Beyond the Limit and Out of Control
For several weeks now, I have been preaching on the “Seven Deadly Sins.” Today, we arrive at the sin of gluttony. This is one that hits a little close to home… for most of us can remember a time when we sat down at the table and ate far more than what we needed to eat. The annual Thanksgiving dinner is one of those times for me. But every holiday… every “all-you-can-eat” buffet… every ballgame… every family get-together… every Two-Cent-A-Meal here at the church… tempts me to do the same. There is so much good food… and we have so many good cooks… that it is hard to resist the urge to chow down like there’s no tomorrow.
And I can’t say that I limit my gluttony to special occasions. Put a basket of corn chips down in front of me any day and I will munch on them until every last one of them is gone. The same is pretty much true of a bowl of buttered popcorn. As a consequence, in January of 2007, I was officially obese. I weighed fifty (50) pounds over my ideal weight. A year later, I am no longer obese, but I am still overweight… and still tempted by corn chips and popcorn… even though I know that they are not good for me… and that I would be much healthier if I could lose the excess weight that I carry around.
And I am not alone. In a recent study, the Centers for Disease Control concluded that the number of obese adults in the United States has doubled in the last twenty years and today, 67% of the population is either overweight or obese. And the projections for the future are even worse. According to a study published in the Epidemiologic Reviews, 75% of our population will be overweight and 41% will be obese by the year 2015… and, at current trends, Dr. John Foreyt at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has predicted that 100% of our population will be overweight by the year 2040. That is a scary statistic.
According to Holmon’s Bible Dictionary, a glutton is a person who is “habitually given to greedy and voracious eating.” In the Bible, gluttony is “associated with stubbornness… rebellion… disobedience… drunkenness… and wastefulness,” as we can see in the passage from Deuteronomy 21 that Dani read and in our sermon text today from the Gospel of Luke. The younger son… the Prodigal Son… took his father’s money… what he claimed was his share, even though his father was not yet dead… and squandered it all on dissolute living… a euphemism for excess in self-indulgence and wastefulness. During that time, the son’s lifestyle was beyond the limit and out of control.
Why do we do it? Why do we stuff ourselves beyond even our own level of comfort… and not just once, but over and over and over again? The negative consequences of gluttony are enormous… both for the glutton and for our society. Health care costs have skyrocketed. The military is having difficulty finding recruits who are fit enough to serve their country. Productivity in the workplace has suffered. School performance has been affected and may account for why the United States is outperformed by other countries on many academic tests. The number of individuals diagnosed with Type II Diabetes has increased dramatically and has even been seen in children as young as five years of age. Currently, one-third of our children are overweight and, for the first time in history, the current generation of children is expected to die younger than their parents.
If we know all this, then why do we continue to overeat? Kelly Brownell, an obesity researcher and the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Says that we live in a “toxic environment”… an environment that makes it easy for us to succumb to poor food choices… overeating… and increased inactivity. We live in a society that encourages us to eat more and more… and move less and less… at every turn. Yet, we cannot blame everything on things that are outside of us… our environment… and the society in which we live. At some point, we need to take control of our lives… and our voracious eating habits. The fact that we don’t… or won’t… do so is why gluttony is labeled a sin.
Gluttony is a sin because, like many of our “Seven Deadly Sins,” the one who is a glutton lives to please him-or-herself… rather than living to please God. Our own desires for pleasure and self-indulgence have pushed God aside and placed an idol in front of us… an idol that tempts us to indulge in the comfort food that we love… and to stuff ourselves until we can’t move. The second scripture that Dani read to us tells us not to spend time with those who are gluttonous, because they will live in poverty. In fact, that same chapter in Proverbs says that we should put a knife to our own throat if we are given to gluttony. A lifestyle of excess consumes any of the “extras” that we set aside for a rainy day... and leads to disaster. But, while that is a dangerous thing, the most dangerous thing is that, while we indulge in self-serving patterns of behavior, we lose our focus on why we exist… why we were created… and that is to glorify and serve God. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body.”
Our physical appetites are an analogy of our ability to control ourselves. In the past, church leaders took an expansive view of gluttony (Okholm 2000), arguing that gluttony could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals… and the constant eating of delicacies or excessively costly foods. If we are unable to control our eating habits, they said… allowing ourselves to dip into periods of self-indulgence… then, we are probably also unable to control other parts of our lives as well… allowing this desire for self-indulgence to control our lives. The Bible cautions us that we are not to let our appetites control us, but rather we are to have control over our appetites. In fact, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians lists a host of behaviors that are associated with self-centered living and then, he says, “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love… joy… peace… patience… kindness…generosity… faithfulness… gentleness… and…you guessed it… self-control.”
But let’s get back to our story of the Prodigal Son. One of the reasons that we love this story so much is that it is the epitome of a story of love and grace. Despite all that the profligate son has done, the father welcomes him home and restores him to a place of honor in the household… much to the dismay of the older son. The Prodigal does not have to take his place with the servants… or do anything to earn his way back into his father’s home… or back into his family’s life… he is welcomed with open arms. And this story is just one example of the outrageous grace that God exhibits toward sinners. The story of the lost sheep and the lost coin are two others.
But, in this story of the Prodigal Son, does the father, by his actions, condone the actions of the son? Does the promise of grace give us permission to continue in sin? Again, the Apostle Paul answers that question in his letter to the Romans where he says, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” And, further on, he says, “The death he [Christ] died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions… For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So, if we recognize this sin of gluttony in our own lives, what should we do to combat it… recognizing as we do that we are prone to temptation and fallible as human beings? Those who successfully control their intake of food know that there are some basic guidelines to keep us on the right path. The first of these is to remove the temptation from our homes. It has been a long time since a bag of corn chips made its way into my house, for I know that if they are there, I will eat them. At the same time, we should not totally deprive ourselves of things that we enjoy… for God made those things for our enjoyment as well… we just need to control the portion that we eat. I now eat ice cream in a tea cup, rather than a bowl… simply because I am less likely to overindulge if I do that.
And thirdly, surround yourself with likeminded people… those who are also working to reduce the temptation to overindulge… either because they are Christians… or because they simply recognize the dangers of overindulgence. I have Christian friends who struggle with gluttony… as I do… and their friendship has kept me from overindulging many, many times. Sharing my struggle with this particular demon has made the journey easier for me… for those who struggle with me help to keep me on the right path. There is someone in this congregation who only has to look at me across the table at a Two-Cent-A-Meal and I am reminded that I need to watch what I eat. That person… as well as others who struggle with me… offer words of caution… encouragement… and laughter that lighten the burden and lift our spirits. If any of us have difficulty finding a friend to share this journey, there are two groups of people who meet here at the church each week to support each other in that struggle: TOPS (Take off Pounds Sensibly) meets in our Fellowship Hall every Monday night and Overeaters Anonymous meets in our church parlor every Tuesday night. Both are nonprofit organizations that our Session has voted to allow to use our building as an outreach to our community.
Finally… and don’t leave this one out… we need to turn our struggles over to God. We need to ask God daily for help in dealing with the temptations that we all face. God has promised to be with us in all our struggles… even our struggles for self-control. Our God has blessed us by filling the earth with foods that are delicious… nutritious… and even pleasurable. And, for that, we give honor and praise to God. In return, we should honor God's creation… including the bodies that God has given us… by enjoying these foods, and by eating them in appropriate quantities… caring for our bodies as we would care for a temple of the Holy Spirit. For, in this way, we give glory to God. Amen.
Luke 15:11-24