Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008

17 Pentecost A 08
September 7, 2008

Romans 13:8-14 (NRSV)
8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Lunch

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s about food production in the US. In one section the writer explores the so-called organic food industry. He speaks about the 60’s and the idealistic communes and farm coops that started the organic food movement. One major player in organic growing movement had since more-or-less sold out to the big agribusiness conglomerates, telling himself that he was getting at least some of the values of organic growing back into big farming. At one point he says, “We can tell ourselves that it’s holy, that it’s communion, but to the world, it’s just lunch.”

The culture of Rome, like the culture in which we live, was shot through with what I might call “little idols.” Little idols were seemingly harmless opportunities to worship the culture’s deities, opportunities usually to have fun or to gain some advancement. In those days, dinner parties were usually dedicated to some pagan god or another. The idea was that you would invite all your friends and associates to your party, which would begin with the sacrifice of grain or fruit or some animal or another, which would then be prepared for a feast which all the guests would enjoy. In a way, the average dinner party was a pleasurable meal in honor or even in the company of some god.

These parties were the core of a lot of social and even business transactions, and I think we can assume they were pretty darn fun. These were the places one met potential spouses, where one negotiated business contracts, where one got to know the people one needed to know for social or political advancement.

The problem for Jews and Christians was that going to such parties meant breaking the first commandment. “You shall have no other gods,” said the Lord. You can’t eat meat sacrificed to such gods and still be a believer. But then how were you to get along in the world? How were you to do business? Make friends? Meet your husband or wife?

For Jews, there were many other ways that they defined a boundary between them and the rest of the world. Dietary laws were big. To really be Jewish, you had to refrain from eating many of the foods the rest of the world ate. The reason for this was probably partly just wisdom gained from centuries of experimenting with the relative health benefits or detriments of various meals. But the deeper religious meaning had to do with the line of separation between God’s people and the rest of the world. The special diet of Jews tended to require them to stick together as a community no matter where they were. It helped to define their culture apart from their geographical and political situation.

The point here is that God wanted his people to be distinct and separate from the rest of the world. He wanted them to stand out. Now some Jews saw laws about foods and eating as marking them as God’s people without any sense of what kind of people they were meant to be.
Other Jews saw more properly that the laws about foods were only one aspect of a far bigger difference between Jews and Gentiles. Jews were expected to live together and to order their society very differently than human governments and businesses and other social groups did.
God expected his people to be different in salutary ways that drew attention to the kind of routine injustice and violence that everywhere marked human society, simply by being free of that very violence and injustice.

But throughout Jewish history, it was a very significant struggle to maintain this separation. The rest of the world developed civilization around the idea of empire, that is, a central suzerain or group that organizes an unbeatable military force that more or less enslaves a huge number of people to benefit a very small group of people, whose language and culture would become the norm for all their conquered people. As emperors got better at empire, they realized they could control their underclasses by convincing them that the empire protected them, much the way organized crime works with small businesses. An empire gives you security, access to goods and services unavailable otherwise, and even advancement, providing you are willing to go the distance for the empire.

One of the most important ways to dominate a foreign culture is to impose one’s gods on them. As people worship, they give themselves to the values of those gods. The empire’s gods valued the empire. To worship them was to fall in line, to do one’s part as a citizen.

Against this, God set himself up as the suzerain, the emperor, and commanded that instead of being enslaved to other human beings, his people would be enslaved to him, and in this way they would enjoy the only real freedom possible. His people would not need security for he would be their security. His people would not need a class system because they would all be equally well-cared for by him. His people would not need access to more goods and services because all they needed would be provided by him. God’s people would live peaceful lives in a just and equitable and eminently hospitable society utterly different from the stratified and deeply unjust society in which the world seemed to glory.

God’s strategy was that the rest of the world he had created and which he loved, would eventually come to see the injustice and misery of human-run empires and the comparative joy and peace of his people, that they might be slowly brought around to his way.

But even God’s people had difficulty with this strategy, because they themselves coveted the riches and benefits of the imperial system. They were forever inching away from God’s plan, until inevitably they had sold themselves down the river to some foreign god or another.

The world has not changed. The empire is still the pinnacle of human achievement. We’re still trying to build that tower of Babel. We are still trying to make a name for ourselves. We aren’t just tempted. We’re wholly committed. There is no alternative. What other plan could we have?
The world is constantly at us, the world that values human empires above all other things, inviting us to just have a little fun, to indulge ourselves, because nothing after all is really sacred.
It’s not communion. It’s just lunch.

In the book of Exodus, probably the most powerful identity God ever gave his people was on the terrible night of the Passover, when he invited all those who believed in him, all those who saw they were enslaved to the greatest empire of that day, to slaughter a lamb, to smear the blood on their doorways as a sign to the angel of death God was sending against their oppressors.

It was no laughing matter. To eat such a meal was to express one’s complete faith in a God that was opposed to the powerful and violent rulers of Egypt. If that faith had been found wanting, all Pharoah had to do to bring the revolutionaries to justice was to roam the streets and look for the blood on the doorposts. It was a meal of tremendous importance.

It was important because it meant committing to freedom. It meant giving up the protection and food supplies and housing provided by the empire. It meant wandering off into a wilderness with no assurance of food or protection or places to live. It was a very, very important and meaningful meal.

To eat the meal with us this morning is equally important. It is to say, this God is my king. It is to say, I am first a citizen not of this world or this country, but of the kingdom of God that is coming and will not be kept away.

Do I want to go through life in the pleasant sleep of the womb? Barely moving, barely breathing, infinitely comfortable? Or do I want to risk loving and losing? Do I want to quietly hoard everything I receive so that I can grow fat in the hammock of wealth, or do I want to leap off the cliff of self-giving, trusting the Father’s waiting arms will catch me? Do I want to burrow into a cocoon of self-protection or do I want to open myself to critique and contempt by telling the truth and shaming the devil? Do I want to “go along to get along” even with evil, or do I want to risk loving the world enough to tell it the truth? Do I want to live comfortably or do I want to live brilliantly?

The meal that I eat is not just lunch.

Amen.