You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat By Rev. Mark A. Pierson

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

You are what you eat. My parents said this when I was a child, hoping it would get me to choose fruit over French fries, or spinach instead of Skittles. It never worked. It only gave me a mental image of oversized junk food with arms and legs. The threat was disarmed by the silliness of it all—and of course I never saw any of my friends turn into a can of Coke or a bag of Cheetos. But there is a grain of truth baked into this old saying, and in more ways than one. You are in fact what you eat, because when the food you consume is digested it gets incorporated into your body’s cells— what you eat and drink literally become a part of you, and so they affect what you are, and who you are.

This is true of our Christian life as well. We live in a world where Happy Meal Worship and Finger Lickin’ Good Theology are far more popular, quick, and easy to get our hands on and to stuff our faces with than a good, steady diet of hearing, reading, singing, and praying the Word of Christ, and receiving His Body and Blood in the Supper. Jesus tells Peter to feed His sheep, but He does not tell Peter to open a trendy chain restaurant where you can build your own religious buffet.

Thankfully, like loving parents who give their kids what is good and healthy, our Heavenly Father knows our needs and how best to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. We do not need catchy slogans; we need salvation. We do not need plate after plate of empty Christian calories; we need the spiritual super food of God’s holy Word. What we eat matters, and so the words we use in our preaching and teaching matter, the words in the liturgy and in the hymns matter. For we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

But just as the right kind of food can give life, the wrong kind of food can bring death. This is seen most clearly in our Old Testament reading, which has one of the most iconic images in the entire Bible: Moses on Mount Sinai, standing with the stone tablets of the Law, one in each arm, carrying the Commandments down the mountain to God’s covenant people, to reveal to them the good and holy will of their good and holy God.

And what happens next is an anticlimactic plot twist of biblical proportions. You likely know the story but imagine if you had never heard it before. These Hebrews, who suffered as slaves for over 400 years—who begged and pleaded with God for Him to finally do something—at long last have their prayers answered. The God Yahweh waged war against all the gods of Egypt and won. This God picked a fight with Pharaoh to set His people free and won for them their freedom. The Hebrews witnessed miracle after miracle: their firstborn sons were saved by the blood of the Passover lamb—which they ate, and they walked across the Red Sea on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army was drowned to death in a watery grave. They came to the mountain where Moses met God in the burning bush, and with their own eyes they saw holy fire descend from heaven with smoke and thunder and lightning.

But after Moses is gone a little too long, the Hebrews get frantic. They forget all that God’s done for them and feel like they’re spiritually starving to death—like their religious waiter hasn’t checked on their table for hours. So they take matters into their own hands and make for themselves an idol, a graven image, a statue of God in the form of a bull. And the thing about this is… that’s what their enemies the Egyptians had. The pagan, heathen, oppressive slave-driving Egyptians made idols for their gods, graven images in the form of animals, and one of them was depicted as a bull. So when the people give their gold to Aaron and ask him to make them gods, and Aaron gives them the golden calf and says, “Here is your God,” they are in fact saying that one god is as good as another, that there is no real difference between the God of Abraham and the bull-god of Egypt.

If we think of it in terms of marriage, this is every bit as bad as if a guy had rescued a gal from an abusive relationship, won her heart through selfsacrifice and showered her with love, but then on their wedding night, when he steps out to grab a bottle of champagne, he comes back to find her in bed with the same guy who used to beat her. And what does she say in her defense? “It’s your fault for being gone for so long. Besides, what difference does it make? You two are basically the same anyway.”

Certainly that analogy breaks down, but you get the point. The honeymoon between God and Israel has only just begun, and already the bride is committing adultery in the worst way possible. You can see why Moses is so angry! Even before the covenant has been ratified, it’s already broken, violated, smashed into a thousand little pieces, just like the tablets themselves. It does no good to pick up the pieces. All the Hebrew women and all the Hebrew men couldn’t put the Law back together again. What’s done is done, and there is no going back. The chosen people have rejected the One who chose them, and so they are served their just desserts.

In his anger, Moses forces the people to swallow their statue, to ingest their idol, to feast on their false god of gold. I can only imagine him treating them like little kids who have to take their foul-tasting medicine, like it or not. As they whine and squirm and flail about, Moses holds them down, forces their jaws open, and pours their welldeserved poison down their throats.

And by this, they are literally given a taste of death. For this wouldn’t be pure gold, but a mixture of gold and other metals that were toxic. Apparently, it was spread so thin between them all that it didn’t kill the whole lot of them but the message is unmistakable. The difference between the one true God and the gods of the world couldn’t be more stark, more drastic, more consequential. The God of Abraham feeds you with His own life; the others offer nothing but death. Death is the only thing on the menu when the devil and his demons are your chef and servers. And you are what you eat. God feeds you life, and you become immortal; the devil feeds you death, and you become the walking dead.

Now, I’m fairly certain that you don’t have a golden calf that you bow down to, that you don’t offer sacrifices to Satan, and even that you don’t rub the belly of a Buddha to get good luck. If you do any of those things, be sure to let me know. But even though you’re a Christian and not a Hebrew, even though you live on this side of the Cross and not before it, even though you baptized believers are now the chosen people of God, you are no better at keeping God’s covenant, no better at keeping God’s Law, no better at fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things.

Idolatry is not just about statues. Infidelity is not just about defiling the marriage bed. There are any number of ways to flirt with false religion, any number of ways that a weak and faltering faith manifests itself in your life. Remember how Paul levels the playing field in Romans. You don’t worship idols? Good for you. But do you put Christ Jesus first in your life? Do you conform your will to His will? Do you daily repent and daily trust in His promises? Or, do you cheat on Christ the Bridegroom or on your diet of God’s Holy Word?

Do you quickly forget all that God has done for you—from your daily bread, to your family, to your salvation— and spurn His good gifts by seeking satisfaction elsewhere? Do you fill your belly with gossip, with slander, with an obsession about your self-image, with images on the internet, with your accomplishments and riches and prestige? Do you get frantic when God doesn’t do things on your timetable, or when you think He’s left you all alone to fend for yourself? Do you lose faith, lose your way, lose your hunger for the Gospel, and take matters into your own hands by creating new gods to feed you with their empty promises?

With insatiable appetites, we greedily gulp down false gods of comfort and convenience. We worship the works of our hands, the intentions of our hearts, whatever we think will make us happy. We swallow the lie that feel-good, watered-down Churchianity is just as good and healthy as the message of Christ and Him crucified. But this is not where nourishment is found. This is not the source of health and healing. All these idols merely make us bloated and ready to burst, while we never feel full and are really just wasting away.

That’s why idolatry is a package deal. You always get what comes along with your false god—the delicacy known as death. You eat death, and in turn death eats you. It swallows you up and doesn’t spit you out but slowly digests you, with stomach acids of disease and decay, starting at your birth and lasting for all eternity. If you don’t believe it, if you think this is just a scare tactic, then tell me, please, how do you plan to cheat death? How do you possibly expect to avoid receiving the wages of your sin? You have seen the effects of death on this world, on your family, on yourself— and you know full well that there is nothing you can do about it.

But where you are powerless, Christ has all the power. Where you are helpless to rescue yourself, Christ rescues you in spite of yourself. Where you find yourself guilty of feasting on poison and death, Christ feeds you the remedy that reverses the curse and brings life out of death.

If you have flirted with false religion and betrayed the Bridegroom…if you have given in to temptation and cheated on the truth…if you feel like you have smashed your faith in Christ into a million little pieces…do not worry and do not lose hope. For your God is the God who keeps His marriage vows no matter what, He is the God who forgives and forgets every sin you commit no matter how big or small, He is the one and only God who can put you and your faith back together again.

In Christ Jesus, the God of Abraham has invaded this world to redeem this world. He comes to you humbly and with salvation, to court you with His self-sacrifice and to shower you with His love. He has descended once again to a holy mountain to give His Holy Word— but not a word of Law that brings death if you break it, rather a word of Gospel that brings life and cannot be broken. As it is written, the Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17).

But notice that long before Jesus came on the scene as a man, God was still gracious to His chosen people even though they didn’t deserve it. In anger, God’s wrath burned against them for violating His covenant. But He didn’t annihilate them right then and there. He relented and had mercy—all because Moses pleaded with God and asked Him to spare them. Now think about this: who is Moses to do such a thing? Who was Moses to have the ear of God, and make intercession on behalf of sinners? Moses was a sinner, too! A murdering, cowardly, complaining sinner. And yet God listened to Him.

How much more, then, will God listen to His own sinless Son who makes intercession for you, who pleads with His Father on behalf of you! If the blood of the Passover lamb kept the people safe from death, how much more does the blood of the Lamb of God keep you safe from eternal death? If the old covenant, written on tablets of stone, made the Jews a holy nation, how much more does the new covenant, written in the wounds of Jesus, make you holy? If God listened to Moses who punished people by feeding them death, how much more will He listen to Jesus who was punished with your death so that He might feed you life?

With the Law accusing us, with our sins slowly starving us, with death dancing on our graves, we need a new and better Moses who can fulfill the Law, forgive our sins, and swallow up death in victory. And that is exactly who Jesus is—that is exactly what Jesus does, for you.

You are what you eat. At this feast, Jesus is the host, the server, and the meal—He feeds you with His words of life, He feeds you with the antidote to death, He feeds you with His immortal Body and Blood. There is no forcefeeding of whiney brats here, just an open invitation to partake of God’s good gifts. For by eating and drinking Him, you again are given the ultimate package deal: wherever Christ is, there, too, is forgiveness, life, and salvation. He is the feast that ends all famine, He is the food that truly satisfies. By consuming Him, the devil and his false gods cannot harm you, for Jesus literally lives inside of you—and the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

You are what you eat. Now taste and see that the Lord is good! In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Pierson is the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Long Beach, California. Besides being a regular author for Higher Things Magazine, he is a contributor to the books Making the Case for Christianity and The Resurrection Fact. He would like to note his indebtedness to the many great preachers he has heard and learned from over the years.