Home > Jasons Sermons > March to May 2010

Cravings

Text: 1 Corinthians 10:1-22

The moment you decide to cut out a relished pleasure from your life - chocolate, coffee, tea, cakes, biscuits, or some other delight - and suddenly you can think of nothing else but the thing you can’t have. Craving. A strong desire.

Craving is neither a good nor bad thing in and of itself. Craving is a common experience in pregnancy (so I’m told). My mother was endlessly teased for her insatiable desire for peanut butter and pickle sandwiches (I can’t imagine!). A young person who leaves home for the first time may experience craving as homesickness. Lovers who are separated may crave one another’s presence. Have you ever had a raging thirst, craving water? What a feeling when you gulp back its coolness, tasting its goodness running down your throat until you feel satisfied.

Cravings are destructive when they control us. Craving nicotine, alcohol, sex, or gambling; craving love, approval, or power. Cravings that take over the way we think and behave are our gaolers.

The people of Israel had a strong craving for meat (Ex. 11:4). Wearing rose tinted glasses they longed for the good old days in Egypt. “We might have been slaves but at least we had meat.” Paul points to this craving for meat as a craving for evil. Their craving is held up as an example not to be followed by the Corinthians.

What does Paul mean when he tells them not to crave evil? Paul responding to a letter the Corinthians had written to him (7:1). It is clear that they were a divided community. At the Lord’s supper some ate their fill and got drunk whilst others went hungry and stayed sober (11:17-22). They also took each other to court when they had disputes (6:1-6). Furthermore, the well heeled kept up their social and business connections by accepting invitations to the temples dedicated to idols. These temples were the scene of celebrating special occasions: weddings, birthdays, healings by the gods. Refusing an invite risked one’s reputation and earning power. The problem was that the meat came from the sacrifices and prostitution was associated with the temples.

The Corinthian followers of Jesus thought that their knowledge and spiritual gifting (1:5-7) meant that what they did with their bodies wasn’t that important. They wanted to keep one foot in both camps: to be pagan and followers of Jesus at the same time. They were spiritual and so their sexual behaviour and social relationships in the temples of idols didn’t matter. “Flee from sexually immoral behaviour,” Paul admonishes. Sexual union makes a man and woman one. If one uses a prostitute they become one with her. If she was a temple prostitute they also become one with the temple. One who is united to the Lord cannot be united to a prostitute. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and belongs to God.

As far as Paul was concerned they were to flee sexual immorality and the worship of idols. In chapter 8 Paul appeals to the Corinthians not to eat idol meat for the sake of fellow believers with a weak conscience. Even though they are strong and understand that idols do not represent real gods, love for others comes before the exercising of our rights.

In chapter 10, Paul highlights the danger of their spiritual arrogance. He parachutes the Corinthian believers into the scripture account of Israel’s wanderings in wilderness after the Exodus. His reading is through the lens of the life of Christ.

The people of Israel are the spiritual ancestors of the Corinthians. They are a type - a metaphor - of the Corinthians. The people of Israel had their Spirit and baptism into Moses: the cloud of God’s presence leading them through the sea under Moses’ leadership. The manna, quail, and water from the rock are, for Paul, the body and blood of Christ shared by believers. He identifies the rock from which the water came with Christ and speaks of the rock following them, and image for God in Deut. 32 (vv. 4, 15, 18, 30, 31). Even though the Israelites had been baptised and eaten at the table of the Lord, God still was not pleased with them and their corpses were strewn all over the wilderness (14:16). Those Corinthians who are smug and self-assured in baptism, bread, and wine are being given the heads up: watch you don’t trip up.

Paul believed that the followers of Jesus were living in the last moments of history. The reality is that Christ did not come as soon as Paul expected. Those of us who live today continue to be in the company of the Corinthians, those “…on whom the ends of the ages have come.” This requires alertness.

The spiritual food and drink supplied by Christ to the Israelites and the Corinthians is about fellowship. For people in the ancient world eating and drinking at the same table was about more than filling the stomach. Whoever sat at your table belonged to you in some way. Eating together was a sign of community and fellowship. Jews refused to eat at the same table as non-Jews (Gal. 2:11-14) and Egyptians refused to eat at the same table as Hebrews (Gen. 43:32). The people you ate and drank with belonged to you. You did not eat with the enemy (Ps. 23:5 - enemies watch on; Ps. 41:9 - friend who shares bread betrays).

Paul holds up the people of Israel as examples not to be followed. They desired evil. It becomes clear that to desire anything other than God is evil. To trust in any one or any thing other than God is craving evil. Paul recalls three instances of idolatry during Israel’s wilderness years. First, they trusted in idols when they asked Aaron to shape a calf, eating, drinking and playing - possibly sexual in nature (Ex. 32). Then they indulged in sexual immorality with Moabite women and feasted (Numbers 25:1-2) and 24 000 people died of plague (25:9), though for some reason Paul slips up and states it was 23 000. Then they complained against God and Moses over the lousy food and water provisions. Serpents are sent to kill them (Numbers 21:4-9). The plague is only cured if people look up to the bronze snake which Moses fashions. Paul compare the Corinthians who were complaining against his authority as apostle with the way that the people always seemed to be grumbling against Moses’ leadership (Numbers 14 and 16).

It’s no accident that most of the examples of Israel’s idolatry involve food, drink and the misuse of sex. The Corinthians’ confidence in their spiritually superiority and knowledge walks hand in hand with their willingness visit prostitutes and share in meals in the temples of idols. They are testing Christ as the Israelites tested him.

For Paul the cup that followers of Christ drink and the bread that we eat is about far more than filling our stomachs and slaking our thirst. What we eat and drink makes us who we are. The bread and wine we consume comes from Christ and makes us one with him. We are in a special, intimate relationship with him. Those with whom we share table with are the people who belong to us as we belong to them in Christ. Those who drink the cup share in the blood of Christ. Those who break bread together share in the body of Christ. When the people of Israel ate the sacrifices they became one with the altar. It is true that idols don’t exist as real gods. But they do embody that which is demonic. Paul’s argument is that being one with Christ through the shared cup and bread means that we cannot eat at the table of idols without buying into the demonic reality it represents (Deut. 32:17). God is a jealous. He requires our love to be singular towards him. We cannot eat at his table and claim to love him when we’re having an affair with what opposes him (Deut. 32:19).

How do we find ourselves in this world of idols? It is so foreign to us. What do Paul’s words have to do with us? It may not be as big a leap as we imagine.

Do we not worship the idols of food, drink and sex? Excessive consumption of food has led to obesity and all the health problems associated with it. Excessive drink is creating a culture in which drunkenness is acceptable but is also costing our health. Sexual freedom has had an effect on the stability of relationships and family life as well as the spread of disease. Pornography has become an accepted part of life. Secular analysts acknowledge that our children are becoming too sexualised too early in life.

Keeping in mind that the temples of idols were places which lubricated the social and economic wheels of society, we can see ourselves inextricably caught up in the financial systems of our world. How do we bank and shop in a way that does not allow money to be the object of our worship? How do we participate in the market place without taking advantage of the poor? The Bible is clear that money is not evil. It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10).

Food, drink, sex, money and all created things are good if we relate to them as God intended. God created everything good and as such, for us to enjoy. It is only when the things he has created things become the object of our worship. Having fellowship with Christ and each other in the cup and bread demonstrates that God is the provider of all that we need. Anything that calls us away from relying on him leads us towards destruction.

In verse 13, in the middle of Paul’s discussion of idolatry he assures us that there is no testing that we cannot endure. God is faithful and he will give us the strength we need. He will also provide the way out. I wonder whether this ‘way out’ is about the direction of our desire. Do not desire evil. Do not give into the cravings that draw you away from God. Those who desire evil do not desire God their creator. Those who desire God - those who crave for him - will have the strength to endure testing.

Gerard Hughes wrote of the nature of desire in The Tablet, 24 June 2000:

Desire is not something we create or arouse in ourselves: it is something we discover. Our deepest desire acts like a kind of drill which bores through layers of more superficial desires within us - desire for health, wealth, reputation, status, security - until it reaches the wellspring of all our desire, which is GOD.

It is through desire that we come to freedom:

able to appreciate, value, cherish and enjoy God’s creation

without being possessed by it.

It is through desire that we begin to learn discernment.

When we choose something according to our deepest desire,

the decision resonates with our psyche,

bringing a measure of peace, strength, and joy.

When we choose contrary to our deepest desire,

this sets up a dissonance within us,

and we experience some measure

of emptiness, inner turmoil, and sadness.

Our deepest desire is