Trinity 9 – Good Stewards of our Passions

1 Corinthians 10:1-13       St Luke 16:1-9

Make for yourselves friends
by means of unrighteous wealth;
so that when it fails
they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
[St Luke 16:9]

In Trinity Season we follow an ancient ordered pattern of readings, developed sometime around the 5th century and it leads us on a spiritual ascent into the life of God.  For those of you unfamiliar with this, we are looking at that ascent in three stages: purgation of the passions, then illumination of the soul by further grace, and finally leading to union of our souls and bodies with God.

In the first part of this season we have just had 6 Sundays on the purgation of the passions of the soul.  A passion is a thought or a strong emotion or a desire that comes upon us – we don’t will it, we receive it passively.  For example, if I offend you in some way, you don’t have think about getting angry, the anger comes upon you immediately (if you’re healthy).  We are passive in that moment, that’s why anger is called a passion.  It is the same for pride, vainglory, dejection, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust – the core passions of the soul identified by the Desert Fathers.  Whatever passion comes upon us, we have responsibility for how we respond to it.  Sin is to not control our passion so that it ends up hurting us and possibility others around us.  It is to not truly love, or to love imperfectly.

The whole point of our ascent or the perfecting of the passions is to love better, to become like God, who is love.

All of us are messing up continually, but we have a holy hope that God will help us to mess up less and less and to love more and more perfectly as we grow in grace.

God is restrained from filling us with more light, more grace, until our passions, by grace, are under better control.  (James 4)

In the last six weeks, you’ve heard different preachers preaching on the different passions: I dealt with pride and vainglory, Fr Jean preached on dejection and wrath, Jean-Luc has preached on sloth and greed in the last two Sundays.

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Today’s readings deal with the last of the passions that should be dealt with, purged or purified, before we can expect a greater infilling with God’s light:  the passions of gluttony and lust.  In the Christian Tradition they are seen as the least worrisome of the passions – because at least there is some mutuality involved; Dante leaves these passions to the top two circles on his Mount Purgatory before entering earthly paradise.

Our spiritual journey is a journey from bondage to sin, to complete freedom in Christ.  And so Paul says, in today’s first reading, that our journey parallels the journey of the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt towards freedom in the Promised Land.  First they were freed from the external threat of slavery under Pharoah, but it was followed in their wilderness wandering by the more internal battles they had with enslavement to sins.  Paul says, referring to the accounts in Deuteronomy and Numbers,

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” [Ex 32:4,6] [He's referring to when Moses was on Mt Sinai receiving the Law from God, he was delayed and the people rejected God and made an idol, a golden calf to worship.  They feasted and rose up to play, a euphamism for sexual immorality.] We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. [Num 25:1-18] We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, [Num 21:5-6] nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. [Num 16:14,49]

St Paul is warning us today in the strongest of terms to avoid our self-destruction!  We can’t save ourselves, but we can undermine our salvation in Christ by our disobedience, by confusion about what it is to love.  To be a slave to food or drink or to commit sexual immorality is to not love as we are meant to love.  They lead to a kind of spiritual death unless we repent and turn away from them.

Are you struggling continually with the same disordered passion and are desiring freedom?

There is good news for us all this morning!  Paul says,

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

I will speak more about this later in relation to gluttony and lust – what is the “way of escape”?

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In The Triads, by Gregory Palamas, a 14^th century Eastern Orthodox theologian, Gregory makes clear some things about the body and soul in our spiritual ascent, and about the passions.

The desires of the body – especially for food and sexual desire – as with all passions, are not to be destroyed, but to be transformed to their true end.

Gregory says that just as our bodily desires can, if followed in a destructive way, darken our soul, and lead to our destruction, so can our soul, when it is focussed on the highest things, lead to a kind of drawing of the body upwards, so that it too is transformed.  He says:

“When the soul pursues blessed activities, it deifies the body also; which being no longer driven by [bodily] and material passions…returns to itself and rejects all contact with evil things.” [Triads, II ii para 12, p. 52]

What would be an example of this?  I don’t know if you’ve every decided you’re eating way too much sugar and so you cut way back.  Then you discover that when you taste something sweet again it seems sickly sweet, not as pleasant as it used to be.  In a similar way, if we lift our minds to higher things, reflecting on Jesus’ life, praying more to Him, and follow in his ways, we find ourselves not so interested in immorality, that desire fades away.  The peace we have in our hearts reconciled to God has replaced the cravings we had for excessive food and drink or sexual immorality.  Then our energies can be directed, and our bodies used in, the pursuit of authentic love – the using of all our gifts, soul and body, for the building up of the body of Christ and the world.

How does today’s Gospel fit in with this?

Jesus tells the story of a dishonest manager who is wasting a rich man’s goods.  The rich man calls him to account and fires him – “you can no longer be manager”!  So, the manager acts quickly, while he still has control of the books.  The dishonest manager takes some steps to assure that after he is fired, he will have friends.  He gives deals to the debtors of the rich man, so he can count on these people later.  Jesus commends him for his prudence – his worldly wisdom.

But Jesus is not commending that we be dishonest.  But he commends worldly people for being wise about how they manage their affairs to come out well in the end.

How does this apply to us, and to our passions?  We are given by God these passions in the soul.  We have these strong thoughts, emotions and desires – it is part of being human.  We are called upon to manage them well.  When we don’t, we’re wasting the goods, the goodness, God has given us – these thoughts, emotions, desires.  Know them well – how they try to trick us, make deals with them, but in such a way that we don’t hinder our salvation – that they [the angels?] may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

This is the call of Jesus, so it must be possible.  As St Paul says, God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Here are some “ways of escape”:

With regard to our desires for food and drink – we are to fast from time to time – when these desires are out of control – but by no means hurting ourselves in this restraint.  Fasting is to not eat 100 percent of what we desire, try 80 percent!  We fast just enough to get our desire under control so that we are healthy and able to accomplish with our bodies what authentic love calls us to – not too much, not too little is key.  The Orthodox fathers suggest leaving the supper table while you are still just a little hungry (not fully satiated), and so in a state where you are still able to pray…  The discipline of fasting is something every Christian should learn how to engage in from time to time.  It is a “way of escape, that we may be able to endure [the temptation].”

With regard to sexual desire – Jesus says the call of every Christian is to express sexual desire within marriage between a man and a woman, or to live a celibate life.  These are the restraints given by God, but they are meant for our flourishing as human beings and the flourishing of society.  These restraints help in the beautifying of marriage between a man and woman – the way intended by God.  Sexual relations held within marriage enable the possibility of a relationship where deep and abiding trust has the chance to develop.  And that is impossible with short affairs with person after person – that only hardens the heart.  Also marriage provides a safe environment for children to grow and to flourish, one of the principle fruits of the union between a man and a woman.  St Paul suggests elsewhere that married couples sometimes practice abstinence, to deepen their life of prayer, but then to come back together so they are not tempted.  So even within marriage we don’t satisfy our desire 100% of the time, are we to try 50%?  I’m not serious about the precise numbers, but relating in back to the Parable.  With regard to all of our passions, we each have to figure this out in our individual circumstances for our sanctification.  Be a wise steward of our passions, with heaven in mind, that when all is finished in this life, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings!

Restraint in food has, in the Tradition, also been connected with lessening sexual desire – so fasting can also be a “way of escape”, if you’re struggling with lust. [Ex 32:4,6]

If you are struggling with gluttony or lust, there is a lot of practical advice, such as guarding what we watch and how we look with our eyes, which a priest or a mature brother or sister in Christ could share with you if you are willing to open your heart and seek help with a disordered passion.  And it can be helpful to have someone to be accountable to, if you are struggling with a temptation you keep falling for.  So don’t suffer silently, there is help…and there is grace.

Jesus says that he will abide with us, He will come to dwell in us, if we love him, and to love him is to follow his commandments.  And Jesus promises his grace to enable us to follow Him – what is needed on our part is faith: living active faith which continually looks up and in the midst of temptation cries out for God’s help – Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!

Jesus has spoken to us in His Word written, giving us hope.  And this morning we will soon call upon Jesus to give Himself to us, in the Word made visible, that is, in the sacrament of His Body and Blood.  Let us prepare ourselves now, through repentance and faith, to receive perfect forgiveness, to be strengthened to endure temptation, and made ready to be filled with His light and love.

Amen +