The Seven Deadlies - Gluttony

Philippians 3:17-21 [NRSV]
Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Gluttony. You know, I’ve been raising my hand here every week and it is getting a little embarrassing. You would think that, as your pastor, I might have at least one of these seven deadlies licked by now. But I hope you know by now that your pastor, like all of us, is on the road to perfection but is not there.

I have to say that I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started this sermon series. Faye Sandsbury and I were talking about possible study groups for the spring and she suggested a series she had done on the Seven Deadly Sins and I thought, “Yes. What an intriguing idea. Why not spend the season of Lent looking at what sin does to us?” But I wasn’t sure how useful the seven deadly sins would be for looking at that. After all, it’s a very old list of sins going back some 1500 years. And is it really true that one sin is much worse than another? Is it helpful to categorize sin in this way when, really, it comes in so many forms?

But there is some wisdom in these old categories. I had a professor once who used to argue that we could revolutionize psychotherapy if we started diagnosing mental and spiritual problems using the sins and virtues that Thomas Aquinas set down in the 13th century. I actually think there’s great value in using the insights of psychotherapy, but there is something intriguing to me about listening to someone and saying, “Yes, I do believe you’re struggling with sloth and it is a spiritual problem because you are blocking your God-given propensity toward joy. How can we unlock your joy?”

At the very least, if we started using medieval Christian therapy, we would start to see how the things we now call diseases also have spiritual roots. We may not be comfortable with the language of sin anymore, but do we suffer any less than we did when we were using the word? Maybe if we used some spiritual language for what was going on we’d take some new steps to get at the deeper problems that plague us.

This week I had someone, a friend who is not involved in church, say to me, “You know, Alex, I like you…I love your church…when you stop talking about sin I’ll be there.” She’s not alone. For many, many people, sin is their impression of what churches have to say – either because that was their actual experience in church or because it is the impression they get from media images and images we project ourselves.

This weekend I went to see the movie, Bridge to Terabithia, based on Katherine Paterson’s book, which was playing up in Belle Haven. A great movie for all ages. But one scene that really struck me was when the three main characters, all children, go to church together. A brother and a sister had taken a new friend, Leslie, to church, even though she had not been before. As they are singing a hymn, The Old Rugged Cross, Leslie has a holy experience as she watches the light come in through a stained-glass window. She opens up her small purse to capture some of the brilliant light streaming in on them. But as they are leaving church and she is talking about what she was feeling, she is surprised that the message the smallest child has been getting from her time in church was much different. For little May Belle, the message is one of fear. “If you don’t believe in the Bible, God will damn you to hell when you die,” is the primary message she hears. Leslie was captured by the love and the holiness and Jesus. May Belle’s language for it was one of obedience and rules.

I think about folks like my friend who is turned off by talk of sin, and of youth, like the character of Leslie, who are captivated by the mystery and the beauty of the story of Jesus, but who are mystified by what we mean when we talk about sin. I don’t think the answer is to stop talking about sin. I think our long experiments with watering down the language of the church to make us more acceptable to the culture around us have been a miserable failure. To coin a phrase from Garrison Keillor, people don’t come to church to hear about how Adam and Eve were forced from Eden because of a tragic failure to communicate. We know somehow, don’t we?, that the cause of our problems is much deeper than that. We know that if the church is going to be meaningful, it has to speak in its own voice. We have to use the language we know. We have to talk about grace even through it’s not a familiar term. We have to talk about redemption even though some folks don’t know they’re enslaved. We have to talk about salvation even though there are folks who don’t know that they need to be saved. And we have to talk about sin because it is at the heart of what it means to be human. It’s not a category that makes sense for dogs and cats and the duck-billed platypus. Sin is a core problem for human beings alone.

Orthodox writer Jim Forest tells the story of a priest in the 1970’s who became infatuated with the book entitled, I’m O.K., You’re O.K. Those of you who lived through the 70s will remember this book. Its premise was that if we could learn to accept ourselves by building our self-esteem we would recognize how we could love others. This priest thought this was a great message and he preached on it one Sunday. As he was greeting people at the door following the service he asked one older parishioner what he thought of the sermon and the man said, “I haven’t read the book. If what you say is true, it’s better than the Bible. My only problem was that I kept thinking of Christ on the Cross saying to those who were watching him die, ‘If everybody’s okay, what in blazes am I doing up here?’”[i]

Sin is one of those things that seem unavoidable when we start to really look into the depths of our souls. The church has been guilty of talking about sin to the exclusion of grace. We can tell the story of sin in such a way that people hear only condemnation and not the word of life that is offered to us in Jesus Christ and the cross. But as I told my friend, I don’t know how to talk about what it means to be human without honestly addressing those places in my soul that are still crying out for transformation and liberation.

Which brings me to gluttony. You might say to yourself, “We are really ending this series in a whimper. Pride? Envy? Greed? Lust? I see people’s lives destroyed by these every day. But how many times is gluttony the cause of someone’s downfall? Am I really putting my soul at risk by sneaking down to the ‘frig in the middle of the night to claim another piece of chocolate meringue pie? Tell me again who suffers because I blew my diet on the second day by ordering a double thick burger with cheese and fries? What’s wrong with daydreaming about Laura Dennis’ caramel cake? Not that that ever happens, but still, what’s the big deal with gluttony?”

It’s true that we don’t talk about the dangers of gluttony in the same way today. The desert monks of the fourth-century were much harsher on the sin than we are today. Evagrius of Pontus said that “Gluttony is the mother of lust, the nourishment of evil thoughts, laziness in fasting, obstacle to asceticism, terror to moral purpose, the imagining of food, sketcher of seasonings, unrestrained colt, unbridled frenzy, receptacle of disease, envy of health, obstruction of the (bodily) passages, groaning of the bowels, the extreme of outrages, confederate of lust, pollution of the intellect, weakness of the body, difficult sleep, gloomy death.”[ii] Plus it gives you bad breath. There was something fearful about this sin that just seems strange to us.

Some of us begin to suspect that there was just some bad body image stuff going on back in those days. That maybe, in the same way that Augustine had some notions about sexuality that seemed to despise that part of our lives, perhaps these ancient Christians despised the fact that we take pleasure in eating and drinking. The earliest biographer of Francis of Assisi, one of our great figures of sainthood, said that he used ashes for a spice so that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the taste of his food.[iii] That’s pretty extreme.

It’s also contrary to our biblical heritage. The scriptures are full of language that tells us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” [Psalm 34:8]. In that first garden, the first man and woman were given trees full of fruit that was good to eat and pleasant to look at. In religious festivals, such as the Passover, the central event of remembrance is a meal where the qualities of the food are essential to its meaning. In Isaiah’s vision of the holy mountain there is rich food and wine. When Jesus tells the story of the return of the Prodigal Son, it is a feast and a fatted calf that is prepared for him. When Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven it is like a wedding banquet. When Jesus turns the water into wine it is of the highest taste and quality. And when Jesus prepares his disciples for his death, he does it, once more, around a table.

When I asked you, at the beginning of the service, to tell a story of the best meal you can remember, I wasn’t setting you up. The things you remember may have had something to do with the excellence of the food, but I imagine there was more going on there as well. Maybe you talked about the people who were around the table with you. Maybe you recalled a time of special importance for your family. Maybe it was just a good meal after a long period of hunger. Some of my primary images of heaven are from my grandmother’s house. Coming in after a long drive on a Friday night after my folks got off work. Sitting shoulder to shoulder around a small table in her small kitchen, but feeling like it was a room as large as creation itself for all the love and warmth it held. The cornbread fried up out of white corn meal. The collard greens with ham hocks. The fried chicken. The potato salad. And, yes, the caramel cake. The temptation to gluttony was certainly there. But what it meant was so much more than what it was.

I don’t think that, if the Apostle Paul had been there, he would have objected, to tell you the truth. When he spoke to the Christians of the city of Philippi, I don’t think he was concerned about their joy in eating together. What concerned him were those who filled their bellies because they could think of no other way to be filled. Paul had the same conversation with the Corinthian Christians. In 1 Corinthians he quotes a group that says, “Well, food is meant for the belly and the belly for food,” so how can you object to our eating or to our following other bodily inclinations? But Paul reminds them that as Christians they are now part of something bigger than themselves. It’s not just their bodies that they have to concern themselves with, but Christ’s body, of which they are now members. So…Paul says, glorify God with your body. [1 Co. 6:13-20]

Gluttony is not just a desire to eat and drink or, to think more broadly, to consume anything. It is an inordinate desire to consume more than one requires. Eating, drinking, even consuming, is basic to human life. We have to do it. More than that, we enjoy doing it. But because we don’t know how to eat and drink in the right way…because we don’t know what eating is for or what it represents, we end up with the messed-up ideas of consumption that we have in our society today. Francine Prose, who wrote a book on gluttony, says that “though gluttony appears to have become the least harmful of sins, it may well be the most widespread. Precisely because of our inordinate interests, our preoccupation with sampling the trendiest dishes at the costliest new restaurants, and our apparently paradoxical, obsessive horror of obesity, we have become a culture of gluttons.”[iv] Maybe eating trendy dishes is not our obsession around here. But we know how eating gets out of whack, even here. Eating disorders like anorexia are a byproduct of our unhealthy, contradictory attitudes toward eating and thinness. The massive all-you-can-eat buffets that have become the norm of eating out in some places, much as they attract me, are another sign of trouble. Our continuing problems with alcohol and substance abuse are signs. Our tendency to eat alone even when we don’t live alone is another sign of trouble.

There is a great Mexican proverb that I learned when I was staying with a family in Mexico on a mission trip once. They would place all this food in front of me and say, “barriga llena, corazon contento,” which means “full belly, contented heart.” And when I could not eat one more thing I would say, “No, no, I really can’t eat anymore. No puedo.” To which they would respond, “mas llena, mas contento” – “if you are more full, you will be more content.” This is the dangerous seduction of gluttony – that somehow if we just get full enough we will finally be contented.
But in that same letter to the Philippians, Paul quotes an early Christian hymn which talks about how Christ, in coming to live among us in human form, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. When Paul says later, that the Philippians should imitate him in imitating Christ, there is some of this message there. To be truly full requires emptying ourselves. It’s the same contradictory way of talking that Jesus had. To gain your life you must lose it. If you lose your life you will find it. If we let go of the inordinate desire to fill ourselves with the things this world provides, maybe we can see what gifts God has for us.

So gluttony does not mean that we should go buy ashes for spice or that we should take no pleasure in what we eat or drink. But if we are not eating in ways that occasionally remind us of the kingdom feasts Jesus talks about…if we do not find ourselves eating with the others God gives us to love…if we do not find ourselves eating with a mindfulness of how we are in fellowship with the poor…perhaps we are gluttons who need to learn our manners before we return to the dinner table. Because we do not live on bread alone and our citizenship is in a kingdom where we eat differently.

Fellow sinners, I invite you to offer yourselves with me to a life that looks different from that of the world around us. God knows we need each other if we are to truly confess these deadly sins. But God has also given us all that we need to break free from their power. God has given us life in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.

[i] Jim Forest, “Confession in the Age of Self-Esteem,” 11/7/2002, http://www.incommunion.org/forest-flier/jimsessays/confession-in-the-age-of-self-esteem/
[ii] Quoted in Francine Prose, Gluttony, [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], pp. 9-10.
[iii] Ibid., p. 28.
[iv] Ibid., p. 41.