First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
March 11, 2001
Scriptures: I Corinthians 8:1-9; Luke 10:1-9
And God said: “Let us make man in our own image….after our likeness….and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle and every creeping thing upon the earth.” So God made man in God’s own image….male and female, God created them. And God looked upon the man and woman and saw that they were lean and fit. And God populated the earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach….green and yellow vegetables of every kind….so the man and the woman would live long and healthy lives.
And the Tempter said: “I know how I can get back in this game.” Whereupon he created McDonald’s. And McDonald’s brought forth an “Eighth Day of Creation Special”…..a 99 cent double cheeseburger. Which was when the Tempter whispered to the man: “You want fries with that?” And the man said: “Supersize them.” And the man gained five pounds.
And God created the always-healthful yogurt, so the woman might keep the figure that the man had found so fair. But the Tempter brought forth chocolate, causing the woman to gain five pounds, and leading God to say: “Won’t you try my crispy garden salad?” And the Tempter countered with Ben and Jerry’s. And the woman gained ten pounds.
And God said: “Behold, I have sent you heart-healthy vegetables, not to mention olive oil in which to cook them.” Which was when the Tempter appeared with a chicken fried steak, so big it hung over the edges of the platter. And the man gained ten pounds while his cholesterol climbed through the roof.
So God brought forth running shoes and commanded the man to lose those extra pounds. But the Tempter answered with cable TV and remote control, thus ensuring the man would no longer have to rouse from recline to switch from ESPN and ESPN2. But after the man gained another 20 pounds, God brought forth the potato….a tuber low in fat and brimming with nutrition. But the Tempter snatched it away, peeled its healthy skin, sliced it into chips, threw them in the fryer, placed them on a plate, and set in their midst a luscious bowl of sour cream (from heaven only knows where).
And with cream on his chin and chips on his chest, the man went into full cardiac arrest (while still holding fast to the remote). So God created the triple bypass. And the Tempter created an HMO.
Were I to preach a sermon on gluttony (still one of the seven deadly sins), that story would speak for itself. To be sure, the earliest Christians concerned themselves with how much people ate. And with good reason. For there existed in biblical times….and in other times, as well…. festivals of gorging, during which pagans ate and drank for days and days. You know, of course, how such was possible. The host, in addition to keeping the table groaning and the flagon flowing, provided each dinner guest with a delicate little feather. And if you need further explanation as to what the feather was for, see me after the service. Or better yet, ask the first pagan you encounter at the brunch table when your hour in church is done.
For the Christian, gluttony was considered wrong….not because you could kill yourself with a knife and fork (as many did, and continue so to do), but because gluttony violated the Christian dictum about sharing with the hungry. You will remember the Gentile Christians who were in the habit of arriving early for the common meal. Their purpose was so that they could pork down all the food and guzzle down all the wine, leading Paul to object, strenuously. Paul’s objection had nothing to do with the fact that they were making spectacles of themselves, but that they were cleaning the table before later arriving Christians (who were probably the newer and, therefore, least-likely-to-be-in-the-know Christians) could get their fill, or even their fair share.
Among the things I needed to learn in order to be an effective minister (but that nobody bothered to teach me in seminary) concerned the proper way to organize a potluck. If you expect more than 70 people, you need to spread the food over more than one table and create multiple serving lines. Failure to do this means that the first people through the line will require a forklift to carry their plate back to the table, while the last people will be lucky to choose from among three half-empty bowls of cole slaw.
Point being: The amount of food you eat should be governed by the needs and claims of the neighbor, rather than by the comfort or discomfort of the stomach.
When last I stood before you, we were talking about food (you and I)….about dining room tables (you and I)….and about how the Lord might either be met or missed there (you and I). Last time I asked: “Who is at the table?” This time I would invite you a little closer, the better to see: “What is on the table.” As a footnote, I recently stumbled on the wry observation by the late Charles Schultz, to the effect that no one would have been invited to dinner as often as Jesus, unless he was interesting and had a highly-developed sense of humor. Which is worth pondering, given the frequency with which Jesus is the answer to the New Testament’s quintessential question: “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
On Friday, I warmed up for the writing of this sermon by eating low-ticket Middle Eastern fare at lunch (pita, hummus and a falafel sandwich), followed by high-ticket Jewish fare….Bar Mitzvah fare….at supper (everything from challa to honey-laden pastries). Which was not strange to me. I have been to Israel. I know the diet. I can do the diet. If you want to know more about the diet, I can talk about what Jesus ate….what Jews eat….what Torah requires….what kosher means…..that sort of thing. Which might make a good luncheon speech. But not today. Instead, I want to look at two biblical stories, make one biblical point, and then send you off in search of sustenance.
The first “slice of Bible” I want to place on your plate comes from the lips of Jesus. We find it in one of his many “hit the road” speeches delivered to his closest followers. I am using “hit the road” here, not in the negative sense of “get lost,” but in the positive sense of “go to work.” In short, Jesus occasionally gives marching orders. In some of them, he actually becomes quite specific (as in what to pack, what not to pack, where to go, who to go with, what to say upon arriving, and how long to stay before leaving). That’s a lot of specificity. This “hit the road” speech in Luke 10 is not untypical, although it is given to “the seventy”…..and we really don’t know who “the seventy” are. But listen:
After this, the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to come. And he said to them: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. Behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals. Salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say: ‘Peace be to this house!’ If a son of peace is there, your peace shall rest upon him. If not, it shall return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and say to them: ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
It goes on, but I stop here so you will not lose what I lost for over 50 years (until John Rick helped me find it last week). I’m talking about Jesus’ twice-repeated instruction:
1. “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide.”
2. “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you.”
There is ample evidence that Luke preserved these early sayings attributed to Jesus. And there is ample evidence that Matthew (and perhaps others) edited them out. Moreover, we know that the Gospel of Thomas (which you do not have readily available) summarizes them most succinctly:
When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what is set before you and heal the sick among them. (14:2)
This is incredible! For it means that Jesus, as a devout and practicing Jew, told ambassadors going forth in his name that they could set aside Jewish dietary restrictions….of which there were many….to eat the food of the house. Clean or unclean….no matter. Kosher or non-kosher….no matter. Meat with all the blood drained from it versus meat without the blood drained from it….no matter. Meat from beasts which chew the cud and divide the hoof like beef cattle versus meat from beasts that neither chew the cud nor divide the hoof like pigs….no matter. What matters are relationships. People bond over food. Therefore, says Jesus, don’t let matters of menu keep you from making friends and building bridges in my name.
To refuse someone’s food in the name of appetite (“Yuck, I don’t like it”) or diet (“Sorry, my doctor forbids it”) is off-putting enough. But to refuse someone’s food in the name of religion is to miss an opportunity to become one with each other and (perhaps) to become one in Christ. Having traveled in a variety of cultures, I know that it is so. And when my mother warned me to eat whatever was set before me (prior to going to a stranger’s house for dinner), she didn’t know how biblical she was.
The second “Bible slice” I would pile on your plate comes from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. This time, he was addressing a “menu dispute” in the Corinthian Christian community. At issue was meat dedicated in pagan temples, or meat sacrificed to pagan gods and then sold or served in the marketplace. Let me explain. It was not uncommon for a steer or a lamb (or some other animal) to be taken to a pagan temple as a sacrificial offering to a god or goddess. But the whole animal was never burned on the altar. Only a small part was burned….a token, really….sometimes just a few hairs pulled from the animal’s carcass.
What happened to the rest? Well, I’ll tell you what happened to the rest. The first gleanings went to the priests of the temple. They took home the ribs….maybe even a whole flank. I like that idea. Then the donor of the sacrificial animal took home the other parts, whereupon he cooked them up, gave a banquet, and invited his friends and neighbors to partake….which might well include Christians. The question being: “Should Christians go?” And if they go: “Should they eat the meat?”
Sometimes, after the token sacrifice on the altar, there was so much meat left over that it was wholesaled out to the butcher shops. But it was seldom marked as such. So the question arose: “Should Christians buy meat from the shops, never knowing in whose temple it might have been….for what purpose….and for how long?”
This issue split the Corinthian church. Somebody brought meat to a potluck. And that started it. You could hear them buzzing in the various corners of Fellowship Hall:
You gonna eat the meat?
I ain’t gonna eat the meat!
Ah….come on….there’s nothing wrong with the meat.
Yes there is.
No there isn’t.
Let’s ask Paul.
So Paul said three things. First, Paul said that if fighting over the meat is going to divide the church, then maybe nobody should eat any meat. That was Paul’s angry response.
Second, Paul said:
I don’t worship idols. I don’t bow down before statues. I don’t go into pagan temples. I know who my God is. What’s more, I know that my God is the only God there is. So all that other stuff about gods and goddesses is just so much unenlightened hocus pocus. Which means that since the meat is being offered to nothing that is anything (God-wise, I mean), it’s just meat. It goes into the temple as meat. It comes out of the temple as meat. Why not cook it and eat it?
That was Paul’s theological response.
But then Paul offered a third word.
If there are people you know whose faith will somehow be injured by what they see you do (maybe because they are brand new in the faith and haven’t got this idol business sorted out in their head) well….for their sakes….why not skip the meat and head for the macaroni?
That was Paul’s pastoral response.
Don’t you see it? Of course you see it. Once again, menu issues become secondary to relationship issues. The cardiologists are probably going to kill me for saying this, but you can eat any darned thing you want to, provided you consider the sensitivities of the people joining you or observing you.
And if the cardiologists don’t get me, Miss Manners will, when I say that you can refuse anything that is set before you, provided you consider the sensitivities of the people joining you or observing you. Medically speaking, we monitor our appetites for reasons of health. Religiously speaking, we monitor our appetites for reasons of relationship. It is the only way I can make sense of the charge….leveled by the Pharisees….that Jesus ate with gluttons and wine bibbers. To which Jesus seemed to respond: “Of course.” Or “Why not?” Relationships being paramount, Jesus concerned himself far more with who was at the table than with what was on the table.
As a biblically-grounded Christian, I can partake of anything, provided (there’s that word for a third time) that, in so doing, I draw nearer to you, and that together we draw nearer to Christ. Read the New Testament carefully and you will see little, if any, concern over the role of food in filling us up. But you will see great concern…..repeated concern….over the role of food in drawing us close.
Isn’t it ironic that in his “hit the road” speech, Jesus told his followers to eat anything that is there for the eating and heal any who are there for the healing. Over the years of my ministry, I have discovered that more healing is done at the table than any other place I know.
During one of our many conversations last weekend, John Claypool told some of us (in wrenchingly personal testimony) about the Saturday morning the lights went out in the eyes of his ten-year-old daughter, Laura Lue, following her 18-month battle with leukemia. For weeks, he said, it was hard enough to get up and get dressed, let alone go anywhere, do anything, or be with anybody.
But slowly, we pulled it together, even to the point of finally deciding to go out for a little supper (my wife, myself and our son) at a little place the four of us once liked to go. “But when I sat down and looked at that empty chair, I thought I wouldn’t be able to go on. In fact, I wasn’t even certain I could stay.”
But then I realized that while I was sitting at a table with one missing, I was also sitting at a table with three present. So I stayed. And we ordered. And as we ate, we talked about the ordinary stuff of our lives….yesterday….today….tomorrow. And somehow, during the course of that meal, I turned a corner. For while I knew I was never (ever) going to be the same, I knew I was going to be all right.
It is a time-honored tradition in the church to punctuate the season of Lent by foods denied and meals not eaten. For in so doing, it is suggested, we will draw closer to Christ. And if that works for you, by all means, stay with it.
But if it doesn’t, why not punctuate Lent with a different discipline? Why not try inviting someone to dinner (family, friend, stranger, even enemy)? I’m talking a really good dinner. Then see if, perchance, you don’t accomplish the same purpose.
Note: I am indebted to Murray Jones for the Internet-circulated story with which the sermon begins. I am indebted to Fred Craddock for his understanding of “gluttony,” in a sermon entitled “Trouble at the Table.” And I am deeply indebted to John Rick for directing me to a wonderful chapter, “Magic and Meal,” in John Dominic Crossan’s
