Might As Well Face It, We're Addicted To Sin: A Homily for the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and Good Shepherd, Stayner, the Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, 5 July, 2026.  Readings for this Sunday: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:11-1; Romans 7:15-25A; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.   Romans 7:19-20

Today I want to talk about how we can understand Paul's talk about sin in Romans by thinking of the addictive behaviours that our society tries to lure us into.

One of my favourite summer pasttimes is watching baseball.   Preferably a Jays game, but any team will do, really.   I love the geometry of the field, the colours, and above all the drama and rhythm of the game itself.    But one thing I don’t enjoy is the rise of the sports gambling commercials and the way that revenues from betting seem to be taking over the sport, despite the fact that gambling is an addictive and ruinous pasttime.

I have no desire to bet on sports, or on anything else, really, and I watch those commercials with a bit of a sneer.  I’m like the Pharisee looking at the tax collector and saying “I think God that I’m not like that sinner”.    But, if I’m being honest, I know that I have my own addiction issues.

My son taught me an acronym, TSLAMP.  Time Spent Looking At My Phone.   Our phones and the apps they provide can consume vast amounts of our time because they are designed to be addictive.  Likes and clicks fuel social media, providing their little dopamine rewards so our brains are actually rewired to want more affirmation, more likes to our posts, higher friend counts.    Our phones make online shopping easier, but they encourage so called “retail therapy”.   Excessive screen time shortens attention spans, makes us less social, and deprives us of sleep.

We could blame all this on the tech companies, but really we live in an addictive culture, of which online gambling and social media may just be symptoms.  We know how powerfully addictive drugs, nicotine, and alcohol can be.  Calorie and sugar rich foods and drinks are targetted to the poor, leading to obesity.   Pornography, especially in its online forms, is likewise powerfully addictive, distorting sexual behaviour from adults to teens.   Whatever the cause, I think it’s fair to say that addictions have a destructive impact on our mental and physical health, on our relationships and families, and on our society.

So while I am saying that we live in an addictive society, I don’t say this to be a scold, nor do I mean to be a sociologist, though I will say that if we put more resources into addiction treatment and made it harder for people to make money victimizing others, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.   Rather, speaking as a priest and as a preacher, I am saying that we live in a condition that, theologically, we call sin, and sin is profoundly addictive.

Sin is a primary theme of Paul’s writing, and particularly in Romans, which we have been sampling of late in our second readings.   You many have noticed that Paul talks about sin in the singular.   Not sins, as in various misdemeanours that we might avoid through greater willpower, but sin as a condition that ensnares and entangles us, like weeds choking a garden.

When Paul says that “the evil I do not want is what I do”, he isn’t talking about a momentary temptation to do a bad thing.   We wouldn’t say that the drug addict stealing money for another fix, or the sports fan spending the grocery money on a betting site, is something that can be fixed by just being stronger.   Sin for Paul is an inbuilt inclination to destructive behaviour. 

Another way to put it is that Paul sees sin as slavery, and sees Christ as the only one who can liberate us from sin.   In 12 step programs and AA, liberation is described as a higher power.  Several times in my military service, I counselled young soldiers who needed AA but couldn’t find make themselves believe in or trust this higher power.  I would always ask them why they needed to go to AA in the first place, and they’d say it was because of the booze.  So I’d say, then you accept that alcohol has power over you?  Yes, they’d say.  So it seems to me that only an even higher power will save you.   And that is Paul’s message in a nutshell.

Sometimes religion is seen, unhelpfully, as a way of keeping track of our misdemeanours, and hopefully keeping them to a minimum, by submitting ourselves to discipline.   And yes, there is a discipline that is part of our Christian faith, which is why we think of self control as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The gifts of the Spirit are part of Jesus’ willingness to come to our aid, because Jesus recognizes our burdens and he understands our entanglement in sin.  When Jesus says in our gospel reading that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, he is speaking to the truly burdened - those crushed by all forms of oppression - to those crushed by violence, imperialism, poverty, hunger, and all the addictive things th

Thinking of sin this way helps us to resist the temptation to see the sinner as the problem.  The problem is sin, in all its forms, and the answer is the kingdom of God, the justice of God, and the solidarity of God in Christ who stands with the burdened. 

Today Jesus’ invitation comes to the those ashamed of the images on their computers, to those desperate for attention on social media, to those whose brains and bodies are taught to crave harmful things.  Jesus comes to break the chains, open the doors, and free us from our burdens. Jesus wants to free us from all those things that ensnare and entangle us.  Because addiction is part of sin, and sin is hard to say no to, unless we first let Jesus say yes to us.  And Jesus will always say yes to each of us, because Jesus loves us and wants us to be free, to love him, to love one another, and yes, even to love our true selves.