Gluttony: Food Fast. Sermon Series: SEVEN DEADLY SEDUCTIONS. Sunday, October 7, Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Pastor

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1 Gluttony: Food Fast Sermon Series: SEVEN DEADLY SEDUCTIONS Sunday, October 7, 2012 Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Pastor Scripture Lesson: Genesis 22:24-34 Thus far in our series Seven Deadly Seductions we ve considered pride, sloth, and lust. Now today we re talking about gluttony which may seem strange on a Sunday when we re serving you a tiny square of bread and an itsy bitsy cup of juice. Do not let that deceive you. This is the eatingest church in the world. As they say, whenever two or three Presbyterians are gathered, a chicken dies. When I think of gluttony I can t help but think of one particular movie scene. I m sure you can find it on YouTube. It s John Belushi going down the cafeteria line in Animal House. He starts out by piling food on his tray, then he looks around and no one s watching so he picks up a plate of Jello and slurps it down, while with his other hand he s grabbing hard boiled eggs and cramming them in his mouth. Then he adds sandwiches, and follows by guzzling milk to wash it all down. Imagine a scene R-rated for gluttony it s utterly disgusting, yet in a way strangely fascinating, to see such a raw, naked display of sheer appetite. Tragically, Belushi s cravings went beyond cafeteria lines to lines of white powder. Cocaine took John Belushi s life at the age of 33. Gluttony is our inability to say no to drugs, food, tobacco, alcohol or other things that are not good for us. There was a Belushi in the Bible whom we find in Genesis chapter 25:27-34, on page 38 of your pew Bible. By caving to his cravings Esau missed out on the highest and best God had for him. One day Esau happened into the cafeteria of his brother Jacob s kitchen. Let s begin with verse 27: 27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents. 28 Isaac [the father], who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah [the mother] loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I m famished! (That is 1

2 why he was also called Edom. He saw things and wanted to eat em). 31 Jacob replied, First sell me your birthright. 32 Look, I am about to die, Esau said. What good is the birthright to me? 33 But Jacob said, Swear to me first. So Esau swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. [Esau] ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. A Picture of Gluttony The picture here of Esau is that he was rough and macho to the point of being crude and boorish. One day Esau came in from the fields after hunting, famished, tummy growling. What is it they say? He was so hungry he could eat the last of an endangered species. Wafting through the air he smelled this tantalizing aroma which he followed into the kitchen where Jacob was making his scrumptious red stew. In the literal Hebrew Esau said, Give me some of that red stuff! I want to gulp it down." Playing kid brother to the T, Jacob said, How bad do you want it? Bad enough to give me your inheritance? Dimwitted Esau said, Yeah, sure, whatever. Crafty Jacob said, Raise your right hand and swear you re giving me the inheritance. Esau said, Okay, I swear. It s a deal. Then verse 34 says, "Esau ate and drank and got up and left, having surrendered the most precious thing in his life in that culture, the right of primogeniture, his inheritance as the firstborn. The King James puts it so unforgettably: Thus Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. To this day, gluttony robs from us God s highest and best. Don t we all have sort of a strange relationship with food? Now some of us have eating disorders and I m so thankful for the counselors at our LifeGate counseling center who help those with eating disorders. But as one seven year old wrote, Dear Mom, please stop telling me not to play with my food. You spent the first two years of my life pretending it was an airplane. And, okay, full disclosure: my wife has to hide the dry roasted peanuts from me. If not, I have been known to plop in front of the TV and inhale most of a 16-ounce jar of dry roasted peanuts in one sitting. That s why I came to Georgia for the peanuts. Forgive me if this is uncomfortable, but is there anything more disgusting than when you wake up the next morning and you re still tasting what you ate the night before? Again and again, our tummies get the best of us. In your mind right now you may have the stereotype of a gluttonous person as grotesquely overweight, to the point of not even being able to get out of bed, like some of those pictures that go around on the internet. There is no evidence that Esau was obese. To the contrary, he was an active outdoorsman, a hunter. It s not how much I eat so much as that I am controlled by my desires. My life revolves around my cravings. As the Apostle Paul looked around at the decadence of the late Roman Empire, at people gorging and drinking themselves into oblivion, he wrote the Philippians, Their god is their stomach. (Philippians 3:19) The stakes in this are very high. Discipline: Who s in Control? Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has written a brilliant book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in which he writes about one of the most famous experiments in the history of 2

3 psychology. They put four-year-old children in a cruel dilemma. The kids were given a choice between a small reward (one Oreo cookie), which they could have at any time, or a larger reward (two Oreos) for which they had to wait 15 minutes under difficult conditions. The child was put alone in a room, facing a desk with two objects: a single Oreo cookie and a bell that the child could ring at any time to call in the experimenter and receive the one cookie. Here s how the experiment was described: There were no toys, books, pictures, or other potentially distracting items in the room. The experimenter left the room and did not return until 15 minutes had passed or the child had rung the bell, eaten the reward, stood up, or shown any signs of distress. Through a one-way mirror, they made videos of the children waiting in the room by themselves and it always brought howls of laughter from the audience. About half the children managed the feat of waiting those 15 minutes, mainly by keeping their attention away from that tempting cookie. The experimenters followed these children. Ten or fifteen years later, a large gap had opened between those who had resisted temptation and those who had not. The resisters those who held off and waited fifteen minutes were less likely to take drugs. Those who showed self control as four-year-olds later in life showed higher cognitive skills and scored far higher in intelligence tests. (Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.47) Not letting your desires control you is very, very important. I love these words by Amy Gross: With discipline one comes as close to having a fairy god mother as real life allows. One has a technique for reaching from wish to fulfillment. Without discipline, one can only stare like a window shopper at the good things in life, and shrug and move on. Discipline is one of the thirty or so names for the secret of living." The good news, my friends, is this morning God invites you to a table where Jesus heals our inner Esau. Our Lord said, Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup. How often do we eat and drink? Every day! Every act of eating takes place in the presence of God. Did you ever stop to think that God could have created us without a need for eating? Just as easily he could have put a battery pack inside us that keeps us going and going and going like the Energizer bunny for ninety years. But God said, Three times a day I want them to stop and think of me and delight in the taste and pleasure and the fellowship of food. And let me step back and say, Enjoy wine responsibly. This summer Becky and I flew far, far away from Georgia to a seaside resort a continent away. One evening right at sunset, Becky and I were walking back from the beach across a courtyard to our room when, lo and behold, right in front of us was a Peachtree member walking along with his family. I thought, This is going to be fun. I came up behind and surprised him by saying Hi, (his name). Fancy meeting you here. Instead of stopping he kept walking for several seconds. Then he turned around: Hi, how are you! Great to see you. Let s get together later. When we were leaving Becky turned to me and said, Vic, when you said hi, do you know why he kept walking? I said, No, why d he keep walking? She said, He threw his wine glass in the bushes. I almost fell on the ground laughing. Beware! We may pop up anywhere! Enjoy the fruit of the vine responsibly! Our Lord served real wine from this table. He made exquisite wine in abundance for that couple s wedding in Cana of Galilee. 3

4 Overcoming Gluttony So, how do we overcome gluttony? Five ways: First, say grace before you eat or drink anything, even if you only whisper it to yourself. What follows from this is you only put in your body things you can praise God for and that gets a little difficult along about the fifth martini. Isn t it funny how we ll go to a restaurant, order a chicken fried steak smothered with gravy, French fries, onion rings that s my downfall, onion rings and wash it all down with a supersized chocolate milk shake and we piously bow our heads and pray, Lord bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. (Ed Young, How to Make God Laugh) A hundred years ago people would to get up from a meal like that and go chop wood for two hours or plough the south forty. Today in society we have engineered bodily movement out of our daily schedules. And, of course we know that obesity is a growing national crisis. When you go to a restaurant with huge portions, why not share something I never dreamed I d do but which Becky and I do more and more. Or if you imbibe, do as more and more young people I know are doing always have a full glass of water separating one drink from the next drink. Say grace and only put in your body things you can praise God for. Second, find comfort in Christ s presence. Anxious eating and drinking comes from spiritual need. Often it s not what we re eating as much as it is what s eating us. I spoke with one local therapist who says we who abuse food often had a lot of fear in our childhoods. We learned in those early years that food brings us comfort. Yes, it is literally comfort food. That brings to mind Paul s wonderful tongue twister in II Corinthians 1: "Blessed be...the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." Sometimes when we re eating we should be praying to the God of all comfort. Third and this is going to sound like I m channeling your grandmother: Now eat healthy. Don t you love the fact today that the hippest place on earth is a farmer s market? Maybe you were blessed as I was to grow up in a family where we grew our own fruits and vegetables. Around dinner I d hear, Vic, go out back and pick a tomato for the salad. Imagine: a tomato that tastes like a tomato. Now there s a concept. I was talking not along ago with our food manager here at Peachtree, Al McDaniel, whom I cannot say enough good things about. You re a tough crowd when it comes to your foodie standards. One day I said, Al, you know why you so impress me? I said, I ve been trying to put my finger on it and here it is: you respect the vegetables and you know what I mean, don t you? He smiled. (We had one of these moments two fingers to each other s eyes) Later he came back and said, I had never articulated it that way. I gathered our employees and said, We have a motto: we respect the vegetables. You can glorify God by respecting the vegetables. They are his vegetables. Then, fourth, savor every bite. They did a study on why the wealth of Americans doesn t make us any measurably happier than other people in the world. What they found was that higher income is associated with a reduced ability to enjoy the small pleasures of life. Contrasted with American women, for example, French women don t multitask while they eat. 4

5 French women take longer, eat slowly, savor their food, and enjoy the actual experience of eating. (Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p.397) Fifth, do not confuse gluttony with feasting. The Bible is filled with guilt-free gourmandizing around a well-spread table groaning under plates piled high with rich delicacies. Jesus favorite way of inviting people to come into his kingdom was to say, Come to the feast! What s the difference? Feasting is something you do with others as a way of showing love and building community. Gluttony we most often do alone. Jacob and Esau did not eat together. Scripture says, Esau ate and drank and got up and left. Prayer: Lord, we know that when you look down upon the churches of Atlanta you don t read the signs out front. You see one body one in our worship of a common Father who made us, a common Savior who redeemed us, and a common Spirit who indwells us. May we be a people of one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all." We pray for the Christian churches of Atlanta which minister to Koreans, to Thais, to Chinese, to Latinos, to African-Americans, to Anglos. Unite us with them and most of all with you in this supper. Amen. This morning, unlike Jacob and Esau, we aren t eating alone. This meal brings us together as brothers and sisters around the globe as we celebrate World Communion Sunday. This is the longest table on earth. It goes around the world. It goes to Nicaragua where we were blessed to send hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry children last month. It stretches to the courageous Christians of Syria and the Middle East who join us at our table, to the faithful believers in Iran where Sassan Tavasoli beams his teaching, to Malawi in Africa, to Costa Rica and Ecuador where we serve. Even though in a few moments I will break this bread, this bread doesn't stay broken. When we partake of this bread in faith suddenly this bread becomes a one loaf again, uniting us with all believers in Jesus across this whole wide world, many of whom would give anything to have the scraps from our table. As we partake of the sacrament, let s pray for those who do not have enough to eat as well as those of us who struggle with having too much to eat. 5

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7 PEACHTREE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 3434 ROSWELL ROAD, NW ATLANTA, GEORGIA

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