Victory Over Gluttony

If you've come to the conclusion that you wrestle with the deadly sin of gluttony, now what? How do you achieve victory over gluttony?

We saw that Jesus was initially tempted with gluttony. Those first temptations were very powerful, much like the ones we face on a regular basis. Somehow Jesus continually found ways to be victorious over gluttony. How? Through  fasting.

WHAT IS FASTING? Abstaining from food and/or drink for a period of time as a way of worship, a humbling of oneself, a form of contemplative prayer, a preparation for service to others.

Not only was fasting a key reason for why Jesus was able to be victorious over the temptations to gluttony in the desert, it was a regular part of his ministry. He would often withdraw to the mountains to pray. It's hard to believe that Jesus would pack a papersack of bread and dried fish as he trekked through the hills in order to get away to pray. 

If you struggle with gluttony, you ought to become familiar with the themes of Isaiah 58 - it reveals the heart of God and what he wants to accomplish in the world through his people. If Isaiah 58 gave direction to the life of Jesus, it ought to be instructional for us. It reveals what is true fasting, what God expects from us, as well as what God wants to do in the world through us.

Here's how I would summarize Isaiah 58 (from the Message):

Hey, You’re a Glutton!
1-3 "Shout! A full-throated shout! Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what's wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins!
They're busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?'
and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
'Why do we fast and you don't look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?'


Your Gluttony Plugs Up God’s Ears
3-5"Well, here's why:
"The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won't get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?


Fasting That Feeds Your Neighbor
6-9"This is the kind of fast day I'm after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed, cancel debts.
What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
THEN WHEN YOU PRAY, GOD WILL ANSWER.
YOU'LL CALL OUT FOR HELP AND I'LL SAY, 'HERE I AM.'

Generosity On An Empty Stomach
9-12"If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones.
You'll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.


Jesus Triumphs On An Empty Stomach
13-14"If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don't use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God's holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing 'business as usual,'
making money, running here and there—
Then you'll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I'll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I'll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob."
Yes! God says so!

A Summary: Turn Away From Gluttony To Fasting That Feeds Others

Turning away from gluttony will be a continuous process. The temptations will grow in intensity to the degree that you learn to resist them. The ongoing response to the temptations of gluttony will be to turn towards serving and blessing others with generosity and food and justice. Think about it: the temptation of gluttony can be your reminder and prompt to lifting up your neighbors out of poverty and hardships!

WHAT IS FASTING? Abstaining from food and/or drink for a period of time as a way of worship, a humbling of oneself, a form of contemplative prayer, a preparation for service to others.

Your fasting is not about impressing God or seeing how long you can go without food. We traditionally think of fasting as a spiritual discipline that is to benefit ourselves. But clearly from Isaiah 58, while fasting does have obvious personal benefits, it is at its best when it blesses others. Our fasting is worship and prayer, but God wants it to alleviate the suffering others.


Which is why I think Jesus entered Jerusalem as king on a growling belly. Victory over gluttony comes from fasting that results in generosity to those who hunger and are oppressed. Apparently it takes a lot of work to overcome gluttony. And it also takes a lot of work to alleviate suffering in the world. And God makes a connection between the two with his idea of fasting. Jesus the starving king who saves the world.


If you are considering a lifestyle of fasting, you must consult your doctor. If you have any ongoing medical conditions or on any medication, you need to discuss with your doctor how you can make fasting a regular part of your diet without harming your self. Everybody can fast, and fasting can take many forms.

Victory over Gluttony. Where there is a will, there is a way.  
And where there is unwillingness, there is an excuse.

Seder with the Spanjers!

Marc and Marla graciously invited Tara and our family over to their home to celebrate the Passover meal with their family. We gladly accepted! What a gift! We've never participated in the Pesach meal before - so this was a real treat. The Spanjers are a neat couple (they have to be - I see them in Starbucks every once in a while!) and their daughter and our daughter enjoy playing together. Not only did Tara and I join them, but so did Emma, Levi and Isaac. Eli's not been feeling well, and even if he was, I'm not sure he's up for a four hour feast!

We arrived at 4:30pm and were greeted by some of the Spanjer's family - Marla's folks, her brother, and a special guest: JessAnn Smith. She is performing in a show during the month of April at the New Huntington Theatre. Being from New York, and wanting to partcipate in Passover, she made some phone calls and was able to meet Marla and arrange to join her (us) for the dinner. What a treat! And the end of the meal she asked if she could sing for her meal - to which the family heartily agreed. She offered up a very beautiful and tender song written (as I recall) by a Jewish musician who was captured during the Holocaust, escaped, but then returned to help others escape. She was eventually caught and never rescued. So the song was very special on several levels.

The meal, the readings/singing from the Haggadah, and the fun atmosphere made for a wonderful evening. Having spent a lot of time lately reading through the Exodus story, Exile stories, and other writings from the Psalms and Prophets, it was very enlightening to hear the Passover story read and celebrated with the family of a rabbi. These writings are not just text to be studied and figured out - they are the real history and life of people and families.

It was evident that the Spanjer family enjoyed each other, enjoyed observing Passover meal, they loved to tell stories, and they loved having guests in their home. We arrived at their home around 4:30pm and left around 9pm. There are lots of memories in that time, here are some that stick out to me (that haven't already been mentioned):

* eating the matzo and maror - the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs (pretty much very strong horseradish colored with beets). It was very potent maror - which is kind of the point: to remind you of the bitter toil and enslavement of God's people in Egypt. Prior to that we had eaten parsley dipped in salt water to remember the tears of the oppressed. Emma, Levi and Isaac liked the fact they got to tear a piece of parsely off and dip it in the salt water, but they had no intention of eating it!

* the Feast! Matzo ball soup! Roast chicken and Tender beef brisket! Potato Kugels! Cakes! Cookies! Coffee! Ahhhh...we were so full, almost all of us pushed ourselves away from the table, put our hands on our tummy's and sighed with a smile! :)

* the reading of the Exodus story - the singing in Hebrew - the comment on the story...

* opening the door for Elijah.

* the stealing of the afikonam: Michal stole the half wrapped up under her grandfather's chair when "no one" was looking, and then her and Emma snuck upstairs and hid it. Then, when her grandfather needed the half of matzo to finish the story, Michal and Emma "refused" to hand it over unless he give all the kids gifts! What fun! The girls and boys had fun handing the afikonam over for toys!

And there other reflections and thoughts - but that is for another post.

Thanks Spanjers!

Levi, Isaac, Michal, Emma

Rabbi Spanjer showing Isaac and Levi how the toy works!

Emma and Michal enjoying the "reward" for finding the afikomen!

Rabbi Spanjer and the family - explaining the afikomen to my kids...

The Apocalypse of Christ - Part Three

My sermon series on Revelation is started up again - I'm getting ready to preach my fourth sermon in the second part of the series. The first three-part series dealt with general themes of how to read and understand Revelation. The second seven-part series was going to be a week by week look at the seven churches to whom Revelation is addressed.

I've had fun doing the series, and I know at least a few people are learning something each Sunday, as well committing to live out the Way of Jesus because of what is being heard. So that's good.

But it is frustrating in that I don't have enough time in the week to learn all I want to learn about the letter. There is way too much content out there to cover, and even if I spent forty hours a week just on my sermon, there'd still not be enough time. So alot of my struggle in sermon prep is sorting out the information that I find fascinating but that is kind of not relevant to the preaching point. Each week there is so much I want to say, and there is so much insight, so many layers to the message in the Scripture text, that it is hard to know what not to say. So, this series has been fun, but also frustrating.

I'm also working to figure out how to make a separation between what I need to hear from the text for me, what I need to hear from the text for the congregation, and then get a sense of what are the many things the text is/could be saying. How one chooses to interpret the text greatly impacts what you will hear it say. But what if the text is designed to say more than one thing? How dogmatic can one be on what the text is saying? One can only be really sure of what the text is saying to me. But that can be dangerous - the text does have an implicit meaning(s), it's not meant to mean anything I want it to mean.

I'm sure by this point you're ready to quit reading this post. Boring.

Welcome to my world. This is stuff that I find fascinating.

I'm sure there are things in your life that you find fascinating that I would find boring. Like who wants to be an accountant? Or who would want to be a doctor? Or who would want to work as a manager in a restaurant. Yet there are those of you who find that kind of accounting/doctoring/managing work to be quite fascinating. Ugh.

Anyways...

With the text for Sunday - Revelation 2v18-28 "To the church in Thyatira"
- an interesting piece of text.
Here we have a Jesus that has eyes of fire, will cast an unrepentant woman on a bed of suffering, as well as inflict all who follow her teachings with great affliction. And he promises to kill the children of this woman.

What a nice Jesus.

Also, he describes his requirements for his disciples as a "burden", and he threatens to repay them for their deeds.
If they pass the test, he will give them authority to rule over the nations with a rod of iron by which we can dash people to pieces. And he'll give us a star for a gift.

What a nice Jesus...NOT.

A straight-reading of this text will definitely leave someone a bit baffled as to what to do with what they are reading. What happened to the Jesus of the Gospels? Even the Jesus of Paul and Peter for that matter. What kind of Jesus are we dealing with here in this text to Thyatira?

Either the congregation has to wade through a bunch of disclaimers as I explain away all the obvious meanings for the underlying text, OR they have to trust me when I give them what I think the "real" explanation, but then if they read the text for themself they may not be able to make the connection between what I explained and what they read.

Even explaining the meaning of the title of the book "revelation = apocalypse = unveiling" can leave people confused.

What was I thinking picking this series? However, people have been asking me for years to preach a series on Revelation. And I was reluctant for the longest time. Until this summer when I was energized to dive in. Now I'm reluctant again.

The message to Thyatira: consider how your use of food and sex brings upon your own suffering; when you consider food and sex a gift from God to be used as a way to bless the world, you will find yourself following the Way of Jesus.

Food and sex are the basic stuff of life - it's how we stay alive and how we keep life going. Food and sex are central to life, which is why Jesus has such strong instruction on how to consider them rightly.

Consider where your food comes from, under what circumstances it was produced, how it was transported, and how much of it you consume?

Consider your desires for sex, what is your motivation for sex, who do you want to have sex with, what are your desires for sex doing to you and others?

If Christians could hearken to this message of food and sex directed to the disciples of Thyatira, our God would grant us more authority to show the world how to carve out a life that sustains a truly good life. We would be like the morningstar - a sign of hope, a light that pierces the darkest of night, a harbringer of the coming dawn.

Bet that wasn't the most obvious message to be gleaned from the Thyatira text. Still not sure how to deliver it as a sermon on Sunday.

Food, Family, and Politics

Touchstone is a magazine I've subscribed to for years - here are a few quotes from this month's issue.

Family

In this world joy cannot be perpetual.
However, it is possible for joy to return, over and over again.

The possibility of happiness and joy rests, of course, within a larger matrix of sacrifices, sorrows, forgone opportunities, and trials that also mark family life.

Living together in families requires that persons confront and overcome their own selfishness.
- page 3

Food

Do not eat the kind of food that "injures a man, deteriorates his spirit, and renders his body prone to disease," but "eat that you may live."
~ Clement of Alexandria, early third century - page 33

Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.
- Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

By speaking of "food", for example, Pollan means to exclude the vast majority of the "edible goods" that crowd our supermarket shelves - we are to regard as food only the things that our grandmothers or great-grandmothers would have recognized as such. Similarly, "plants" mean fresh ones, unprocessed and grown locally in nutrient-rich, pesticide-free soil.
- page 33

For more information on food, eating, and our life/faith, see Polyface Farms - they have a great index of books to read and ponder.

Politics

For Augustine, membership in a political community, is, then, and event of participation that orders a people by attuning their desire and drawing them towarad those loved things held in common.

Put simply, politics is the collective act of ordering human desire. It is at root a question of love (that which orders our desires) rather than one of justice (that which orders our actions).

History becomes both an account of that ordering and the source of that ordering.

What does a man or a society love? That is the key political question as far as Augustine is concerned.
- page 14