WHOOPEE! A SERMON ON SELF-CONTROL
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
April 25, 2010
I Corinthians 9: 24-27
Matthew 16: 21-28
Some of you will remember the sermon series I preached last summer on the fruits of the Spirit, those 8 gifts given by God to all who are baptized. Gifts given in order that God, through us, can bless and love the world. They include: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. You may also remember that I didn’t preach a sermon on the last of the 8 gifts of the spirit, promising to save it for a Sunday later in the year. Because I’ve been away this past week attending a conference on ecumenical relations, I needed a sermon for today that I could get together in a hurry. Since this one was ready to go, it’s the one that gets preached.
The last fruit of the spirit mentioned by Paul is self-control. Self-control is not the most popular fruit of the spirit. Possibly, if you’d known I was going to preach on self-control you would have exercised some self-control and stayed home. Others, of course, would pay a small fortune to gain mastery over their emotions or appetites.
For example, all my adult life I’ve had to work at weight control. I’m sure I’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds over the years and put them all back. Then I began having heart problems and was told what foods I could eat and what I couldn’t. Basically, or so it seemed to me, the doctors were saying I could eat anything that didn’t taste good.
In any case, when I think of self-control I can’t help but think mostly about food. Other people have other temptations. Some, in fact, are very serious.
In his book Addiction and Grace psychiatrist Gerald May lists no fewer than 100 things that people can be so attracted to that they might be called addictions. See if you can identify one or more of your temptations or addictions: anger, approval, art, attractiveness, cars, causes, chocolate, coffee, cleanliness, computers, contests, drinking, drugs, exercise, fishing, gambling, guilt, ice cream, lying, money, movies, pets, pizza, pie, popcorn, potato chips, reading, self-improvement, sex, sports, stock market, talking, television, tobacco, work.
Clearly, any one or more of these and the 80 others can cause us to be out of control of our lives, can't they? Sometimes it’s harmless. Sometimes its catastrophic. Just ask Tiger Woods’ wife Erin. In any event, most of us feel the need, in some way, to gain better self-control. Unfortunately, there are no quick or easy solutions.
In the movie "Bang the Drum Slowly" members of a bush league baseball team regularly scammed unsuspecting fans. They'd set up a card game in a hotel lobby and soon fans would sidle up to them wanting to be near the baseball players.
"Whatcha playing?" a fan would ask.
"Tegwar," a player would respond.
"Tegwar? Haven't ever played that"
"Well, sit down and we'll teach you."
And the fans would sit down and ante up the stakes, and proceed to lose all their money because the players would make up the rules as they went along.
"Oh, too bad!" one of the players would say, scooping up the pot. "My one-eyed jack always beats a red ace east of the Mississippi. You must be used to western rules."
"Tegwar," you see, stands for "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules."
Tegwar is not a game to be played by unsuspecting folks. And yet it’s paradigmatic for the way many people live their lives -- without rules.
Fact is, like it or not, there are rules for life -- rules to live by. There are rules for good physical health, rules for good mental health, and, rules for good spiritual health.
Of the three, my job is to convince you that good spiritual health is not less important than physical or mental health. As Jesus said in the Gospel this morning, "What does it profit a person if he or she gains the whole world, but forfeits their life?" meaning their life in relationship with God.
Physical health and mental health are good. But not totally good. Good spiritual health is what gives life meaning and fullness of purpose.
The truth, however, is that God isn't a god of three separate functions, body, mind, and spirit. God is a god of whole people. Our bodies, our minds, our spirits are intertwined. Play fast and loose with any part of body or mind or spirit and the whole of ourselves will suffer. It’s the proverbial 3-legged stool. Take any one away, and the whole body suffers.
St. Paul knew this. Thinking holistically is hardly a new invention. He knew that to do what Christ wanted him to do he had to discipline his body, his life even as an athlete must in order to win the prize. He wrote, “Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified."
Many of us know the experience of disciplining our bodies, or our minds, or our spirits in order to gain a prize of one kind or another. Maybe it’s been in the field of athletics or to earn a diploma or degree or to pass a test for a job promotion or to impress someone.
Take class reunions for example. Naturally, we want to look our best. So most people would try to lose weight, get some new clothes, try to look successful. And then we go to the class reunion where everyone has tried to lose weight, bought some new clothes and are trying like all get out to look successful. And then, when we return home, like as not our old ways return. We fall out of control. We just haven’t been sufficiently motivated to keep it up.
Another source of motivation is fear. Fear is at the heart of the motivation for change for many of us. Fear is operative in helping me to watch my eating habits to a certain extent. Jeanne has this picture of a clogged artery on our refrigerator. All of a sudden one day it appeared. But, you know what: because I know it’s there I just don’t look at it when I go for ice cream.
Likely fear motivates you to exercise self-control in one way or another. After all, the evidence is compelling: Smoking can kill; excess weight is bad; you don’t want your picture on the front of a newspaper for having indulged in one temptation or another. But despite our healthy fear, we often still find it hard to keep motivated, to take care of ourselves, to do the right thing, to have self-discipline over a long period of time. There's something in us that just keeps thinking we can get away with being less disciplined. "I have good genes." "I can play fast and loose with life and not be harmed." But, sooner or later, our lack of self-control catches up with us.
The deal is, we need a motivation much stronger than self-improvement or gaining a prize or the fear of illness or death or having our picture show up on the front page of the newspaper in order to achieve a satisfactory measure of self-control.
For Paul that motivation was in trying to please God. It was in doing what God called him to do.
Now, it’s not that Paul was looking for a motivation to help him have self-control. It’s that he found self-control by focusing on trying to please God, to do what God wanted him to do.
A couple of verses earlier Paul wrote "I have become all things to all people that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings."
Does this motivation sound too spiritual for you? It shouldn’t. Likely you have callings similar to St. Paul that you respond to every day.
I was telling someone recently about my step-father who spent 9 years caring for my mother who had Alzheimer’s. His whole world was devoted to caring for my mother. Did he wake up in the morning motivated to please God? Yes he did. And how? By caring for my mother. He also knew that if he didn’t take care of himself, he’d be no good for her.
The spiritual life of those who follow Jesus Christ is nothing if not grounded in earthiness. Indeed, the ultimate motivation for self-control is found in trying to fulfill the responsibilities we believe God has given us to fulfill in this short life.
My step-father had to exercise self-control to care for my mother. I have to exercise self-control to be able to serve God and you and the bishop as well as be around to love my grandchildren.
And you. There are people who need you. Who need you healthy. Who need you to be around. Who need you to serve God by serving them in one fashion or another.
In my last semester of college I needed another humanities course to fulfill degree requirements. The only course open at the time I had available was a senior seminar on “The American Short Story.” I was not enthusiastic. I was not an English major. However, it turned out to be one of the best courses I ever took.
Among the many writers I read was Flannery O’Connor, a southern Catholic woman who wrote the most wonderful stories before her life ended so tragically when she was 39.
In her story “Temple of the Holy Ghost,” she tells of two fourteen-year-olds, who provoke themselves to convulsive laughter by calling each other “Temple One” and “Temple Two.” They are making fun of Sister Perpetua, the oldest nun at their school, who told their class what to do if a young man should “behave in an ungentlemanly manner with them in the back of an automobile.” They were to say: “Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!”
As the story goes, these two girls are invited for the weekend to the home of a woman and her 12-year old daughter. Caught in another episode of the giggles, the girls gleefully tell their host about Sister Perpetua and what she said.
To their surprise, the woman does not join their laughter but in a serious voice tells them, “I think you girls are pretty silly. After all, that’s what you are – Temples of the Holy Ghost.”
O’Connor writes, “The girls are more astonished than impressed, suddenly wary that their host “was made of the same stuff as Sister Perpetua.”
The exchange, however, is overheard by the host’s twelve-year-old daughter, who takes it all in and marvels at the idea: “’I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost,’ she said to herself, and was pleased with the phrase. It made her feel as if somebody had given her a present.”
What present, assignment has God given you? Care for a spouse? Care for a parent? Care for children? Care for students? Care for employees? Care for those who are down and out? Care for someone lonely? Care for a ministry of the church?
Well, hear this: You are absolutely nothing less than God’s Temple of the Holy Spirit made for caring and serving and loving.
And so, for God’s sake, let us please, control ourselves.
