A Low Carb Sermon

Genesis 25:29-34

October 9, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            This is a low carb sermon.

            “Carbohydrates” are a technical name for sugars; high energy bursts of calories, often sweet in taste.    Most foods have some level of carbohydrates.  Our modern, processed foods contain extraordinary levels of highly refined carbohydrates.   They are found in white breads, pastries, soft drinks, or white flour pastas, and hidden within many of our processed comfort foods such as breakfast cereals, fruit juices or fast foods.   In refined white sugar or flour products these carbohydrates are broken down very quickly by the body elevating blood sugar levels which at first give us a sense of well-being.  Then as the blood sugar levels drop we develop a depressed craving for more.   The Atkin’s or South Beach diets have become popular explaining how these sugars are digested directly into fat storage, so that when folks abstain from foods containing white sugar or white flour carbohydrates they will lose weight. 

            “Low carb” diets, food lines and entire stores now appear everywhere!    Ignoring the role of fat and calories to weight gain, pizza parlors offer “30% reduced carb” pizzas by rolling their dough thinner.    Drive through fast food restaurants offer “low carb burgers” wrapped in lettuce instead of white bread.   Even Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to offer their products as “diet food”, “low in carbs”, until they were turned down by the Federal Trade Commission.

            Well, in a blatant attempt to cash in on this low carb craze, I am proud to assert that this is a low carb sermon; not a lot of sugar and it takes a while to digest.

            Hopefully, it will contain a healthy level of protein; grams of the muscle building element essential for growth.   When the preacher quotes a hero or shares the story of a saint or offers rich biblical insight it builds up the Body of Christ.  

            Hopefully this sermon will contain just the right level of healthy fat.   Our bodies need an appropriate level of unsaturated, non-hydrogenated fat such as olive or fish oils.  So do our spiritual ears need to hear a corny joke or two and a dash of hyperbole to get the meat of a sermon.

            And don’t forget the fiber.   Fiber is that insoluble, indigestible “stuff” found naturally in many foods.  When added to other foods, fiber aids the intestines and cleans out the colon as it passes through the body.   Hopefully the casual mention of certain professional sport activities or the warm and winsome butchering of the English language by this preacher will help flush out our spiritual digestive tract as well.

            In fact, one could correctly argue that our Biblical tradition offers a variety of examples of “low carb” nutrition.   

When Moses promises bread and meat to feed the Israelites in their desert wandering (Ex. 16:1-36, Num. 11:4-9), God sends “manna” in the morning for them to make their bread.  According to scholars this manna may have been the “honeydew secretion of two kinds of scale insects feeding on the sap of the tamarisk tree” (Bodenheimer, Harper’s Bible Dictionary, 1985) in the Sinai desert; completely organic and high in fiber.   The “meat” God sends in the evening is quail, whose wonderful flesh is low in fat and rich in protein.   

When Jesus feeds the 5,000 in the gospels with five loaves and two fish (Mt. 14:13-21, Mk. 6:32-44, Lk. 9:10-17, John 6:1-15), the bread is made from barley flour, an excellent flour very low on the glycemic index.  The fish is high in protein and healthy fats.

Dr. Jordan S. Ruben asserts in his book, The Maker’s Diet (Siloam, New Mary, FL, 2004) that a diet based on the Biblical era’s dependency on unprocessed fruits and vegetables, unrefined sugars and flours, grass fed meats and lots of exercise could save us from the dangers of our contemporary Northern American diet.  A Biblical diet could help us live longer and enjoy life more along the way.

But let’s admit that that sounds pretty silly for most of us, certainly impractical.   Who has the time to cook our meals at home anymore let alone expend the energy to plan out a healthy diet?   Many of us gulp down a coffee and bagel on the way out the door, do business over lunch, dash off to the next event and pick up something along the way.  We don’t have the time to argue with the kids about what is nutritious.  It is so much easier to just “drive thru”.   

Frazzled and harried at the end of busy days we are “starving”.  We just want somebody else to feed us for a while.  By 2012, 43.1% of American meals were purchased and eaten away from home (USDeptAg).

Doesn’t that sound just like Esau in our Old Testament lesson this morning?   After a tiring day hunting in the field he sells his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a pot of stew.

Jacob and Esau are the twins of Isaac and Rebekah.   Their saga (Genesis 25:19-33:20) describes the primal struggle between agrarian and migratory cultures, between two nations in the ancient Near East and the struggle within families for a future.   Their story also describes the power of food.

Esau wants some of Jacob’s “red stuff”, possibly a blood soup (Von Rad) popular among hunters like Esau.   As the older brother, Esau is entitled to the larger share of Isaac’s estate upon his death, the inheritance being his right at birth (Deut. 21:15-17).   The younger brother Jacob seizes the opportunity of Esau’s hunger and careless impatience to trade not blood soup but a lentil stew and some bread for his brother’s birthright.   Esau agrees and falls for the deception.

In fact, he will do so a second time when the aged and blind Isaac asks Esau to cook a savory stew of wild game in order to receive his father’s final blessing before he dies (Genesis 27:1-f).   Rebekah hears the agreement through the tent wall and prepares a savory lamb stew for Jacob to present before Esau returns in order that the younger brother might gain Isaac’s final blessing instead.   Jacob covers himself with the skin of a hairy animal and rubs his cloths in the dirt and sage of the outdoors in order to trick his blind father’s touch and smell, along with his taste buds, and rob his brother a second time of his inheritance.

And it all begins with a pot of stew.

What are we selling our birthright for?

God’s intention by the very structure of our biological lives is that we inherit health and wholeness to the degree we are given it at birth.    Our bodies are designed to touch and smell and taste the glory of God’s creation.  Within the limitations of mortality our bodies are designed to heal themselves when given the chance.   We discard that birthright when we fill our bodies and the bodies of our families with the empty calories of “stuff” because it’s easy and cheap.    We dismiss the joy of eating when we no longer sit together at a meal, take the time to actually taste our food and share it with conversation and concern.   We diminish the sacredness of food when we don’t pause for a moment before we eat and thank God in prayer that we are a few of the privileged who have enough.

We’re still selling our birthright for food.

We do it with drugs.    Ken Caminiti played baseball for San Jose State University and was the National League MVP in 1996.   Those who played with him loved him.   He died at the age of 41 to a drug overdose in New York City.   He had struggled with drug addiction for years.  He confessed using steroids to be a professional athlete.   Any of us sell our God given right to inherit health and wholeness when we seek the answers to our problems in a needle or a pill or a glass.

We do it for money.

There were two evil brothers. They were rich, and used their money to keep their secrets from the public eye. They even attended the same church.  They looked to be perfect Christians.  Then their pastor retired, and a new one was hired. Not only could she see right through the brothers' deception, but she also spoke well and true, and the church started to swell in numbers.  A fund raising campaign was started to build a new assembly hall. All of a sudden, one of the brothers died. The remaining brother sought out the new pastor the day before the funeral and handed her a check for the amount needed to finish paying for the new building.  “I have only one condition”, he said. “At his funeral, you must say my brother was a saint.”  The pastor gave her word, and deposited the check.   The next day, at the funeral, the pastor did not hold back.  “He was an evil man,” the pastor said.  “He cheated on his wife and abused his family.”  After going on in this vein for a small time, she concluded, “but compared to his brother, he was a saint.”

            Consider the pressure we put ourselves under, the tension that shapes our most intimate relationships and the cost to our health and happiness that comes from the hold that money has on our lives.    Of course we are called to provide for our families.   But on the day we gather to mark the death of a person, at a funeral or memorial service, the inheritance that will be celebrated has little to do with their money and everything to do with the love they shared with their family and the world.  In fact, it’s the only thing we take with us into the next world.

            We sell our birthright to God’s promise of health and wholeness when money becomes the primary focus in our lives.

God intends for us to inherit nothing less than the Kingdom of God.   We are to revel in the bounty of this earth, celebrate its flavors and share those blessings in community and in service.  God is at work in our lives even in our failings, even when we don’t recognize it.  All we are asked is to be faithful.

This is the “meat” of the scripture lesson today.

Jacob’s tricks will succeed but will also result in him fleeing for his life to exile in Haran where he will spend 14 years in servitude to his uncle Laban, marry Laban’s two daughters Rachel and Leah, and return to his homeland to encounter and reconcile with Esau.   On his return he wrestles with God and is re-named “Israel” = “he who struggles with God”.   His twelve sons will become the twelve tribes of Israel.  From their decedents a nation is born that will offer the world its savior Jesus of Nazareth 1,800 years later.

What is most nourishing about a low carb sermon such as this isn’t that it will keep us from gaining weight.  We’ll buy into all sorts of fads to chase the illusion that a number on the scale will make us happy.  

What feeds us the most is hearing how God can use even childish, petty people, like Esau and Jacob…like you and me…to do great things.

Amen.