Last Sunday, Don Rempel Boschmann suggested that I had the
easy task (preaching on self-control and its relevance to creation care) and he
had the challenging one. He did a great job with his assignment – linking
generosity with justice to help us not use our generosity as a way of avoiding
the consequences of injustice. But I’m not so sure that my task is much easier.
The connection between self-control and creation care is
easy enough to establish, but here’s the problem. It means that I have to speak
about how we use our money. This is the third or fourth time I have preached
here on the topic of money and Christian living. I remember the first time,
over 20 years ago, in a sermon on Mary’s Song in Luke 1, which we call “the
Magnificat”. When I was done, I heard that someone commented, “Climenhaga wants
us all to give away all of our money.” Well! How to get in trouble!
Talking about how we use our money is a sensitive topic. Whatever
Don said last Sunday, I don’t think I drew the easy task! I am not going to
tell you what to do with your many, but I do want to fairly and biblically with
the issue today.
Self-Control and Creation
I start by noting the obvious link between self-control and
creation care. As I suggested in the looking ahead question, some people say
that human beings are the greatest threat to the environment. One can see why
they think that.
Just for fun, I did a Google search of excessive displays of
wealth. Reading through a list of such displays was both amusing and
depressing. I could read the list to you, and we would all feel better about
our own spending habits. I doubt that any of us have brought in our private jet
(Boeing 737) to take our dog home. The waste and extravagance in such examples place
huge stress on the environment around us.
But what about us? We are not so extravagant, are we? We
don’t have a second yacht to carry the full staff and accompany us on our first
yacht, but our living habits also place the earth under stress. Consider air
conditioning. In the 1950s, when I was a boy, air conditioning was quite rare.
In the 1970s (based on an internet search) air conditioning proliferated, and
today something like 90 to 95 percent of homes in North America have air
conditioning.
A quick poll: How many people here grew up with central
A/C in their homes? Not many, I suspect. How many of us have central A/C now?
Probably all of us. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone else here. Two weeks ago
on Saturday, our air conditioner stopped working. I couldn’t wait for the
repair shop to open on Monday so I could call them and get the repairman out to
our house. That’s the point. We use a lot more energy to live today than we did
50 or 60 years ago, and all that energy puts greater stress on the environment.
(For a graphic that shows how much food people in different countries use in a
week, look up “The Hungry Planet” by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aliusio)
You can see how a call to self-control might help,
especially if self-control leads to the practice of simplicity – a commitment
to use only what we need and a refusal to gratify our urge to splurge. Simplicity
as a personal and communal value helps us to live more modestly, not to be
extravagant. In short, simplicity on our part benefits the earth as a whole.
Without saying more on simple living, we turn to our texts
and ask they have to do with this ideal of simplicity or self-control.
Isaiah 58
The passage from Isaiah comes in the final section of the
book. The first half of Isaiah warns Israel of judgment and exile coming. The
second half promises restoration (Isaiah 40) and the final consummation of
God’s reign (Isaiah 65 and 66). Chapter 58 is set in this restoration and
observes how God’s people undermine the fullness of God’s reign by practicing
injustice.
Verses 1 to 5 warn the people that their efforts to worship
God through fasting and prayer are in vain because they have embraced
oppression and injustice. In our setting, it is as if someone who makes lots of
money by cheating his/her customers walks into church and makes a show of
worshipping God. Isaiah says, “God hates that kind of worship!” Your lifestyle
must be consistent with your worship for your worship to have meaning.
Verses 6 to 11 point us to true worship. True worship that
God loves expresses itself both in prayer and fasting and in acts of generosity
and justice – as Don Boschmann Rempel reminded us last Sunday. The acts Isaiah
names form the basis for the parable of the sheep and the goats recorded in
Matthew 25. True worship provides for the oppressed and the poor; it feeds the
hungry and clothes the homeless and sets free those in prison. Both Jesus’
inaugural sermon in Luke 4 and his parable in Matthew 25 echo the message of Isaiah
58.
The connection to self-control is clear: God wants us to
live simply so that we can work for justice and bring in God’s reign. That kind
of living is good for people and good for the environment.
Luke 12
We turn to “the parable of the rich fool” (as it is titled
in the RSV). A wealthy man was planning how to increase his wealth, building
barns, planting more crops, all the time unaware that he would stand before God
that night. The parable illustrates Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount:
“No one can serve two masters … you cannot serve God and money” (Mt 6:24).
The parable comes in response to a plea from someone in the
crowd around Jesus to adjudicate a dispute between him and his brother
concerning their inheritance. Jesus refused to get involved; instead, he
implies that this person has given their life over to the pursuit of money and
needs to reorient their life to the pursuit of God. I wonder why Jesus said
this. The person in the crowd was asking for what was fair and right. What’s
wrong with that? Jesus’ response suggests that his focus was more on the money
he saw as his right than it was on God. There is nothing wrong with making
money. There is nothing wrong with having money. The problem is with what he
had come to love. He loved his possessions more than he loved God, and that is
a problem.
Connections
The connection between living modestly in the way we consume
material possessions is clear enough. Isaiah suggests that a real concern with
our neighbour, making sure that everyone has enough, is essential. If we share,
we are less likely to over-consume. Luke suggests that a primary focus on God
will naturally re-orient our attitudes to what we possess. If we are in right
relationship with God, we are less likely to over-consume.
In short, good Christian living is good for the earth. But
what does all of this have to do with the fruit of the Spirit? Our theme for
the summer is specifically based on the fruit of the Spirit, so we turn to
self-control in Galatians 5.
Self-Control
Self-control is the final fruit mentioned in Paul’s list. The
old King James Version uses the word “temperance”, which reminds us of the
values of simplicity and moderation. The NIV, like the NRSV, uses the word
“self-control”. The original Greek was ἐγκράτεια – self-control or self-mastery. In Paul’s day, the
basic idea was that the person with ἐγκράτεια was
someone who used their personal strength to keep themselves under control at
all times. But Paul adds an important qualifier to the cultural value of “self-control”
in Galatians 5. (If I knew more about Stoic philosophy, I would develop this
point more fully.)
This ἐγκράτεια
is a “fruit of God’s Spirit”, not a quality that you or I can manufacture in
ourselves. In Paul’s thinking, you cannot discipline yourself enough to control
your desires properly. You can try, but you will fail. As he puts it in Romans
7, “I know what I should do, but I fail to do it. I know what I should not do,
but I do it anyway.” Paul’s point is that only God’s Spirit can create this
fruit in our lives.
If you look
at a fruit tree and notice that the orange growing on that tree is anemic, what
do you do? Do you walk over to the orange and try to add more fruit to it so
that it is healthier and bigger? Of course not. It is fruit. If you want the
fruit to grow, you feed the roots, not inject food directly into the fruit. So
it is with the fruit of the Spirit. If you want to be more self-controlled, you
feed the roots of self-control; that is, you feed your relationship with God so
that God’s Spirit working in you produces the fruit of actions and emotions
under the control of your will.
The man in
Jesus’ parable in Luke 12 failed in his attitude towards money because he loved
money more than God. Money was the root, so the fruit of the Spirit could not
grow in him. Do you want a healthy attitude towards possessions, to live in a
way that benefits the planet? Begin with the root of your attitude towards the
Creator of the planet, the God who made you and all that is around you.
Concluding
Thoughts
There is a
danger in this line of thought. It is possible to over-spiritualize our
problems, similar to telling someone who is depressed that they just need to
pray more or suggesting that someone who is badly ill that their illness is
evidence of lack of faith. Noting this potential danger, let me conclude by
saying more about the analogy of root and fruit (or, more accurately, of
treating the whole plant, not just the fruit).
When Lois
goes into our garden and tends the plants there, I notice that she works on the
soil, digging it up and making sure that the roots of the plants are healthy.
She also works on the plants themselves, deadheading flowers that are past
their prime and taking off leaves that have died. Good plant care involves both
the fruit and the roots, the whole plant. Similarly, developing the fruit of
the Spirit involves both root (the presence and work of the Holy Spirit within
us) and fruit (the practice described by the presence of God’s Spirit).
“The fruit
of Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self-control.” The combination of root and fruit reminds us that this
passage requires the presence of God’s Spirit within us. When we gather
together, one of the things we are doing is opening ourselves again to God’s
Spirit. God’s love flows into us and through us. God’s joy peace fill us and is
evident in the way we relate to each other. God’s patience with us becomes the
patience that we exercise with each other. God’s generosity becomes our
generosity; God’s faithfulness and kindness become our faithfulness and
kindness with and towards each other. And God’s self-control becomes our
self-control demonstrated in the way that we live.
To put it
another way: Real self-control is possible only if God’s Spirit creates it
within us; but we must exercise self-control in order for God’s Spirit to work
in us. We often use the example of a child jumping off a ledge into his/her
father’s arms. The child’s trust is made possible by the father’s ability to
catch the child, but the trust only becomes real when the child jumps. It’s a
good example. We cannot control ourselves with our own strength, so we give
ourselves to God and open ourselves to God God’s Spirit; then we exercise
self-control, and God’s Spirit flows through us enabling us to do what we
cannot do in ourselves.
In the
context of our summer with the environment, our willingness to control our
appetite for more is essential to the long-term health of the planet. In
ourselves, we cannot exercise such massive restraint, but with and through
God’s Spirit we can. Simplicity and temperance can mark our lives, and we can
live simply and joyfully as we wait for God to bring in the New Heaven and the
New Earth.
’Tis the gift to be simple
’Tis the gift to be free
’Tis the gift to come down where
we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the
place just right
’Twill be in the valley of love
and delight
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we won’t be
ashamed
To turn, turn, will be our
delight
Till by turning, turning we come
round right.
28 July 2024
Steinbach Mennonite Church
Texts: Isaiah 58:6-11; Luke 12:13-21
