Give Up Gluttony

Lent 2023 Sermon Series
Give Up Gluttony

While they were still talking with him, the king’s eunuchs arrived and hurried Haman off to the banquet that Esther had prepared. -- Esther 6:14

Do you eat to live or live to eat? This was a question I heard often while growing up. The question represents the ideological divide around the human experience of consuming food. Is eating so central and enjoyable and fulfilling that it becomes the only reason for living? Or is food just the fuel for a larger purpose of your life? This is, of course, a false dichotomy - very likely, food is both necessary and enjoyable. And if food isn't enjoyable, very likely it isn't an ideological choice. Our relationship to food is complicated, holding memory, tradition, norms and mores, and our participation in these meanings can be more or less present at various times. 

However, there is another association with that quote that points us to look out for a particular vice - gluttony. As a vice, gluttony represents the antithesis of a virtue. Our lives are meant to be more than just subsisting, more than just enthrallment in a particular activity. Gluttony is the drowning of oneself in that food, that thing, or that activity. As with all the vices, it leads to a life unanchored in the bigger picture. 

But gluttony can also be an escape. Imagine going to Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family, including those family members that cause you to be wary. You might enthrall yourself in the conversation and because it's family and because we don't always follow those rules of "no politics or religion at the table" you will eventually find a place where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Gluttony would be a great way to escape those conversations through over eating, over consuming, and never looking up from one's plate. A mouth that is full cannot say anything or respond to less than polite conversation. Gluttony allows us to ignore what is really happening around a table. While this may be preferable for the moment, it also is the loss of the opportunity to deepen relationships and to be accountable to one another. 

In story of Esther, our eponymous character invites the King and Haman to her table. Both are honored to gather with one another. While the King knows there is an ask coming, he still participates in the opportunity to deepen his relationship with the Queen. The food, the ask, and the relationships are all tied together and so the feasts that Esther offers are more meaningful - this is especially obvious in the way that the King will eventually respond to Esther's request. But for Haman, he can only see what he wants to see. His counsel for the King, his efforts to bring ethnic cleansing, his recommendation of how to honor someone who has saved the King, these are all for himself. Even as his recommendation of how to honor this person who saves the King ends up being for Mordecai, an individual he hates and resents, he still participates in the laud and honor because by doing so he makes himself more honored in the eyes of the King. Haman is a glutton of himself; a selfishness in which he is completely consumed. 

Because of this, Haman cannot see the chaos he is creating, he cannot see the seeds of animosity he is planting. And he does not imagine that he will be held accountable to Esther, an enslaved woman whose office, the office of Queen, is meant to be seen but not heard (as we learned from Queen Vashti). For Haman, this ignorance costs him his life. But for the rest of us, what does our gluttony cost us? Relationships, opportunity, love. The next time you sit and spend time with another, imagine what else is set at the table. Consider what each person brings and the opportunities to enjoy more than just the food in front of us.