Lust at First Sight
II Samuel 11:2-5
March 6, 2005
This fellow had a dream in which he was transported to heaven. In his vision, St. Peter was showing him around the place when the guy noticed that there were clocks everywhere. Everywhere he went there were clocks…thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them, millions of them.
None of them had the same time because they were all ticking away at different rates. Under each clock was a name plate with someone’s name on it. He asked St. Peter what all the clocks were for and was told that each one was designed to keep track of a particular individual’s sins. Each time a person committed a sin, his or her clock would make a complete revolution.
This fellow began to look around and couldn’t find his clock. So when he asked St. Peter about it, he was surprised at the reply. “Oh, your clock? Well, we moved it back into the office and are using it as a fan.”
It’s interesting, isn’t it? We really don’t like to call sin by its real name anymore. We call it by other names that don’t sound so harsh. We don’t like to admit to sin, but will admit to miscalculations, or errors of judgment, or mistakes. You do remember, don’t you, the Kobe Bryant incident out in Colorado a couple of years ago? I remember the news conference he held immediately after being charged with a crime. He said at that time that he had made the “mistake of adultery.” Call me a little old fashioned if you wish, but I think that adultery is a little more than a mistake.
The story is told of Moses, who, when coming down off the mountain with the stone tablets, said: “The good news is that we were able to hold God to only ten commandments. The bad news is that adultery is still there.”
I have to admit to you that I struggled with this sermon a little bit. Here we are, continuing the series on the seven deadly sins, and we have come to lust. I studied and studied, thought and thought, hoped and hoped…in order that I might keep this at no more than a PG13 rating. I don’t know if this sermon is one which you have been hoping for, or one which you have been anticipating with great fear and trepidation.
There is a series of books out on the seven deadly sins. I have picked up and read a few of those. I finished the one on lust and decided that you have to be smarter than I am to understand what the author was saying. He is a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University and does a lot of talking about Platonic and Aristotelian thought. He brings in Shakespeare and Freud and a whole lot of other people I’d never heard of. He talks about the animal kingdom, about evolutionary psychology, and was really no help at all.
We do have some Christian and biblical resources to help us get at lust. We know that Jesus said, “…everyone who looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28). You will remember that St. Paul subscribed to the theory that it was better to marry than burn. Actually, he said that it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion and lust (I Corinthians 7:9). If you can’t control your desire, he said, then go ahead and get married. But it is better if you remain single and celibate.
People in the early generations of the church used to be so afraid of the possibility of lust that they felt that the only way to control it was to become a desert hermit. Saint Jerome makes mention of it this way.
There was I, therefore, who from fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, with only scorpions and wild beasts as companions. Yet I was often surrounded by dancing girls. My face was pale from fasting, and my mind was hot with desire in a body as cold as ice. Though my flesh, before its tenant, was already as good as dead, the fires of the passions kept boiling within me. (As referred to in “Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins,” 2004. Simon Blackburn. The New York Public Library: Oxford University Press. page 54)
St. Augustine of North Africa, before he became a saint, lived with a woman for a number of years, having a child without ever marrying. His mother had a firm hand in the end of this story. She insisted that he get rid of the woman and the child and go to Italy to study with the great Christian masters. In his Confessions, he admits his struggles with lust and passion. “As a youth I had been woefully at fault, particularly in early adolescence. I had prayed to (God) for chastity and said, “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
So here we are with lust. What in the world are we going to do? Probably the best known story in the Bible that considers a story of lust is that of King David and Bathsheba. It is a story that has been made into books and movies. Bathsheba has been the subject of art work for generations. It has undoubtedly been the subject of more sermons than we would like to remember.
David’s armies were out fighting. For some reason he had not accompanied them, but stayed back in Jerusalem. Perhaps he was tired and because he was king, didn’t have to go. Perhaps he was waiting to go to the field when the final victory was at hand. Perhaps they considered him to be too important to risk in battle. Who knows? We only know that he was back in Jerusalem when he decided to take a walk on his roof one afternoon. He looked over and saw a woman taking a bath.
Now, since he was king, he could have anything he wanted and he wanted this woman. So he sent some of his people to go get her. It didn’t matter that she was married. It didn’t matter that her husband was out in the field with David’s troops. It didn’t matter that David was on his way to becoming a sexual predator. The only thing that mattered at the time was what the king wanted. The end result, of course, was that Bathsheba became pregnant.
As I thought about that story, I came to believe that our definitions of lust are too limited and too limiting. We talk about lust in sexual terms. Maybe we do that for a reason. I read the other day that therapists suggests that men think about sex every three minutes and women think about it every six minutes. (“The Workbook on the 7 Deadly Sins” 1997. Maxxie Dunnam and Kimberly Reisman Dunnam. Nashville: The Upper Room. page 144). At its core however, there is much more to lust than just sex. I think that it goes much deeper than sexuality. A broader and more encompassing definition of lust is this: an overwhelming desire, as in a lust for power.
There was a time in Israel when they were ruled by a series of Judges, sort of local tribal chiefs. Things seemed to be working out all right, but the people were looking at the nations around them who had kings. They wanted a king just like everyone else. The prophet Samuel warned them that they really didn’t know what they were asking. He told them that a king would “take” their sons to be in the army; would “take” their daughters to be cooks and bakers; would “take” the best of their fields, vineyards, and olive orchards; would “take” one tenth of their harvest; would “take” their slaves, cattle, donkeys, and flocks (I Samuel 8:11-18). All of these things would be taken from them simply because he had the power to do so.
When David summoned Bathsheba, it was simply another aspect of his taking what he wanted, when he wanted, and where he wanted it. He did it because he could, because he had the power.
For David, this was not a matter of sex. He already had multiple wives. In II Samuel 3:2-5, there is mention of the sons that he had with each of his six wives. He gets another wife in verse 14. In chapter 5 verse 13, we learn that when he came to Jerusalem, he took more concubines and more wives. So this Bathsheba matter is not about sex. It’s about power. It’s about the lust for power. It’s about absolute power corrupting absolutely.
A thousand years later, Jesus would address the issue of power, authority, and influence. In the Gospel of Matthew, he said:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. No so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-28).
David’s crucial mistake, in my opinion, was that he believed that power gave him control. He supposed that he could control the situation and that he was in control of his destiny. He was under the impression that because he had the power to do something, that was evidence enough that it was acceptable. He assumed that his own self-interest was the highest value. He had no thought of the consequences and no consideration of the dangers that waited for him. He was blinded by his lust for power. In the end, that lust for power didn’t provide him with control, but only stripped him of it.
So maybe you’re wondering what all of this has to do with you. I think that it is important to face David’s sin because by doing that, we can then face our own inclinations to use each other for the fulfillment of our own desires. We are here, as Jesus said, to serve and not to be served. We are here to put the needs of others first. We are here to consider the requirements of others before our own. We are here to feed, more than we are here to be fed. We are not the center of the universe. It is not all about us.
When we lust after power and the ability to lord that power over other people, in whatever guise that presents itself, the slide into sin becomes easier and easier. When we use each other to get what we want, we get tangled in the sin that clings so closely (Hebrews 12:1) and thus tend to be driven into even more sin to try to cover up. Just ask David.
This is the season of Lent. It is the time to remember that we may be able to hide our sin from others for a time. In fact, some of us do that quite well. But we cannot hide our sin from God. As David transgressed deeper and deeper into his sin, he discovered that even though he could kill his chief rival, he could not conceal his actions from God. He paid the penalty for his lust for power.
Power can be used for good or for ill. It can be desired and sought for the thrills it brings. Power can also be cherished because it can be used in ways that lift people up and model the self-giving of Jesus.
The lust for power can only lead to a downward spiral of sin upon sin, whether those sins be sexual in nature or otherwise. By contrast, the pursuit of the capability to control our lusts leads us to an ever closer relationship with Jesus. In this season of Lent, I pray that we might all put a bridle on our lusts. I hope that we will think about others before we think about ourselves. I sincerely dream of the time when we will be reconciled with Jesus. He is the one who has the power to forgive, cleanse, and set us right.
