Gluttony Versus Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 6:25-34:

One of the accusations that was leveled against Jesus, both by opponents, and even somewhat by supporters was that he was a glutton. This accusation was especially true when compared against John the Baptist. We are told that John was living an ascetic lifestyle wearing a camelhair cloak, which wasn’t very comfortable, and that he ate locusts with wild honey. I’m thinking the honey was a dipping sauce. That is a very different picture than what we see of Jesus, and in fact John’s disciples come and ask why it is that they are fasting while Jesus and the disciples are not. To which Jesus says that someday they will fast, but they should feast while the bridegroom is still with them. The accusation that Jesus was a glutton was a slur used against him to try and denigrate him and his message, more than a reality. But, it does appear that it was fun to be around Jesus, at least most of the time, and as I said in this week’s newsletter, we have lots of stories of Jesus eating with the disciples and with others.

Eating, breaking bread, was important to Jesus and a part of his witness about the Kingdom of God, and we still talk about the feasting that Jesus is preparing for us, and yet what we see in that is the judgments about his behavior could be made. We still see that today because of the seven deadly sins, the one that many people feel comfortable making a judgment about, especially when it comes to others, is the sin of gluttony. Most people just assume that people are overweight because they are gluttonous, and while gluttony does have something to do with overeating, it doesn’t really have anything to do with obesity. The two are not necessarily connected. You can be gluttonous and skinny. And we have to remember that when it was the poor who were skinny that having a little meat on your bones was said to represent divine favor, virtue and nobility. Oh how things change.

Although we can be gluttonous in many behaviors, like binge watching TV, or drugs, or even working, this behavior has typically been reserved for food and alcohol, and it is the probably the easiest of the deadly sins to see as an excess of a natural behavior. That is we need to eat and we need to drink, but if we take it too far and eat or drink too much than we can be said to be gluttons, and most of us have us have probably been gluttons at one time or another, after all, we have the national day of gluttony coming up at the end of November, in which we exhibit gluttony in all sorts of ways.

Pope Gregory, who popularized the deadly sins said that gluttony was eating “too daintily, too sumptuously, too hastily, too greedily, too much.” And of course since we need an acronym for everything someone came up with FRESH, which is eating fastidiously, ravenously, excessively, sumptuously, and hastily. Eating fastidiously, or daintily, is about our expectations around eating, especially of having a certain experience. High dining, in which presentation is everything, can be gluttonous eating, even though there is little on the plate. Eating ravenously sort of speaks for itself, although it can also be sumptuous eating, which can be a part of being a picky eater, which is being concerned about what we eat which can also fall under sumptuously. Eating hastily is for those who shovel food into their mouth, and excessively is just eating too much or too often. Ultimately gluttony then is not just about how much, but why we are eating and the attention we are putting into our food and why. Someone who is ultra-picky can be a glutton, someone who is demanding about food can be a glutton, someone who drives way out of their way because they just have to have a certain thing that’s only sold in a certain place can be a glutton. It’s not about not enjoying food, although there are arguments about that, but God gave us taste buds and smell, and in the garden was food that was delightful, so enjoying food can be okay, to a point, but again it’s the purpose and reason for why we are doing things. Is it to eat for survival or to enjoy food for the sake of enjoyment or to fill something in ourselves that seems to be lacking? To make up for something in our lives? Because no matter how much we eat, we will always get hungry again. Food can never truly satisfy us.

In the passage we heard from Isaiah this morning, he says “why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” That is fill yourself, or be filled, with the things of God, not the things of the world. Those things we are trying to stuff ourselves with, regardless of what they are, will not fill us up, they will not leave us satisfied. Instead be filled with the love of God which will fill, but also leave us wanting more in a positive way.

And so Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Notice he doesn’t say those who are filled with righteousness, or had been filled but now need more. Nor does he say blessed are the righteous. Instead it’s for those who are seeking and searching for righteousness. Those who are striving for God’s Kingdom to come and God’s will be to be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is a continual search for God’s Kingdom and God’s justice, because the word for righteousness here can also be translated as justice; not our justice but God’s justice. Now the other thing we have to keep in mind is that righteousness at a very basic definition, is to be living in right relationship with God and with each other, its part of that love the Lord with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself thing. In scripture people pursue righteousness, as we are supposed to do, or hunger and thirst for it, but, as we heard when we talked about the righteousness of Abraham a few months ago, righteousness is not something we gain. It is something given to us by God.

Paul makes very clear that while the prophets say that our highest goal is to pursue righteousness that it is a gift given by God. Paul wants to make sure we understand that it is gift because if it is the result of our own actions then it is something that we can boast about, or be prideful of, which leads us into self-righteousness and away from God. So perhaps we might even say that it’s possible to be a glutton for righteousness in seeking so much of it that it actually distracts us from true righteousness, of the pursuit of it, knowing we will only ever get there and only achieve it through God’s grace, that as John Wesley would say, we are moving onto perfection.  And when we know that and do that then we begin to focus on the things that truly matter, which is not the things of the world, not the food for our stomach, which can become a God, Paul says, but the things of God, loving God and loving neighbor, and always wanting more, always knowing that we are not there yet.

When Jesus tells us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear, he is not saying that these are unimportant or we can just forget it all together. What he is saying, or at least what I think he is saying, is that he knows we have to eat and get dressed, and God knows these things to, but eating and drinking, or even being a fashionista, is not the end all and be all of our existence, and if we try and make it so, we will never be satisfied. We will discuss this more next week when we talk about greed, and in two weeks when we talk about lust, but we can hunger and thirst for better or more food, or better or more clothes, or better or more cars, or whatever it might be, but they won’t make us happy. In fact, as humans we are incredibly bad at choosing what will make us happy, and these things can be wonderful to have, and wonderful servants for us, but they are terrible masters. When we allow these things that we can be gluttonous for to control our lives we will always want and need more and more and more, because they can never fill us. They are always drawing a new line of saying, if you just have this then you will be happy, then you will be filled. But what happens when we get that thing, eat that meal, buy those shoes? The line gets moved and we are now hungering and thirsting for something else. There is more to sustaining life than just these things.

When we gather at the table, it doesn’t fill us up. It’s not meant to fill us up. It’s meant to leave us wanting more, to keep coming back to the table, to taste and see that God is good, and then to continue to seek that out in the world. To hunger and thirst not just for God’s righteousness, but to hunger and thirst for God. because when that is what we are striving for, what we are hungering for, to claim Jesus as the bread and water of life, and to know that with him we will never be hungry and thirsty again, because he has poured himself out for us, and offered himself up for us, and God’s love is given to us freely. Can you ever have enough love? Can the love you feel or the love you receive ever be too much? No, because there is always room for more, and with God there is always more to give, and in our broken world there is always more of God’s kingdom to seek and to give. So we are always striving first for the Kingdom of God.

So don’t worry about what you will eat, or drink, or wear, for those are the things of the world. Instead seek to fill yourself with God’s righteousness which may be given to us because we love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and minds and soul and strength and we love our neighbor as ourselves. That is what we are called to do and that is who we are called to be in everything, and not only will those who hunger and thirst after righteousness be filled, but as Isaiah tells us, we will go out with joy and be led back in peace and even the mountains and the hills will burst into song and the trees of the field will clap their hands. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters.