Revised and condensed from a sermon preached in Goodson Chapel (Duke Divinity School) on 16 November 2008, part of a Sunday Night Worship sermon series on the seven deadly sins. I was asked to preach on gluttony.
“For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” – Philippians 3:18-21
Gluttony. For me, the term immediately calls forth the image of the Star Wars character Jabba the Hutt. Even more relevant is the parallel character in Mel Brooks’ spoof Spaceballs, Pizza the Hutt, a gruesome creature made completely of—you guessed it—pizza. Pizza the Hutt is so gluttonous that eventually he eats himself.
However, that is an easy, caricatured way to understand gluttony. I’d like to offer an alternative definition that has less to do with the action of eating too much and more to do with the nature of our relationship with food. Food is important throughout the Bible. In Genesis, Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit not just because it was forbidden but because they “saw that the tree was good for food,” according to Genesis 3:6. When wandering in the desert with Moses, the Israelites had manna rained down on them from heaven—but they could only gather what they could eat in a day, so they would not forget that the food was a gift. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he set an example that would have us saying, “Give us this day our daily bread” before even “Forgive us our trespasses.” Food matters, and our relationship with food is linked to our relationship with God.
The witness of Scripture shows us that food is not merely or even primarily for sustenance. Meals are meant to be shared in community. In fact, instances in Scripture where the inherent value of food is emphasized over against its place within a communal meal often involve temptation. This is not to say that food is inherently bad. When God created the world, he made plants and animals expressly as a source of food for humans. We need food. The question is not whether food is good or bad, but whether we consume it and share it in a context that fits the Biblical pattern and lives into the fullness of how God intended for us to live together. This is how we should frame our relationship with food: by understanding meals as a central action of community, a means for social justice to take place, and a starting point of reconciliation.
I chose the verse from Philippians 3 because it contains the phrase “their god is their stomach.” This passage leaves open the question of precisely how the stomach comes to be idolized. Is it in satisfying a greedy appetite, or in obsessing over how small your stomach can be? Either way, disordered eating turns too much of the focus onto the food itself, thereby making food-related fellowship, social justice and reconciliation difficult or even impossible. One part of the suffering of people with eating disorders is that they are unable to share in normal meals with friends and family, which isolates them even more in a time of need. Overeating abuses the gift of meals together, and abstaining from meals removes us from fellowship with one another.
I believe that, like so many other things, eating disorders and corrupted relationships with food cannot be overcome alone. This is why the fact that eating disorders often remove people from table fellowship with others is so dangerous. An anorexic needs common meals more than I do, even if being around both food and other people is difficult or even traumatic. We need to look out for each other. Despite Cain’s sarcastic question in Genesis 4, we are our brother’s and our sister’s keeper.
Of course, if we are to care for each other, we must first be able to see the wounds that need healing. When we have to sit at the dinner table with our family, we see pretty quickly where tension lies. When a person struggling with an eating disorder comes to a meal, their desperate need is made painfully clear—even more so when he or she does not come to the meal. When we break bread for communion, we see the brokenness of Christ’s body, both at the altar and among the people present at the table.
At the Lord’s table, there is fellowship, there is a mandate for social justice, there is a chance for reconciliation with each other and with God. But communion is a strange sort of food. Never is the phrase “You are what you eat” more true. When we eat the bread of which it has just been said, “This is my body,” we become part of that body—the body of Christ. The last part of Philippians 3 says that Jesus “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” This sounds like something that will happen in the distant future, but it happens in a small way every time believers come to this table of mercy. Join in that meal. Share in the fellowship, hear the call to justice, look around for the beginnings of reconciliation. It doesn’t happen by magic—entering into these functions of food will involve both joy and pain. Don’t shy away from seeing the brokenness in the room. Do not be consumed by appetite or a desire to be thin. Be consumed by Christ. Believe in his healing power. Become a part of his body.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Theology and William Tell
The story of William Tell shooting the apple off his son Walter's head has always left me vaguely curious. Did that really happen? Did his son cooperate or was he tied down somehow? Were the onlookers hoping he'd hit the apple…or not?Of course, being me, the first thing that jumps out at me from a story of a man shooting an apple off his son's head is a flowery metaphor for a deep spiritual truth. Great. Did Walter trust his dad? Did William trust himself? Is trust the same thing as knowing the outcome?
Yesterday, I was meeting with my counselor. [Sidebar: Counseling is great. Everyone needs a little therapy. Go get you some counseling. Especially if you're a current or future pastor of any stripe.] I forget what exactly we were talking about, but I said something like, "I guess I just don't really trust myself." He responded more affirmatively than might have been considered polite in any other setting, but it's a truth I've been wrestling with for a while. I don't trust myself.
What that means is that I end up looking to everyone else to tell me how I should think and feel, and what I should do. The problem is that I don't necessarily trust other people either. That's new for me. Most of my life, I've been very trusting of others, to a fault. I haven't really lost that, but as I get older and life sends me more complicated messages and lots of mixed signals, it's harder to know whom to trust.
Of course, the answer should be obvious. I should be trusting God. Yeah, yeah. I know. I have excuses for not trusting God more—God has never been very direct with me, how do I know it's God's voice and not my own fallen desires or the voices of other authority figures in my life, yadda yadda. But I should be trusting God.
And not necessarily to show me the right way. I believe God will guide me on the path eventually. But I'm realizing I've lived my whole life believing that there are very strict right and wrong answers to questions of what I'm supposed to do with my life. Applying for summer field education has been a traumatic experience because I've convinced myself that it would be possible for me to apply for the WRONG kind of field ed.
But that's absurd. God doesn't work that way. Gary said something recently that I really needed to hear: "God's will for your life is not a tightrope to walk." God's love is wide and deep. Yes, God has plans for me. But who am I to limit God's endless creativity in drawing me into that plan?
To go back to William Tell, discerning my vocation is NOT like shooting an apple off the head of my future. My calling is not a minuscule target that I must hit in exactly the right spot to please God or to be happy or whatever it is I think I want out of life. I need to trust in God, not necessarily to be a sign pointing down one road or another, but as the one who carved all the roads and, to paraphrase William Paul Young in The Shack, would travel any path to get to me.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Live Alive // Forays Into Hymnwriting
I decided a while ago that I wanted to be a hymnwriting pastor. I've always preferred Charles to John (Wesley, that is) for his massive contribution to hymnody, and more recently I was inspired by discovering the work of Andrew Pratt on the General Board of Discipleship's website in a collection of resources for times of crisis (which is an excellent place to find ways to address world events in a timely and theologically sound manner). Pratt has studied the history of hymnody extensively and writes new hymns for everything from natural disasters to welfare reform. Check out his blog for some new texts set to old tunes, which he allows to be used locally for free.Anyway, I decided this long after I had abandoned my plans of becoming a music major in undergrad, so the decision to be a hymnwriting pastor was followed by much bewailing of my lack of training in music theory and composition. I've had some of that, but only some, and it's been a while. I've sat in this rut of feeling called to do something I wasn't equipped to do. I did find an outlet in arranging hymns for use in contemporary worship, something that has been a lot of fun and to which I also feel called; but writing hymns still seemed beyond me.
Then I remembered a saying I heard once: "God doesn't call the equipped; God equips the called." And I realized, maybe I need to equip myself. Joining the Vespers Ensemble again was not a random decision, nor was my signing up for voice lessons. I'm looking for any way to be more intentional about my musical training and to absorb well-written music.
I also realized that the only way I'm ever going to get good at writing hymns is to DO it. I have friends at Duke who are accomplished composers--why wouldn't I take advantage of that resource? So my plan is just to start spitting out music and see if I can get people who are better at this than I am to give me pointers. It'll be embarrassing--my counterpoint is awful, and yesterday I wrote a tune that I was excited about until I realized it was just a lame version of one of my favorite melodies in the hymnal. But that's how you get better at something, right?
I did succeed in setting a text between yesterday and today. Back story: my grandfather, Tom Stockton, is a retired Methodist bishop, and in the 80s he recorded and published a sermon series called "Live Alive!", based in part on John 10 (the whole "good shepherd/giving life so that we may have it abundantly" thing). Over Christmas break, he gave me a set of the cassette tapes (because this was, you know, 1986), and I found a way to convert them to mp3s, which was exciting for me. Whether my grandfather grasped the concept or not, I don't know, but I think he appreciated me listening to his sermons.
Anyway, I took the John 10 passage and the titles of each part in the series and voila, a hymn text called "Live Alive." This is the one for which I wrote that tune that wasn't all that original, so I just went back and set it to FOREST GREEN, the tune I accidentally ripped off (which is already used 3 times in the Methodist hymnal, I think). Click here for a really crummy audio of the hymn tune (in this instance, "I Sing the Mighty Power of God"). Check out the "Live Alive" text below. One day I'll write a hymn tune and call it LIVE ALIVE (funny story--there's already a tune called STOCKTON in the UMH).
Text: Thomas B. Stockton and Sarah S. Howell (John 10:9-11) © 2011
Tune: FOREST GREEN
Oh, live alive, for Christ has come
To open wide the door;
The goodly Shepherd calls his sheep
To save and to restore.
Though thieves may come to steal and kill,
Our Christ will set us free,
For he gives life that all may have,
And have abundantly.
Through God's own actions we receive
The strength to live alive,
And through our actions we respond
To grace that helps us thrive.
Although perplexed, we trust and lean
On love so freely giv'n.
All servants of the Servant King
May hope to enter heav'n.
And as we face the trials of life,
We learn how to respond,
E'en in the strife to work for peace
With love to correspond.
And weary though we well may be,
Our faith will help us stand.
No storm could ever hope to shake
The rock on which we stand.
Oh, live alive, for Christ has died
And risen once again.
The sum of all that we could know
Can ne'er compare to him.
Christ died for us to truly live,
Not merely to survive.
Oh, praise the Lord, in whom we all
Will ever live alive.
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Thursday, February 10, 2011
Gluttony vs. Fellowship, Justice and Reconciliation
Revised and condensed from a sermon preached in Goodson Chapel (Duke Divinity School) on 16 November 2008, part of a Sunday Night Worship sermon series on the seven deadly sins. I was asked to preach on gluttony.
“For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” – Philippians 3:18-21
Gluttony. For me, the term immediately calls forth the image of the Star Wars character Jabba the Hutt. Even more relevant is the parallel character in Mel Brooks’ spoof Spaceballs, Pizza the Hutt, a gruesome creature made completely of—you guessed it—pizza. Pizza the Hutt is so gluttonous that eventually he eats himself.
However, that is an easy, caricatured way to understand gluttony. I’d like to offer an alternative definition that has less to do with the action of eating too much and more to do with the nature of our relationship with food. Food is important throughout the Bible. In Genesis, Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit not just because it was forbidden but because they “saw that the tree was good for food,” according to Genesis 3:6. When wandering in the desert with Moses, the Israelites had manna rained down on them from heaven—but they could only gather what they could eat in a day, so they would not forget that the food was a gift. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he set an example that would have us saying, “Give us this day our daily bread” before even “Forgive us our trespasses.” Food matters, and our relationship with food is linked to our relationship with God.
The witness of Scripture shows us that food is not merely or even primarily for sustenance. Meals are meant to be shared in community. In fact, instances in Scripture where the inherent value of food is emphasized over against its place within a communal meal often involve temptation. This is not to say that food is inherently bad. When God created the world, he made plants and animals expressly as a source of food for humans. We need food. The question is not whether food is good or bad, but whether we consume it and share it in a context that fits the Biblical pattern and lives into the fullness of how God intended for us to live together. This is how we should frame our relationship with food: by understanding meals as a central action of community, a means for social justice to take place, and a starting point of reconciliation.
I chose the verse from Philippians 3 because it contains the phrase “their god is their stomach.” This passage leaves open the question of precisely how the stomach comes to be idolized. Is it in satisfying a greedy appetite, or in obsessing over how small your stomach can be? Either way, disordered eating turns too much of the focus onto the food itself, thereby making food-related fellowship, social justice and reconciliation difficult or even impossible. One part of the suffering of people with eating disorders is that they are unable to share in normal meals with friends and family, which isolates them even more in a time of need. Overeating abuses the gift of meals together, and abstaining from meals removes us from fellowship with one another.
I believe that, like so many other things, eating disorders and corrupted relationships with food cannot be overcome alone. This is why the fact that eating disorders often remove people from table fellowship with others is so dangerous. An anorexic needs common meals more than I do, even if being around both food and other people is difficult or even traumatic. We need to look out for each other. Despite Cain’s sarcastic question in Genesis 4, we are our brother’s and our sister’s keeper.
Of course, if we are to care for each other, we must first be able to see the wounds that need healing. When we have to sit at the dinner table with our family, we see pretty quickly where tension lies. When a person struggling with an eating disorder comes to a meal, their desperate need is made painfully clear—even more so when he or she does not come to the meal. When we break bread for communion, we see the brokenness of Christ’s body, both at the altar and among the people present at the table.
At the Lord’s table, there is fellowship, there is a mandate for social justice, there is a chance for reconciliation with each other and with God. But communion is a strange sort of food. Never is the phrase “You are what you eat” more true. When we eat the bread of which it has just been said, “This is my body,” we become part of that body—the body of Christ. The last part of Philippians 3 says that Jesus “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” This sounds like something that will happen in the distant future, but it happens in a small way every time believers come to this table of mercy. Join in that meal. Share in the fellowship, hear the call to justice, look around for the beginnings of reconciliation. It doesn’t happen by magic—entering into these functions of food will involve both joy and pain. Don’t shy away from seeing the brokenness in the room. Do not be consumed by appetite or a desire to be thin. Be consumed by Christ. Believe in his healing power. Become a part of his body.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Theology and William Tell
The story of William Tell shooting the apple off his son Walter's head has always left me vaguely curious. Did that really happen? Did his son cooperate or was he tied down somehow? Were the onlookers hoping he'd hit the apple…or not?
Of course, being me, the first thing that jumps out at me from a story of a man shooting an apple off his son's head is a flowery metaphor for a deep spiritual truth. Great. Did Walter trust his dad? Did William trust himself? Is trust the same thing as knowing the outcome?
Yesterday, I was meeting with my counselor. [Sidebar: Counseling is great. Everyone needs a little therapy. Go get you some counseling. Especially if you're a current or future pastor of any stripe.] I forget what exactly we were talking about, but I said something like, "I guess I just don't really trust myself." He responded more affirmatively than might have been considered polite in any other setting, but it's a truth I've been wrestling with for a while. I don't trust myself.
What that means is that I end up looking to everyone else to tell me how I should think and feel, and what I should do. The problem is that I don't necessarily trust other people either. That's new for me. Most of my life, I've been very trusting of others, to a fault. I haven't really lost that, but as I get older and life sends me more complicated messages and lots of mixed signals, it's harder to know whom to trust.
Of course, the answer should be obvious. I should be trusting God. Yeah, yeah. I know. I have excuses for not trusting God more—God has never been very direct with me, how do I know it's God's voice and not my own fallen desires or the voices of other authority figures in my life, yadda yadda. But I should be trusting God.
And not necessarily to show me the right way. I believe God will guide me on the path eventually. But I'm realizing I've lived my whole life believing that there are very strict right and wrong answers to questions of what I'm supposed to do with my life. Applying for summer field education has been a traumatic experience because I've convinced myself that it would be possible for me to apply for the WRONG kind of field ed.
But that's absurd. God doesn't work that way. Gary said something recently that I really needed to hear: "God's will for your life is not a tightrope to walk." God's love is wide and deep. Yes, God has plans for me. But who am I to limit God's endless creativity in drawing me into that plan?
To go back to William Tell, discerning my vocation is NOT like shooting an apple off the head of my future. My calling is not a minuscule target that I must hit in exactly the right spot to please God or to be happy or whatever it is I think I want out of life. I need to trust in God, not necessarily to be a sign pointing down one road or another, but as the one who carved all the roads and, to paraphrase William Paul Young in The Shack, would travel any path to get to me.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Live Alive // Forays Into Hymnwriting
I decided a while ago that I wanted to be a hymnwriting pastor. I've always preferred Charles to John (Wesley, that is) for his massive contribution to hymnody, and more recently I was inspired by discovering the work of Andrew Pratt on the General Board of Discipleship's website in a collection of resources for times of crisis (which is an excellent place to find ways to address world events in a timely and theologically sound manner). Pratt has studied the history of hymnody extensively and writes new hymns for everything from natural disasters to welfare reform. Check out his blog for some new texts set to old tunes, which he allows to be used locally for free.
Anyway, I decided this long after I had abandoned my plans of becoming a music major in undergrad, so the decision to be a hymnwriting pastor was followed by much bewailing of my lack of training in music theory and composition. I've had some of that, but only some, and it's been a while. I've sat in this rut of feeling called to do something I wasn't equipped to do. I did find an outlet in arranging hymns for use in contemporary worship, something that has been a lot of fun and to which I also feel called; but writing hymns still seemed beyond me.
Then I remembered a saying I heard once: "God doesn't call the equipped; God equips the called." And I realized, maybe I need to equip myself. Joining the Vespers Ensemble again was not a random decision, nor was my signing up for voice lessons. I'm looking for any way to be more intentional about my musical training and to absorb well-written music.
I also realized that the only way I'm ever going to get good at writing hymns is to DO it. I have friends at Duke who are accomplished composers--why wouldn't I take advantage of that resource? So my plan is just to start spitting out music and see if I can get people who are better at this than I am to give me pointers. It'll be embarrassing--my counterpoint is awful, and yesterday I wrote a tune that I was excited about until I realized it was just a lame version of one of my favorite melodies in the hymnal. But that's how you get better at something, right?
I did succeed in setting a text between yesterday and today. Back story: my grandfather, Tom Stockton, is a retired Methodist bishop, and in the 80s he recorded and published a sermon series called "Live Alive!", based in part on John 10 (the whole "good shepherd/giving life so that we may have it abundantly" thing). Over Christmas break, he gave me a set of the cassette tapes (because this was, you know, 1986), and I found a way to convert them to mp3s, which was exciting for me. Whether my grandfather grasped the concept or not, I don't know, but I think he appreciated me listening to his sermons.
Anyway, I took the John 10 passage and the titles of each part in the series and voila, a hymn text called "Live Alive." This is the one for which I wrote that tune that wasn't all that original, so I just went back and set it to FOREST GREEN, the tune I accidentally ripped off (which is already used 3 times in the Methodist hymnal, I think). Click here for a really crummy audio of the hymn tune (in this instance, "I Sing the Mighty Power of God"). Check out the "Live Alive" text below. One day I'll write a hymn tune and call it LIVE ALIVE (funny story--there's already a tune called STOCKTON in the UMH).
Text: Thomas B. Stockton and Sarah S. Howell (John 10:9-11) © 2011
Tune: FOREST GREEN
Oh, live alive, for Christ has come
To open wide the door;
The goodly Shepherd calls his sheep
To save and to restore.
Though thieves may come to steal and kill,
Our Christ will set us free,
For he gives life that all may have,
And have abundantly.
Through God's own actions we receive
The strength to live alive,
And through our actions we respond
To grace that helps us thrive.
Although perplexed, we trust and lean
On love so freely giv'n.
All servants of the Servant King
May hope to enter heav'n.
And as we face the trials of life,
We learn how to respond,
E'en in the strife to work for peace
With love to correspond.
And weary though we well may be,
Our faith will help us stand.
No storm could ever hope to shake
The rock on which we stand.
Oh, live alive, for Christ has died
And risen once again.
The sum of all that we could know
Can ne'er compare to him.
Christ died for us to truly live,
Not merely to survive.
Oh, praise the Lord, in whom we all
Will ever live alive.
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