Third Sunday in Lent
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. At the end of the day, there are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of the devil. The Kingdom of God has and will win. The kingdom of the devil has and will lose. The question for us is: to which kingdom do we wish to belong?
The easy answer is, of course, the kingdom of God. We’re here, after all, so we must put some faith in God and want to be with him. But we often find ourselves as divided, as some of us wants God, and some of us wants the devil. We would likely never say it that way with our lips, but our actions tell a different story. Every time we sin, especially, but not limited to, mortal sin, we choose the kingdom of the devil. Every time we respond to God’s grace, we choose the kingdom of God.
Our Lenten pilgrimage is meant to help purify us to choose God more frequently than we choose the devil. By denying ourselves certain things, or maybe doing extra things, we are trying to train ourselves to choose God. As our Lord says elsewhere, we cannot serve two masters. We will either love one and hate the other, or hate one and love the other.
St. Paul outlines ways that the people of the Church in Ephesus chose the devil: by saying obscene or silly or suggestive things, or participating in immorality, impurity, and greed, which the Apostle calls idolatry. And certainly, when we do those things, we give our attention to something other than God. Instead, we are told to be thankful. Thanksgiving might seem to fit as an antidote to greed, but what does it have to do with immorality and impurity? I suggest that we give thanks to God for the gift of our sexuality, but also for knowing how to use it properly.
Our sexual passions often become false gods. They so often want to demand total obedience. But they are a hunger which is never satisfied. They keep wanting more. They’re like the old commercials for Lays Potato chips: bet you can’t have just one. It’s not enough to see one impure image; once one is seen the desire for another, or something more enticing, grows. The passions that arise from physical expressions of affection, too, seem to want to keep ramping up and escalating. But God has revealed ways that humans can express physical affection, but without becoming slaves of them. He tells us that certain expressions of love are only fit within the confines of marriage, where man and woman can give themselves fully to the other, open to life, as an expression of love between a husband and wife. If those three requirements are not met, then a couple would be falling into the immorality which St. Paul says can exclude us from the kingdom of God. Even and husband and a wife could need to abstain from physical intimacy if those three requirements for holy sexual activity are not present, so that they do not use each other simply for pleasure.
In my work as a chaplain for the Michigan State Police, I too often see where people have let their passions, both sexual and other passions, run free, and how much it ruins their lives. God does not desire ruin for us. He desires the fulfillment of our human nature, which God reveals to us. Yes, it sometimes means saying no to our desires, but that no is a sign that we are free. If we only can say yes to something, then we are a slave. If we have the ability to say no, then we are governing ourselves. The devil, on the other hand, desires our ruin. He never paints it that way, but he encourages us to give in to our desires every time they pop up. But in doing so we enslave ourselves to the prince of lies.
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| St. Irenaeus |
For when Satan is bound, man is set free;…the Word bound [Satan] securely….And justly indeed is [Satan] led captive, who had led men unjustly into bondage; while man, who had been led captive in times past, was rescued from the grasp of his possessor, according to the tender mercy of God the Father, who had compassion on His own handiwork, and gave to it salvation, restoring it by means of the Word–that is, by Christ.
This time of Lent is the perfect time to re-welcome the kingdom of God in our lives, and ask Christ to bind up the enemy, so that we might no longer be in slavery to him.
So the question for us is: to which kingdom do we want to belong? To the kingdom of the devil, which often brings immediate pleasure but later suffering and death? Or to the kingdom of God, which does have us deny ourselves at times in the present, but which leads to the eternal joy of heaven, where we see God face-to-face: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.