Constant Craving

October 19, 2025 sermon at Ascension Lutheran Church, Montreal, QC by Rev. Charles St-Onge. Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5.

Transcript

A long time ago, when I was young, we had – at best – two or three television channels to watch. You had CBC, CTV, maybe PBS if you could pick it up from the US. Then we had cable, but you still had to watch whatever the networks were playing – including their commercials. But we wanted more. Now we have streaming of almost anything you could want to watch, when you want to watch it, ad free (provided you have the money). We wanted more TV, and we got more TV. 

Canada’s premier streaming service, which will let you watch hundreds if not thousands of TV shows and movies on demand is called, appropriately enough, CRAVE. We don’t just want TV. We crave more TV. Constant craving for visual entertainment.

Paul gives a charge to his spiritual son Timothy, to preach the Word at all times. To reprove, rebuke, and exhort. To do it with patience and sober mindedness. This is the call every pastor has from the Lord, including me. We are to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, that he has authority over both the living and the dead, and by that preaching create Jesus’ rule, his kingdom, on earth. 

What makes this an uphill battle for pastors? Why is this task so difficult at times? Paul tells us. It is our epithumia – our passions.  It is our lusts, our desires and our longings - in short, our constant cravings – that make bringing God’s kingdom through the preaching of Jesus so hard. 

We humans don’t just want things. We crave them. We arrange our lives around getting them. Addicts are the extreme example of what’s in a little bit of all of us. We want to get back to the Garden of Eden where we didn’t need to make a living from the sweat of our brow, where the earth gave us everything we needed and we could rest. But we also don’t want to give up on our dream of being God, of having everyone and everything serve our needs. So we try and find shortcuts back to the Garden. We try and satisfy our sinful cravings. We become addicted to them. 

The singer-songwriter Lissie wrote a piece called “The Habit:” She sang, “and if you don't quit, you'll never get over. If you don't quit, you'll never get out. And you're always gonna be an addict. The heart breaks way before the habit.” 

Our constant, sinful cravings choke out the word of God. In Jesus’ parable about the sower, he talks about how the good seed can be suffocated by “the longing for other things.” Same word as Paul uses in his letter to Timothy. The Word is smothered by our cravings.

So Paul warns Timothy, whom he has charged to preach the word, that: “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” Teachers to suit their own cravings. 

At St. Mark’s in Ridley Park I had a member who had left the church for a long time, decided to go back, and went to the closest Lutheran church and thought “Woah! What is this?” What he was hearing now was not the Word he had heard growing up. I shared with him this passage from 2 Timothy about finding teachers to suit our own cravings. He responded, “wait, that’s in the Bible? But that’s exactly what’s happening now!” 

How do we keep from looking for teachers to suit our passions, our cravings? We keep the bad cravings ever before us by reflecting on the 10 commandments, which we’ve now almost reviewed again. We heed the warning against craving things, craving sex, craving power over others, craving even to be God. Or a craving at least to mold God into our own image. 

Remember the old iPhone commercials? “There’s an app for that.” There’s a myth or teaching for anything we crave. Want to hate certain people that you don’t like? There’s a myth for that. Want to be greedy? There’s a myth for that. Want out of your marriage because you’ve found someone cooler? There’s a myth for that. Constant cravings will lead you away from sound teaching.

But there are also good cravings. The night before he was betrayed, Jesus said to his followers, “I have longingly longed to eat this Passover with you.” (Luke 22:15). You could actually translate this verse as “I have craved with a deep craving to share this meal with you.” Buddhism would have you be “healed” by ridding yourself of all cravings. But that ignores that some cravings are good! In the sermon on the mount Jesus said those who hunger and thirst for righteousness – who crave justice – are blessed. That’s the real way back to the Garden of Eden, through Jesus and his cross. 

In the confessions of Augustine, he wrote that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the Lord. We will go from passion to passion, craving to craving, trying to find something that satisfies but taking in only spiritual junk food and “soulnography.”  

So Paul charges Timothy to be patient. To endure. To be sober-minded. To proclaim Jesus as the saviour of the world, as the redeemer from sin, as the one whose death destroyed death, as the one whose resurrection brings eternal life, as the one whose return will restore the world.

Conclusion

Alberta singer k.d.lang had a hit song called “Constant Craving.” In it she asked whether “a great magnet pulls all souls towards truth, or maybe it is life itself that feeds wisdom to its youth,” because, in her words, “constant craving has always been.”

Do not be deceived by the myths that seem to fulfill your cravings but leave you wondering off from God and your neighbour. Christ calls you to receive his sound teaching, about his saving you from sin and death at his cross. Amen.