| “JUNK FOOD, OR JESUS?” Amos 8:11-14; Luke 16:19-31 Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA © Rev. Linda Jaymes, 4/11/10 |
In an old Peanuts comic strip, Marcie is running after Peppermint Patty, shouting, “You have to go to school, sir…You
can’t just quit.” Peppermint Patty turns and says, “Why can’t I? Yesterday one of the teachers even criticized my lunch.
She said I had too many doughnuts and not enough carrots. It’s time to quit when they even criticize your lunch!” Well,
Peppermint Patty isn’t the only one whose lunch is in trouble. Not that long ago, right here in Philadelphia, we experienced
what I like to refer to as the “Trans-Fat Wars.” And now I’m hearing competing commercials on the radio about whether to
tax soft drinks or not. It seems like every couple of months someone comes up with a new finding about some food that we
either need to eat more of or less of if we want to stay healthy.
Well, I’m not here to criticize your lunch, but to encourage all of us to take stock of what we’re eating, at least on a
spiritual level. The truth is that not only legislators and nutritionists but even God challenges us to take care of our bodies—
because they are the temples where the Holy Spirit dwells. So I hope we’re watching our diets and eating enough carrots and
not overdoing it with junk foods like doughnuts and soda. I think we are all well aware that in recent years all kinds of articles
have been published pointing out how malnourished Americans are, not because we don’t have enough food, but because we
eat too much of it, and the wrong kinds. Being overfed is as great a health risk as being underfed. But, as I already said, seeing
as I have my own junk food addiction to potato chips, I’m not really here to preach to you about your diet, except on a spiritual
level. And just as there are steps we can take to renew our physical health, like diet and exercise, there are steps we can take to
renew our spirits as well.
The first step toward spiritual renewal—and probably the most important one—is to take an honest look at our relationship
with the Lord and see if there is any kind of spiritual void in our lives. If there is, if we realize that something is missing, then
we need to face the fact that our spiritual health is in danger of malnourishment or even starvation. We’ll never experience
spiritual renewal until we understand that God has made us humans with spiritual appetites that can only be satisfied by God and
the things of eternity. In the words of Blaise Pascal, “only God can fill the ‘infinite abyss’ [or vacuum] in man…” (Pensees
#425) The bottom line is that if we don’t fill that vacuum with the only thing that will fit in it—God—we will die of spiritual
starvation.
Apparently this is a concern even in the secular realm. David Gergen, commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-
selling author and adviser to presidents for 30 years, thinks our culture has neglected the health of the soul for a long time. He
was writing about this back in 1999, when the second millennium A.D. was coming to a close. Even then, Gergen noticed a
huge contrast between the hard way of life and yet the triumph of the human spirit during the first millennium A.D., a time
when life was lived in the shadow of disaster, war and plague. He says that in spite of such hard realities, by the end of that
first millennium, England had
“developed a work ethic that became a basis for material success in the centuries that followed; …social organizations
were built that laid the foundations for democracy; …prayer and music flourished and Western Europe experienced an
extraordinary burst of energy, art and technology.”
But Gergen questioned whether future generations would look back on the year 2000 and be able to say that there was “a
veritable triumph of the human spirit” at the end of the second millennium. He believes that “Men and women today are
haunted by a sense that in the midst of plenty, our lives seem barren. We are hungry for a greater nourishment of the soul.”
Gergen suggests that an answer to this problem can be found in an African philosophy which says that there are two
hungers in life. The lesser hunger fills the belly. It is satisfied by food, materials goods and the money to pay for them. The
greater hunger is for an answer to the question “why are we here?”…“what is life for?” According to Gergen, those who
lived at the end of the first millennium could never satisfy their lesser, physical hunger, but they were pretty good at fulfilling
their greater, spiritual one. Unfortunately, our situation today is just the reverse, and we ought to think about what’s missing in
our lives.
I think Gergen is right on this issue. There are two kinds of hungers, and we Americans spend too much of our time and
energy feeding on “junk food,” satisfying the wrong one. Even so, I think that many people have begun to realize that they are
starving spiritually, and they are beginning to seek the kind of food that will feed that other hunger. But I wonder if they are
looking in the right place, or wasting precious time pursuing false “spiritualities” that promise peace or prosperity in this life but
nothing in terms of eternity. Of course, this is nothing new; people around the world have been pursuing false gods since the
fall from grace and that has always been an empty pursuit. But scripture warns us that we need to fill up on the right kind of
spiritual food now, because it won’t always be available.
The prophet Amos spells it out very clearly: the day will eventually come when that “food” is no longer available. If we
don’t recognize our spiritual hunger and feed it now, time will run out on us. Amos challenged Israel’s obsession with
materialism and their disregard for justice and morality. The wealthy were gorging themselves on the physical things that fill
that lesser hunger, while exploiting the poor and neglecting the spiritual things that feed the greater hunger. They worshipped
wealth while ignoring the needs of the disadvantaged. And for that, Amos says, there will be consequences. God will send a
famine, not of food, but of his word, his presence, his Spirit. Too late, people will wake up and realize they are starving for
God. They will stagger and wander and search all over for spiritual food, but not find it. Even the young and strong will faint
away from spiritual hunger and thirst, and those who worship at the altar of idolatry, materialism and sensuality will fall, never
to rise again. Those who push God and God’s righteousness aside will suffer spiritual famine and eternal death.
Jesus presents a very similar message in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man, clothed in purple, the
color of royalty, and fine linen, which only the wealthy could afford, lived in luxury. Every day he feasted on the best food that
money could buy. He had a big enough estate to have an outer gate, where a poor and sick man lay begging and hoping to get
the crumbs from his table. In that culture, they ate with their hands, using bread to wipe off the food and grease when they
were finished. Then they would throw that bread to the dogs under the table. The poor man, Lazarus, longed for some of that
bread that was thrown to the dogs, but it doesn’t sound as if he ever got any. The rich man seemed oblivious to Lazarus’
hunger and needs. And to make matters worse, the dogs would come and lick his sores. This was not a comfort in that
culture. Dogs had not yet become man’s best friend; they were regarded as impure, disgusting scavengers.
But eventually the tables turned. Lazarus died, and was carried immediately by angels to Abraham’s side. Evidently,
Lazarus had been a man of faith, as Abraham was. Although he had not been able to feed his lesser, physical hunger while he
was alive, we are to understand that he had not neglected his greater, spiritual hunger. And so he found himself at rest and
peace in eternity. But the rich man, who had filled up on junk food during his life, who apparently didn’t even realize there were
spiritual needs to attend to and a spiritual hunger to satisfy, found himself in hell when he died. And it was a place of torment,
where he could not get at the water he needed to quench his thirst. In the parable, Father Abraham tells him that he had his
good things in his lifetime, and besides, there is a great chasm separating hell, and those in it, from those who are at peace with
God. The rich man found out too late that he had filled up on the wrong food while he was alive.
Make no mistake here, his sinfulness was not having riches, just as Lazarus’ righteousness was not in being poor. Wealth
is not a sin in itself; poverty is not a virtue. Whether we are rich or poor, what counts is our attitude toward wealth, and what
we do with what we have. Regardless of our economic standing, what matters in the end is that we pursue the things of God
and eternity; that we fill up the greater, spiritual hunger in our lives not with junk food, but with Jesus.
The parable could have ended there, for Jesus had already made a powerful point. But it continues. The rich man pleaded
with Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn his five brothers about what would happen to them if they didn’t
recognize that they were starving spiritually. But Abraham refused. Those brothers already had the scriptures, which contain
everything needed to understand God’s ways, everything necessary to feed their spiritual hunger. But apparently these men had
no regard for God and his word, either, and the rich man hoped that maybe a miracle, like seeing Lazarus return from the dead,
would wake them up. Still, Abraham wouldn’t budge. If they didn’t listen to the prophets and Moses while alive, even seeing
someone rise from the dead would not convince them. And he was right. Jesus raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, a
man who had been sealed in a tomb for four days, yet not everyone believed. Not everyone realized they were living on junk
food, instead of Jesus. Even after Jesus’ own resurrection, many did not recognize that they were dying of spiritual hunger.
Unfortunately, that is still true today. Sometimes it takes something pretty awful to wake us up to our spiritual needs.
Howard Rutledge, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam during the early stages of the war. He spent
several miserable years in the hands of his captors before being released at the end of the war. In his book, In the Presence of
Mine Enemies, he reflects on how blind he had been to his spiritual hunger and needs. He writes,
“…in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. My wife had encouraged me
to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded -- she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to
spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things.
“Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon out-did my
hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and
Christ and the church. But in solitary confinement, in what we called Heartbreak Prison Camp, there was no pastor, no
Sunday School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely
neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God.”
Hopefully, it won’t take prison camp for us to recognize how empty life is without God, who offers us a relationship with
Him through faith in his Son, Jesus, the fellowship of his Spirit and the church. Hopefully, even in our relatively affluent
society we can cultivate an appetite for Jesus, instead of spiritual junk food that never satisfies and only destroys our health.
Hopefully we will get hungry for Jesus before it’s too late.
There is another story that should remind us that in every age, there will always be some who pursue the greater hunger,
and some who pursue the lesser one. It’s the story of two medical students who studied together, interned together and did
their residencies side by side. One’s name was Ben and the other’s was Al. When it came time for them to graduate, Ben said,
“Come with me and let’s go to London to start a large medical practice. There are so many wealthy people there that we’ll
have it made in no time.” But Al wasn’t too sure. So Ben tried again. “OK, Al, then let’s tour Europe, hobnob with the
social set, and be physicians to the nobility. With our talents, we can’t miss.” But Al replied, “No Ben, I just can’t do it. I
want to be a great surgeon. I want to serve people, and I want to provide care to the people who have no care.”
We wouldn’t recognize Ben’s last name today, but we might recognize Al’s. It was Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer. He
realized that he had that greater, spiritual hunger that needed to be filled, and so he read the books of Moses and the prophets,
and the parables of Jesus, too. When he got to the one about the rich man and Lazarus, he felt that God was showing him that
Africa was a poor, sick beggar, sitting outside the rich gates of England and Europe. He knew he could not be oblivious to the
needs of that poor continent, as the rich man had been to the needs of Lazarus. And so he followed his spiritual hunger to
Africa, where he satisfied it by pouring himself out as a writer, a doctor and a missionary to Africa’s poor. He once wrote that
“a successful life is a life that is given away. It is a life lived not for wealth, security, and notoriety, but rather a life
given away to God, trusting that He will provide all things that are really necessary.”
Only time will tell if our nation will ever turn around and start focusing again on the right kind of spiritual things. I hope
so, because Amos and Jesus make it very clear that the time will come when it’s too late to take care of spiritual needs. And if
people are getting hungry for things of God and the Spirit, then we need to make sure that they can find their spiritual food
through the Church, the Body of Christ. If they don’t, they’ll look for it in some counterfeit spirituality that will not satisfy
them beyond this life. So there’s no better time than right now to examine our own spiritual health and diet. Are we filling up
on junk food, or Jesus? Are we taking the low road, in pursuit of things that only satisfy our lesser hunger, or the high road in
pursuit of Jesus Christ? What we eat not only affects us and others now, but forever. Will it be doughnuts or carrots, junk
food, or Jesus? The decision is up to you.
Let us pray.
can’t just quit.” Peppermint Patty turns and says, “Why can’t I? Yesterday one of the teachers even criticized my lunch.
She said I had too many doughnuts and not enough carrots. It’s time to quit when they even criticize your lunch!” Well,
Peppermint Patty isn’t the only one whose lunch is in trouble. Not that long ago, right here in Philadelphia, we experienced
what I like to refer to as the “Trans-Fat Wars.” And now I’m hearing competing commercials on the radio about whether to
tax soft drinks or not. It seems like every couple of months someone comes up with a new finding about some food that we
either need to eat more of or less of if we want to stay healthy.
Well, I’m not here to criticize your lunch, but to encourage all of us to take stock of what we’re eating, at least on a
spiritual level. The truth is that not only legislators and nutritionists but even God challenges us to take care of our bodies—
because they are the temples where the Holy Spirit dwells. So I hope we’re watching our diets and eating enough carrots and
not overdoing it with junk foods like doughnuts and soda. I think we are all well aware that in recent years all kinds of articles
have been published pointing out how malnourished Americans are, not because we don’t have enough food, but because we
eat too much of it, and the wrong kinds. Being overfed is as great a health risk as being underfed. But, as I already said, seeing
as I have my own junk food addiction to potato chips, I’m not really here to preach to you about your diet, except on a spiritual
level. And just as there are steps we can take to renew our physical health, like diet and exercise, there are steps we can take to
renew our spirits as well.
The first step toward spiritual renewal—and probably the most important one—is to take an honest look at our relationship
with the Lord and see if there is any kind of spiritual void in our lives. If there is, if we realize that something is missing, then
we need to face the fact that our spiritual health is in danger of malnourishment or even starvation. We’ll never experience
spiritual renewal until we understand that God has made us humans with spiritual appetites that can only be satisfied by God and
the things of eternity. In the words of Blaise Pascal, “only God can fill the ‘infinite abyss’ [or vacuum] in man…” (Pensees
#425) The bottom line is that if we don’t fill that vacuum with the only thing that will fit in it—God—we will die of spiritual
starvation.
Apparently this is a concern even in the secular realm. David Gergen, commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-
selling author and adviser to presidents for 30 years, thinks our culture has neglected the health of the soul for a long time. He
was writing about this back in 1999, when the second millennium A.D. was coming to a close. Even then, Gergen noticed a
huge contrast between the hard way of life and yet the triumph of the human spirit during the first millennium A.D., a time
when life was lived in the shadow of disaster, war and plague. He says that in spite of such hard realities, by the end of that
first millennium, England had
“developed a work ethic that became a basis for material success in the centuries that followed; …social organizations
were built that laid the foundations for democracy; …prayer and music flourished and Western Europe experienced an
extraordinary burst of energy, art and technology.”
But Gergen questioned whether future generations would look back on the year 2000 and be able to say that there was “a
veritable triumph of the human spirit” at the end of the second millennium. He believes that “Men and women today are
haunted by a sense that in the midst of plenty, our lives seem barren. We are hungry for a greater nourishment of the soul.”
Gergen suggests that an answer to this problem can be found in an African philosophy which says that there are two
hungers in life. The lesser hunger fills the belly. It is satisfied by food, materials goods and the money to pay for them. The
greater hunger is for an answer to the question “why are we here?”…“what is life for?” According to Gergen, those who
lived at the end of the first millennium could never satisfy their lesser, physical hunger, but they were pretty good at fulfilling
their greater, spiritual one. Unfortunately, our situation today is just the reverse, and we ought to think about what’s missing in
our lives.
I think Gergen is right on this issue. There are two kinds of hungers, and we Americans spend too much of our time and
energy feeding on “junk food,” satisfying the wrong one. Even so, I think that many people have begun to realize that they are
starving spiritually, and they are beginning to seek the kind of food that will feed that other hunger. But I wonder if they are
looking in the right place, or wasting precious time pursuing false “spiritualities” that promise peace or prosperity in this life but
nothing in terms of eternity. Of course, this is nothing new; people around the world have been pursuing false gods since the
fall from grace and that has always been an empty pursuit. But scripture warns us that we need to fill up on the right kind of
spiritual food now, because it won’t always be available.
The prophet Amos spells it out very clearly: the day will eventually come when that “food” is no longer available. If we
don’t recognize our spiritual hunger and feed it now, time will run out on us. Amos challenged Israel’s obsession with
materialism and their disregard for justice and morality. The wealthy were gorging themselves on the physical things that fill
that lesser hunger, while exploiting the poor and neglecting the spiritual things that feed the greater hunger. They worshipped
wealth while ignoring the needs of the disadvantaged. And for that, Amos says, there will be consequences. God will send a
famine, not of food, but of his word, his presence, his Spirit. Too late, people will wake up and realize they are starving for
God. They will stagger and wander and search all over for spiritual food, but not find it. Even the young and strong will faint
away from spiritual hunger and thirst, and those who worship at the altar of idolatry, materialism and sensuality will fall, never
to rise again. Those who push God and God’s righteousness aside will suffer spiritual famine and eternal death.
Jesus presents a very similar message in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man, clothed in purple, the
color of royalty, and fine linen, which only the wealthy could afford, lived in luxury. Every day he feasted on the best food that
money could buy. He had a big enough estate to have an outer gate, where a poor and sick man lay begging and hoping to get
the crumbs from his table. In that culture, they ate with their hands, using bread to wipe off the food and grease when they
were finished. Then they would throw that bread to the dogs under the table. The poor man, Lazarus, longed for some of that
bread that was thrown to the dogs, but it doesn’t sound as if he ever got any. The rich man seemed oblivious to Lazarus’
hunger and needs. And to make matters worse, the dogs would come and lick his sores. This was not a comfort in that
culture. Dogs had not yet become man’s best friend; they were regarded as impure, disgusting scavengers.
But eventually the tables turned. Lazarus died, and was carried immediately by angels to Abraham’s side. Evidently,
Lazarus had been a man of faith, as Abraham was. Although he had not been able to feed his lesser, physical hunger while he
was alive, we are to understand that he had not neglected his greater, spiritual hunger. And so he found himself at rest and
peace in eternity. But the rich man, who had filled up on junk food during his life, who apparently didn’t even realize there were
spiritual needs to attend to and a spiritual hunger to satisfy, found himself in hell when he died. And it was a place of torment,
where he could not get at the water he needed to quench his thirst. In the parable, Father Abraham tells him that he had his
good things in his lifetime, and besides, there is a great chasm separating hell, and those in it, from those who are at peace with
God. The rich man found out too late that he had filled up on the wrong food while he was alive.
Make no mistake here, his sinfulness was not having riches, just as Lazarus’ righteousness was not in being poor. Wealth
is not a sin in itself; poverty is not a virtue. Whether we are rich or poor, what counts is our attitude toward wealth, and what
we do with what we have. Regardless of our economic standing, what matters in the end is that we pursue the things of God
and eternity; that we fill up the greater, spiritual hunger in our lives not with junk food, but with Jesus.
The parable could have ended there, for Jesus had already made a powerful point. But it continues. The rich man pleaded
with Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn his five brothers about what would happen to them if they didn’t
recognize that they were starving spiritually. But Abraham refused. Those brothers already had the scriptures, which contain
everything needed to understand God’s ways, everything necessary to feed their spiritual hunger. But apparently these men had
no regard for God and his word, either, and the rich man hoped that maybe a miracle, like seeing Lazarus return from the dead,
would wake them up. Still, Abraham wouldn’t budge. If they didn’t listen to the prophets and Moses while alive, even seeing
someone rise from the dead would not convince them. And he was right. Jesus raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, a
man who had been sealed in a tomb for four days, yet not everyone believed. Not everyone realized they were living on junk
food, instead of Jesus. Even after Jesus’ own resurrection, many did not recognize that they were dying of spiritual hunger.
Unfortunately, that is still true today. Sometimes it takes something pretty awful to wake us up to our spiritual needs.
Howard Rutledge, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam during the early stages of the war. He spent
several miserable years in the hands of his captors before being released at the end of the war. In his book, In the Presence of
Mine Enemies, he reflects on how blind he had been to his spiritual hunger and needs. He writes,
“…in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. My wife had encouraged me
to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded -- she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to
spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things.
“Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon out-did my
hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and
Christ and the church. But in solitary confinement, in what we called Heartbreak Prison Camp, there was no pastor, no
Sunday School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely
neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God.”
Hopefully, it won’t take prison camp for us to recognize how empty life is without God, who offers us a relationship with
Him through faith in his Son, Jesus, the fellowship of his Spirit and the church. Hopefully, even in our relatively affluent
society we can cultivate an appetite for Jesus, instead of spiritual junk food that never satisfies and only destroys our health.
Hopefully we will get hungry for Jesus before it’s too late.
There is another story that should remind us that in every age, there will always be some who pursue the greater hunger,
and some who pursue the lesser one. It’s the story of two medical students who studied together, interned together and did
their residencies side by side. One’s name was Ben and the other’s was Al. When it came time for them to graduate, Ben said,
“Come with me and let’s go to London to start a large medical practice. There are so many wealthy people there that we’ll
have it made in no time.” But Al wasn’t too sure. So Ben tried again. “OK, Al, then let’s tour Europe, hobnob with the
social set, and be physicians to the nobility. With our talents, we can’t miss.” But Al replied, “No Ben, I just can’t do it. I
want to be a great surgeon. I want to serve people, and I want to provide care to the people who have no care.”
We wouldn’t recognize Ben’s last name today, but we might recognize Al’s. It was Schweitzer. Albert Schweitzer. He
realized that he had that greater, spiritual hunger that needed to be filled, and so he read the books of Moses and the prophets,
and the parables of Jesus, too. When he got to the one about the rich man and Lazarus, he felt that God was showing him that
Africa was a poor, sick beggar, sitting outside the rich gates of England and Europe. He knew he could not be oblivious to the
needs of that poor continent, as the rich man had been to the needs of Lazarus. And so he followed his spiritual hunger to
Africa, where he satisfied it by pouring himself out as a writer, a doctor and a missionary to Africa’s poor. He once wrote that
“a successful life is a life that is given away. It is a life lived not for wealth, security, and notoriety, but rather a life
given away to God, trusting that He will provide all things that are really necessary.”
Only time will tell if our nation will ever turn around and start focusing again on the right kind of spiritual things. I hope
so, because Amos and Jesus make it very clear that the time will come when it’s too late to take care of spiritual needs. And if
people are getting hungry for things of God and the Spirit, then we need to make sure that they can find their spiritual food
through the Church, the Body of Christ. If they don’t, they’ll look for it in some counterfeit spirituality that will not satisfy
them beyond this life. So there’s no better time than right now to examine our own spiritual health and diet. Are we filling up
on junk food, or Jesus? Are we taking the low road, in pursuit of things that only satisfy our lesser hunger, or the high road in
pursuit of Jesus Christ? What we eat not only affects us and others now, but forever. Will it be doughnuts or carrots, junk
food, or Jesus? The decision is up to you.
Let us pray.
