"Fast Foods Versus Slow Fruits

Sermon 06.27.10
Fast Foods Versus Slow Fruits

In 1937, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald open a hamburger stand called the Airdrome in Monrovia, California. By using the Speedee Service System, an assembly line method for food preparation, the brothers could prepare a hamburger that in 1948, sold for 15 cents. By 1958 the number of hamburgers served reached the 100th million mark, and the rest is history after Ray Kroc acquired the business in 1961. By 1976, the chain of McDonalds recorded that it had sold 20 billion burgers. In 1997, the franchise offered refunds to anyone who was not served within 55 seconds. Right now, McDonalds sells 8500 hundred hamburgers per minutes. The rest of the story is the revolution of the fast food industry in America.

Hamburgers may be an American icon, but in 2001, in Italy, a Catholic priest in Tuscany is suggesting that the road to hell is paved with hamburger. Adding grease to the fire, he argues that hamburgers, French fries and Coke are "the fruit of a Protestant culture."

"Fast food reflects the individualistic relation between man and God introduced by Luther," the Rev. Massimo Salani said in a full-page interview published last fall in the Catholic daily newspaper Avvenire. In addition, he insisted that fast food lacks "the community aspect of sharing."

With Italians deeply divided over the arrival of McDonald's and other fast-food chains in a country that takes its three-hour lunches almost as seriously as soccer, other newspapers leapt on the story with obvious glee. "Theologian Excommunicates the Hamburger," proclaimed a headline in the Rome daily Il Messaggerro.

Perhaps the priest is right: We have a preference for bad food because, as we've so often observed, bad food seems to taste better than good food. Better to wolf down a super-sized quarter-pounder with fries and Coke and enjoy it, than pick at a tofu salad and hate it, we say. Of course, if you're a tofu lover, you've got the best of both worlds: good food, and good food you love.

The issue of fast food versus slow fruit is part of our human behavior and essence, which is divided into two parts: that of the flesh (sarx) and that of the Spirit (pneuma). Paul gives explicit instructions on what each realm is. Because Paul is wordy at times, with sentences that are a paragraph long, I wanted to read to you this text as translated by Eugene Peterson in the message.

READ FROM TRANSLATION

The apostle Paul couldn't have expressed the dilemma better. He warns us that certain behaviors may cause the flesh to feel good, but they're ultimately destructive. Paul's bad-food, fast-food menu includes fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness and carousing (5:19-21). And all of it comes with fries.

Paul offers an alternative lifestyle option: the fruit of the Spirit. Rather than a vice that one manufactures, the fruit of the Spirit are virtues that are generated from within. Spirit virtues can fill us, satisfy us and strengthen us - and best of all, no spiritual dietitian or gastronomic theologian will say that such fruit is bad for you. Paul insists that there "is no law against such things" (v. 23).

What Paul does declare is that “faith working through love” is what truly matters. It is the fruit of the Christian freedom that he speaks of in the passage.

The fruit of the Spirit is slow food, not fast food; good food, not bad food. It's never going to be a hamburger - if, by a hamburger, we mean an entree that is cooked, wrapped and rushed to a ravenous customer in a matter of minutes.

No, it's a lifestyle that takes time to cultivate and develop. We'll need to cultivate and nurture spiritual gifts such as generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These fruits won't sprout up quickly, and they won't be ripe and ready overnight. In fact, converting to a fruit-full lifestyle means that you've taken over what Carlo Petrini of the Slow Food Movement originating in Italy calls "the rhythms of your life."

Selecting the slow food, fruit option, allows us, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to gain control over how fast we go - to set a pace that enables us to cultivate and nurture virtues such as generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We do not have to be victims of our schedules, no matter how harried and driven we feel. We are in control of deciding how fast we have to go. Remember what Paul said to the Galatians: "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (v. 1).

The art of Christian living - choosing a "slow-faith" rather than a "fast-faith" approach to living - also requires community. Christianity is based on a shared Communion meal and life together in the body of Christ - not on fast-faith pit stops and individualistic approaches to the Christian life. It is within the community that Paul challenges us to become "slaves to one another" through love, resisting the temptation to use our Christian freedom "as an opportunity for self-indulgence" (v. 13).

It's like the Italian theologian said: Fast food lacks "the community aspect of sharing." Fast faith is as deficient as fast food - an approach to Christianity that is rushed and individualistic.

God is calling us to make a lifestyle change, eliminating one hamburger at a time or one vice at a time. But have as much fruit as you want. Amen.