Sinful Sundays

Sinful Sundays

June 26, 2022

Galatians 5:1, 13 - 25

The freedom to shop on Sundays seems like a gift to many Americans, but it leads to a surprising increase in iniquity.

“For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).  What a good line to ponder as we get ready for Independence Day picnics and parades.

But watch out. Freedom can be as explosive as a Fourth of July firecracker.

Two economists have discovered that the freedom to shop on Sundays contributes significantly to wicked behavior.  And, the people most affected are the ones who are the most religious.

Surprising, but true. Jonathan Gruber and Daniel Hungerman have studied what happens when states repeal “blue laws” — statutes that prohibit the Sunday sale of nonessential items such as appliances, furniture, jewelry, liquor, and cigarettes.  They’ve found that church attendance decreases when stores are open on Sundays, while drinking and drug use increase.  Most striking is that the biggest change in bad behavior mostly occurs among those who frequently attend religious services!

Before the shopping ban was lifted, 37 percent of people attended religious services, at least weekly.  But once the stores were open on Sundays, attendance fell to 32 percent.  And instead of going to church, many of the faithful are going astray.  Marijuana use increases among church attendees, compared with those who never went to services, as do cocaine abuse and heavy drinking.

“Instead of being in church, you’re working or shopping in the mall,” says economist Daniel Hungerman to The Washington Post (September 14, 2006).  He suspects that time at the mall — whether you are working or shopping — increases your exposure to sinners, and surrounds you with many more “party animals.”

Open the stores, and suddenly Sundays become sinful.

As Americans, we are certainly great lovers of freedom, but it’s time we took a long, hard look at the dark side of independence.  Like kids who get their driver’s license and then wrap their cars around trees, or students who go off to college, drink too many shots of tequila and die in a fraternity house, we’ve got to learn how to handle the freedom we are given.  And that is what gets us to our text.  What do we do when we suddenly find ourselves without boundaries or constraints?  Do we have to become total party animals, stumbling from regular church attendance into drug and alcohol abuse?  Or, can there be a much more uplifting outcome to being set free from the law?

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” says Paul (5:1).  This liberty doesn’t have to result in Sinful Sundays.

St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians can be understood as a spiritual Declaration of Independence, because it frees us from Jewish legal obligations and insists that we become right with God only through our faith in Jesus Christ.  But Christian liberty is not a license to go crazy.  When we are set free from the Jewish law, we are not given permission to do whatever we want.  Freedom in Christ is freedom to do what Jesus wants — it’s a freedom that says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (2:20).

“You were called to freedom,” writes St. Paul to the Galatians; “only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence” (5:13).  Don’t assume that faith in Christ gives you a “get out of jail free” card for the pursuit of personal pleasure through drinking, drugging, and promiscuous sexual activity.  That’s the mistake made by the ancient Antinomians, meaning “against the law.”  Antinomians believed that Christians are not bound by moral laws, since God’s grace is so broad and vast, and they’ve popped up from time to time over the centuries, from the days of the ancient Gnostics to today.  Certain sects in the Middle Ages practiced sexual license as an expression of Christian freedom, embracing “the heresy of the Free Spirit.”

Such ideas really set off the Apostle Paul.  To the Romans, he wrote: “What then are we to say?  Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1).  St. Paul’s answer borders on an expletive.  In the Latin (Textum Vaticanum), it’s absit.  Its English equivalent might be, “Heck, no!” -- or something a little stronger than that.

So St. Paul opposes this self-indulgent tendency when he says, “Through love become slaves to one another” (v. 13).  He knows that if we are servants of one another, then we are not going to behave in selfish ways or abuse one another.  “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,” writes St. Paul, “’You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (v. 14).  He challenges us to love one another as Jesus loved us, and to serve each other as Christ served us.

The blue law study indicates that when stores are open on Sundays, marijuana use increases by 11 percentage points among church attendees, compared with those who never go to services.  Cocaine use increases by nearly 4 percentage points.  Heavy drinking increases by over 5 percentage points.  And, although the study doesn’t say so, you can imagine that other pleasure-seeking behaviors increase as well:  “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (vv. 19-21), to use St. Paul’s list.

These are signs of freedom, yes — but not Christian freedom.  The liberty we have as Christians is the freedom to love our neighbors and act as slaves to one another.

Now maybe you’re thinking that this talk of selfish pleasure-seeking has little to do with you.  After all, you don’t smoke pot, snort cocaine, or go on alcohol-fueled benders.  Licentiousness, idolatry, and sorcery are not part of your normal Sunday routine.

For you, this talk of Christian freedom has a different, but equally important message:  You now have total license to go crazy with good works!  “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” says St. Paul.  “There is no law against such things” (vv. 22-23).  There’s absolutely no regulation against having too much joy, being far too patient, showing excessive generosity!  Go ahead, says St. Paul — knock yourself out!  There’s no law against it.  When was the last time someone came up to you and said, “Would you please stop being so loving, joyful, peaceful, and patient”?  We don’t have this problem because we’re timid about using the freedom we have been given.

“Hey, Joe.”

“Yeah, wassup?”

“Well, you’ve been really supportive of me.  You encourage me all the time.  You’re so patient and always happy and cheerful, and when I need something, you’re there for me; you’ve always been kind to me and my family, you’ve totally got my back, and I appreciate it.”

“Okaaaaaay.”

“So would you please cut it out.  Enough already.”

Who’s going to say that?  No one’s going to complain; no one’s going to put a limit on the generosity, the love, the joy, the patience, and kindness that we show to each other.

Unlimited freedom to be followers of Christ — that’s the amazing gift we are given when Jesus sets us free.  Sadly, it’s a gift that so few of us are willing to put to use.

It’s time to show our independence and unleash some good works on the world around us.  Time to focus on “the fruit of the Spirit” instead of “the desires of the flesh.”  Time to uncork some love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and generosity.

Bernie Siegel, the author of several books including Peace, Love and Healing, recommends that we ask ourselves “How would I behave if I were a loving person?” and then act that way.  Identify a role model, and then imitate that person.

“I follow Don Quixote,” says Siegel. “I view the world with love.  I tell people to experiment with this.  Judge no one you meet for the next 24 hours.  Love everyone you meet and see.  It’s incredible how that changes your relationship with people . . . .  When you judge everybody — he’s lazy, he’s no good, he only wants money, he doesn’t care about me — you project that, and you affect those people.  When I walk around being loving, it’s incredible how people respond.”

Love.  Joy.  Peace.  Patience.  Kindness.  Generosity.  All these are gifts that can be unleashed on the world, because we have been given unlimited freedom to go crazy with good works!

It was one year ago that Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, decided to give 85 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help cure the globe’s most fatal diseases.  It was an incredibly generous gift — $31 billion dollars.  But more significant than the size of the gift is the mission of the Gates Foundation.  When Bill Gates was interviewed about the work of his foundation, he listed the reasons that people give for tackling global health problems.

• Some use economic arguments, he said, stressing that if we cure something like malaria in an African country, then the country’s gross national product will be higher.

• Some use security arguments, saying that if we don’t cure these diseases, the instability in these countries will increase.

• Some use neighborhood arguments, pointing out that somebody could get on a plane from one of these places and bring the disease here.

But none of these arguments, Gates said, is the right one.  “The right argument is this mother’s child is sick.  And that child’s life is no less valuable than the life of anyone else.  And the world has plenty of resources to go solve these problems.”

There are plenty of problems in this world — some caused by mosquitoes in Africa, and some caused by stores doing business on Sundays in America.  But we have an abundance of resources to solve these problems — financial resources, intellectual resources, and spiritual resources.  The right argument is always that people are in need, and every life is precious.

The time has come to stop holding back.  On this, our spiritual Independence Day, let’s break free from being stingy with our God-given love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and generosity.  We have total license to go crazy with good works, so let’s unleash our gifts on the world.

What might that look like?  Here’s a story from Tony Campolo:

In his book The Kingdom of God Is a Party, he tells of flying to Hawaii to speak at a conference.  He describes checking into his hotel and trying to get some sleep.  Unfortunately, his internal clock wakes him at 3:00 a.m.  The night is dark, the streets are silent, the world is asleep, but Tony is wide awake and his stomach is growling.

He gets up and prowls the streets, looking for a place to get some bacon and eggs for an early breakfast.  Everything is closed except for a grungy dive in an alley.  He goes in and sits down at the counter.  The fat guy behind the counter comes over and asks, “What d’ya want?”

Well, Tony isn’t so hungry anymore, so eying some donuts under a plastic cover he says, “I’ll have a donut and black coffee.”

As he sits there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30, in walk eight or nine provocative, loud prostitutes just finished with their night’s work.  They plop down at the counter and Tony finds himself uncomfortably surrounded by this group of smoking, swearing hookers.  He gulps his coffee, planning to make a quick getaway.  Then the woman next to him says to her friend, “You know what?  Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be 39.”

To which her friend nastily replies, “So what d’ya want from me?  A birthday party?  Huh?  You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday to you?”

The first woman says, “Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean?  Why do you have to put me down?  I’m just sayin’ it’s my birthday.  I don’t want anything from you.  I mean, why should I have a birthday party?  I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life.  Why should I have one now?”

Well, when Tony Campolo heard that, he said he made a decision.  He sat and waited until the women left, and then he asked the fat guy at the counter, “Do they come in here every night?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

”The one right next to me,” he asked, “she comes in every night?”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s Agnes.  Yeah, she’s here every night.  She’s been comin’ here for years.  Why do you want to know?”

“Because she just said that tomorrow is her birthday.  What do you think?  Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her right here in the diner?”

A cute kind of smile crept over the fat man’s chubby cheeks.  “That’s great,” he says, “yeah, that’s great.  I like it.”  He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, “Hey, come on out here.  This guy’s got a great idea.

Tomorrow is Agnes’ birthday and he wants to throw a party for her right here.”

His wife comes out. “That’s terrific,” she says.  “You know, Agnes is really nice.  She’s always trying to help other people and nobody does anything nice for her.”

So they make their plans.  Tony says he’ll be back at 2:30 the next morning with some decorations and the man, whose name turns out to be Harry, says he’ll make a cake.

At 2:30 the next morning, Tony is back.  He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, “Happy Birthday, Agnes!”  They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great.  Harry had gotten the word out on the streets about the party and by 3:15 a.m. it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place.  There were hookers wall to wall.

At 3:30 on the dot, the door swings open and in walk Agnes and her friend.  Tony has everybody ready.  They all shout and scream “Happy Birthday, Agnes!”  Agnes is absolutely flabbergasted.  She’s stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees start to buckle, and she almost falls over.

And, when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, that’s when she totally loses it.  Now she’s sobbing and crying.  Harry, who’s not used to seeing a prostitute cry, gruffly mumbles, “Blow out the candles, Agnes.  Cut the cake.”

So she pulls herself together and blows them out.  Everyone cheers and yells, “Cut the cake, Agnes, cut the cake!”

But Agnes looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, slowly and softly says, “Look, Harry, is it all right with you if ... I mean, if I don’t ... I mean, what I want to ask, is it okay if I keep the cake a little while?  Is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”

Harry doesn’t know what to say so he shrugs and says, “Sure, if that’s what you want to do.  Keep the cake.  Take it home if you want.”

”Oh, could I?” she asks.  Looking at Tony she says, “I live just down the street a couple of doors; I want to take the cake home, is that okay?  I’ll be right back, honest.”

She gets off her stool, picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail.  Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do.  They look at each other.  They look at Tony.

So Tony gets up on a chair and says, “What do you say that we pray together?”  And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, half the prostitutes in Honolulu, at 3:30 a.m. listening to Tony Campolo as he prays for Agnes.  Tony recalls, “I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her.”

When he’s finished, Harry leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, “Hey, you never told me you was a preacher.  What kind of church do you belong to anyway?”

In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”

Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, “No you don’t.  There ain’t no church like that.  If there was, I’d join it.  Yep, I’d join a church like that.”

We are free to love our neighbors    use the list  ____