Categories: forty-blogs-of-lent
Date: 19 March 2012 23:46:42
Inspired by conversations on badger culls, on long term sickness and on struggling , I found a blog on the Roman Catholic site, New Advent which sort of tied them all together.
So here it is. My thoughts about my own long term pain and a mash up of the above four sources. This was the talk I presented at the 9.00pm BST service on 9th June 2010 in St Pixels, and it will probably be the only time you see a sermon on the theme, "Do not eat rock badger."
Reading from Deuteronomy 14: 3-10 ESV
You shall not eat any abomination.
These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.
Every animal that parts the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat.
Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not part the hoof, are unclean for you.And the pig, because it parts the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.
"Of all that are in the waters you may eat these: whatever has fins and scales you may eat.And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.
-o0o-
When was the last time you felt like eating rock badger?
When we look at the dietary requirements of the Old Testament we can look at how primitive they are. We are now enlightened, we know how to cook pork and shellfish without causing poisoning and even death. We are so more enlightened than those poor Old Testament people groping in the dark.
But that would be a hasty decision.
You see the OT ritual is not about disease control at all. Disease control is a consequence, but it isn't the main concern of the teaching.
There is still a yuck factor, to be sure. It hasn't gone away since we learned how to cook pork.
How many insects have you eaten today? When was the last time you tucked into a delicious plate of brains, or snake.
So even in our enlightened times we still have taboos about food.
And that is the point of the dietary restrictions, the biological yuck factor relates to the spiritual yuck factor. It is all to do with how God sees sin, so yucky things like touching corpses, effusions of blood and leprosy and other diseases, relate to the yuckyness of sin.
The image of things too yucky to touch and too yucky to eat is an image of how God sees sin. It is a pollutant. Eating pork, or rock badgers, pollutes the Jews ritually in the same way that sin pollutes us spiritually.
In the same way sickness is seen in the Scriptures as an image of sin and not a punishment of sin.
Living in constant pain does not mean I am a greater sinner than those who are fit. But the frustration I feel at not being able to do as much as I'd like gives me an insight into the frustration God feels towards sin in the world.
That's in the good times.
In the bad times, while the pain is not a consequence of sin it can lead me into sin, I get angry too quickly, can be impatient, uncaring and hasty.
Thankfully God isn't like that.
Sin is something that needs to be got rid of.
And thank God that through the death and resurrection of Christ they can be removed.
Now where can I find a butcher who sells rock badger?
-o0o-
This was first posted on St Pixels blog on 9 June 2010