Sermon Archive
Soul Food
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 9 October 2005
Exodus 32:1-14 ; Philippians 4:1-9 ; Romans 2:1-3
‘Do not worry about anything.’ But do I have the right clothes to wear to the wedding feast?
Let’s fill out an imaginary questionnaire. Do you have adequate life insurance, accident insurance, pet insurance? Have you made provision for the education of your children and your own retirement? Is your job secure? Do your colleagues respect you? Is it time you had a face lift? Should you go on a diet? What will happen if the ice caps melt, or the oil runs out, or an asteroid crashes into the earth and destroys life as we know it? And what will happen to Scottish football now they have been knocked out of the World Cup?
Not much to worry about when set against landslides in Guatemala or earthquakes in Pakistan it is true, but nevertheless, we live in a culture that thrives on anxiety. So it is startling, if reassuring to find St Paul telling us, ‘Do not worry about anything’, when he clearly had far more to worry about than most of us. It’s equally puzzling to find that this is a theme echoed in the words of OT prophets and angels and Jesus himself – so far as God is concerned, so far as life is concerned, do not fear, do not be anxious, do not be afraid – Peace, be still.
Having said this, this is clearly not the mood of our Old Testament story. Moses disappears up the mountain and doesn’t come back, so the people grow understandably fractious. We can’t be left stranded here without a god – our neighbours will laugh at us. Aaron, what are you going to do about it?
And Aaron, makes the same mistake that we priests have made down the centuries, he shoulders responsibility for the people’s anxiety and gives them what they want, not what they need. The few god earrings and other trinkets cannot have made a particularly beautiful sacred cow, but it was glitzy and something you could see and it served its purpose. Karl Marx had it right, you know, religion has too often been used to keep the people quiet.
In other words, we church people have no grounds to be overly critical of the Israelites. Christian communities too have striven through the centuries to keep up with their neighbours. Just look at the patterns of church building in Edinburgh, for example. Do we have anything we rush to put in place of God? Could it be buildings – there’s certainly a warning for us here to examine our motivation as we begin to get serious about a new building project. Or might it be styles of worship, or music, or even, God forbid, issues of social and global concern?
None of these things are bad in themselves, please note, just the use we may find for them. Or might it be that we are so absorbed in popular culture that it is not churchy things at all that distract us but secular gods: Consumer, whom we worship weekly in the shopping mall; Celebrity, whom we worship before the shrine of the TV in our living room; Alcohol, whom we worship through ecstatic behaviour and morning headaches; or perhaps the great god Indifference, whom we worship by studiously averting our eyes from anything that troubles us.
For the people of Israel, it’s not Aaron the priest but Moses the prophet who must restore order. He comes marching down the mountain not with something glamorous or beautiful, or offering easy rewards, but simply with rules of behaviour.
Now, I don’t want to fall into the trap of claiming that our faith is simply a moral code, that way lies the path to guilt and the very anxiety that Jesus and Paul told us we need not have. But neither is it simply a matter of slavishly believing every article of the creed and then doing whatever we like. Our faith is about a relationship with God that expresses itself in who we are and what we are becoming – and that has implications for how we behave.
It’s said that we are what we eat. There’s been a body of research recently, for example, that suggests that children’s ability to concentrate at school is related not only to the amount they eat but also the kinds of food they choose. Similarly, faith-wise we are shaped and determined by the way our souls are fed. We can if we like go to the spiritual equivalent of the pick’n’mix counter at Woolworth’s – filling our sweetie bags with things we like, ignoring the things we don’t – choosing only what makes us feel good and offers the minimum of inconvenience. Or we can ignore the glitz and the bright colours and find more substantial soul food elsewhere – something tougher, more protein rich, perhaps a little chewy, without the sugar rush but with a longer and slower release of energy, building stamina.
Dull? Not really, not once we have a taste for real food. But this is what St Paul is getting at in our second reading. He is speaking of what nourishes us, what it is that helps us grow up into the life and character of Jesus Christ. ‘Whatever is true,’ he says, ‘whatever is honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy, think about these things… and the God of peace will be with you.’ There’s nothing arcane about this, it’s pretty much common sense, but this is the way we grow into holiness, by filling our consciousness, feeding ourselves with all that is good. And having done that, to stop worrying.
So, if I look back over the past few days what are the good things I can think about? I think of the radiant smile on the face of the old man in hospital. (Would you smile if you woke up to see me? No? Well, he did!) I think of the little month old baby I met, oblivious to anything except food and comfort. I think of the elderly man caring patiently and gently for his sick wife; I think of the children entertaining us with music at the Harvest Supper last night. What can you think of? This isn’t as twee as counting your blessings, but rather about cultivating a way of looking at life that discovers blessings in the ordinary and everyday. And then to store them in our memories for when next we are down, or when next we wake in the middle of the night terrorised by a nightmare, or when next our colleagues or our friends let us down.
Gradually we become more alert to the wonderful and the special. Sometimes these revelations come easily – the lovely scenery, the stunning piece of music, the poem, the moment of love and closeness to someone. Sometimes they are more hard won – the discovery of people who reach across divides of enmity to find forgiveness and hope; of courageous people who suffer to maintain their integrity in the face of oppression. The discovery of people of other faiths, or no faith, who show us what true humanity means.
By thinking on these things, feeding on this soul food, gradually we grow to become what we eat. It sounds simple enough, but it’s also a discipline that we need to acquire in the face of so many distractions, not least our instinct to become obsessed with the inconsequential, or worrying about what will never happen. But the fruit of this discipline, as St Paul makes clear, is that the God of peace will be with us – that is, that we begin to enter into that holiness which is God. If we learn to rejoice always, if we learn to be gentle in our approach to life, then the Lord will be near, and we need not be afraid.
In short, if we can live in this way we begin to develop a sense of what deserves worship, a sense of the holy; we begin to open the door in our soul to the surpassing peace of Christ. As St Paul says elsewhere, ‘clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience… Above all, clothe yourselves with love… and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.’ To begin to live in this way means that, little by little, we realise that it may be possible after all to arrive at the wedding feast wearing the right clothes.
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