Epiphany 4B
February 1, 2015
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
If you’re happy and you know it, eat a
snack! If you’re sad and you know it, eat a snack. If you’re sad because you’re
angry, feeling down or generally bad, if you’re sad… eat a snack.
If you’re bored and you know it, eat a snack. If you’re lonely and you
know it, eat a snack. If you’re sleepy and you know it, if you’re guilty and
you know it, if you’re stressed… eat a snack.
If you’re human and you know it, then your face will surely show it. If
you’re human, eat your feelings. Eat a snack.
Has anyone
seen this commercial? It’s a recent Weight Watchers commercial. I think it ends
with something like, “We’ll help you with the hard stuff.” It’s sort of a cute
approach, using a child’s song, but the first time I saw it, even though I chuckled,
I also found it deeply unsettling. It is such an accurate assessment of the
relationship so many of us have with food. Food is this wonderful gift from God
that serves to nourish our bodies and provide what we need to be strong and
healthy – and yet for many of us, it is something with which we have a
complicated relationship: we eat when we’re stressed, we eat when we’re bored,
we eat when we’re tired, we eat when we’re sad… just like the song on the
commercial says. What should be a gracious gift from God becomes for many of us
an enemy to combat, a temptation to overcome, a continuing foe, which stalks us
and grips us every
And that is
just a reflection on our personal relationship with food – it says nothing of our
global relationship, and the broader impact of our food choices. In the Western
world, we have very little sense of what goes into the food we eat. I know we
have several farmers and gardeners in this congregation, but in a lot of
communities, especially urban ones, people have no sense of what food looks
like in its raw form. They just take for granted how it appears on their plate
or in the grocery store. Many of us don’t know what goes into its growth,
harvest, and production – including how many pesticides are used, how much
water, how farm workers are treated, and in the case of livestock, how the
animals are treated, what drugs they are given, how much land is used, how much
toxic gas they emit into the atmosphere, how much oil is used to get all this
food to our communities from far away… And then of course there is the
processed food, which, somewhere between its initial growth and its appearance
on the grocery store shelf, is loaded with chemicals, sugars, and preservatives
to give it lasting shelf life and appealing taste. All of this process for
getting food from land to plate is very involved and complex, and the decisions
we make about what food we buy and eat affects a long line of people, not to
mention animals and the environment.
Yes, human
relationship with food is complicated, whether you are thinking about it in
terms of you and the delicious looking pastry in front of you, or in terms of
the larger scheme of food production. What should
be a gracious gift from God and a supplier of nourishment for our bodies becomes
one of our biggest challenges.
Apparently human
relationship with food has long been a challenge, albeit in different ways. We
see it in our passage today from 1 Corinthians. This is one of those passages
that might at first seem completely inapplicable to our 21st century
context, as it begins, “Now concerning food sacrificed to idols...” Sacrificing
food to idols is not something in which most Christians participate
today, so
we may just decide to write off the rest of the passage. But in fact this
passage has much to say to us regarding our own relationship with food, and our
relationship with the other myriad things that demand our attention.
 |
| Ruins in the city of Corinth |
The original
question, about eating food sacrificed to idols, likely arose out of a dispute
between members of the very diverse Corinthian church, who came from varied
backgrounds. When you bring such varied backgrounds together, you are bound to
get a clash. But Paul’s approach to the dispute is not only about the
particulars of that question, but more broadly how to live as a Christian, a
Christ-follower, in a world that often makes this a challenge. Corinth, you
see, was a quintessential pagan city, and so being a Christ-follower there was
particularly challenging: how do we follow Christ when there are so many
cultural norms around us that go against what Christ calls us to do?
The question
of trying to live a Christian life among so many things that battle that effort
is one that hits very close to home. It brings me to our Gospel text today, in
which Jesus confronts a man with a demon possession. We don’t talk much about
demon possession these days, outside of horror films, but it is true, isn’t it,
that there many things in the world that possess us, that have a grip on us, that
tempt us and control our actions – even if we don’t call them “demons.” Food can
certainly be one of these. So can alcohol or other drugs, or even things that
seem noble and harmless, like being possessed by a need to work, or with a
particular hobby. Or we may be possessed by our fears, or our past failures.
Even relationships might possess us – whether it is one that is damaging or
lacking or harmful, or even an infatuation with someone. Or we are possessed
with a need to have the latest and greatest toys and gadgets. So many things in
this world can possess us, and when they do,
they take our attention away from
God.
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| Jesus Heals a Man Possessed by a Demon in the Synagogue, illustration for ‘La Vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ’, published in Tours 1896 (color litho) by Tissot, James Jacques Joseph (1836-1902) |
This threat
of possession by the things of this world is a part of the reason we will be
focusing on simplicity during Lent this year. The hope is that as we journey
together with Christ, we will be able to identify some of those possessions,
those things in life that hinder our relationship with God and place our focus
elsewhere – and then that we will be able to move past those possessions and
focus on love: of God, of our neighbor, and even of ourselves.
Today’s
texts give us strength for that journey. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul
makes clear that the ultimate concern is not knowing what is wrong and what is
right, but rather, awareness of how our actions and behaviors affect our
relationships – with God and with our neighbor. Our behaviors are to be guided
not by knowledge, which “puffs up,” but by the love of God, which “builds up,” and
how that love is expressed in community.
For example, does eating tomatoes
that I know were unethically harvested reflect love for my neighbors working in
the field? Does addiction to alcohol affect familial relationships negatively?
Does allowing fear to guide your actions and behaviors allow you to treat
people lovingly? Do the things that possess you enable or prevent you
from living in love of God and neighbor? Paul says this question should be our guiding light in deciding how to act.
That’s all
well and good, and a wonderful possibility in theory, but that can be really
hard! And so it is our Gospel text that gives me hope for actually overcoming
our various possessions. This encounter that Jesus has with the demon-possessed
man is, in Mark’s Gospel, his first public act of ministry. In other words, this
is significant. This action frames his entire ministry. What it says to us is
that Jesus is someone who is here to confront our demons with authority. He is
someone who not only walks with us, but who stands up for us, who says to the
voices of the world that would challenge our efforts to live faithful lives,
“Be silent, and come out of him!”
We will not
always be successful in navigating the complicated relationships we have –
whether that is with food, with addiction, with our work, with past failures or
fears, or even with each other. But, we can always be certain that Jesus came
to confront our challenges with us, to help us face the temptations of the
world, and to offer to us not death and failure, but life and freedom.
Let us pray…
Ever-living God, we live in a world full
of things that demand our attention and try to take our focus away from you.
Help us to trust in your Son, who confronts our possessions, and promises to
bring us into everlasting life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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