In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Anybody here ever been on a diet? Atkins, Sugar-Busters, and the South Beach Diet have all been recent fads. I hate diets and dieting!
Last Sunday evening I saw a brilliant – but tragic – meme on Instagram. An expanding middle-aged man was looking disapprovingly at his increasing girth in the mirror, and the caption read, “I can’t believe I spent my skinny years thinking I was fat!”
After I stopped laughing, reality started to settle in, and I felt rather remorseful about the bananas foster I loaded up on last Sunday night (my skinny years are long gone!).
I probably shouldn’t tell you this, because you might think less of me, but after the whole meme discovery last Sunday night, I found a little relief in an email sent to me Monday morning. A fellow foodie friend sent me a document that pointed out how many of the most famous diet experts have rarely enjoyed long, healthy lives. And we call this sort of twisted, sick relief self-justification!
Seriously, though, do you know about this phenomenon?
James Fixx, who authored The Complete Book of Running, died while running at age 52. After Dr. Robert Atkins died at 72, from complications resulting from a slip on the ice, it was revealed that he had pretty extensive heart disease. Does the name Jerome Rodale ring a bell? He basically launched the organic movement in this country. He was invited onto ABC for an interview when he was 72, and, as he was explaining how his diet would help him live to be 100, he “made a loud snoring sound and died” (New York Times).
So, tell me about your diet plan. How’s it going?
But I’m not asking about our collective obsession over losing a few pounds. I’m tricking you. I’m talking about something much more important – I’m interested in our spiritual diet today, because Jesus said:
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. He who eats this bread will live forever (St. John 6:56, 58b).
So, tell me about your spiritual diet plan. How’s that going?
The truth is that many of us aren’t doing very well at all – many of us are binging on what I call the “spiritual junk food diet.”
And it’s doing us no good whatsoever. In fact, it’s killing us – slowly but surely. This spiritual junk food comes in many forms – pride, envy, jealousy, gossip, and so forth are all very popular this year.
Perhaps the most common late-night snacks on this junk food diet are those old staples of anger and bitterness.
If we keep ingesting this stuff, if we keep gorging on useless junk, like resentment and anger, is there any wonder why so many so-called Christians are the most miserable – least joyful – people we know? The old adage really is true at every level – “you are what you eat.”
Now, I don’t want to scare you, because we’ve got a Saviour more mighty to save than we could ever sin or stray – and I’m certainly not finger-wagging when I say this – but one day, you and I will indeed be asked to step-up on the scales in the presence of God almighty for our big weigh-in.
And all that junk food we’ve scarfed down over the years – all our hypocrisy and lies – will finally be exposed as dead weight on the scales of life. And we will see, in a sad instant, that instead of filling us up all that junk food really did was starve us of that deeper nourishment we craved all along.
But, the good news of the gospel is that for 2,000 years the Church has been in the business of providing the food that fills – the food that doesn’t reduce life-expectancy, but instead gives life – even eternal life.
Do you know about this phenomenon?
I don’t know what you thought you were getting into today when you made the decision to come to mass, but you’ve come to a feast today, and the one thing needful – Jesus – is on the menu!
But, I need to caution you once more. If you’ve come here to eat of this Bread and drink of this Cup, thinking that this whole church thing is just another box you need to check off on your way to becoming “citizen of the year,” I respectfully ask you not to come forward to the altar today.
As a footnote, please don’t misunderstand or misquote me; there is nothing wrong with trying to improve one’s self, nor is there anything wrong with trying to become a genuinely better person.
This altar – this great Sacrament – is reserved exclusively for penitent thieves – “miserable offenders” – like you and me who come to receive what we could never achieve – to receive unconditional love, forgiveness and overflowing grace – to receive Christ Himself.
In a book entitled Why We Go to Church, the English Dominican Timothy Radcliffe says all of this so much better than I can:
If one were to stuff oneself with greasy hamburgers five times a day and then go to the gym once a week, one would probably find the exercise pretty pointless. It would have no meaning in a life pointed in another direction. Going to the Eucharist is not like going to see a film. One can come straight off the street into cinema and be bowled over by the drama on the screen. But the Eucharist is the drama of one’s whole life – birth to death and beyond. It reshapes one’s heart and mind as someone whose happiness is to be found in God.
Friends, in the end, only one diet ultimately works, and it involves what we do here every single day—feasting on the Bread of grace that lives beyond the tomb.
On the night in which He was betrayed, he took bread, and when He’d given thanks, He gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take. Eat. This is my Body which is given for you.” DO THIS!
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
14th Sunday after Pentecost
26 August 2018