be impatient with others because we
know we share the same short comings. These people are recognized because they
are not out to be recognized. They listen to others because they respect the
worthiness of others. They grow old gracefully because looking young is not
what makes you feel worthy. This person wakes up every morning knowing exactly
what they are: a child of God.
2. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Envy is the failure to admire and emulate the beauty of everything
and everyone else. There is no cheap imitation in their lives. They do not want
anything except the very best for others. This virtuous person is always wide
eyed in wonder and delight, never squint eyed in resentment.
3. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Anger is consumptive and useless. Vengeance or Revenge is far from
them, for they recognize the destructive power of that evil. Indignation is
their response to what is wrong and the only anger in their hearts is that
indignation on behalf of others rather than service to one’s self. This person
is recognized as a friend of the poor and defender of people without power or
status. They get mad for the right reasons, and they know when to shout and
when to whisper.
4. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Sloth rejects the wonder and goodness of everything God has made by
saying, “Who cares? They expend their energy for others, are filled with
compassion and they are content and comfortable with themselves as God made
them, holy and good. They plant seeds and wait, knowing that the planting is
their job and the harvest if God’s. They have peace which surpasses all
understanding.
5. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Gluttony is living to eat instead of eating to live. They turn every meal into a sacrament and
they commune with friends to savor every moment rather than ever meal. They
never forget that food is a gift, that less is always more, and that what seems
like too little is always more than enough in the presence of God.
6. You can recognize the virtuous
person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Lust is love of self, and so they never
take those who love them for granted. Considerate and thoughtful, knowing that
physical attraction is rooted in emotional intimacy and tangible tenderness.
Holy Intimacy in love is always Intimacy with the Holy.
7. You can recognize a virtuous person
because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Greed because they remember that desire is both a blessing and a
curse. Wanting things for them is no sin if those things are a means to an end,
not an end in themselves. They are free of possession. They love life, not
things. They do not serve money, money serves them so that they can serve
others. They are always stewards of God’s gifts.
For all their glamour, the Seven
Deadly Sins are really just seven fallen angels.
Worthiness is the quiet,
unspoken antidote to pride;
Emulation, not envy is what
makes us all students of beauty and truth;
Indignation is how we turn
self-serving anger into a passion for change;
Fidelity and trust is how we
keep monogamy from becoming monotonous;
Communion is how food become
fellowship with another and with God;
Wanting wisely is how desire gets
bent into useful shapes; and
Contentment is how we let things
be and trust God Providence to restore all things to goodness.
Praise to God, the source of all our
goodness.
Praise to Jesus Christ, the Word Made
Flesh,
The path of Virtue for the Saved.
Praise to the Holy Spirit, the giver
life who fills us with Joy.
In the name of the Father, the Son and
of the Holy Spirit, let us be embraced by the power of grace, conversion, and
peace.
Amen.
