Sermon for 9th Sunday after Trinity, 2020
Homily for Trinity 9
August 9, 2020
Fr. Tony Melton
Children, maybe you were too young to remember, but one of the first times you really disobeyed your parents was by sneaking food. We have some dear friends whose darling daughter, who was barely big enough to walk, snuck out of bed, crawled to the pantry, and at over the course of a several nights had eaten a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Back in Dallas at the St. Timothy School, there was a 4th girl that we would never suspect of deceit, had snuck into her teacher’s desk several times, and over the course of 4 days had eaten 136 fun size Milky Way bars.
We need to understand the importance of Food. Even a cursory reading of the Bible will show how food is almost always intertwined with God and His people. The Garden, Mt. Sinai, the Wilderness, even the Eucharist itself! But even outside the front and back covers of the Bible, food is so obviously important. Most of life is the pursuit of food, and we are living in a culture which is both gluttonous and fixated on healthy food. We cannot ignore food, and its obvious relationship to our spiritual lives.
Our primary text this morning is 1 Corinthians 10, our Epistle reading. And our subjects are taken directly from that passage: Gluttony, Idolatry, and the Eucharist. Paul will show us gluttony and idolatry go together, but receiving all things from God’s hand with eucharisteo, thanksgiving, leads to joy, and peace, and Faith. What I hope to show you is that food is a symbol for our whole lives. How a glutton treats food is how an idolator treats life. This is why God focuses so much on food in the Bible. But where we will also go is how the Eucharist, which is food, is itself a pattern for life, the opposite of gluttony and idolatry.
We are going to walk through 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul is talking about meat sacrificed to idols. But first, you need to understand the biblical backdrop of food. Time after time in the story of redemption, the choice for God’s people is between God’s food and forbidden food. I’ll say this again, throughout Scripture the choice for God’s people is between God’s food and the forbidden food.
In the Garden of Eden God blessed Adam and Eve with all the fruit from the trees, but He draws a line and says, “But not that food. All the other trees can be eaten as unto the Lord, but taking of this one tree will be idolatry, a worship of Self.” The Law of Moses placed great emphasis on eating God’s food and not forbidden food. God made food central to our survival and central to our worship. In the Wilderness Wanderings, it is food that is the locus of Israel’s unbelief. God provided for them manna, and water, and quail, yet they continued to long for the forbidden food of Egypt. Again, food is not detached from our worship. There is a deep connection between Gluttony and idolatry.
And this is why Paul ties together the stories about Israel’s food failures in the Wilderness and meat sacrificed to idols. Let’s walk through 1 Corinthians 10, found on page 201 of your Prayer Book.
In verses 1-4, Paul shows us that Israel was given God’s food, just like us. Paul says, “[They] did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink.” This is referring to the manna and water that God provided in the Wanderings in Exodus 16 and 17. Paul says in verse 6 that these things are are “examples” to us. Paul is pointing out that the manna and the water were types of Eucharist and Baptism. Paul does this to show that Israel was given God’s food, just like us.
But Paul’s next section in verses 5-14 describes how the Israelites died in the wilderness because they rejected God’s food and were overthrown by their lust after forbidden food. So Paul walks through each instance where Israel was provided with God’s food and rejected it for the forbidden food. In verse 6, this ‘lusting after evil things” is referring to Numbers 11, when the people cried, “We are tired of this manna! Who will give us flesh to eat?” God sent them quail, and while the flesh was in their teeth, His anger was kindled and He killed, it says, those who “had lusted.” Verse 7 speaks about when Israel lapsed into idolatry with the Golden Calf. Notice that the text emphasizes that they sat down to eat and drink. Gluttony and Idolatry. Verse 9 speaks of when the Israelites tempted God and were destroyed by serpents. Again, this is about food. In Numbers 25, when the people complained to Moses and Aaron about the lack of bread, and longed for Egypt’s food, God sent fiery serpents among them. Let it not escape your notice. Paul is talking a lot of about God’s food and forbidden food, and closes the section in verse 14 with “flee idolatry.”
Why is this important? Who cares about food? What does this have to do with you? The fact is, God places food at the center of nearly everything. In fact, God has taken Bread and Wine and placed them at the very center of the Christian life. This is because we are in the same position as the Israelites. Either we will eat God’s food, or we will eat the Forbidden Food. Either we will live a life of faith, or a life of idolatry. In a life of faith, we freely give to God everything, and receive only back what He gives. A life of idolatry is like the life of a glutton. We keep things to ourselves, and eat what we want when we want it.
This is why Paul starts to talk about the Eucharist. I want you to think about the Eucharist, and what it is that we are doing. We take Bread and Wine. Why Bread and Wine? They are the most common things. They represent our whole lives. Everything that we eat, or make, or enjoy is symbolized in a loaf and a cup and lifted up to God as an offering. Now everything belongs to him. And, then we wait. What will God do? Will He keep it all to Himself? No, He gives us back the Bread and Wine. Only better. It has been transformed to the most precious thing in the world: the body and blood of Jesus.
Do this with me. This is the pattern of Eucharist. We give everything to God and He gives it back, we receive it and commune with Him. Paul even says that meat sacrificed to idols, if offered up in eucharisteo becomes God’s food. If lifting up devil meat to God can make it holy, then what can God do with your life if you offer it up entirely to Him? The Eucharist is the pattern for life. Whatever falls outside of the action of offering up and receiving back falls outside of this Eucharistic pattern. Adam and Eve fell outside of this pattern. The Israelites in the Wilderness did, too. And it is only within this pattern of life as sacrifice and gift, of life as Eucharist, that we can understand why food is so central to our life with God, and why the glutton is like the idolater.
Most people live their lives like gluttons. We guard our time, money, pleasure, future, like a glutton guards their stash of candy bars. God can’t have my life. He might take too much of it. I can’t survive off what He gives. I’m hungry for other food. Yet the story of the God’s people and the action of the Eucharist teach us to offer everything to God and to receive His food with thanksgiving.
You want to know what Adam and Eve and the Israelites in the Wilderness had in common? They were gluttons. They wanted more than God provided for them. Do you know what the opposite of a gluttonous life is? A Eucharistic life. A Eucharistic life is one that puts everything on the altar. A Eucharistic Christian takes every entertainment, every thought, every aspiration, every dollar, every skill, every possession, every habit, every pleasure, your time with others, your time alone, your mornings, your evenings. You take it all and you kneed it into the Bread, and you mix it with the Wine and offer it all to God and keep nothing for your own secret gorging. And when you receive it, you give thanks, because you have received it from God’s hands and enjoy it for His purpose and His glory. To live on only what God provides—this is a Eucharistic life.
In closing, let us turn our attention to our Gospel is the story of the Prodigal Son, a story that shows how forbidden food can lead astray, but how God’s food can also lead us back home. The Prodigal Son was lured away by the prospect of “riotous living.” This was gluttony in all its forms. But a famine hit the land, and his gorging stopped, and he began to crave the slop of pigs. He came to his senses and what did he remember? God’s food. The bread from his father’s table. And what did He find when he turned away from the empty food of self-idolatry? The Father did not give him the mere bread of the Old Covenant. It was far better than he could have ever imagined. The fatted calf was the feast! The Eucharistic life is not the drab bread of the servants, but the lavish banquet of God’s forgiving love in the slain body of Jesus! Therefore, do not hold anything back from God, to be enjoyed in secret. Do not allow any part of your life to be left out of the Bread and the Wine of the Altar. Rather, let your whole life be from the cup of blessing. Let everything that gets you through the day be from God’s hand. Everything else is gluttony and idolatry. Isn’t His food enough? Come, Church, let us go up to the Father’s house to taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen.