1.  I probably should have issued a warning when I first began this series of sermons on The Seven Deadly Sins.  I didn’t then, so I will now.  You need to know this!  Learning about these deadly sins may lead to some pretty uncomfortable discoveries about ourselves.  We may find out that we engage in a good many activities that are deadly to our spiritual lives, just as weeds growing in our gardens can be deadly to the flowers.  We could discover that!  But we’ll have to discover it ourselves, because our friends certainly won’t tell us.  We may be thinking that our life gardens are full of flowers, and those friends may very well leave us to our delusions.  Which doesn’t matter one whit, because even if they told us we probably wouldn’t believe them.  But the truth is, some of the growth in our life-gardens that resemble flowers really are weeds, and they can take over if we don’t get rid of them.

2.  So far during Lent we’ve identified three sin-weeds in the garden of our lives – Pride, Envy, and Anger.  Or, as I have dubbed them, Pride-bane with its oversized head and prickly leaves, Envy-ivy that turns us green and makes us itch to have it all, and Anger-lion, which can be both beautiful and ugly, depending on where it grows and how big it gets.  Today we examine the sins of Greed and Gluttony, or, in my made-up pseudo-botanical terms, Greed-weed and Glutton-wort.

3.  First the Greed-weed.  Weeds, as you may know, are simply plants that grow where they should not grow.  Some of them are quite lovely, and we are hard-pressed to find anything undesirable about them.  There are some beautiful plants growing in our grass right now.  But they’re not supposed to be there, and that makes them weeds!  The same is true of the lawns and gardens of our lives.  Greed-weed can choke out what would otherwise be good qualities.  Case in point – the story from Mark.  This good man had a life-garden full of beautiful plants – and he had carefully tended every one of then since he was a little kid.  He had only one God.  Remembered the Sabbath.  Honored his parents.  Faithful to his wife.  Honest and truthful.  You couldn’t ask for better plants in the garden.  But I’m assuming he had not received the neighborhood beautification award, because he knew something was missing.  So he asked the Master Gardner himself.  “What do I need?  What am I lacking?”  Jesus was gentle in his response, because he could tell the man was sincere.  “Actually, it looks pretty good,” Jesus told him.  “But you have too much.  So get rid of all that extra stuff, and give it to those who don’t have enough.  Then come with me.”

4.  Now, I have to digress for just a minute.   What we read in many translations is not what Mark wrote down.   Almost half of our English translations add two words that simply are not there.  Those two words are “the money.”  So we end up reading “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor.”  I think I know why they’ve done this, and if you want to know, ask me after worship.  The literal translation of these words is “Go, divest yourself of the surplus that you have, and give it [the surplus] to those who don’t have enough.”  Jesus was not calling this man (or us) to live a life of poverty!  He was, back then (and is even today), reminding him (and us) that we don’t need all the stuff we have.  There are plenty of people who have nothing at all and would love to have our surplus.   When we care about all our stuff more than we care about people, and want more stuff to make ourselves more comfortable, we let greed take over.  Greed-weed.  The weed that looks like a flower because it’s so pretty!  But too much stuff, whether or not it’s pretty, does not belong in the garden of our lives, the Garden of God.

5.  Neither does its cousin, the Glutton-wort, the Deadly Sin of Gluttony.  Gluttony is to our food what greed is to our stuff.  Gluttony is eating food for all the wrong reasons.  Do you remember  Zorba the Greek?   He has an idea that helps us identify the glutton-wort in our gardens.  At one point, Zorba speaks to his young friend.  “Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.  Some turn their food into fat and manure, some [turn their food] into work and good humor, and others, I’m told, [turn their food ] into God.”^[i]  Three uses for food, or three varieties of glutton-wort, the first of which is a deadly weed.  William White says gluttony “is eating without a sense of community, and it is eating without joy or the presence of God.”^[ii]   Eating without community, eating without joy, eating without the presence of God.  Gluttony!  How much of our 21^st century food-life borders on gluttony?  So many of us eat alone – at our desks while we work, in our cars after grabbing a sack of something at the drive-through-window of the fast-food restaurant, at the kitchen sink rather than seated around the table with friends or family.  White says that “gluttony does not connect us with each other, and it does not connect us with God.  Gluttony is a solitary act that defeats”^[iii] a sense of community.  And it only produces fat and manure.  It is a weed in the garden of our lives, and does not belong in the Garden of God

6.  Food for Jesus and his disciples, on the other hand, was of the second and third varieties, and was more flower than weed.  Compassion motivated their actions, and so the food they ate turned into work and good humor.    Jesus’ critics called him a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34) – only because he enjoyed food and drink in the company of friends.  His critics missed the point!   Food with friends is a feast, regardless of the amount.  For years, my Mother had a wall plaque in the kitchen that read “A crust that’s shared is finer food than a banquet served in solitude.”  Remember the stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes?  That little bit of food satisfied everyone!   Food shared with friends satisfies more than just our appetites.   Shared food can be turned into Life itself, turned into God.

7.  The best example I know of food turned into God is this old story about the difference between “heaven” and “hell.”  Both places look identical – lots of people milling around, a huge table in the middle laden with more food than you’ve ever seen, and of a greater variety than is normally on a table.  When the dinner bell rings, everyone sits down to eat together.  And this is where the difference first becomes noticeable.  The people in hell – that place where there is no evidence of God at work – those people use their spoon to feed themselves.  Or, rather, TRY to feed themselves.  It’s way too long, and they just spill it everywhere.  In heaven, on the other hand – that place where there is ample evidence of God’s presence – those people use their spoons to feed each other.  There is true community around that table! It is a feast!  It is a joyful feast!

8.  Sometime during the coming days or weeks, each one of us will find a Greed-weed or a Glutton-wort growing in our life-gardens.  And when we do, let’s get rid of it!