The Sin of the Skipper, Hophni and Phineas

by Dave Wilkinson

1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25a

July 8, 2001

Some years ago Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma announced that the members of their faculty and student body would be required to keep their weight under control. Students and staff members who were overweight were required to go on carefully prescribed diets and to adopt a strenuous program of physical exercise.

I'll tell you one man who would have had a terrible time at Oral Roberts University -- the outsized Skipper of the tiny ship The Minnow.

We are looking this summer at the Seven Deadly Sins. These sins -- pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust -- are seen as particularly deadly because they are originating sins -- kind of the mother ships for the lesser sins. All other sins flow out of these seven.

As we have seen in previous weeks, each of these deadly sins, is modeled by a character from Gilligan's Island. The technical term for this field if study is Gilliganology. It is best studied weekdays at 4 or late at night.

When I first announced the theme of this series, a number of you immediately went to work to figure out which deadly sin went with which castaway. You had trouble with Mary Ann, Mr. & Mrs. Howell and The Professor. But no one had trouble with gluttony -- "The Skipper, of course, gluttony."

Why? That's easy. He's fat. And in the popular mind glutton equals fat.

But I have some bad news for those of you who thought you were exempt from at least one of the deadly seven because of your relative lack of weight. Gluttony isn't a condition of the body. It's a condition of the heart. Skinny people can also be gluttons. You aren't exempt just because you look like Calista Flochhart.

In the novel Zorba the Greek, Alexis Zorba speaks to his young friend. He says: "Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you who you are. Some turn food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, into God."

Did you ever think that there is a spiritual element to eating? Probably not, because we Americans are a people who, on the whole, have secularized the ritual of eating. For us, eating is simply the act of stuffing the food in one's face. Breakfast is a pop-tart while we're running out the door, if we eat at all. Lunch on the job is often eaten as fast as possible, maybe at our desk, maybe alone. Or it's used as an opportunity to shmooze a client, which is another way of saying that we work through lunch. We know how to wolf down a hamburger and call it a meal. In the process, we've become fatter than all the other nations. And, we know it's bad for our health, but we never think about it being bad for our souls.

We've forgotten that eating has a spiritual dimension. The need to eat is built into us by our Creator. It reminds us of how fragile and dependent we are.

On many occasions in the gospels we are offered scenes of Jesus eating with people. Jesus eats with Pharisees. Jesus eats with disciples. Jesus avoids eating with the Devil in the wilderness -- that would build up too much of a relationship. When Jesus fed the 5,000 we are told that "all ate and were satisfied."

But too few people eat today and are satisfied. Many people around the world are unsatisfied because they have too little to eat. Others are unsatisfied even though they gorge themselves with food.

Society has a word for wrongful eating: It's called gluttony. It comes from the Latin, gluttire, which means to gulp down. Gluttony is eating food without thinking about it -- without considering what it means.

The Church has always been less concerned with the amount of food people eat than with the way people eat it. Gluttony is eating without the sense of community, eating without remembering the hungry and caring for them, eating without purpose, eating without joy or the awareness of the presence of God.

The glutton substitutes God's gifts for God Himself.

That was certainly the case for the non-dynamic duo -- the sons of the old priest Eli, Hophni and Phineas.

Eli had no doubt tried to bring up Hophni and Phineas to honor God as he did, to serve God as he had, to live honorably before God as he did. Hophni and Phineas became priests like their father. It’s the family business. They learned to do the religious motions. But motions were all they had.

To be fair, maybe Hophni and Phineas could only see the feebleness of it all -- the feebleness of their father, the feebleness of Israel under pressure from the Philistines, the feebleness of God who seemed unable to do anything about it. In any case, Hophni and Phineas turn to gluttony. They become gulpers of people, food and things rather than lovers of God.

Their calling is to help people reach out to God. They turn that into a means of doing well for themselves. They are feeding off the people rather than feeding them, taking for themselves gifts that are designed to be expressions of commitment to God. They make a special point of pulling the choice cuts of meat from the sacrifice for themselves. In addition, they are involved in sexual relationships with fellow- ministers.

There they are, God's ministers at the Ark of the Covenant Shrine at Shiloh, and they are starving to death spiritually because they allow themselves to substitute God's gifts for God Himself. They are classic gulpers. They are gluttons.

Now the fact is that you can enjoy a major league, 10 course feast and not be a glutton about it. Feasting celebrates God's bounty. In Isaiah 55, God invites Israel back home, and God says, "Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food."

God doesn't seem to be encourage calorie counting. Jesus Himself was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.

Now almost all the artist renditions we have of Jesus depict Him as being sort of skinny, don't they? Perhaps they aren't quite accurate. A 30-some year old carpenter who enjoys feasting on food. He couldn't have been too skinny, could He? He must have had some meat on Him. He was no ascetic, starving Himself. If anything, He enjoyed eating. That’s how He got the reputation. He didn't push aside the food at the meals He was invited to at the homes of Pharisees. He told parables of a great heavenly banquet where everyone who came would be satisfied. "Loving excess" was a sign of the extravagant love of God for the world. For Jesus, a feast on earth was a foretaste of the great feast to come when the family of God will all gather together and enjoy our Creator's abundance forever.

Meals brought Jesus closer to friends and God. But gluttony connects us neither with friends nor God. Feasting needs, and builds up, community. Gluttony is a solitary act that defeats community.

Frederick Buechner writes that "a glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition."

What a great definition. There is a great cavity within each human being that yearns to be filled. We often fill that hunger with things--clothes, jewelry, cars, food. We eat out of boredom. We eat out of frustration. We eat when we are depressed. We eat when we are stressed or angry. We eat because we hope it will satisfy our longing. But it doesn't.

For our real, inner longing isn't for food. It is for something deeper and more meaningful. Our longing is for God and for community.

Gluttony keeps us from examining our spiritual longing and moving to take care of it. That's why gluttony is a deadly sin. It keeps us from running toward God and toward our brothers and sisters. Boredom, depression, stress, anger -- mindlessly eating a bag of cookies while watching another dumb rerun is not the best way to deal with these things. God has something better in mind.

A proudly irreligious man -- from California, no doubt, came to visit his brother and his family on their farm in the Midwest. He made no pretense of Christian faith. Just the opposite. He gloried in needling his brother and his family about their "superstitious rituals" like saying grace before meals.

After one prayer he said, "Isn't there anyone around here who doesn't feel a need to bow their heads and say "thank you" before diving in?" "Yes" said his ten year old nephew, "There are some like that." "Do I get to meet these enlightened individuals? "You'll find them outside. We call them pigs."

Do you belong inside or outside?

Pause before you eat. Remember to eat with thanksgiving to God. Focus on God who gives the gifts.

Pause as you eat. Remember to eat with thanksgiving for each other.

Don't gulp -- savor.