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the freeing, supportive presence of God. So your experience of God may
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“The Christian Meat Grinder”
March 26, 2006
As many of you know, one of my hobbies is antiques. I have a basement full of interesting things just from the last five generations of my own family. For the most part, I never seem to have time to keep up with any of my hobbies except for special occasions like yesterday at the Antique Mall in Orchard Park, and today when we will be visiting the antique shop on Federal Avenue, and giving a tour of Silver Lake and explaining some of its history to my friends.
One of the usual items to be found in antique stores is the old cast iron meat grinder. I have many memories of the old meat grinder starting in my childhood when I would help my grandmother by feeding chunks of meat into the grinder. What came out was something very different and much easier to handle.
Later when I had my own children, I used that very same meat grinder to regularly make homemade hash in preparation for what I used to call “a special breakfast.” I remember the year that I had the South African foreign exchange student staying with me and I told him that eggs and hash was an old American frontier dish that the cowboys ate out on the range. I know I had heard that, but to this day I am not certain whether it was completely true or not. Dennis, my foreign exchange student, did not like the idea or the appearance of eggs and has, and only seemed willing to try it after I had told him the Old West story. Perhaps it was a little meat grinding in the story department. Boy, what we’ll do just to get kids to eat!
The events of our current world and the Christians’ responses to it, reminds me a little of the old meat grinder. God provides us with valuable chunks of truth and insight into God’s higher ways of thinking, yet never intending to expose all of the answers to life’s wonders, as the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us.
We, on the other hand, are always eager to cram those chunks of truth and insight, along with our own slants and opinions, and those ideas that seem important to us, and grind away until the resulting mixture comes out in a way that is pleasing to us. We do this because we, as a people like – and on occasion – need neat little packages of black and white answers. This however, is not necessarily the way God intended it. God offered us the chunks of truth and insight and then gave us the free will to make personal choices based on that truth and insight.
God’s ways, God’s thinking, and God’s future plans have always been the privileged information of God himself. Even Jesus was not privy to the entire mind of God, for he said on at least one occasion, “Only the Father knows the day and the hour of the coming of the Son of Man.” God has chosen to withhold certain information for our own good.
God has always intended us to live by faith and trust. Granted, we should always continue to learn more and more about our world and what makes it tick, but when it comes to the mind and the working of God in our lives, one must ultimately rely on the practice of faith, hope, and trust.
Look around us, what do you see? Look at our community, our state, our nation, and our world. What do you see? We see a vast and wide variety of persons and personalities coming from many cultural, social, and religious backgrounds and experiences. You see persons educated on many differing levels, and approaching life in many different ways. You see man differing approaches to God, to faith, and to the unseen in general.
God created this vast variety so that each person would not have to conform to others, but to be true to themselves. The old hymn states it—“I would be true, for there are those who trust me.” God desires that we use our own uniqueness to think, live, believe, and conduct ourselves in responsible ways.
We find much of what we know of God in our Scriptures. From the Scriptures we discover there are contradictions from one writer to the next. We discover cultural biases of ancient societies that often hinder our ability to understand it in today’s terms.
The Scripture, however, also contains plain truth and easily understood principles. We discover in it, very helpful nuggets of truth that should help us live in harmony with one another and live lives that care and provide for those who have less than we do.
We also believe that the Scripture contains all that is necessary for salvation. It is not, however, a book of science or even a book of history. You can prove just about anything when taking the verses of Scripture out of their context. Rather, our Scripture is a book of faith and an excellent one at that.
If we were able to place all of the vastness of Scripture—the good, the bad, the plain truth, the contradictions, the intentionally confusing language of prophesy, and the nuggets of insight into a meat grinder, what might be the product that emerges?
Would we learn from this ground up mixture whether life starts at conception or at birth’s first breath from God? Would we learn that the world is flat and the center of the universe, or that it is round and only a small part of the universe?
Would we learn from this ground up mixture whether way is sometimes beneficial and good, or whether war is always immoral and evil. Would we learn that procreation is the only moral exercise of intimacy, or would we learn that committed love is the moral responsibility for intimacy?
Would we learn that there are races and classes of people who should not intersperse themselves among, nor procreate with, other races and classes, or would we learn that we all are children of God, equal in value, and equally loved by God?
Do you get my point? Some people grind u0p the marvelous truths of God along with unimportant cultural ideas, personal thoughts, and a literalistic interpretation of our complex Scripture, in order to come up with a mixture that suits their preferred position and comfort level. Then they proclaim this ground up mixture to be “the pure Word of God” which must be obeyed.
Let’s look at our Scriptures for this morning once again. Watch for the words “love” and “grace,” and for the important themes that emerge around them. The writer of Ephesians tells us, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
We are no longer bound to the Law of Moses or the Old Testament for our salvation. As St. Paul said, the lawn equals death. We are bound only to the command of Christ, which is to love God, and to love our neighbor.
If we are truly loving God and truly loving our neighbor, it is neither necessary nor wise to legislate a one way of thinking for every one. It is neither necessary nor wise to legislate such issues as when the precise moment of life comes, or when the precise moment of intimacy is appropriate, nor if to start a war, nor the withholding of food from the hungry, nor resources withheld from the needy, nor crude and evil attitudes toward differing races, classes, orientations, and statuses of people. If we truly love, these issues take care of themselves through the hearts of individual Christians sharing the unconditional love of God. As the old hymn puts it—we come to the Lamb of God, without one please, but rather “just as we are,” for that is how God loves us.
The writer of John makes it plain to us that God’s love is for the world, and if it is truly for the world, then there is no person nor group of persons, who is excluded from God’s love. We must even love the sinners, as God does, and judge them not, for even Jesus “came not to judge, but to save.”
Come, place your hand in mine and mine in yours, and let us learn to find contentment and joy in the supernatural mystery of God, learning to trust God’s everlasting love and God’s magnificent grace.
Together, let us ask God for help in reversing the meat grinder and returning us to the God-ordained chunks of truth and light. Let us ask God for help in protecting those unadulterated chunks of truth and light from the grinding of literalistic and specific biblical interpretation. Let us ask God for help in living and being comfortable with, God’s general revelations of truth and light, protecting us from our own personal, social and cultural preferences.
These very un-ground chunks of truth and light are the valuable gifts from God—even though they do not give us all the answers—what they do is to urge us to live by faith, trusting in God. Amen.
