Gluttony: The Sin of Overconsumption
September 20, 2026
17th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Deuteronomy 8: 1-3; John 6: 30-35
“Gluttony: The Sin of Overconsumption”
by Rev. David J. Wood
17th Sunday After Pentecost, September 20, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: Deuteronomy 8:1-3; John 6:30-35
So our series on the Seven Deadly Sins continues. We are down to the last two: Gluttony and Lust. When we get to these final two deadly sins, the body is front and center. Pride, anger, sloth, envy, and greed…relate more to dispositions, emotions and perceptions…we don’t think of them as being directly rooted in our physical being….even thought they may have physical manifestations.
But when dealing with gluttony and lust, it feels more, well, fleshy…it gets under our skin. The direct relationship to our bodily existence is more front and center.
Gluttony then is an inordinate obsession with food, drink or plain consumption. In a culture where we that designates us as consumers, there’s good reason to think that gluttony constantly lurks in the shadows.
Have you had the experience of coming to a new perspective on the cultural waters you swim in only when you have spent some time immersed another culture? Our taken-for-granted way of being in the world tends only to become visible when we step outside of it. That happens for me when we spent a year living in Paris, France. Practice around food and eating is a case in point.
When we lived in Paris, we enrolled our young children into French public schools. Needless to say, I don’t think they have ever forgiven us for that cross-cultural experience. But one thing I think they did appreciate had to do with lunch time. In France, at noon, they had a full hour to eat their four course meal (provided by the school). They were then dismissed to play in the schoolyard for another 1/2 hour.
When we moved back to the US, we enrolled our kids in the Louisville public school system. I remember asking our daughter, Julia, how it was going. She said, “ok.” I asked her to tell me a bit about her daily schedule. She mentioned that her class goes to the cafeteria at 10:45 and that they had a full 20 minutes to eat their lunch.
It was in that moment that I knew that, bringing my children back to the US was the worst mistake in my life!
The word “Buffet” originally referred to French sideboard furniture where the food was served….only in America did it become associated with showcasing food to and for large numbers of people. As one write put it,
There’s no better example of our love of excess than the buffet, that cultural touchstone of culinary decadence that is so typically American. When all is said and done, what is more American than the almighty buffet?
The American buffet grew its wings – literally – in Las Vegas, circa the 1940s. Herb McDonald created the Buckaroo Buffet, The goal was classic Vegas: keep people inside the casino longer, where, tempted by the tables and slot machines, they’d spend more money. the buffet is not just an archetype of American cuisine; it’s a metaphor for America, in all its splendid, dangerous excess.
[From Brian Bartels, “The History of the Buffet, an American Institution”]
Needless to say….during our sojourn in France, I never saw anything resembling a buffet, let alone an “ALL YOU CAN EAT” Buffet.
Addicted as we are to ACCELERATION and speed and convenience…it makes perfect sense that , we would be the people who created FAST FOOD. And we have succeeded exporting our ‘fast food’ culture. I remember visiting the Pyramids of GIZA in Egypt some years ago…and noticed that across the street was a Pizza Hut and a KFC!
However, sometimes it gets modified along the way. Back to France for a moment: in the late 90’s, in Paris, I remember visiting the McDonalds that had recently opened on the Champs Elysees. It was the first time I encountered a cappuccino bar in a McDonalds…and I remember that it was often hard to find a table because people would sit around for hours sipping their cappuccinos and enjoying their meals. They were making a meal out of it!
That we eat is a given. What we eat, how much we eat, and how we eat is not! You can tell a lot about a culture by examining it practices around food and eating.
Next time you are watching commercial TV…take note of how many commercials are about food or drink. It is estimated to be about 40%. Add to that, the number of commercials aimed at addressing our gluttonous tendencies promoting antacids, diet programs and related medications. A LOT of people are spending a lot OF MONEY on stimulating our hunger and thirst. No wonder we live in a culture in which eating and drinking disorders are common.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we dwell in a gluttonous culture…I’m not just taking about the degradation of food…but the degradation of our practices around eating…the degradation of the culture of the TABLE. It’s not a leap to see how eating and drinking can become occasions for sin.
How we live with food is a crucial indicator of spiritual flourishing or our spiritual malnutrition.
In Deuteronomy, we read that one of the very first things things God taught the Israelites when they were freed from captivity in Egypt, was how to eat.
They were taught to gather only what they needed, no more, no less. They were not allowed to store food for more than 24 hours, except on the day before the Sabbath when they could gather enough for two days. They were to eat to live not live to eat. Their experience of food was an exercise in dependence, in trust and the practice of communal life. They learned that, “We do not live by bread alone.
One of the most significant innovations that Christianity brought to Judaism had to do with food. In the early Christian communities, the laws around what foods one could eat were essentially done away with. Food ceased to be an instrument for division and separation. As the Apostle Paul put it, ”What God has made clean you must not call profane.” Food is good.
What does become important in the New Testament is the MEAL. This, of course, was inherited from the Jewish understanding that every meal was a religious occasion—an event that begins with a blessing, a recognition that food is a gift from God. Eating become regarded an expression of fellowship, community, friendship, and solidarity….of communion. Early on, one of the metaphors for the church was that it is a moveable feast.
There is plenty of evidence that food and spirituality are bound up together from the beginning…first sin of the first couple is about eating the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. One of the three great temptations Jesus faced was whether he would turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. Food is freighted with spiritual significance.
Jesus’ favorite image of the Kingdom of God is of a FEAST…the great banquet. One of his greatest miracles Jesus performed was the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus identified himself as, “the bread of life.”
Jesus accused by his enemies of being a “glutton and a drunkard”…he was known for bringing the best wine to the party…he told many parables about feasts and celebration meals. So it seems fitting that, when Jesus sought to give his followers a way to remember him, he chose a meal.
It is right to think that the church is built on a culture of the TABLE. Before buildings or pews—there were tables in homes…small communities gathered together sharing meals and prayers and songs.…gathering around the TABLE in remembrance of the One who was made known in the breaking of bread…the One who was for them the BREAD of life.
Think for a moment about how formative our experience of the TABLE is in each of our lives. I’m thinking here of the tables around which we gather in our homes.
• It is the first way we are incorporated into community. We move from the crib to our mother’s arms…to the high chair to the table…it is where we first come to know our place in the life of a family.
• While we each have our own place at the table…it is a shared space…it where we learn to share and serve each other…we converse…we learn good manners….we learn to wait…for many of us, outside of Sundays, its where we learn to pray together.
• To be sent from the table is a kind of banishment…like being sent into exile…To be received back to the table is always an experience of being brought back into community.
• The table is where we sit facing each other. Where else do we sit facing each other these days…except when around a table?
The Table and the context for food and our eating it provides, features prominently in the course of our lives…and that prominence gives us more than a hint of the significance of the Table in the experience and formation of Christian community. It’s where the presence of God is recognized, remembered, and celebrated.
As I said earlier, How we live with food is a crucial indicator of spiritual flourishing or spiritual malnutrition.
We lose so much when our eating and drinking become disordered.
Surely the presence of widespread hunger in our world is sinful and a consequence of self indulgence.
Whereas we live in a culture of FAST FOOD…the Jewish and Christian communities, along with other religious traditions, have a different way of relating “Fast” and “Food.”
Fasting was, among other things, the practice of interrupting the unthinking movement from hunger to being filled…it was a discipline against being ruled by one’s appetite, against the drift to overconsumption…fasting was a recovery of the sacredness of the meal…a visceral way of living the truth that we do not live by bread alone.
Living as we do in a culture that inclines us toward gluttony and overconsumption, there is a case to be made for the practice of fasting as a practice of resistance.
That being said, there is equally a case to be made that resistance to gluttony is to be found in the simple, graceful, sharing of a meal that restores the culture of the Table…that provides the proper setting for our eating and drinking and recognition of the grace upon which our lives and well being depend.
At the very least, it is a good place to begin…not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the world. Amen.