Sermons

 Food Life

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
February 1, 2009	I Corinthians 8:1-13

We had a favorite restaurant in Chicago. It was, in reality, a glorified food court; though I don’t think they liked it when you called it that. Everything was prepared as you waited, and the ingredients were fresh and good and we enjoyed our meals there. It was pricier than a mall food court, but since we were negotiating the palates of two reasonably accommodating adults and two more particular young children, it felt like it was worth it.

The place was called Food Life, and it struck me then and it strikes me now as one of the smartest names for a restaurant of all time. To go there, to make that choice, was life itself. To choose any other restaurant, for any other reasons at all, was death, or at least food death. Such high stakes. Such pressure. In fact, there was such pressure that like much of recent marketing, they smashed the two words together and used lower case… “foodlife.” I couldn’t quite get myself to do that in the sermon title.

But the concept has stuck with me, and even more so, its implications. Food is in the news all around us, even this morning. For example, I love peanut butter, but now I am not so sure. Or reports about Rochester and childhood obesity. Or the growing movements of locally grown, organic food, with nutritional implications as well as implications for our global climate crisis. Or the way that we are responding to the current economic crisis by going to restaurants less frequently, and when we are doing so, are spending less.

Perhaps you’ve read stories this week about how well McDonald’s is doing in this crisis. I thought about McDonald’s this week. My first job. Literally the day after I turned sixteen. I started on clean-up, what they called “lot and lobby” but what was really mopping and taking out the trash. And cooking, and then eventually, the front line. I liked cooking the best, though my family will testify that whatever proficiency I had then has been thoroughly lost.

I thought about that as I read about McDonald’s, and about my first job as so many this week, including those we know, lost their only job, a loss with much higher stakes.

It is all connected somehow, and this week it is all connected around food – food life. Food being more than food.

The Apostle Paul has been communicating to the early church he founded in Corinth. Like any group in its infancy, they are trying to figure out how they will function, how they will live together. And this group reflected diversity in extreme, coming together from many social places, cultural places, economic places, religious places. It’s not as if 200 Presbyterians were transplanted from one place to another and asked to start again. Rather, it was people from every stripe of life, including those who believed one thing, those who believed another thing, and those who believed nothing. Different beliefs, different behaviors, different customs.

A central issue was food…food life. Food being more than food. Earlier religious practice had food being purchased, prepared, and consumed as an offering to idols, either at the temple or in homes. And now, as the new church was being formed, some were carrying that practice forward.

It was a problem on several levels. One was the issue of idols themselves – and, in fact, for followers of Christ, the disappearance of the need for any idols at all. That was central to Paul’s concerns. But another concern was economic – simply that those who had more financial resources could afford better food, meat, in this case, and even through their consumption now did not hold religious meaning, their ability to consume affected the life of the community.

Kind of like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” – remember that? – coming into conflict with “Lifestyles of the Modest and Marginal” or “Lifestyles of the Rest of Us.”

Society does a pretty good job of keeping social groups apart. But the church will insist otherwise, that there is no such thing as have and have-not.

It was a big problem, and may still be. Food being more than food. Paul insisted that there was no such thing as an idol, let alone idols to worship. The issue for Paul was love, and how people with more would treat people with less, and how different practices are welcomed into the community.

Eat what you want, Paul says, but remember there is one God. And eat what you want, but don’t let what you eat, how you behave, how you function as a member of the community, get in the way of your interactions with others in the community.

No stumbling-blocks, Paul says. Be sensitive to those around you. Set your own limits based on an awareness of the limits of others.

For some in the Corinthians community, the eating of “idol food,” as it was called, was a strong reminder of the past, and a temptation. For others, it was no big deal. But food is more than food, so Paul made the ethical point not what was permitted to be eaten, but the nature of the community and its spirit. “Therefore,” he said, “if food is a cause for their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.”

Charles Cousar writes that this discussion seems trivial until it is placed in the context of “Christians having honest differences among themselves” or about “the critical matter of individualism versus community.” (Texts for Preaching, Year B, page 130) For Paul, says Cousar, “within the Christian community love is to take precedence over the exercise of individual’s freedom.” Eat what you want, spend what you want, behave as you want, as long as it is not a barrier to Christian relationship or a stumbling-block to anyone on their faith journey. Love builds up, Paul insists, and as long as behavior builds, rather than breaks down or tears down, it is fine.

Food is more than food. We know that around here. We know that in the three big weekly meals we prepare in our kitchen each week – youth on Sunday night, Qabats on Wednesday night, Dining Room Ministry on Saturday morning. We know the food that is prepared is about more than the preparation, and the meals that are shared are about more than what is eaten. We know that. We knew that at yesterday morning’s men’s breakfast, or a Calvin Guild potluck, or when the staff breaks bread at noontime on Wednesday. We know that.

We know that especially on a day like today, when in a few moments we will say ancient words and engage in ancient practices. We know that we could spend a lifetime debating what it means – is it really the body and blood of Christ or what actually happens and why do churches disagree and should I participate or not.

We Presbyterians fall, as we often do, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum on all of this. We do not believe that the actual elements – bread and cup – are changed in their nature, but we do believe that the presence of Christ is with us, so that this is more than a mere rehearsal of what happened two millennia ago.

Like baptism, what we have called communion or the Lord’s Supper, and now, more recently, Eucharist, is a sign and seal of something greater than what happens here – food being more than food – a sign of God’s mercy and love, a profoundly gracious welcome to a table whereby we could never earn an invitation, but are invited nonetheless.

And because of that, we believe that all are invited, all are welcomed, and in the spirit of Paul, we should do as little as possible to get in people’s way. Sometimes arcane doctrine can get in the way. Other times it is the behavior of the community itself. If there are barriers of any kind, we work hard to remove them, even if they are harmless in their own right. That is what Paul seems to say – it’s not what you eat, but how you eat, and how you connect with those who eat differently, live differently, that makes all the difference.

Christ’s table is the great leveler – I believe that. And it therefore calls us into a deep vision of community that challenges every division that we experience, even in this relatively homogenous gathering called Third Presbyterian Church. What we know, what we consume, how we live, where we work, how we behave, is all placed in the crucible of love, love that reshapes and reforms the community.

And no symbol is stronger than this table – where all are welcomed and there is no place of privilege, where the host is guest and every credential is stripped away except for one, child of God and pilgrim with deep hunger and profound thirst. No room for arrogance. No room for hierarchy. No room for cultural or economic distinction. Plenty of room for love, and love only, and all that love demands.

Richard Hays asks difficult questions arising from this text: “Can Christians fit into the social world of their surrounding culture” and how are divisions addressed within the church. (First Corinthians, “Interpretation” Series, pages 143-145)

Different traditions have answered those questions in different ways. We have preferred to live in the messiness of the real world, whereby we neither reject the culture out-of-hand nor embrace it fully – and live with the complex consequences in church and culture.

That is why food is more than food, and it is also why we are investing so much energy on congregational fellowship these days, on connecting with each other as a community of love more deeply, more profoundly, to strengthen the ties that bind us.

Food is more than food. And a table is more than a table.

We will present ourselves in a few moments, from east and west and north and south, and more than that. We will present ourselves, young and old, man and woman, gay and straight, sure and doubting, fully vested and recently laid off, meat-eaters and vegetarians (symbolically and otherwise), in recovery, healing, Democrats and Republicans, single and coupled.

We will present ourselves. And the food will be more than food and the table will be more than a table. And we will meet Christ and he will meet us. And through that, we will meet each other. And the common denominator will be our hunger and our thirst, whatever it may be. And that hunger and that thirst will be satisfied. Nothing else will matter. Nothing else matters. Only love. Amen.