Ash Wednesday, 2001
1 John 2:15-16

Renunciation

At the age of 70 Saint Augustine admitted to a sin so grave that he offered to retire as bishop. Augustine, the bishop of Northern Africa, was a mentor to a man named Antonius. The bishop was so impressed with his intellectual abilities that in the year 423 he ordained him. Unfortunately, Antonius turned out to be a destructive scoundrel. Augustine was mortified and wrote, "In my haste and lack of due precaution, I have inflicted a tragedy." The statement and his willingness to step down as bishop reveals both his high view of the Church, and his low view of human nature. He understood all too clearly his own sin, and humbly acknowledged it. The Pope of course declined the bishop's resignation.

Twelve years after Augustine converted to Christianity, he wrote a book called Confessions . Aside from the Bible this may be the greatest Christian tome ever written. Augustine's Confessions details the way that God had transformed him from a debauched pagan to a devout Christian.

On this Ash Wednesday let us reflect on some of his thoughts. In Book Ten of his Confessions he examines 1 John 2:15-16. That passage says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life -- is not of the Father but is of the world." The three points are a) the lust of the flesh b) the lust of the eyes, and c) the pride of life. These three temptations are things of the world controlled by the devil. They are to be renounced. Let us examine them one at a time. [For more on this see Gilbert Meilander's article in Sin, Death, and the Devil . Also Christian History , issue 67]

First there is the lust of the flesh. The lust of the flesh is a phrase that calls forth the subject of sex. For Augustine, there was no way to manage simultaneously love of a wife and love of God. In the act of sex itself he saw his soul drawn away from wholehearted devotion to God. This horrified him. He surely over reacts in condemning sexuality even within marriage. But we should nevertheless take seriously his cautions.

Sexual desire, no doubt, was created by God, and is honored within marriage; the Bible teaches that. But it is also a powerful force for anarchy in human life. Sexual addictions, destroyed marriages, homosexuality, and rape are only a few examples of the horrendous effects of a good thing put to abuse. Sex grips all of us in different ways. It is a temptation we have to deal with on a daily basis. During the season of Lent we should consider the purposes of sex. Too many people assume that the object of sex is to make us happy. True, it can and often does that, but if we regard sexual practice as merely a means of personal fulfillment then we have lost the biblical vision.

Scripturally, sex is the task of begetting and rearing children. Procreation is the first and most important purpose of sexual relations within marriage. The purpose of sex is to love and please our spouse. Sex is the task of giving ourselves to our spouse, learning to love that other person as much as we love ourselves. These are the biblical goals of sex, and outside of these confines there should be a good bit of renunciation in our lives. If we are going to be pleasing to God, and if sexuality is going to take its noble place in our lives, then it should be disciplined, ordered, and even suppressed. Let us therefore renounce the lust of the flesh.

We are called upon to renounce the lust of the eyes. How did Augustine understand this temptation? He himself was no longer attracted to circuses at the coliseums, or dog races, nor did he attend the theater. But there were many small occasions in life when he frequently slipped in lusting with his eyes. He confessed that while sitting at home he suddenly realized that his attention had been wholly absorbed in "a lizard catching flies or a spider entangling them in his web."

He actually regarded his National Geographic fascinations as moral lapses; he took them seriously. Why? Because these curiosities enticed him away from wholehearted love of God. Augustine seems extreme here, but his problem is our problem. How do we love God? How can we fix our heart on the Lord? How can we truly love God with our hearts, souls, minds and strength when we are immersed in worldliness? When Augustine worries lest he be carried away by "lust of the eyes," he has in mind the empty longing and curiosity that overwhelms our powers of attention and leaves no place for God.

Now if Augustine finds his love of God reduced by the distractions of a lizard or spider, how much more should we be concerned with the distractions of modern life? Consider the number of television programs we can enjoy, the sports channels. Indeed, the NCAA basketball tournament now dominates the season of Lent. If we do not go the movie theatre we can walk down the aisles at Blockbuster and pick out several to watch at home. Then the internet and video games offer diversions almost without end. Many people spend all their waking hours engrossed in such spectacles.

The issue is not, for the moment, whether these are good gifts of the Creator. Many surely are. How could we suppose that baseball or Shakespeare were not good things? The issue is whether our attention is overwhelmed by an empty longing to know and experience. Let us be honest. We can easily become slaves to what God created and called good. This is one of the subtle temptations of the devil. That is why Lent is so necessary for us. The season of Lent teaches us that there is a time to pause from enjoying God's creation. A time to fast and pray, and meditate upon God's Word and contemplate His glory. Such a pause gives rest to the soul. It deepens our love of God. We are not wrong to attend to the delights of the world, but a periodic retreat is needed. The fasting of Lent, the forty days of austerity, a turning from what is evil and a turning from what is even good is a way of fortifying our love of God.

Then, 1 John 2:16 speaks of the pride of life. Here Augustine gets stumped. Pride for him is a deep and serious sin, but it is so puzzling. It seems to creep into every thought we think, every plan we make, and every word we speak. It is the ubiquitous sin that is impossible to elude. Consider the praise of others. That can be a source of pride. Augustine wrote 92 books, many of them classics. When his books are praised by others, does he give that praise back to God or does it subtly become his own? Augustine could give up wealth or high position, but then, others might praise him for doing so. Shall he try to live a bad life so that no one will praise him? That hardly seems right. Thus, pride is so hard to avoid, so pervasive, so difficult to even evaluate. And yet it is a tool of the devil to bring down the elect. God hates pride and so we make every effort to renounce it and root it out wherever and whenever we spot it.

Ash Wednesday calls us to renunciation in these three areas, but let us not suppose that our renunciation of God's creation is permanent or absolute. Such ongoing renunciation of the physical and external smacks of Gnosticism. We are not Gnostics. We take seriously the transformation of culture and the arts, of sexuality and society. So how do we harmonize ascetic denial of the world with righteous delight in God's world? How is it possible to mesh renunciation of God's world with the transformation of God's world? Why is abstention even necessary? It is necessary because we have a propensity toward idolatry. Without God's grace we tend to idolize some aspect of creation. Godly asceticism purges our heart of sinful absorption in the world. The spiritual diseases that cause us to become enslaved to food and sex and wine and TV need to be purged. We are best prepared to see culture from a Christian perspective, and best prepared to transform it into its heavenly model only after the Holy Spirit has purged our lives of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And so God uses prayer and fasting and lenten abstemiousness to bring about a fresh flowering of culture. The cleansing of our enslaving habits with lenten austerity and asceticism not only brings us much needed rest for the soul, and a deeper love for God, but lays the foundation for a holy enjoyment and transformation of creation.

I have in the past described how hard it is to get my sons to do their P.E. exercises. A howling and wailing often goes up when I announce to them it is time to run a couple of miles and do some push-ups. But Beth and I have also discovered that they are pretty happy after PE class is over. They claim they are glad because it is done. I think there is more to it. They feel good body and soul. They are happy because discipline brings joy. Rigorous exercise is good for us, whether that be physical or spiritual exercises.

During this season of Lent the Church calls you to fast and renounce certain things: coffee, chocolate, alcohol, soda, meat, TV, video games, sport. I would encourage you to abstain from at least one such item. It is not that these things are inherently evil. It is that they are potentially enslaving, they have the capacity to draw our attention away from God. Our love for them can carry our affections away from devotion to Christ. We do not properly enjoy the good things of God's creation until we come to enjoy God above all. Let us therefore devote ourselves to prayer and fasting, austerity and discipline during the next 40 days. Let us renounce the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

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