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[17
August 2008]
John 2: 1-11a, Math 11;16-19
Pride, anger, envy, greed, lust, sloth, and gluttony
– the seven deadly sins. I’m
not quite sure how gluttony made it into the list.
I do know that in the early church there was a strong ascetic
movement that stressed that people needed to give up pleasures of life or
the sins of the flesh as they called them.
Remember John the Baptist who took off into the desert where he
wore simple clothing and ate things like locusts and wild honey.
For some this was considered an ideal and eating too much became a
serious sin. However when the
seven deadly sins were put together in the middle ages gluttony almost
didn’t make the list. Dante
one of the poets who popularized the deadly sins considered pride much
more serious with envy, anger, sloth, and greed being the serious sins.
Gluttony and lust were the two least important with lust winning
the place for the least serious.
There are I think some good reasons for gluttony’s
less serious place. Christianity
actually likes food. If you
read the gospel accounts of Jesus it seems he liked going to parties.
He liked a good spread and a glass of wine or two.
Many an abstemious teetotal Christian has scratched their heads at
the first miracle recorded in John’s gospel which has Jesus
manufacturing 600 liters of wine so the guests can finish off the party.
Cana
wasn’t that big a town so we can only presume there were some sore heads
the next morning. It seems
this was not an isolated incident however for in comparing Jesus to John
the Baptist we hear some people were saying that Jesus is a glutton and a
drunkard who is a friend of people who liked uncouth parties like tax
collectors and sinners.
Christianity is a religion that takes a remarkably
positive view of earthly life. Spirituality
in Christianity is earthed in this life and not as the Gnostic elements of
early Christianity proclaimed in some sort of spiritual other life.
Life is for living and enjoying.
Food is good because it is part of God’s creation.
A fine glass of pinot noir, or a slice of rich camembert, a sweet
tasting pear, or a scrumptious piece of freshly baked bread are all God
given pleasures. Of course at
the heart of Christianity is a meal we call communion and while we have
sacralised the meal the importance of meals and sharing food together in
our faith can not be over emphasized.
So what is all the fuss about gluttony about.
When I think of gluttony I think of someone stuffing their face
with food as if there is no tomorrow.
But the sin of gluttony has always had some other shades of
meaning. It has for instance
always included getting too fussy about food and making a god of food.
Take note all the foodies out there who watch those endless food
programmes on TV. Gluttony has
always included drinking too
much alcohol and getting drunk. Gluttony
has also included eating too little and using food as a means of gaining
power and attention. The
reality of course is that food and drink are important in our lives and
it’s easy to get the place of food out of kilter.
I know I find keeping the weight down can be a struggle at times.
Being overweight is of course reinforced as a sin by the current
values of our society where to have a perfect body is to be slim, bronzed
and without a spare gram of fat in sight.
We need to remember this is a recent fad and wind the clock back a
few years and a very different picture of beauty emerges.
Look at Reuben’s pictures of the 17th century and
you’ll see pale white skinned ladies with rolls of fat, because then to
be skinny was a sign of ill health and poverty.
Bronzed bodies were a sign that you were a labourer.
However obesity is clearly a growing issue in the world and there
is an issue with our own health and with the reality of so many starving
people. On the other hand we
need to remember that the skinny bodies paraded as ideal in our time are
often the result of anorexic and unhealthy eating patterns which are as
gluttonous as over eating.
I say this because what we are really talking about
in this sin of gluttony is our relationship with food.
It’s not so much the amount but whether eating food in our lives
leads us closer to God or leads us away from God.
When we eat is God more part of our lives or is God forgotten?
I want to
affirm two truths that I think will lead us closer to God.
1. Food is a
Gift From God
In our family we grew up with a little practice that is familiar to
many of you. Saying grace.
It often was something we said without much meaning as we eagerly
awaited the food, but it was a good little family ritual that I believe we
should work to encourage again, because we so easily forget that God is
the provider in a society where food is provided from the supermarket.
We have lost our links with where for example milk comes from and
we no longer look heavenward if we need some item of food but simply take
a trip down the road. With
constant abundant supply we take our food for granted, but there are signs
that this carefree consumerist way may not be best way for us.
Many children now have no idea milk comes from a cow, and in their
minds most food is manufactured by machines.
Growing some of our own food and discovering our reliance on
God’s graciousness creates a different sort of society.
Giving thanks to God when we harvest food, when we prepare food and
when we eat food I think is a healthy option and a very good thing to do.
Treating food as just another consumer product abuses the gift
which is given to us often with the costly sacrifice of life and labour.
It also robs us of the mystical and gracious understanding of life
that is so strongly upheld in our scriptures.
Our dependence on God is forgotten and the gracious giving heart of
God is forgotten. Treating
food simply as a consumer product encourages us to eat all we want as our
right while the rest of the world goes hungry.
2. Food is
Given to Enrich Communal Life
In my younger days I was part of a group that used to get together for
a drink most weekends. Christians have always had a love hate relationship
with alcohol for good reasons, but I have always maintained that God and
Jesus is present in many a pub as people engage communally over a pint. But
one thing I also worked out was that it wasn’t good to drink alone.
Drinking alone was a sign that something wasn’t right within.
The same also goes for food.
Of course for many people it is a daily reality because they live
alone, but eating food is an activity that is best done in a communal
setting. There as we share
food with one another we will often find God dancing in the conversations
and Jesus present as an unseen guest. Hospitality and eating together is
something very important in our Christian tradition.
Jesus often chose to reach out beyond the normal boundaries and
accepted groupings to include others in his communal eating.
We are told a feature of the early church was the way they opened
their homes up to others over a simple meal.
The church has always upheld hospitality to be a spiritual practice
just like praying.
I know in the home I was brought up in one of the
most important times of the day was the evening meal.
We would gather at
5.45pm
and attend to the setting up of the table and other tasks and then begin
eating at
6.00pm
. If you were not going to be
there you needed to prearrange your absence and you needed a pretty good
reason, because come hell or high water the expectation was that you would
be there. To be absent from
the family evening meal was a definite sin in our home.
I can’t help feeling we have moved away from God in
our modern practice of eating food on the run, with very few families
eating around a table any more. We
do need to rediscover the importance of eating together and the enrichment
of family life that a good communal meal can bring.
But eating communally is also about reaching out and
including others. In our home
we try and invite others to share our table.
often we attempt to do this thinking especially of people who we
might not normally invite. As
I have said many times before sharing food together with strangers or with
those you are not close to is often a time when God somehow jumps out of
the woodwork and you are left feeling there was another presence with us
around the dining table today. We
build friendships and bonds of understanding and when we do this we know
our eating is leading us closer to God.
I was sharing a meal with a couple yesterday and got to hear about
their journey of facing cancer. The
battle has not been won but they have really looked at their lives and
discovered again what is really important.
This has meant some very significant changes for them, and the
giving up of much unimportant activity to focus on what is really
important. Such conversations
over a meal are heartening and soul enriching.
Remember that quote from Hebrews….. “do
not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for many have done so and
discovered they were entertaining messengers of God without knowing it.”
Invite someone out for a coffee, or around to your place for a meal
sometime soon. Make time to
listen to their story and I’ll be surprised if God doesn’t use the
opportunity to tell you something or bless you in some way.
Thanks be to God for the gift of food to sustain us.
As we eat and drink may they be times we draw closer to God.
Dugald Wilson
17 August 2008
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