Whoever first baked Pecan Sandies should be made a saint. I love Pecan Sandies cookies!
The taste of crunchy pecans, the texture of shortbread. I don’t care if you are from Georgia and pronounce it pee-kan, I’ll insist that Pecan or pee-kan Sandies are the finest cookie on the market.
And so one day my wife sent me to the grocery to pick up a few things. On her list it said, "Cookies -- you choose". And so I did. Chose a bag of pecan sandies.
But now if one bag of pecan sandies is good, what about two bags? Twice as good, right? And although I had not been instructed to get two bags, I exercised my freedom, and set one bag aside on the car seat. The idea was just to have one ... or two ... or three ... on the way home.
As fate would have it, there was a red light almost immediately. Time enough to open the bag and pull out a cookie. I made my turn and was confronted immediately with another red light, a long red light. Got out two more pecan sandies to nibble while waiting for that light to change.
By the time I got to the third and last stop light before our house, well, let’s just say I slowed down in hopes that light would turn red!
Now I’m home. What am I going to say to explain a bag of cookies with four or five or maybe more missing? Remember, I was only asked to bring home one bag of cookies. So: who needs to know about a second bag? I presented Margaret with one full, complete, intact bag of pecan sandies; the other sack, the open sack, slipped downstairs to my study. Mighty good treat for Friday when I would be working on my sermon!
Fifteen minutes later I was at my desk for something, and an irresistible urge pulled my hand down to the sack of pecan sandies, for just one more. Well, just two more. And just a nightcap. Well, the bag is almost empty anyway; why bother to keep the rest?
Are you as surprised as Margaret was that evening when, after dinner, she said, "For dessert let’s have ice cream and a couple of those pecan sandies", and I said, "Well, maybe later."?
Wherein lies a parable. The parable teaches us that taking care of our wants and wishes is normal. It’s innocent and right to take care of what we need and even what we want; that’s just a part of our human freedom. But at some point, if that’s all we do, taking care of wants becomes taking care of habits. Taking care of needs becomes self-indulgence. Getting one’s way becomes a feeding frenzy, an obsession. When satisfaction grows into self-indulgence, then we’ve done something destructive. Something which destroys us and destroys our relationships.
I am asking our church to follow this coming year the theme, "Freedom, Love, and Service". The insights I’m going to try to share today apply equally well to our personal lives and to the life of the church. We are empowered by God to take care of ourselves. But if that is all we do, if we do nothing more than feed our own self-interests, then we will become self-indulgent, and worse, we will destroy ourselves.
But there is a way to get past self-indulgence. There is good news. Here is God’s word on this matter:
Galatians 5:13-15
I
First, I’d like you to notice that freedom is God’s gift. The thrust of the Galatian letter is that God in Christ has freed His people. "You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters". God wants us to be free persons.
Now, when you think about being free, what does that mean? Among other things, it means that you can discover what you want and you can go for it. You can dream a dream, you can imagine a plan, and then you are free to bend every effort to make it come true. All of us do this. All of us who know that we are free at all work at getting what we want, we get busy doing what we want to do.
I’m saying that that’s natural; nothing wrong with that. I would even argue that to do less that to go after what you need is sin. To be less than what God empowers us to be is sin. To want less for ourselves than what God wants for us, that is sin. The Bible says in James, "Anyone who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin." If you don’t speak up and ask for what you want, you are acting like a victim, you are displaying low self-esteem. That’s not what God wants for you. Galatians teaches that you are a child of God, made for freedom.
"You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters". That means: seek what you need. Here in the church: expect to get what you need in order to grow spiritually, and if you don’t get it, ask for it.
This church has made, I believe, a commitment to certain standards of excellence. We are committed to worship and preaching that both inspires and informs. We are committed to teaching the Biblical revelation. We are committed to training ourselves to thrive as skilled Christians. We are committed to providing the things a Christian needs in order to grow in Christ.
And so, given that commitment, I have to say to you, "Use your God-given freedom, ask for what you need." If what you need and what you want is not being offered, ask for it. For if you hide your needs, you are denying your personhood in Christ, and that is sin.
I have known some people who had certain needs and wanted the pastor’s help, they wanted a deacon to visit, they wanted a Sunday School teacher to address the problem, but they never said a thing about it. Never asked for a visit, never set up a counseling session, never raised a question, never said a mumbalin word, but then went around the comer and complained because nobody seems to care.
No, let me assure you that we care if you have needs which are not being met. Thank God we are capable of doing something about many of them. I wish I could just take all morning to lay out the potential that resides among us. Among us are people with insight, with skills, with influence, with creativity. All we have to do is exercise our freedom and ask for help.
I also know folks who are attending tiny little churches, churches which have been in decline for years, now reduced to not more than 35 or 40 people. I find myself wondering, when everything is going downhill, and there aren’t enough people to do much of anything, how does anyone find satisfaction in going to a church in that kind of shape?
Well, we’re not like that. We have the capacity to do some things, and to do them well. We just have to be accountable for knowing our needs and speaking out about them.
"You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters". Act on that freedom!
II
But now remember. Remember how one pecan sandie became two, and two became three, and three four and five, and in the blink of an eye, a whole bag was consumed! What happened?
What happened is that very easily, very quickly, meeting needs becomes self-indulgence. All too soon taking care of our legitimate needs and our normal wants becomes an obsession. It gets out of control. It becomes sheer self-indulgence. And when self-indulgence reigns, it destroys both our selves and our relationships.
Do you remember my sermon on the steps this past August? We were learning the Roman Road together. In speaking about how the wages of sin is ultimately death, I pointed out by using these steps that first there are sins, specific acts of rebellion, not too serious in and of themselves, but sins nonetheless. And then I stepped down a little farther and pointed out that there was sin, not just sins, but sin, rebellion as a way of life.
And then, lower than sins and even lower than sin, I showed you that there was … what? Evil. Evil, that power that grasps us, holds us, binds us, will not let us go. The sin thing gets too big for us to handle on our own. Evil takes us over. One novelist, describing one of his characters, says of her, "Edith was an island; bordered on the north, south, east, and west by Edith." Complete self-containment.
Now that’s where I see the issue of self-indulgence. Self-indulgence means a self-serving that is out of control. My hand irresistibly drawn to the hidden pecan sandies. Seems like a small thing. Someone on our streets irresistibly drawn to target and shoot police officers. That’s a large thing. Or, someone in our church who can see nothing more than his or her own comforts and pleasures, and, no matter how hard we try, is never really satisfied. Small thing? Someone lurking on the street corner, waiting to buy mind-bending drugs. Large thing. I know that’s mixed bag of someones, but it really is all the same thing. Self-indulgence.
Self-indulgence will ultimately destroy not only us but also and everybody else around us as well. I guess that’s why Paul can say, "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence ... If you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another." Too much fat and sugar in the pecan sandies; too much deception with my spouse. Destructive.
In our church, if it becomes, "I’m going to have it my way, no matter what you need", then watch out. We’re on a slippery slope.
If it becomes, "I’m going to play in my sandbox with my friends, and I don’t intend to get to know the others, I don’t bother with new people" … if it becomes being absorbed in our small comfortable circles, then we will consume one another.
If it becomes, ’Why doesn’t Takoma take care of its own and stop running around trying to enlist new people?" … if it becomes, "Why don’t we just plan nice programs for the dignified people of our community, and make sure nobody messes up our pretty building?" … if it becomes, "I’m not comfortable inviting anybody to church" and "I’m too reserved to share my faith" and if it becomes, "looks like the government would take care of all these needy people" ... if it becomes all of that, then we should shutter these doors, because sooner or later, like a cancer, we will begin feeding on ourselves.
"Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence ... if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another."
If our church should one day fail, it will be not because we are incompetent, it will not be because we are stupid, it will not even be because we are not religious enough. If our church should fail, it will be because we ignore one another and turn, as the Bible puts it, "every one to his own way." Each one eating the whole bag of pecan sandies, each one his or her own little church with a membership of one.
If all we do is think about, and obsess on, what we want in order to be spiritually comfortable and religiously insulated, then Paul’s warning will have come true. "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence ... if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another."
III
So, now, what have we said about our life together in this church?
We’ve said, "if you have needs, ask for them to be met. Demand what you need in order to grow spiritually." Be the free beings God has called you to be.
But we’ve also said, ’Watch out that your desire to get what you need does not snare you into obsessing on what you want. Watch out that your perfectly legitimate need to be spiritually satisfied does not become an indulgent, destructive, uncaring selfishness.”
How can we make sure this doesn’t happen? How can we keep our normal need for spiritual satisfaction from becoming a chronic, insatiable appetite for having our own way?
There is good news. There always is. Thanks be to God. Here is Paul’s wonderful answer, the answer that prompted me to select our theme, “Freedom, Love, and Service".
“Through love become servants to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The way into the future for our church is service. Service. Ministry. Care for others. Care for our community. Reaching out to the lost, the least, and the locked out. Yes, I got that phrase from Marion Barry! The lost, the least, and the locked out.
The way into the future for our church is service. For when you get involved in caring for others, you get to be too busy and too fulfilled to worry very much about yourself. The happiest, healthiest people I know are the ones who give themselves away. They don’t need to clamor for attention, they don’t need to have more things, they don’t even need to be recognized and applauded. Seeing the smile on somebody else’s face is all the reward they need. Service heals.
“Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ’’You shall love your neighbor as yourself’”
When you get to feeling sorry for yourself, get past that self-indulgence and call up somebody who is in pain. Share that burden.
When you begin to feel the weight of your years, get past that self-indulgence; look up a young person whom you could serve as a mentor.
When you think you are spiritually dead, yes, by all means enter the closet and pray; yes, by all means, get into Bible study; but also, get past self-indulgence, find someone who needs to know the Lord and share what the Lord has done for you. Out of your apparent emptiness the Spirit will draw wells of living water!
When you’re feeling lonely and depressed, shut out, get past wallowing in all that stuff, get past self-indulgence, because, remember, it will destroy you and everybody around you. Find a child to love, find a shut-in to serve, find a single parent to encourage, find a jobless person to counsel, find a mentally impaired person to play games with. Freedom, love, and service! “Through love become servants of one another."
And yes, here at church, when the music is too slow; and the preacher is too long-winded; and the room is too chilly … or, when the music is too jumpy, and the preacher never got to the point, and the room is warm and stuffy ... and when there are a hundred temptations to stay away ... then get involved in one of our serving ministries. When you cannot feel God’s presence, serve someone and He will be there.
"For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
As good as the first two or three pecan sandies tasted, because it was normal and natural to enjoy them, after six or eight or ten, I felt kind of sick. Having what I wanted had turned into a painful self-indulgence.
I’d have felt a whole lot better if I’d given each one of you a pecan sandie too!
