1.  Has anybody seen The DaVinci Code yet?  I understand that many congregations will be hearing sermons based on this movie today.  You are not one of them.  I haven’t even read the book, much less seen the movie.  I will though . . . just not today.  Today I’ll go ahead and finish this series on The Seven Heavenly Virtues.

2.  Our Christian faith encourages us to “plant” the Seven Living Virtue “flowers” once we gotten rid of The Seven Deadly Sin “weeds” in the “gardens of our lives.”  The “weeds” are Pride, Envy, Anger, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, and Sloth.  We dug them out of our “gardens” before during Lent. Since Easter, tho, we’ve looked at the “flowers” to plant in our gardens – flowers called faith, hope, love, fortitude, and justice.  Today we’ll examine prudence and temperance, in reverse order.

3.  TEMPERANCE.  Do you envision the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, determined to rid this country of that disgusting, evil liquor?  That was before my time, of course.  But the memory lingers on!  This particular virtue has gotten lots of bad press, so listen carefully.  Temperance is not refusing to enjoy yourself.  And it’s not being determined to enjoy yourself as little as possible.^[i]  That would create sadness, and sadness is not a virtue.  Temperance is actually the opposite of disgust – it is not about enjoying less, but enjoying more!  Baruch Spinoza [18^th century philosopher] says temperance is being able to refresh and restore yourself with pleasant food and drink, with fragrant aromas, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use in moderation without injury to self or another.^[ii]  What did Jesus say was the Great Commandment?  Love God, love yourself, and love each other.  So temperance is that virtue which allows us to be masters of our pleasure instead of becoming its slaves.  Intemperate people are prisoner of their own desires.  For instance, I may have a deep desire to have every variety of rose growing in my garden.  Now, I don’t really know how much space it would take to have every variety, but I’m pretty sure it would take a space bigger that the Tulsa Rose Garden currently has.  So, given the size of our yard and the limitations on our time, I must temper my desire for every rose and opt for a number I can manage, so Richard and I don’t kill ourselves trying to take care of them.  Temperance - using that which pleases us to renew us, not destroy us, not hurt others.

4.  Temperance and PRUDENCE.  Prudence is more of an intellectual virtue , which makes it one of the most overlooked of the seven virtues.  Its ancient origin binds it all up with truth, knowledge and reason.^[iii]  Over the centuries, we humans have loaded prudence with so much debris that it broke down like an old garden cart and got lost in the garden shed of practical living.  But that doesn’t mean that we need to keep it there!  We need prudence!  We need to think about what is best for a particular situation, and then act appropriately.  Although prudence is usually at the end of any list of virtues, it should really come first!  If we don’t cultivate prudence, then none of the other virtues will grow.  To continue the analogy of planting flowers in the garden of our lives, think about this: If we plant a shade-loving flower so it gets the hot afternoon sun, without thinking about it, it will burn up, and we’ll be left wondering why.  The best of intentions oft go astray when prudence doesn’t precede them.   But prudence doesn’t have the advantage of buying a gardener’s manual!  Hard data from identical situations simply doesn’t exist when prudence is needed.  “Prudence presupposes uncertainty, and risk, and chance, and the unknown.” ^[iv]

5.  Here’s an example.  Last Sunday we had a situation that called for prudence.  A visitor came in to our worship, a person none of us knew.  He sat on the back row, and as soon as I reached that door he approached me and said he needed me to pray with him right then.  Now, when someone I don’t know begins a conversation that way, it’s often a clue that the person wants money more than prayer.  My first priority was to greet you, so I asked him to wait, which he did, greeting many of you while he waited.  He was very friendly, and at least one of you thought maybe he was a visiting missionary.  Well, sure enough, he wanted money – $10.  So we ended up giving him $10 in cash – which is against our policy of never giving out money.  But we were out of our Reasor’s Gift Cards.  He asked if he could have some coffee and cookies, and I thought “What harm could come from that?”  You were all very gracious to him as he went from first one and then another.  But I began to feel uncomfortable about him, and when I had to leave, I asked Todd to make sure he got out of the building and the door was locked.  Todd did as I asked, and as he turned from the now-locked door, he noticed the man sitting in the back seat of the Neal’s car.   What he saw had the effect of giving a shot of Miracle-Gro to the virtue of prudence, and it blossomed big time!  Todd thought “No, this is not a good picture!  They could be hurt.”  He sprinted across the parking lot, opened the back door of their car and said, “Here, let me give you a ride!  They’re headed the other direction, and I’m going your way.  Come get it my pick up.”  The man got out all right, but immediately began to speak with belligerence, and it became very obvious that his intentions were to harm this faithful, loving couple who only wanted to help him.  Mary told me later that the man became very quiet when he got in their car, and in that quiet, the hair stood up on the back of her neck.  They realized how he had manipulated them.  They are convinced that the virtue of Prudence, growing strong in the garden of Todd’s life, saved them from that man’s evil intentions.

6.  These, then, are the living virtues: Faith, hope, love, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence.  You graduates would do well to add them to the degrees you have earned.  The whole world would be a better place if we planted those seeds, watered them with the Living Waters of Christ Jesus, fed them Scripture, and let the winds of the Holy Spirit blow her live-giving winds all day long!