Delight Yourself in Rich Food

Author: Pastor Daniel Rinehart, Sermon for Holy Trinity on 10/18/2020

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I am grateful to Pastor Mike for giving me the opportunity to preach here one last time. Holy Trinity Lutheran Church has been a steady presence in my life over the past five years. This congregation has been so very good to me. I am glad that I can thank you today for your love and support and friendship. I am glad that I can share the good news of God’s love for you and for me; that I can speak of what God has done for me; that I can talk to you about the life we share in Christ.

Pastor Mike mentioned when he invited me to preach that the text appointed in the lectionary for this Sunday is a famous text. It’s an important text, too, in an election year, when we consider how our faith might inform our political decisions and how best to live as Christian citizens in a democracy. But Pastor Mike also said I could preach on anything I thought was appropriate to this moment, so I asked to preach on one of my favorite passages in Scripture, perhaps my very favorite, the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.

Ho, everyone who thirsts,

    come to the waters;

and you that have no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

    and delight yourselves in rich food.

I love food.

I love my mom’s rhubarb pie and her fruit soup. I love my dad’s schnitzel and his Swedish meatballs. I used to be married; I loved my wife’s latkes and my mother-in-law’s matzoh ball soup.

I love Korean barbecue; I love Japanese zaru-soba. I love Wendy’s and I love Chipotle.

I love oatmeal with butter and cream and brown sugar. I love grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. I love pan-seared steak and roasted brussels sprouts.

I love food.

Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, and perhaps it is a sin that I need to be careful of, but I think this passage from Isaiah makes clear, among other things, that love of food is not itself a sin. God created a wonderful world full of delicious things to eat, and God made us human beings to live in this wonderful world, and gave us taste buds to enjoy these delicious things and ingenuity to prepare our meals in ways that make them even more delicious. God wants us to eat what is good, and to delight ourselves in rich food.

Life, and the good things of life, are free gifts of God. We hear an invitation in this passage: “You that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This seems like a contradiction, to buy without money and without price. I think it serves to emphasize the generosity and the liberality of God. When we buy something, once we have paid, we have no further obligation to the one we have bought from. When we receive a gift, we might perceive an obligation to the giver. The gifts of God carry no obligations. God wants to be in relationship with us, but when God gives, God gives without expectation of reciprocity. It is as though we have bought what we have received for free.

Our problem is that we spend our money on things that are not nourishing, and we labor for things that will not satisfy us.

There was a period of my life when it seemed like nothing would satisfy me, and I spent a lot of money on things that were not nourishing and did not satisfy me.

In 2018, I was married to a lovely woman who loved me and I was serving as pastor of a lovely congregation who loved me. And yet I was unhappy. One thing I had already started to learn was that alcohol would make my bad feelings go away temporarily. So I drank.

In September of that year I told my wife I wanted a divorce, and then I was on my own. I felt some relief at no longer having to maintain a relationship that had become painful for me. But mostly I took the opportunity to drink more. I moved out to Maryland to be closer to my congregation, and I drank more and more.

I don’t want to spend too much time with tales of my escapades — what recovering alcoholics sometimes call a “drunkalogue.” But let a few examples suffice. There was Christmas Day, when I decided I would roast a goose all by myself in my apartment. I also decided to keep track of how many shots and beers I had through the day. My memory is that I got up to seventeen, which is about the equivalent of a fifth of hard liquor. Among alcoholics, this is not an exceptional amount; there are many who drink quite a bit more than that on a regular basis. But it’s certainly an alcoholic amount, and I was surprised that it was that much. The word “sobering” comes to mind when I think of the tally I made that day. But of course it wasn’t literally sobering; I kept on drinking. The goose turned out fine, by the way. I ate some, put the rest in the fridge, and ended up throwing out most of the leftovers.

Another time I attempted to make coq au vin, the famous French preparation of a whole chicken in a pot with vegetables and a wine sauce. I put the wine in that the recipe called for, started it cooking, drank the rest of the bottle of wine, fell asleep, and awoke in confusion with the smoke alarm blaring and my apartment full of smoke. I opened the window, leaned my head out, coughed, sucked in fresh air, yelled for help, and went back in and turned off the stove. I have a vague memory of someone, perhaps a neighbor, checking on me. My apartment smelled like smoke for weeks afterwards. I kept drinking.

One Wednesday evening in Lent, I had volunteered to make soup for my congregation’s soup supper. I went home around noon and got a Scotch broth going — Scotch broth is a soup of lamb and barley and vegetables. I also got out a bottle of Scotch and eventually fell asleep on my couch. When I awoke it was well past suppertime and already time for evening worship to begin. I assumed they would be making the best of it at church. One of my congregants came to check on me. I told him the truth, and I called Bishop Graham the next day and told him the truth. And I kept drinking.

Pretty much everyone in my life who knew me well knew I had a problem and wanted to help me. I pushed them all away because I wanted to keep drinking. I don’t really understand why, but I didn’t want what God was offering to me without money and without price. I wanted to spend my money on that which is not bread and my labor on that which does not satisfy. And let me tell you — I spent a lot of money. Alcohol is expensive. And I spent a lot of labor — life as a drunk is mystifyingly difficult, just a ton of work to accomplish very basic things.

This went on until one day I showed up for an appointment with my counselor with enough alcohol in my system that she was worried about letting me drive away. I don’t know why I finally allowed myself to be helped that day, but I did. My best friend happened to work nearby and joined me and stayed with me until I got into a detox unit. It was the wee hours of May 31st, 2019, when I got in there, and I haven’t had a drink since.

The prophet said,

Seek the Lord while he may be found,

    call upon him while he is near;

let the wicked forsake their way,

    and the unrighteous their thoughts;

let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,

    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Mercy and pardon are what I have experienced for the past sixteen months: from God, from family, from friends, from the church.

I started going to AA meetings, including one right here at Holy Trinity. I got to know people. Some people I encountered briefly; some people I knew longer. Both kinds of relationships could be very important and very meaningful. I started to work a program; I started to do what the people around me did. I had never lost my faith, but as you can imagine my spiritual life was an absolute wreck. So I learned from people who understand that God’s ways are higher than our ways and that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and know how to listen for God and hear God even so.

Let me take a moment to say: if you think you might want help with an addiction problem, talk to me or talk to Pastor Mike. We know some people. We’ll get you in touch.

I moved into a sober house about a mile from here. One of my housemates one night made a simple pasta preparation with store-bought sauce and Italian sausage and it was one of the best things I’ve ever had. I’ve made cookies and cakes and pies for my housemates. Last Easter I roasted a leg of lamb and made a bunch of other things to go with it and I had people to share the feast with me.

The prophet said, speaking God’s words,

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth [says the Lord];

    it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Some Christians and some people in recovery take an absolutely deterministic view of God’s providence, believing that God controls every minute action at every moment. Some people say “everything happens for a reason.” I don’t believe that. What I do believe is that God loves me and God loves you, and God has continued to speak that love into our human story. God spoke love through the prophets of Israel. God spoke love through Jesus Christ, who preached good news and worked wonders, and who died on a cross and rose again from the grave. God continues to speak love into our lives, that we who are dead in sin might rise again to new life.

On this beautiful day in autumn, the best of all seasons, I would like to read to you part of a sermon by the great poet and preacher John Donne. Listen:

If I should declare what God hath done (done occasionally,) for my soul, where He instructed me for fear of falling, where He raised me when I was fallen, perchance you would rather fix your thoughts upon my illness, and wonder at that, than at God’s goodness, and glorify Him in that; rather wonder at my sins than at His mercies, rather consider how ill a man I was, than how good a God He is. If I should enquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ my name in the book of life, I should sooner be afraid that it were not so, than find a reason why it should be so. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons; but God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of His mercies; in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in Heaven it is always autumn, His mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday. He never says you must again to-morrow, but to-day if ye will hear His voice, to-day He will hear you. If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion in north and south, as that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together; He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons.

That was John Donne. Here’s Isaiah, one last time:

For you shall go out in joy,

    and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

    shall burst into song,

    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,

    for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Today the sun is shining and the trees are changing colors, and I am about to go out from you in joy, and to be led back in peace to a place not so far from where I was born and raised. I give thanks to God for the mercy I have received and the love I have known. I give thanks to God for you, for this community. I give thanks to God that I have been able to lift up the name of Jesus Christ among you and with you. I give thanks that while I go to Iowa to lift up the name of Jesus Christ among God’s people there, you will still be here lifting up Jesus’ name, loving your neighbors, sharing the Good News of God’s almighty love for the world, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For all this I say thanks be to God.

Amen.