Matthew
4:1-11
Gluttony
(Jesus) fasted forty days and forty
nights, and afterwards he was famished.
“Fasting” has sort of gone out of
vogue among Christians. Most of the
Christians I know who fast have said their cultivating of this spiritual practice
is somewhat attached to their admiration of Muslims fasting for the month of
Ramadan. During my wife’s last year at
the seminary, her professor of worship fasted each day during Lent. What I remember most were the complaints about
how grumpy he became.
Have you ever “fasted”? I haven’t.
Not really, or seriously. I use blood-sugar
issues as my excuse. I have diabetes up
and down my family tree. And I experience
hypoglycemia a couple of times each week.
Jesus did fast. And at least once in his lifetime he fasted
for forty days. I can only imagine how
famished he would be when that time was over.
It seems like the perfect time for the devil to come with temptations.
Of course, it isn’t only food
offered by the devil. There is also
power and prestige; there is recognition and admiration. Jesus is tempted by being offered all he could
grab of the things which we are so carefully taught are in short supply.
All Jesus has to do is gobble it
up; take it into himself. But we all
know what Jesus did, don’t we? And by extrapolation,
we also know what Jesus would have us do, don’t we?
Don’t be a glutton.
Today is the first of seven worship
services in which we are going to make use of the Church’s identification of
seven sins considered to be particularly deadly. Once more we will touch on these seven sins
on a Sunday; the other five will be during our Wednesday evening
gatherings. This morning, we want to spend
a few minutes thinking about gluttony. It
seemed rather easy to see gluttony as the generic temptation which lies beneath
the actual temptations Jesus endures. It
seemed rather easy, because too many of us would see gluttony as the opposite
of fasting. And because too many of us
might think such thoughts, we can all learn something about this deadly sin.
Gluttony does not occur as a result
of our being hungry. Gluttony happens
when the fear of being hungry drives us to consume more than we ought. Gluttony
is selfishness, expressed in satisfying our own impulses rather than showing
concern for the interest and well-being of others. How can we eat so much when there are
starving children? How can we consume so
much when there are so many doing without the basic necessities of life? Gluttony emerges as a deadly sin because it
exposes our inattention to the needs of our neighbors.
It has been reported to me by those
who do make a regular practice of fasting that the experience places them in a
new relationship with the one-in-five neighbors who experience food shortages. Those who fast speak of the deep compassion
they have when they see someone begging – deep compassion regardless of the
story so easily constructed as to how that by the roadside begging for
food. “So what?” if there is an
addiction issue, or perhaps a criminal record.
None of that matters when one’s stomach is turning in on itself and the
gastric juices are starting to eat at the linings of one’s own bowels. None of us wants to be there - none of us
wants to experience hunger – and one of the ways we numb ourselves to this fear
is gluttony.
And it is not just with food. It is also with stuff. With clothing. With wood-working tools. With trips to exciting destinations. With public praise and recognition. And even with our statue among our fellow church-goers.
Jesus is tempted to be
gluttonous. He is given the clear choice
which would allow him to take into himself food and power and prominence. And what does he do?
Gluttony applies to so many other things,
but it does apply to food. And here, obviously,
I am preaching to myself. We tell
ourselves (and it is true) that once food is set before us it isn’t going back
to the kitchen, then the grocer, and finally to a food pantry. But we do regularly participate in the
encouragement of larger portions by making this the hallmark of a great restaurant. I am always pleased and impressed when a host
puts on an extravagant spread. And I am
among those who would never, ever allow dinner guests in my home to face a
depleted serving platter. But what is
true for me isn’t true for one-in-five of our neighbors. And there is a connection between what folks
like me want to buy and what is made available for those who have to keep a
close eye on their food expenditures.
Gluttony does not begin and end
with what is forked into our mouths. It arises
when we do not see the correlation of our behaviors with the neglect of those
around us.
It is a lot more difficult for us to
see this in our segregated neighborhoods than it is in other cultures. We have insulated ourselves.
Heddie West shares her experiences
at the ending of WWII. As a teenager, she
was internally displaced in Germany. As she
began to make her way back home, she meet and travels with an older, more capable
woman. This provided Heddie additional
safety. This woman noticed a freshly
planted potato field, she realized that each mount of dirt contained a potato
slip. They dug up those potato slips in
order to stave off starvation. Heddie
continues to confess her sin, and to worry about the farmer and his family who
did not have a potato crop because of her.
Would that we all could so clearly
see how our actions impact the lives of others.
And would that we found it possible to curb our gluttonous actions in
order that others might experience the bounty of God’s creation and a share of
its goodness. There is enough to go
around, when we all share.
Our Ash Wednesday confession
included a petition to forgive us of our self-indulgent appetites and our blindness
to the needs of others. It is a prayer
that gluttony would end in our lives and in the way we interact with others.
Amen.
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