Sunday
05/19/19 - Sidney UMC
Sermon Title: “A change of Diet!”
Old Testament
Scripture: Psalm 148
New Testament
Scripture: Acts 11:1-18
Gospel Lesson:
John 13:31-35
Brothers and
sisters, friends, welcome once again on this the 5th Sunday of
Easter. Five Sundays after Christ rose from the dead, conquering sin and death,
and giving us hope, victory, and new life! For Christ is risen! He is risen,
indeed!
Today I want to talk about a topic that is a little bit of
a taboo topic. Today I am going to talk about a 4-letter word, which for most
people, is a word that we should never say under any circumstances. This is a
word that we certainly should never say in church, if anywhere. It’s a dreaded
word, and for many it strikes fear in us by us just hearing the word. That’s
right, I’m going to say it, “Diet”. I just said the dreaded 4-letter word, “Diet”!
While a “Diet” is the way we eat and how we eat, for many
in our culture a “Diet,” means not eating as much to lose weight. When some
people are on a “Diet” there are certain foods that they can’t eat, or that
they must eat less of. How many of us here have been on a “Diet” to lose
weight? How many of you do not like this dreaded 4-letter word? “Diet”!
I think that I am very brave to bring up the 4-letter word
“Diet” in, of all places, a United Methodist Church. You have heard my joke
before, “How do you bury a United Methodist when they die?” The obvious answer
of course, “Is in a covered dish”! I saw a funny meme or a little picture joke
on Facebook a couple of years ago. The meme said, “When you want to lose
weight,” and the next picture showed a massive Methodist covered dish supper.
The next picture then showed a frowning face and said, “But you’re a
Methodist”. “When you want to lose weight, but you’re a Methodist”.
I have joked with people that Jenny Craig met with one of
our bishops once about changing how we eat at Methodist covered dish suppers. I
then say, that the negotiations quickly broke down. I have also been told that
“if you are a United Methodist Church Pastor and you’re skinny, you have no one
to blame but yourself!”
My sermon title for this morning is called “A Change of
Diet”? Has anyone here ever found out that they had high cholesterol, high
blood pressure, or some other medical condition? Not only this, your doctor
then told you that you could no longer eat what you wanted to eat? I mean what
do they know, it’s not like they went to medical school right? Maybe you had
another medical condition and you couldn’t eat what you wanted to anymore.
Our Jewish brothers and sisters, and our brothers and
sisters of the Muslim faith, do not eat pork, for example. That is right,
devout Jews and Muslims do not eat pork. Why don’t Jews eat pork? Well in the
Jewish Torah in the Book of Leviticus, or our Old Testament, it says in 11:7-8:
“The pig, for even though it has
divided hoofs and is cleft-footed, it does not chew the cud; it is unclean for
you. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch;
they are unclean for you”
(Lev. 11:7-8, NRSV).
In Islamic or Muslim law, and even in some Christian
denominations, it is taboo or you are not allowed to eat pigs. In Judaism, many
call what devout Jews are allowed or not allowed to eat in the Torah, or our
first five-books of the Old Testament, “Dietary Laws”. This means in Judaism,
Islam, and even in some Christian Churches, specific “Dietary Laws” prohibit
what you can and cannot eat. These prohibitions aren’t just for losing weight
either, they are permanent.
So devout Jews cannot eat ham, bacon, pork chops, or pepperoni.
I saw a funny meme or picture joke years ago. The meme showed a Muslim
religious leader, a Jewish religious leader, and a Christian bishop. The bishop
was smiling, and the caption said, “Christianity, we have bacon!”
In India, people of the Hindu religion traditionally cannot
eat beef, as they consider cows to be sacred animals. Maybe some of you are
vegetarians, or vegans, flexitarians, or maybe there are foods that you can’t
eat. Diabetics have limited diets, and some have an allergy to gluten. Many
people have some type of dietary restrictions. On some level then, we are all
on a diet of some sort.
So if our ancestors in faith, our Jewish brothers and
sisters, can’t eat pork, then why can we? I mean in the Book of Leviticus, in
our Old Testament it says to not eat the meat of a pig. It also says that we
can’t eat shell fish, by the way. How many of you if I told you today that to
stay a Christian, you would have to stop eating bacon, would consider departing
from the Christian faith? Don’t worry, you’re good!
So the Torah, our Old Testament, says do not eat from a
pig, as it is unclean. Yet, we Christian eat ham, bacon, pork chops, and
pepperoni. What gives? When did Christians start eating pigs? In our reading
from the Book of Acts for this morning, we have one of the answers in the New Testament.
Some of our Jewish brothers and sisters to this day, still
follow the Jewish “Kosher Dietary Laws”. How many of you have ever noticed a
product at the grocery store has a “Kosher” label on it? For a food to be
kosher, it has to be handled and processed in a certain way, and a Jewish Rabbi
must bless it.
When I was in Israel five-years ago, in the Holy Land, our
group was told that when archeologist unearthed a former settlement they would
know that Christians were there in part, by finding pig bones. The crosses were
a giveaway to.
So let’s look once again at our scripture from the Book the
Acts of the Apostles 11:1-18. It says once again:
“Now the apostles and the
believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the
word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers
criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with
them?” (Act. 11:1-3, NRSV).
Christianity
in its very first years, consisted of only Jews. Then Greeks, Romans, and other
non-Christians began to accept Christ as there savior and become Christians.
Yet of these “Gentiles,” as the Jews often call us non-Jews, none of them
observed the Jewish Laws. The men were not circumcised, and were according the
Jewish Law therefore, unclean. Eating with them was unclean, according to the
Jewish Law. Yet, these non-Jews, these gentiles accepted and believed in the
gospel and Jesus Christ.
The Book of Acts continues on
saying regarding these non-Jews or Gentiles becoming Christians, as it says:
“Then Peter began to explain it to
them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a
trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from
heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked
at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of
the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But
I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered
my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made
clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything
was pulled up again to heaven”
(Acts 11:4-10, NRSV).
So Peter is in Israel in Joppa, or what today is called
“Jaffa,” which is a city in present day Israel. Peter tells the church that
while in Joppa, he had a vision from heaven. In this vision, a voice from
heaven was telling Peter that he could eat animals that were previously
forbidden to eat under the “Jewish Dietary Laws”. Peter then tells this voice
from heaven, that he nothing “profane or unclean”. The voice from heaven then
tells Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. Essentially,
Peter has a vision that eating restricted animals, according to God, is now ok.
Peter in fact, even says that he had this same vision three times. So are we to
then break with “Jewish Dietary Laws” now? Let’s see how the Book of Acts
continues once again for this morning, as it says:
“At that very moment
three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The
Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and
us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s
house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying,
‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message
by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak,
the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I
remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water,
but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same
gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that
I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised
God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads
to life.” (Acts 11:11-18, NRSV).
Peter then explains the experience that he has had, and the
vision that he had three times. The church leaders and other Christian, then
begin to expand the church to include no just converted Jews, but also
Gentiles. Further, it is revealed to Peter three times that Christians,
followers of Christ can eat any animal. That the “Jewish Dietary Laws” no
longer apply to Christians. Jesus of course said that he did not come to
destroy the Jewish Law, but to fulfill it. Therefore the “Dietary Laws” in the
Torah, the Old Testament are not binding for us.
Jesus also discusses in Mark 7 about what is and isn’t
clean (Mk. 7, NRSV). Other New Testament scriptures illuminate this when the
Christian Church was just in its infancy. This also is how the church in its
earliest of days went from being a small faith of Jewish converts, to a
worldwide faith that included people from all over.
In our gospel lesson from the gospel of John for this
morning, it says once again:
“When he had gone out, Jesus said,
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also
glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with
you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so
now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also
should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.” (Jn.
13:31-35, NRSV).
Jesus tells
his disciples that soon he will be crucified, raised from the dead, will ascend
to the Father, and he will not be seen again, until he returns in glory. Jesus
then tells us to love on another. Jesus tells us to love God and to love him.
So we are not
bound by Jewish Dietary Laws of Torah, as we have precedents in the New
Testament for this. Nowhere in the New Testament though, are we told to not
follow the Ten Commandments for example. In fact, Jesus reteaches and reemphasizes
some of the Ten-Commandments. Some of the Old Testament beliefs have been she
by precedents in the New Testament, but some are maintained in mainstream
Christianity, and have been for 2,000 years.
The founder of Methodism, John Wesley called this view of
scripture “the general tenor of scripture”. By this, Wesley would say that the
truths that were written and presented in the Old Testament were still binding
to us as Christians if the continued on into the New Testament of the Bible. The
“Jewish Dietary Laws” were canceled out in the New Testament, but many things
in the Old Testament continued to be taught, emphasized and practiced in the
New Testament, and to this day. As Jesus said, he came to fulfill the law, not
destroy it. What we eat no longer became as big of deal. How we live, the
choices we make, and how we treat people though, well much of this still
applies.
So with this said, let’s eat bacon! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment