Our deepest desire
Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, year B
Bible reading: Psalm 145:16,18-19
The words from our Psalm today, written by King David, may be familiar to many of you. They are often used just before a table grace. David’s psalm is brimming with thanksgiving as he extols the Lord God for satisfying the desire of every living thing.
The word ‘desire’ has not always had very positive connotations in the church.
I was exchanging comments with some friends on Facebook a few weeks ago. I mentioned that after a long day I was looking forward to a few beers. Well, you should have read the responding comments, and these from friends who have no particular religious affiliation: Shock! Horror! What kind of a pastor are you? Drinking beer? What kind of a role model?
Of course they were having fun with me. They love to tease me because I’m a ‘man of the cloth’. But it brought to my attention again just how outsiders often view Christians. Some still see us as a bunch of puritanical, stuffy sad sacks who guard ourselves against any form of pleasure. No music. No dancing. No feasting. A bit like that monk in the movie The Name of the Rose who insisted that laughter was of the devil. Some think Christians have buried all passions and desires and that we worship a God who has caged us up in some miserable, ascetic bubble.
Friends, nothing could be further from the truth! For here the psalmist knows God to be completely interested in our deep desires, and eager to satisfy them as well. Christianity is not so much about moral prescriptions, but about being fully alive. It’s about the land of milk and honey. It’s about a chock-a-block abundance of good things as we heard in our readings today. God feeds the hungry. He is at work within us to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think! We worship the God who said, I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly!
—John 10:10
Jesus was constantly setting people free: free from disease, free from slavery to sin, free from slavery to money and possessions, free to enjoy the Sabbath Day and not mope about in misery, free to live life abundantly. His biggest gripe with the Pharisees was that they burdened people with the accusing and threatening finger of the law. The psalm today shows God with an open hand, generously dishing out good things in order to satisfy our deep longings and desires.
So why are many Christians frustrated? Why so disappointed, like the older son in that famous parable Jesus told, the son who was unable to join in the great celebration feast when his younger prodigal brother returned home?
Or why do so many Christians go too far? End up having an affair? Embezzle money from others? Sink into the darkness of substance abuse?
The problem on the one hand is that people pretend they have no desire. They somehow think all pleasure is wrong. So they repress their passions and desires. What eventually happens is that they end up miserable and sullen, or at best luke-warm and unpassionate. They know that following Christ is supposed to bring joy. But they dare not admit their frustration.
Sometimes this has a messy end. Desire does burn like a fire as Bono and friends sing in the famous U2 song. You can’t ignore it forever. Repressed desire eventually erupts in ways not ordained by God. King David, of course, knew this only too well from his adulterous and murderous affair with Bathsheba.
So we cannot live without yearning. And yet our yearning so often sets us up for disappointment, sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. So it’s safer to amputate all desire, right?
Wrong! Too often people think it’s a case of either/or. Either I choose God, or I choose pleasure. I have good news for you friends. God wants you live with both. Christianity takes desire seriously
, writes David Eldredge in The Journey of Desire, far more seriously than the stoic or the mere hedonist. Christianity refuses to budge from the fact that man was made for pleasure, that his beginning and his end is a paradise, and that the goal of living is to find Life.
The heart of the problem, however, is that we really don’t know what it is that we desire. We think we do. Our impulses tell us that the fire will be soothed in those very objects of desire: sexual intimacy or filial affection; a certain place or location; a certain pleasurable pastime or lifestyle. In all of these we are searching, trying to home in on what it is that our lives lack. The truth is that we will only find true joy as we come to them through a living relationship with God. Without him, they are mere distractions. Let me give you an example by way of an analogy.
An anti-ship missile cruises along its horizontal path not far above the waves. With each passing second it closes in on its target. The warship a few kilometres away appears to be a sitting duck. But it has defences and it has detected the approaching missile. It fires off a countermeasure, which, once clear of the ship, erupts into a chaff bloom, creating what the missile perceives to be a ‘better target’. The missile, distracted from its original target by the chaff, alters course, and expends its destructive force on a false target. It has been deceived. It has failed to hit home on its intended target.
All too often we are deceived. The true target we were designed for is union with God. Sin fools us into thinking that our desires can be satisfied in what we perceive to be a bigger, better and more impressive target. In the end we are deprived of true joy, and true pleasure.
Our hearts remain unsatisfied until they find their true target in God. St Augustine, who was a passionate pleasure seeker in his youth, finally admitted in his famous prayer, Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.
And there are classic cases in the New Testament where true desires were finally fulfilled in Christ – the Samaritan woman at the well; Zacchaeus; Mary Magdalene; Peter; the man on the cross next to Jesus; Saul. Their restless hearts found true rest in Jesus Christ.
So how should we handle the burning fire of desire? Through prayer in the name of Jesus. Desire gives fervour to prayer
, and there can be no true praying without desire
. Not repressed, false prayer, but honest, persistent, gritty, truthful prayer. The Lord is near to all who call on him in truth.
Tell God the truth. Tell him your heart’s desire, or ask him for strength when you desire that which might lead you into sin.
For honest prayer is a true sign that someone has refused to pretend desires don’t exist. Killing desire may look like sanctification, but it is really godlessness. It is literally our way of handling life without God, and it will end in great sadness.
Heartfelt honest prayer on the other hand, is an act of trust – of faith. Such prayer returns the frustrated believer to the means of God’s grace, to the God who is passionate, fiery, tender, creative, the one who has deliberately planted desire in us, who created the very things we desire, and who has promised to fulfil our desires, for he knows what we need.
The Christian life is characterised by thanksgiving rather than bitter regret. In God we find what it means to enjoy the abundance of good things without letting them destroy us. It is the Lord who fulfils our desires, and in abundance, not by depriving us of the things we love, but by giving them to us. He, after all, fed the crowd of 5000 until they were satisfied.
For he is the true target, the one we are seeking when we climb that mountain; or drive that sports car along the coast on a warm November morning; or smile at a beautiful face; or when an opera singer sings her last note and the audience erupts into applause; or when a child rides his tricycle down a sloping footpath for the hundredth time; or when a man hears the word ‘yes’ at a restaurant after proposing to his girlfriend.
Life in abundance. That’s what Christ desires most for you, even when he withholds something from you for a time or calls you to give something up. For without him, we are like misguided missiles, or perhaps worse still, like missiles that are never even launched.
When we start with ourselves, and worry how we will get those things we long for while still trying not to offend God, one of two things will happen: either we will eventually give up trying to be good, or we will end up miserable.
God sent his only Son into the world to save us from the great delusion. He came to restore paradise. From baptism he gives us himself, the real target of our longing, so that we become rooted and grounded in love, knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, filled with the fullness of God! Gradually, or suddenly, he shows us that he alone is the real, the true desire of every longing heart, and a desire that finds fulfilment both in this life and beyond.