rich’s blog

Preface: 

So this morning we are going to do a survey of what the Bible says about food.  When I asked for suggestions, this was one of them.

 

But it’s a complicated thing to talk about; a number of diets—and we’re talking about what to eat and how to eat it, not some way to lose weight–are suggested in the Bible, and making sense of what is appropriate or inappropriate for us as Christians can feel tricky.

 

We’ll survey some passages, we’ll talk about where we stand now, and we’ll talk about some of the things we should be aware of as we move forward after this morning.

 

So let’s pray.

 

Prayer: 

Jesus, please.

 

Introduction:  

But before we talk about anything else, let’s be honest: food is a complex thing for us, right?

 

It’s tied tightly to all sorts of parts of our lives and our memories, we eat for all sorts of reasons, and we almost never change our diet, what we eat, based on new information.

 

Most of us don’t eat what we eat based on information, most people eat what they eat based on emotion or peer pressure.  But my whole effort this morning is to inform us, right?  And so I worry that we’ll see a neat survey, and go to lunch, and not think about food at all.

 

But when we cast our lots with Jesus, we gave away the option of just ignoring stuff that comes out of the Bible. So whatever things we notice this morning, I don’t think we have the option of simply disregarding them.

 

And of course, I’m a vegetarian.  I’ll talk about why, but I’m not here as “Ambassador of Vegetarian Land,” if you’re nervous about it.

 

Surveying Some Relevant Passages:

Right.  Let’s look at some relevant passages. And as we move from passage to passage, we’ll do our best to discern God’s intentions, we’ll talk about why things change from one passage to the next, and hopefully we’ll not only leave this morning well informed, but positioned to think more deeply about food.

 

Let’s start…in the beginning.

 

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so (Gen 1:29-30 TNIV)

 

So we see here that at the beginning of Creation God gave the humans he made fruits, nuts, vegetables–the seeds of other plants.  And if we count ourselves in the “in everything that has breath” category–which we probably should–our first parents were also given “every green plant” for food.  So Man and Woman, Adam and Eve, at creation were invited into a particular type of diet; a diet that required no death.

 

This is important to notice.  It would be simplistic for us to say that humanity was meant to be vegetarian, or to eat only fruits & seeds & grains.  This misplaces the emphasis of this passage, which is not on what we should eat: but rather that God has promised to provide for us, and does so without anything having to die.

 

So the first diet people–humans–had was a death-free one, not simply a vegetarian one. There was no “meat” because “meat” requires the death of a creature, it’s not surgically removed, right?

 

But even in this death-free diet we should note that there were limits, right?  Although God says every seed & fruit & green thing will be for food, there were a couple of trees that humans weren’t supposed to eat from.  There were some limits.

 

Moving On: 

But there’s the whole “Fall” thing that happens, humanity tumbles away from this idyllic, death-free world.  They were tempted by our enemy to eat the fruit of a tree they weren’t supposed to touch.  They did; went past the few limits they had, and Eden–this idyllic place, blissful existence–ends, and death is introduced.

 

And things move forward.  People get nasty, everything everywhere becomes corrupt–total corruption, you know: like a stain or a stink that covers everything.  And God resolves to basically burn down the house & start over with Noah.  And he does, by way of cleansing flood.

 

But it’s not a fresh start, right?  God doesn’t build a new canvas; he just paints the old one white.  This is important.  Because it means that the effects of the whole “Fall” thing are still there.  Death is still there, part of the canvas, part of creation.

 

Surveying: Gen 9:1-4

And God decides to take this canvas and repaint it with Noah, his family, and a big boat of animals. And when God has brought them safely through the flood, He echoes His first charge to Adam & Eve, but makes some changes.  Let’s read it.

 

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

    “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

 

    “Whoever sheds human blood, 

       by human beings shall their blood be shed; 

       for in the image of God 

       has God made humankind. (Gen 9:1-6 TNIV)

 

So in this passage we see how things have changed as far as food goes, right? God says “Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”  God declares the “fear and dread” that all animals will have toward humans. One person says that “Humans acquire power over the life of animals,” in way that we really hadn’t before. (Westermann, Continental Commentary, 462).

 

And the change in what’s allowable food wise–from death-free vegetables to death-necessary meat points to a change the order of creation. Death is in the world.

 

And God is in some ways really giving boundaries to death. Look, you cannot kill humans; if you administer death to them, your life will be asked of you. You can kill creatures; but even this shouldn’t be done lightly, because no spilling of blood should be done lightly.  And we can’t eat anything that has blood in it.

 

And this isn’t arbitrary, it’s because blood is significant, it’s stands for life, for the life of whichever creature the blood comes from. Deuteronomy 12:23 states “The blood is the life.” And even if we have the power to spread death, we don’t have control over life.  (This simple point was clarified for me by Robin Parry’s statement re: this topic on his blog: “…Not because there is anything inhenrently bad in eating blood but because abstaining symbolically represents a recognition that all life belongs to God and not to us.[sic].”

 

One person, tying some of this together, suggests that “the killing of animals carries within it the danger of killing for the sake of killing.” “They call this “blood-lust” (Westermann, 465). Death for food, for survival, was given to us, but it limits us when we could have just decided to kill whenever or whatever we pleased.  Just for kicks.

 

Do we see this?  The things we read here are fences around our ability to kill. Now that death is introduced, we can be killers, easily, it’s part of the fabric of the universe: but when God sets Noah & his Ark down, the first thing he does is limit our freedom, keep us from what scholars have summarized as “barbarity & brutality.”

 

This is about food, definitely, definitely, and the way God provides humanity with sustenance; but it’s also about we humans are supposed to live within limits now that death is loose.

 

Moving On:

But things move forward. God raises up Abraham, the Israelites, and sets about making a people for himself through whom he’ll redeem all humanity, end Death, and fix every relationship that the Fall broke.  And in the process of all this, God gives them a set of rules–the Law–which allows the Israelites to draw close to God and be the people who wants them to be.

 

Surveying: Leviticus 11 & Deuteronomy 14

So we could spend a lot of time discussing these passages, Leviticus 11, which was read to us today, and Deuteronomy 14.

 

We won’t!  We don’t have the time!  But what we have to notice is that if we’ve seen limits before when it comes to food for people, now we really see them.  These passages are passages that set up a special diet for God’s special people the Israelites.

 

They are allowed to eat some things—“clean” animals—and forbidden to eat others—“unclean animals.” A couple reasons why:

 

Clean & Unclean: 

Many unclean animals are animals that are basically scavengers–so they’ll end up eating bloody things, which is no good, as we already saw. Or they’ll eat the dead bodies of other “unclean” animals, or waste or garbage—literally, unclean stuff. That’s one reason for some of the animals that fall in the “unclean” category.

 

Also, some of these “unclean” animals aren’t really one thing or the other: they eat their cud, but don’t have a cloven hoof: they fall in two camps.  And this points us to how this diet was supposed to function of Israel.

 

Israel was supposed to be Holy, supposed to be set apart for God’s purposes.  They weren’t supposed to live in two camps; just one, God’s camp.  And their special diet was a reminder of this special calling.

 

Which makes sense, right? Because food, as we talked about, is so personal, and so much a part of who we are, that what we do or don’t eat sends an incredibly strong message to the world around you.  People notice when you pick something off your pizza.

 

This diet was a big huge flag in other people’s faces about how this group of people was different, and holy, and every time they ate the remembered and declared it.

 

Surveying: The Prophets 

Now.  With the dietary rules set, things were really rolling. We see Israel messing them up now and then, in big ways and little ways, but this unclean/clean diet really did become the normal, diet of Israel.  And it tied into a whole system of holy living that kept Israel distinctive from the people around them.

 

But the prophets can teach us some things.  We’ll take Isaiah 11 as an example.

 

The wolf will live with the lamb, 

       the leopard will lie down with the goat, 

       the calf and the lion and the yearling 

       together; 

       and a little child will lead them.

 

The cow will feed with the bear, 

       their young will lie down together, 

       and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

 

Infants will play near the hole of the cobra; 

       young children will put their hands into the 

       viper’s nest.

 

They will neither harm nor destroy 

       on all my holy mountain, 

       for the earth will be filled with the 

       knowledge of the LORD 

       as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9, TNIV)

 

We learn that it’s God’s intention to get the world back to a state where death no longer factors in.  This matters, because it points out that there won’t be death on the other side of the resurrection.  Our diet, what we eat, will be death-free like it was originally meant to be.

 

Revelation points us back to this original situation when it talks about the tree that stands in the city of God, which has medicinal leaves, and bears a different sort of fruit each month for those of us to eat. God will provide sustenance for us without death.

 

And we’re not done surveying scripture this morning, but this primarily why I’m a vegetarian, for what it’s worth.  I want my diet to be as close as possible right now, even in this fallen world, as it will be when we’re all resurrected.  So I don’t want death to be a part of it. So there you go.

 

Moving On: 

And after the prophets, who kept calling Israel back to God, and also doling out bits & pieces of how that would happen, Jesus comes along.

 

Surveying: Jesus 

And he shakes things up.  He takes the Law and redefines all sorts of things in it, tells us things like this:

 

    Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside you can defile you by going into you. Rather, it is what comes out of you that defiles you.”

    After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters you from the outside can defile you? For it doesn’t go into your heart but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

    He went on: “What comes out of you is what defiles you. For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile you.” (mark 7:14-23)

 

Jesus undoes the food laws of Leviticus & Deuteronomy.  He says that its our behaviors, what we do, which spring from our heart, that make us holy or not.  What we eat has nothing to do with it.

 

But it’s hard to break a centuries old belief down, right? The early church–which was Jewish long before it was Gentile–had a hard time with this.  Eating kosher—eating clean foods only—was part of what it meant to be Jewish. And as the church spread, led by the Holy Spirit, out into the Gentile world this became a huge deal.  What could people eat, really?

 

Feel Free to Turn to Acts 10:9-16: 

We have the scene from Acts, that Peter experienced.  You can turn there if you’d like.

 

And while this passage, which was read to us this morning, is clearly a statement on food, on what we can and can’t eat, and God is saying there is nothing you cannot eat; it’s first and foremost a statement on the whole unclean/clean thing itself, as the context of this passage shows.

 

God is showing Peter that he can interact with these unclean people and their unclean foods because God has made them clean. The division between unclean and clean is gone.

 

We realize that nothing is inherently unclean this side of Jesus. He really did set into motion the redemption of all creation; so no any animal, or any person, is unclean.  Nothing is inherently off limits as food.  But this was such a hard thing for Jewish Christians to get that Peter needed a vision from God, and Paul had to discuss it at great length.

 

Surveying: Paul

He tells us, for example, in Romans 14:

 

    Accept those whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat everything, but another person, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted that person. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master they stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (romans 14:1-4 tniv)

 

I love this passage, because occasionally people will suggest my faith is weak because I eat vegetables, when, you know, I do it as an act of faith, but whatever.

 

In context, Paul is trying to tell a group of Christians, some of them Jewish some of them Greek—how to live together.  And the point he makes in these verses and in the ones that follow it, is that we are all God’s, we’ll be judged by God, and we should all live for God’s glory.  And we should live in unity, in peace, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit despite our different sensibilities, our different understandings of what is most pleasing to God.

 

He does more or less this same thing in First Corinthians 10, telling us that whatever we eat or drink, whatever we do, we should do it all for the glory of God.  “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.  Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.”  (1 cor 10:31-11:1).

 

And there are clauses, limits, Paul makes to both these passages.  We’ll talk about them in a second.

 

But where do we stand today?

 

Where We Stand: 

Where we stand today is that there is nothing inherently unclean. Animals can be food; and no animal or vegetable is inherently clean or unclean. There is no food that we can’t eat simply because we are not allowed.

 

Paul shares, in 1 Timothy: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.” (1 Timothy 4:4-5).

 

And all this is because of Jesus, right?  Jesus tore up the lists of unclean and clean.  Anything that might be considered “food” is a go, if we, who have the Holy Spirit, receive it with thanksgiving.

 

Why the Changes? 

And the changes that we saw as we moved through the Bible were directly related to the way God goes about redeeming creation.

 

First Death doesn’t exist; there is no “meat” to eat.

 

Then Death is loose in the world, and God limits Noah’s ability to kill willy nilly.

 

God works through Israel to redeem the world, and uses their diet, their food, to as a witness to others and a reminder to them about just how holy they are.

 

And then Jesus comes, and declares everything holy.  For those of us living with the Holy Spirit, we can partake of all foods, anything edible, as long as we do it with thanksgiving, as Paul says.

 

Limited Freedom? 

But this is tricky, because in destroying the lists, Jesus ups the ante on our personal responsibility with regard to what we do or don’t eat.  We have freedom—Paul talks about his liberty, his freedom to partake, to eat what he desires—but it’s limited.

 

But we don’t have total freedom.  Our current freedom is a lot like Adam & Eve’s: eat every fruit and vegetable you want…except from those two trees over there.  There are some clauses, some limits, to our freedom.

 

Limits: Acts 15

In Acts 15 we see a scene in which the earliest church in Jerusalem is trying to figure out how to incorporate non-jewish Christians into its fold, and they send a letter to these Greek believers.  In it they write:

 

“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” (Acts 15:28-29 NRSV)

 

We don’t often come across meat that is sacrificed to idols.  If we were part of The Brethren Church in India, which is growing at an enormous rate, we’d daily be faced with meat sacrificed to idols.  And we would need to avoid it.  Paul talks at length about this in 1 Corinthians 10.  We Christians are to eat at one alter; the alter of the Lord.  Jesus was a sacrifice, and the only one we’re ever to be a part of.

 

And remember the stuff we talked about earlier this morning regarding blood?  Blood signifies the life of a creature.  And God was very clear with Noah that spilling blood was not something to be taken lightly,  and the early church seemed to think this was still was the case. Blood was sacred. Avoiding what is strangled goes along with this, because the capillaries of strangled animals would burst, and in bursting, would flood the meat with blood.

 

Now, this could also play into the religious ceremonies that some of these early Christians would have faced, and again: if we were part of the Church of the Brethren in Africa, we might be pressured to take part in ceremonies involving blood.

 

But this is a command that seems to limit our freedoms, right? It may not apply to many of us in this room; but it’s a boundary. Some people will suggest that Christians should abstain from eating blood sausage, or black pudding, or these things that have blood as a basic ingredient; I fall in this camp.  But it would be wise for us to consider these Acts 15 statements.

 

Limits: Idol Participation

Paul shares some limits with us, too. In 1 Corinthians 10, he basically says, look, if you might be eating meat that is sacrificed to idols, it’s better to just not ask, so that you don’t have to worry about it, so it’s not on your conscious, and you’re okay.

 

Paul is a pragmatist, you know. And he says here, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you when it comes to this.”

 

But if you do ask, or your host tells you, “Hey I bought this down the street at the temple! Crazy cheap!”  You shouldn’t eat it.

 

And you shouldn’t eat it because it will lead your host to think that you don’t have any boundaries, that you can do whatever you want: but as we’ve seen, we Christians partner in only one sacrifice, and Paul would say that if we eat meat sacrificed to idols, then we partner with the demons that the meat was sacrificed to.

 

That’s a scary thing; and maybe not as relevant for us in North America, but incredibly relevant in other places our Church, The Brethren Church, is flourishing.

 

Limits: Community

Another limitation is each other. In Romans we read:

 

     Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean…Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. (Romans 14:13-21 TNIV) 

 

Paul puts a very high value on our personal conscious, our freedom of conscious—nothing is unclean, he knows this; but some of us aren’t as mature him.  We’ve been living kosher for 60 years, and we just can’t eat pork. Paul says, fine: don’t.  But don’t make it a rule.

 

But if we are causing someone Jesus died for to stumble in their faith because of our choices, we had better stop whatever it is we’re doing.  We choose to limit our freedoms for the good of others; and this extends to what we eat.

 

Limits: Thankfulness

And whatever we eat, we need to remember that it is something to be thankful for: that it isn’t unclean, we’re not “bad” because we ate it, and we can survive and live and glorify God because of it.  This is amazing. We have amazing freedom in our diet.

 

And when we choose to sustain ourselves by eating meat, we should remember that every creature that has breath praises the Lord, and we should receive it with thanks, as Paul says we must, not lightly and with disregard. Although we can still administer death to creatures for our own survival, we shouldn’t take that lightly.

 

Our freedom does come with limits; and it does seem to me that we should still resist brutality and barbarity; we shouldn’t kill for pleasure, man or animal, but instead receive with thankfulness whatever is keeping us alive, whether its animal or vegetable.

 

Limits: Holy Spirit & Conclusion

And really, we’ve got to walk with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will lead our consciences, give us insight into what is good and right regarding what we eat.  We have to invite the Holy Spirit into this part of our lives. And most of us simply don’t.  We don’t invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us about our diet, our food choices.

 

Conclusion:

Here’s the thing. You can tell a lot about a person from how he or she approaches food, right?  And guess what: God can tell a lot about us from how we approach food…and we could learn a lot about ourselves by paying attention to how we approach food, too.

 

There are limits to our freedom when it comes to eating. To simply dismiss them is foolish and shortsighted. Some of them don’t feel as relevant to us, but seem to still be: the idol participation, the consumption of blood.  Some of them are daily relevant, like letting the Holy Spirit have a voice into what we eat, how and why we eat, and how we administer death.

 

And instead of destroying the work of God—the community God has built for us at Smoky Row, and the personal work God is doing in each of us—for the sake of food, we should work to allow food to draw us together at one table, giving thanks for the provision of the Lord, and blessing of one another.

 

Prayer:

Father, don’t let us just forget this stuff.  Food is such a deep part of our lives and our identities, about what it means for us to be us; and you know that.  That’s why you’ve always cared about it.

 

But give us the courage to act with integrity when it comes to our food choices.  To not disregard scripture, to turn to the Holy Spirit.

 

Until you bring us into a death-free world help us to receive everything with thankfulness & prayer. Protect us from evil, bless ours who aren’t here.  Amen.