gluttony

this wed. is my turn for the rotation for preaching on the seven deadly sins. my sins are gluttony and greed. some initial questions to explore are: if you are going to limit a list of sins to only seven, why the seeming redundancy? is there a significant difference between gluttony and greed? what is the word for myself and the community of franklin grove?

experienced a brilliant sermon by Rev. Cole on pride and envy yesterday. it seemed like a similar pairing. pride leads to envy as greed leads to gluttony. but i wonder if we lose something about the special nature of envy and gluttony when we limit it to simply being an instance that displays the rule. one thing from yesterday's sermon that i intend on reiterating is that all sin leads to death, making the '7 deadly sins' both limited and redundant. however, the major shift from Rev. Cole's approach and mine will be the locus of sin. that is, i find in the Bible record an emphasis on communal sin, or at the very least, a notion that sin permeates well outside the flesh of the individual. in the hebrew law, there is the notion of the ground puking if there is sin in the midst of the people, when something is made unholy, it is contagious. etc. etc.

so, what about eating. is it a sin if the only one it hurts is oneself? how do we know where the line is between sustanence and gluttony?

it is clear pride and greed fit the 'internal emotions' view of sin. but gluttony (and envy), may make us a little more uncomfortable. gluttony has historically been associated primarily with food. eating too much chocolate clearly seems to fall into the 'non-of-your-buisness' category. the only one that is being hurt is themselves. no harm, no foul. so where is the harm in sin if it is not communal?

so, here is the tension

1. sin is not just about the individual
2. sin is about broken relationships, specifically, between humanity and God.
so, if 1 & 2, what is the harm of gluttony?