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?
