Leaking Underground Storage Tanks
Or What You Can’t See Can Hurt You!
In our text today, the Prophet Ezekiel has used the image of lust to describe the sins of Samaria and Jerusalem during the period leading up to the fall of Jerusalem and the exile of the children of Israel in Babylon. Ezekiel was in Babylon with the exiles. What becomes clear in this picture painted by Ezekiel is that Jerusalem was not faithful to God, but was seeking her pleasures elsewhere. For doing that, she and her people would suffer. Ezekiel’s purpose was to create a particularly repulsive portrait of Israel’s sin… and I think he was successful, for many of us are offended by these images invading this space… and yet, how often do we tolerate these same images in other parts of our society... or our world today?
Today, we continue four examination of the “Seven Deadly Sins” by taking a look at the sin of lust. We have already discussed pride… envy… and greed. Lust is cut from the same cloth. It is a sin born of self-centered desire. Indeed, lust is an intense sexual desire for another… an uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire… or a passionate or overmastering desire or craving. Words often coupled with lust include prostitution… adultery… fornication… sexual assault… rape… incest… and pornography. This is merely a short list of the ways in which lust is actualized in our world today.
Most of us know what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount on the topic of lust. In the Gospel of Matthew (5:27-28) we read, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." I suspect that some of us can remember President Jimmy Carter confessing that he had lusted after a woman other than his wife… and the nine-day-wonder that confession became in the national news. From time to time, we have heard people speak of “lusting after someone… or something,” but do we really understand why lust… this emotion… this feeling that no one even knows that we have… is a sin?
Lust is sin because it is a form of idolatry. When lust consumes the mind, the object of that lust supplants God… which is why St. Augustine said that “carnal lust rules where there is no love of God.” Some commentators believe that the Samaritan woman at the well in our gospel lesson was really an allegory of Samaria herself, for Samaria had become home to peoples from five different nations… and all of them brought their own gods to Samaria… the woman’s five husbands… but the one she was with now… Jesus… was not her husband… for Samaria did not truly know the God of the children of Israel. Samaria had worshipped these other gods… as this woman had married five different men… but she did not know the one true God… the one who could give her living water so that she would never thirst again.
Lust consumes the mind of the person experiencing it and drives all other thoughts away… including thoughts of God. Lust has only one object… the pursuit of sexual pleasure to satisfy the self-serving desire of the person experiencing lust. While the object of that lust is another person… a child of God… the person lusting after them has no thought of this other person as a unique individual created by God… nor do they take into consideration the wants… needs… and desires of this other person. His or her only interest in this other person is the satisfaction of his or her own physical pleasure… his or her own desire. Thus, lust objectifies the object of its lust. The person who is being lusted after becomes merely a means to an end… a very selfish end… namely the satisfaction of sexual desire. He or she is no longer seen as a person… a precious child of God… a creature created by God with the image of God in their very soul.
Given this perspective, most of us can see why prostitution leads the lust list… for the easiest way, perhaps, of dealing with lust is to pay for someone to perform an act of sex to satisfy the craving for it. That is why the worldwide sex trade is a multi-billion dollar business involving millions of women… and children… yet those who profit from it are not those who provide the service, but the ones who control the lives of those who do. Research shows that 90 - 95% of prostitutes are controlled by pimps who often use threats or violence to gain their cooperation. The violence includes sexual assault… rape… and torture. While some say the answer is to legalize prostitution, 92% of prostitutes say they would like to escape prostitution if they could do so. The average age of entry into prostitution in the United States is thirteen years of age and 85% of these young people report incidents of sexual abuse or incest in their childhood… acts born of lust aimed at totally inappropriate targets. In addition, prostitutes report that 80% of those who seek their services use pornography to illustrate the sexual act they wish performed and that their pimps use pornography to teach them their trade. Each day, more and more women and children are trafficked in order to feed the insatiable lust of other human beings… women who are deprived of their dignity… children who are robbed of their childhood… traumatized by things they should not ever experience… and often introduced to it by those they trusted.
We who sit in this place may claim that we do not participate in the sex trade. And yet, are we not bombarded in all our television programming with images that reduce women, in particular, to mere objects… to the point where many men refer to them simply by their body parts? Do we not sit silently by as sexual innuendo and dramatized sexual acts fill the scripts of the programs we watch… or the advertisements that are shown? Have we not heard, without making an effort to correct it, the act of sexual intercourse itself spoken of as a bartered commodity that one might acquire… “Did you get some last night?”… rather than a beautifully sacred act between loving individuals in a covenantal relationship. In 1 John 2:16, we read, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world." By our very silence, we are complicit in the commoditization of sex… and the objectification of women and children… both by-products of the sex trade which is born of lust. In this community, rape… sexual assault… and incest are a part of the fabric of our lives.
At first, I was amused when I went to the Internet and googled “lust” and was sent to a website dealing with leaking underground storage tanks… but the more I thought about it, the more it fit. Just like leaking underground storage tanks, lust cannot be seen by others. Like leaking underground storage tanks, the toxic material contained within the tanks can escape into the surrounding environment and contaminate it. Even though what is happening might not be seen by others… it still does its damage to the heart… mind… and soul of the person who is lusting… and it destroys the life of the person who is the object of that lust. What you can’t see can hurt you… whether it is a leaking underground storage tank… or lust. And, sometimes, the real damage will not be known for many years.
What can we do to combat the effects of lust in our lives? The first step is to recognize lust for what it is… the objectification of another human being for our own personal pleasure… whether that lust is actualized or not. That is what Jesus meant when he said that “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." To look at another person as “eye candy” is to reduce that person to less than what God created them to be. To treat another person or to speak of them… whether man or woman… as a “piece of meat” is to objectify and degrade them. The tacit approval of such acts of lust… such as sitting silently by as such acts are portrayed on film or on television… supports an ever-growing obsession with sex in our culture.
The second thing we can do is to teach our children not just the “facts of life”… but the meaning of the act of sexual intercourse and its place within the context of a Christian life. All of us were born with the instinctive desire for sex… it is part of the package and necessary for the survival of the species. But what separates human beings from animals that have the same instinctive drive to copulate is the mind that God gave us that we can use to decide which acts of sex are a beautiful sacred gift… and which are merely the exploitation of another individual. Our young people need to be taught the difference.
Finally, whenever and wherever possible, we need to combat the ills in our society that lead to the exploitation of others. We need to speak out against anything that perpetuates violence in the home and exhibit no tolerance of any sexual abuse… incest… sexual assault… and rape. We need to stop the warped application of justice that leads to the conviction of 48% of the prostitutes who are arrested while only 8% of their johns… their clients… are convicted of a crime. We need to provide a safe environment… counseling… and opportunities for alternative employment for those who are trapped in circumstances that lead to a life of prostitution. And for all who are caught in the quagmire of the sex trade… whether abuser or abused… we need to speak of the love and grace of God… and of the power of God to overcome evil and change lives. Most of us are familiar with the quote from Edmund Burke which says, “All that it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing,” but few of us are aware that Leonardo DaVinci put it even more strongly than that. “He who does not punish evil,” he said, “commands it to be done.”
This week, as we consider the sin of lust, let us become more aware of the ways in which our culture exploits human beings to serve a lustful public… or the ways in which we tolerate the exploitation of other human beings because we sit silently by doing nothing… or the ways in which we fail to witness to the power of God to change lives. Albert Eistein once said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Let us not be one of those. Amen.