Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity

Exodus 32:1-20; St. Matthew 24:15-28

November 8, 2026

“You are what you eat.” The saying comes from Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach was a nineteenth-century philosopher. A materialist, he believed philosophy should just study man as he exists. No abstractions, and no religion. God is just a projection of human needs. “Man is what he eats.” We are what we consume.

He was wrong, obviously. But still, he was on to something. Today we think of consumption not only as food and drink, but as media. We “consume” books, shows, music, podcasts. And the economy is driven by the consumer, often buying things he wants but does not need. You become what you consume. Devote yourself to alcohol, you become an alcoholic. Eat fat, get fat. That’s overly simplistic, but you get the idea.

Watch porn, become perverse. Watch violence, become insensitive to human suffering. Listen to filth and your own speech imitates it.

You are what you eat. In the absence of Moses, who was receiving God’s Commandments on the mountain, the Israelites had Aaron make a god of gold. Moses burns it, grinds it into powder, and makes them drink it. They are eating their god. But you cannot eat gold and expect it to nourish.

You are what you eat. They were supposed to eat the food they received from YHWH, the only true God. Touched by the holy fire of His altar, they would be holy. They would be nourished by divinity. His bread, His meat, His wine, His goodness.

Consuming the food touched by the fire of His holiness, they would become holy. You are what you eat.

But instead they gaze upon the gold, and give themselves over to lust, desire, the passions. The passions consume and destroy them. They became what they ate: lifeless, devoid of meaning, devoid of truth.

What are you eating? What are you consuming? What matters to you, in this brief life filled with trouble?

Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.

What are you selling out? What aspects of your life are held back from the Lordship of Jesus?

You are what you eat. The prophet Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?”

With disordered desires, we give ourselves over so readily to things that hurt us.

Today’s Gospel comes from Mt. 24. The chapter opens with the prophecy of the Jerusalem temple destroyed.

Why? Israel had given themselves over to lust. Lust for power. Lust for money. They sold access to God, the way politicians sell access to power.

Betraying their office, betraying their God, the capital city of Israel will be burned, the temple toppled. The words of Jesus come to pass in a few short decades, when the future emperor Titus surrounds Jerusalem, and in AD 70 burns it. Jesus calls what is to come another “Abomination of Desolation,” a phrase that comes from Daniel. In the second century BC, a Seleucid king (Antiochus IV Epiphanes) put an altar to Zeus into the Jerusalem Temple, and offered sacrifices of swine there. This led to the Maccabean revolt, which is super interesting but too much for a sermon. Anyway, Jesus is saying something like that is coming, and you should get out of Jerusalem before it happens.

Well, that particular message is not for us. But we are not without our own abominations. Virginia just enshrined in her constitution unfettered abortion, and the distinction between male and female was wiped away. These are monstrous crimes.

But we should be more worried about the abominations in our own hearts. You are baptized. Which means your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What altars to idols occupy your temple? Do you eat the Lord’s Supper, and with the same tongue utter foul language? Do you praise God with your mouth, and with the same lips tell lies, slander, and grumble?

The warnings in Scripture are written for us. On All Saints we heard about those who have come out of the great tribulation, their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. Everybody likes All Saints. It’s comforting. It’s the nice side of judgment day. But on the other side is a necessary warning. We’re not out of the tribulation. For us, it is both now and ahead.

Part of the tribulation is the temptation of false christs and false prophets. No political savior is coming for you. No medical savior is coming for you.

When I was at our synod’s convention last summer (we have them every three years), delegates were already whispering about the 2029 presidential election, before the 2026 convention was even finished! And of course, no sooner were the midterm elections finished last week but the talk immediately shifted to 2028. Almost everything in life is like that. Everyone is looking for the next thing: the next school, the next job, the next vacation, the next house, the next spouse—God forbid! May it never be so for us.

Our eyes should not be watching for some earthly messiah to arise and fix things for us. Our ears should be deaf to the mutterings of prophets of doom and the prophets of epicureanism—eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Those voices mean nothing to you, for you are a disciple of Jesus. Simply look today how to keep the Commandments, and for tomorrow, you look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Are you what you eat? Well that’s the point of the Supper, isn’t it? To be sure, it’s about the forgiveness of sins. But so is Baptism and Holy Absolution. There’s something unique, too, to the various means of grace. The Supper is about nourishment – and transformation. About the Supper, Luther said that eating it, ceaselessly Christ transforms us: our souls into righteousness, our bodies into immortality.

You are what you eat. Consume evil, become evil. Consume death, die. Consume Christ, and become His. Consume His body, become part of His body. Drink His blood, be sprinkled and cleansed from all sin.

Stop consuming the things of death. You are disciples of Jesus. Don’t gaze on the gold – or drink it. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Consume His Word with your ears. Consume His body and blood. In Him shall you live. In Him shall you die. And His shall you be forever.

+INJ+