First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
November 14, 1999
Scriptures: Matthew 5:13, I Corinthians 3:1-2, Matthew 20:20-28
Pardon me if I exaggerate, but it sometimes seems as if everyone I know is either starting a diet, or breaking one. We have become a people preoccupied with poundage. There is a slice of conventional wisdom which says: “You can never be too rich or too thin.” But we know better, don’t we? Especially the part about being too thin. “Thin” kills….some of our brightest and some of our best.
Roger Wittrup recently sent me a memo on the subject of “Beautiful Women Month.” You’ll have to ask Roger about the details. But he raises some interesting concerns. A psychological study recently revealed that three minutes spent looking at models in a fashion magazine caused 70 percent of the female readership to feel depressed and ashamed. Moreover, models of 20 years ago weighed eight percent less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23 percent less. But the most telling revelation concerns the fact that one in every four college-age women presently suffers from an eating disorder.
When I read that, I couldn’t believe it. So I called the very best dean of students I know for purposes of corroboration or denial. Concerning the “one in four” figure, she said: “That’s probably pretty accurate.” Then she faxed me some additional information, including a study reporting that two-thirds of our high school students are on diets, although only 20 percent are actually overweight. Although 90 percent of these students are young women, the ratio of young men appears to be increasing. Since males tend to conceal eating disorders more than females, the numbers may be skewed. But one recent study of Navy men reported a 2.5 percent rate of anorexia, 6.8 percent of bulimia, and 40 percent of eating disorders, not otherwise specified. To be sure, gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. But the eighth may be its opposite. And it’s time somebody said so.
I probably shouldn’t talk about diets on a day when we are being so wonderfully fed. Or as Don Foehr promised me (in the office last Friday): “Bill, I’m going to eat before you preach. I’m going to eat after you preach. But I’ll give you my solemn vow, I will not eat while you preach.” My goal is not to keep you from the food. Go ahead….partake and enjoy. If you are currently on a diet, let me offer you a morning’s worth of absolution.
Every one of us has our personal point of weakness. Potato chips are mine. I can’t eat just one. And I shouldn’t eat any. But I have found a way to rationalize my cheating. I blame it on my wife. She buys them. It’s her fault. Never mind that company might enjoy them with hors d’oeuvres and various finger foods. Never mind that Kris might like to crumble them on top of a tuna noodle casserole. Never mind that the fault lies as much in my lack of willpower as it does with my wife’s devil-may-care approach to grocery shopping. Just the other day, I was saying to God in the garden: “It was the woman….the woman you gave me….who bought me the Ruffles. And I ate.”
But my favorite story involves a lady I once followed through a buffet line. Down the table she went….loading up on everything….missing nothing….precariously balancing the growing mountain of food with the grace and technical skill of a ballerina from Purdue. Then, upon arriving at the place where beverages were being poured, she said: “Make mine tea….with lemon. And no sugar. I’m on a diet.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth when someone snickered at the irony of it all. Leading her to say (in mock indignation): “Well….the tea is for my conscience. What’s on the plate is for me.”
I can understand that. I, too, have taken (from time to time) a little tea for my conscience. And so have you. But I’ll return to that later. For the moment, I am going to put you on a diet. Which I think you’ll like. For my diet includes the things everybody warns you to stay away from: liberal salt, red meat and a stiff drink. At least, that’s what it says in my sermon title….which (I trust) will raise no false hopes among the bartenders among us. For I may not deliver on the assumptions they are making….about the “stiff drink,” I mean.
But that’s a few minutes down the road. What’s immediately before us is salt….and lots of it. My first word of dietary advice is that you should salt liberally. I usually do. Have you ever noticed that some people automatically reach for the salt shaker without even tasting their food? I am one of those people. But you would have guessed that, given my craving for potato chips.
Jesus said to the disciples: “You are the salt of the earth. Don’t lose your salty taste. If you do, you will be good for nothing.” Which sounds kind of harsh. And also puzzling. How can salt lose its saltiness, except by dilution? Then, again, that was probably the thing Jesus feared.
In my former church, there was a salesman who occasionally brokered food products. One year he was test marketing a new product called “No Salt.” So he gave me some. It was white. It was grainy. It came in a cylindrical container. You could shake it on stuff. It was supposed to satisfy your craving for salt, without being salt. It was promoted as being good for people with high blood pressure. Fortunately, I don’t have high blood pressure. Because I hated the stuff. There is no substitute for the real thing. Apparently, Jesus thought so too.
“You are the salt of the earth,” he said. “Be what you are.” Notice that whenever we want to pay a supreme compliment, we describe someone as being “the salt of the earth” or being “worth their salt.” The Greeks called salt, “divine.” I can think of a trio of reasons.
First, salt was a synonym for purity. The Romans thought that salt was the purest of substances because it came from the purest of sources….the sun and the sea. Salt was a primitive offering to the gods. And the last Jewish sacrifice of the day was traditionally offered with salt. Therefore, “salty Christians” are persons who (in a compromised world of falling standards and blunted consciences) still strive after purity. This does not mean we are perfect. Neither does it mean that we should pull back from the trench warfare of daily moral combat, lest we get our Sunday clothes dirty. What it does mean is that we are required….always and everywhere….to give greater weight to that which is ethical than to that which is expedient. We are called to demonstrate that there are still places in our lives where we draw lines we will not cross, simply because we are Christians.
Second, salt is a classic preservative. It keeps things from going bad. Plutarch used to say that meat is nothing more than leftover parts of a dead body. Left to itself, meat will go bad. But salt will prevent the process of decay. We all know that there are certain people in whose company it is easy to be good. We also know that there are certain people in whose company it is easy to be bad. Why do you think parents are so terribly concerned with “the crowd” their kids hang with? Jesus may be saying that “salty Christians” are to be influential in preventing others from going bad. It does not mean we will avoid less-than-honorable companions. Sometimes it’s not practical to do that. What it does mean is that each of us must become a force for “raising the tone” of whatever company we are in.
Which leads to a third understanding. To be sure, salt is connected with purity and preservation. But salt is also connected with flavor. Maybe Jesus is saying that Christianity is to life what salt is to food….a flavor enhancer. The tragedy being that so many people see Christians in just the opposite light….as flavor inhibitors.
The Roman emperor, Julian, who followed Constantine to the throne, looked at the Christians of his day and longed to roll back the clock to the old pagan gods. Said Julian:
Have you looked at these Christians closely? Hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, flat-breasted all. They brood their lives away, unspurred by ambition. The sun shines for them….but not in them.
I suppose that Julian’s sentiment was in the mind of Oliver Wendell Holmes when he wrote: “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew hadn’t looked and acted so much like undertakers.” I suppose it should be noted that none of the stories of Jesus discussed the proper role of mourners at a funeral. But it would take the fingers of both hands to count the stories Jesus told about how to behave at a feast.
I have been called many things in my life. But, in my 59.2 years, I have yet to hear anyone refer to me as a “party animal.” Yet I trust that Kris and I are not perceived as “wet blankets” in the social realm. For I doubt that we are. In fact, I’d like to think that we flavor such gatherings for the better, making people glad we came rather than wondering why we came….and how soon we were going home.
But enough about salt. On to the second ingredient in the Ritter diet for Christians. I am talking about plenty of good red meat. I understand that red meat is not supposed to be good for you….especially when consumed in large quantities and well marbleized with fat. I certainly wouldn’t want to contribute to anyone’s cholesterol problems. But as you have probably guessed, “red meat” (in the Ritter diet) is neither a vote for nor against cholesterol. Instead, I am using red meat to represent what Paul regularly refers to as “solid food,” when he differentiates between the milk-fed and meat-fed Christians of his day. In his first Corinthian letter, Paul tells his new Greek friends: “I fed you with milk, not solid food, because you were not ready for solid food. What’s more, you are still not ready for it.” On other occasions, Paul puts it even more bluntly: “I have had to nurse you along….keeping you on a soft diet….treating you as mere infants in Christ.” Which obviously frustrates Paul. For he would prefer dealing with Christians who could chew on something real. Milk-fed Christians are, by implication, fragile Christians. Paul cannot push them too hard or challenge them too openly.
Sometimes milk-feeding occurs at the level of ideas. People don’t want to chew on anything solid. They say as much. “Don’t push our faith. Don’t stretch our minds. Confirm what we already believe. Use words we already know.” Which is not true for everybody. This church has a lot of people who are “into” thinking about their faith. They want to know what is being written, what is being read, what is being debated, what is being discussed. But not everybody feels that way. So I have learned the art of discernment. I don’t tell everything I know, without first giving thought to my audience. That’s not a cop out. It’s just that, over the years, I have learned that different people are stimulated by different things. Personally, I find that religion is most exciting when I am asking some cutting-edge questions. But you may find that disturbing. For you, religion may be most exciting when I am assuring you that all of the present answers are correct.
This debate was never more clearly put than in the letter of censure issued by the Episcopal bishop of Florida to another Episcopal bishop, the late James Pike. The letter followed the publishing of Pike’s controversial book on the Apostle’s Creed, A Time For Christian Candor. Said Pike’s critic:
Jim, you and I know that many of your ideas on the creed have merit. But you have got to take your office more seriously before you say such things. Think, my friend, of their effect upon the church. Think of the little people.
To which Pike shot back an angry rejoinder:
The best thing we can do for the little people of the church is to tell them there is no need for them to be “little” any longer.
He was referring, of course, to the generations of churchgoers who have been milk-fed at the level of their thinking. But there are other Christians being milk-fed at the level of their acting. They are never challenged with anything real to do (or chew), out of fear that they might choke, leave the room and never come back. Soft diets, as I have discovered from 35 years of hanging around hospitals, may sustain you in the midst of recovering from this-or-that disease. But you will not be able to get up, go home or move on until can get some solid food in….and can keep some solid food down. I am talking about occasionally asking you to do (not just chew) some tough stuff….stuff that will put, not just your head to the test, but your heart to the test (as well as the rest of your body to the test, from the tips of your fingers to the balls of your feet). I am asking you to “chow down” as Christians, the better that you might “weigh in” as Christians.
Which spills over from my “solid food” image to my “stiff drink” image, don’t you see. That’s right. I am encouraging you to take a stiff drink. But that drink has nothing to do with alcohol. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with Jesus’ act of changing water into wine (even though the Church of Jesus Christ has made a mockery of that story by reversing the miracle, so that the rich red wine of the gospel is sufficiently watered down, so that it is scarcely recognizable to anyone who attempts to drink it).
No, the “stiff drink” is the one that Jesus holds before the disciples when he asks: “Can any of you drink the cup which I must drink?” You remember the story. It is late in Jesus’ ministry. Jerusalem looms ahead. As does the cross. Which he seems to sense. But which no one else seems to sense. Some of the others think that wonderful things will happen, once they get to Jerusalem. They want to be in on them. So James and John ask for a favor. What is it they want? Nothing less than front row seats at the inauguration. In fact, in Matthew’s version of the story, they get their mother to intercede on their behalf. That way, mama can say: “There’s my boys, Jimmy and John, right in the front row. There’s Jimmy on the left. There’s Johnny on the right. And that looks like Bob Uecker right next to John.” Which is when Jesus says: “Forget about front row seats. What I want to know is, can you drink my cup?”
It’s hard to know what the cup represents. Given its placement in the gospel, you might call it the cup of death. But you could also call it the cup of sorrow or the cup of disciplined obedience. Take your pick. What the cup is not, is the wine that Christians take to their comfort. Instead, it is the wine that Christians take to their challenge. Jesus seems to be asking: “How far can you go….how much will you risk….how long will you be able to hang in there with me?” And we just sang (with great gusto, I might add) “Lord, we are able.” But the question won’t go away.
Once again, we are plowing ahead….or perhaps sliding downhill….into yet another political season. Before long, we will elect leaders great and small, to jobs great and small, in places great and small. But what will bother me most (in the process) is how few of these people who desire to speak to me, will ask anything substantially of me.
I am getting tired of politicians who fall all over themselves telling me how much they can do for me….how many goodies they can offer me….and how easy their administration is going to make it on me. And I am tired of the recurring litany (from both parties) asking me if I am not better off now than I was four years ago. Sure, I’m better off now than I was four years ago. And four years ago, I was better off than I was four years before that. But the question caters to the most self-indulgent part of my nature and, as such, strikes me as offensive.
I want to be stimulated….challenged….conscripted in the service of a vision that might command my attention, capture my loyalty, and ask me to do something other than sit tight on my ever-fattening wallet. I want to drink from a cup that is poured from the canteen of someone who is on the march….and would like some company. I can be bought….not by someone who meets my price, but by someone who asks me to pay a price.
Not long ago, I heard something about a church member that affected me deeply. This fellow regularly goes one step beyond being a blood donor, by allowing his blood to be screened for platelets through a process known as pheresis. A couple of years ago, the Red Cross did some voluntary screening of pheresis donors for the purpose of typing bone marrow as well as blood. This fellow participated. Then he forgot about it. Two years passed. Finally they called him. They told him that he was a perfect match….the only perfect match….for a 26-year-old California female dying of aplastic anemia. Doctors scraped 1100 cc’s of bone marrow from his hip and sent it to UCLA. He didn’t see it as a big deal. “It wasn’t a hard decision to make,” he said. “I had it. Somebody else needed it. It didn’t seem too much to ask.”
Here, drink this,” said Jesus.
“What is it?” I asked.
I couldn’t make out what Jesus said next, so I drank it anyway.
But I can tell you this. It was more than “a little tea for my conscience.”
