Porky Jesus/ Feed Me

“Feed me” is the cry of gluttonous churchgoer who defines their spiritual life by how much preaching they hear and enjoy. If they don’t like the speaker’s style or personality, then he does not “feed them.” And they will be off looking for someone else who can scratch their “religious information itch” with passionate and powerful insights. The Bible calls it “people having itching ears.”

The term “feed me” is forgery of what Jesus told Peter when He walked with him on the beach. He told Peter that if “he loved Him, he would, feed His sheep.” So people wanting to take advantage of what Jesus said simply cry out, “I need someone to feed me!”

“Feed me” also works well with the preacher. After all you cannot do any better than to obey Jesus and feed His sheep! If you feed them they will come! They will sit and swoon. They will take notes and nod with conviction and agreement. It’s a beautiful thing; a preacher feeding the sheep and the sheep eating it up! It’s an experience that I enjoy more than words can say. But is that what Jesus had in mind when he told Peter, “feed my sheep?”

In the context Jesus was not talking about the roughly 120 people who were already committed to following Jesus. He was talking about the whole nation of Israel and the lost world that were like sheep without a shepherd. People, who like sheep, had turned everyone to his own way. In fact it was not so much about just feeding them as it was about going out like a shepherd and bringing them into the sheepfold of faith!

In Jesus day, the effort to feed the sheep, the four legged kind, had a definite purpose. It was so that the sheep could be eaten, sheared or sustained so they could reproduce. The sheep were fed not to just make them happy, but to enable them to accomplish their ultimate purpose!

In the human world, when we feed the sheep, something else happens. The more well fed the sheep are, the less productive they become. A fed sheep (the two legged kind) should be looking for ways to share the meat of what they have been learning. They should be longing to sacrifice themselves for the good and blessing of others. They should share with those who are truly starving in our world that there is someone who really is the Bread of Life. The real goal of a well fed sheep should be to want the starving and truly malnourished of this world to eat of the Bread of Heaven.

It is such a tragedy that the entire modern church organization is set up to educate and instruct but not to enable and send out. Instead of equipping and sending out an army of people ready to share the blessings of the Good Shepherd we create more and more excuses for them to come and hide in the “sanctuary” and learn more of that, with which they refuse, to do anything!

For all the time and money that is spent on discipleship in this country, we have an ever decreasing number of people who are coming into the discipline.

Sadly most pastors and church leaders have figured out that porky, well fed sheep, don’t complain. They don’t make trouble. They just tell others about how good the food is and how they should come eat too. They consume, contribute and keep the cycle going and it never occurs to them that they should do something besides eat. After all, if Jesus told someone to feed, it’s our duty to eat, right?

Porky Jesus Continued

Can you imagine a porky Jesus?

Of all the renderings of what Jesus might have looked like, I have never seen one that made Him look plump. Or to be totally politically incorrect, porky! I have never once seen a porky Jesus. Well, except for one.

One year a church had two men playing the role of Jesus. One was played by a small thin man that looked good hanging on the cross in his loin cloth and light enough to be hoisted up during the ascension scene. The trouble was he couldn’t sing.

Then there was the guy who they wanted to play the part that had a great voice but he was well, a little on fleshy side. The singing Jesus was, you guessed it, dare I say it, a porky Jesus. Just a little too porky to hang on the cross in a loin cloth and way too porky to hoist the 30 feet into the ceiling in the ascension scene, so they had the petite Jesus and the…porky Jesus.

I am pretty sure that the reason they never painted Jesus as porky was because while we have no way of knowing what He looked like, it is pretty certain that a man who had no home, walked every where he went and often worked without eating to the point of exhaustion, was not porky.

Remember the story of Jesus asleep in the storm-tossed, sinking boat? Of all the explanations I have ever heard, not one time has anyone blamed sleep-apnea due to mild or morbid obesity. The most likely reason Jesus was able to sleep in such an unlikely circumstance was that he was so mentally and physically exhausted that he passed out in the back of the boat!

You never see a porky Jesus because he was serving himself to death. He was walking along endless lines of hurting people whom He healed. He very likely spent few nights indoors. After all He was not born in a house and after He began His ministry, it is very likely that he spent more nights praying and sleeping on a hillside than in a guest house.

I wonder how many times someone invited Him to dinner and by the time the dinner was over they were so convicted or enraged that they did not invite Him to spend the night!

No, I am pretty sure there was no porky Jesus. The man Jesus was thin, weary and in need of supper, a shower, and sleep! The point is that He was so busy living, loving and going out into the world that he was as we would call it, malnourished.

While Jesus was not porky, the same cannot be said my most of us who call ourselves His followers.

“In a study on body weight and religion, sociologist Kenneth Ferraro of Purdue University discovered that active church members are more likely to be overweight than other people.

Ferraro found religion was associated with obesity in all 50 states. Broken down by religious groups, Southern Baptists were the heaviest, while believers from non-Christian religions were the least likely to be overweight.
Among other indicators, believers who watch or listen to religious broadcasts were more likely to be overweight.”

If you think that the research is faulty, just go to church. Look around. Check the bulletin for the next eating-meeting. You will find that typical church-goers are drawn together to eat, take a seat, and meet.

We have traded the Great Commission for the great Concessions. We call the food courts at sporting arenas concession stands. Because it is where we go to concede or yield to our cravings for food.

Church goers love to go to a church fellowship meals and have a Bible study. They love to concede to their appetite for food. But don’t ask many of them to serve a meal to the needy. And whatever you do, don’t make it a habit of going to the great concessions and not taking something or you will soon be treated as an outcast!

Does it strike you as odd that churches will build enormous meeting halls and furnish state-of-the-art kitchens but never host a daily or weekly meal for the needy and hungry?

Oh, you will have no trouble finding a porky Baptist or a porky Methodist or a porky Pentecostal. You might even find a porky actor playing Jesus in a drama, but when you look at the homeless missionary of the New Testament, you will not find a porky Jesus.

Maybe churches should begin to refocus on serving the needs of the community rather than the needs of its members.

Porky Jesus

Do you speak Porky-Jesus?

Excuse me! Porky Jesus, that’s got to be taking God’s name in vain if not out right blasphemy!

Well before you heat up the tar and start plucking feathers let me tell you first of all these were the words of a precious, innocent two year old. She and her dad were having a random conversation and he referred to something as being Portuguese to which she responded, “Mommy, daddy is talking porky-Jesus!”

Well I just chuckled, as I hope you are now doing! Her dad had said one thing and she had heard another. Because of her limited vocabulary and understanding she translated what he had said into words that she could put together. Portuguese was not in her vocabulary box. So, she quickly grabbed the two things in her box that would coincide with what she thought she heard and so she came out with “porky-Jesus.”

I tell you this story to convey one simple truth; We interpret things in the framework of our box, our understanding, experience and vocabulary. We can see or hear one thing and because of our box we translate or interpret things very differently. This is especially true in regard to the Church (body) that Jesus founded and the churches that are in business today.

For about 1700 years we have been reading more or less the very same New Testament. Yet these centuries have been marked by blood, controversy and division because of the way we read the very same words.

Thankfully, it has been a long time since one Christian group has imprisoned and or executed a member of a rival Christian group. No longer is the government imprisoning people because of what they believe the Bible says, all in the name of allegiance to the Bible.

Nowadays churches just fight it out with music styles, superstars and media campaigns. One church can prove their superiority and spirituality if they are able to do a better job of saturating the market with their name and ministry strengths. Often it is about whether one pastor happens to be a more gifted entertainer than another. Not that content does not matter, content matters greatly. If your platform personality can say something profound and insightful in a moving and interesting way; then you will have a church with a growing attendance on your hands. The people probably came from another church but hey…you get more people and the church with the most people wins, right?

Currently the majority of churches are drifting or declining. And those that are growing and seemingly reaching people for the kingdom are all headed down the same spiraling staircase into self-centeredness.

Only a handful grasp the idea that the purpose of the church is to be a moving force charging out into our world and not a fortress built on a hill in which all of its people can hide.

I want to invite you to join me as we look at just how we have twisted and misunderstood what Jesus taught and commanded the same way my friend’s little girl changed Portuguese into Porky-Jesus. To be continued…