CLEAN UP YOUR PLATE, IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost."  So they gathered them up and fill twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten (JOHN 6:12-13).

Feedstuffs is a newspaper for agribusiness that I receive each week.  In a recent issue Rod Smith wrote a column called, "Food waste astounding."  He begins the column with these words and basic statistics: In a day and time when agriculture is under increasing pressure to produce 70% more food for 30% more people in 40 years, it's incredible that one-third of food production is wasted every year, yet that's the estimate from the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization.  That's a lot of waste!

Waste is part of living in a fallen world; it can never be eliminated.  Nevertheless, it should be a high priority to reduce it as much as possible.  In America we have been bountifully blessed, so much so that American waste as much as 40% of their food and food waste is the largest single kind of waste entering land fills. If just 25% of what is wasted in America and Europe could be reclaimed there would be enough to solve world hunger.**  I might add that politicians are the biggest obstacle to solving world hunger.

Jesus did not believe in wasting food.  That which was left from the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was saved to be distributed to the poor and needy.  Christians must understand that it does make a difference to someone else in the world if they waste their food.

Our Father's Blessings,
Tom

*EPA Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe

**food waste expert Tristram Stuart

A TASTE OF NEW WINE

Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now (John 2:10-11).

The United States has a long-standing tradition of temperence.  We owe the Methodist circuit riding preachers a debt of gratitude.  They recognized what unrestricted consumption of home-brewed alcohol was doing to children and families.  They preached against it and worked for legislation against it.  Thomas Welch was a Methodist minister who started making non alcoholic grape juice with which to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

Today, within the Stone-Campbell restoration movement, there are quite a number of preachers, ministers and pastors who regularly drink alcoholic beverages.  The purpose of this bullet is not to consign such leaders to hell, but it is intended to remind each one of their responsibility to be an example.  I have known of such drinking leaders who, when they go on paid leave to a Christian convention, will, skip the convention to celebrate their "freedom in Christ" by partying and drinking.  They wouldn't be employed at my church very long.  The Church must be a safe place for addicts and sinners! 

In the United States, each year approximately 80,000 deaths are directly attributed to alcohol consumption.  Gun violence, domestic abuse, automobile accidents all increase as alcohol consumption increases.  Because of how alcohol effects the brain, one under the influence KNOWS what he is doing, he just doesn't care.  There are 14 million alcohol addicts in the United States.  The cost of alcohol to the U.S. economy is about $230 billion dollars each year.  Is it any wonder that Solomon warned his sons, 'Do not even wish you could have some wine' (Tom Steele paraphrase of Proverbs 23:31).

I do not believe Jesus consumed wine with alcohol.  I know there are scholars who will "guffaw" this and think I am ignorant, so be it.  But I am willing to do a word-study with you if you like.

Experts say that the use of yeast for making alcoholic wine has been around since about 4,000 BC.  That is fairly consistent with the Biblical record of Noah's wine making.  Generally, from the beginning to the end, the Bible takes a dim view of alcohol consumption, but commends those who abstain.  Among those are the Rechabites of Jeremiah 35 of whom God said they "shall never lack a man to stand before me" because they obeyed the command of  Jonadab, their father, to not drink alcohol.

What would Jesus do?

Our Father's Love,
Tom

*It's just an opinion of mine that the water Jesus turned to wine was what wine will be in the new creation. 

COMMUNION: LET US USE WHAT JESUS USED

Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (I Corinthians 5:8).

Recently, I had the opportunity to teach a class of 5th and 6th graders about communion, as a result, it made me think that it is important for all to understand.  A couple of  points about communion that are important for Christians to understand are what the elements were that Jesus used to institute the memorial and why.

When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper he used a couple of the elements of the passover meal that he and the disciples were eating (Read Matthew 26:26-29).  The bread that Jesus used was unleavened bread.  Leaven, throughout the Scriptures, is symbolic of sin.  The Jews were to search out all leaven in their houses and dispose of it at this time.  The spread of leaven is subtle, but it always spreads.  It is symbolic of sin's influence, relentless and malignant.

The contents of the "cup" that Jesus used was nonalcoholic wine, "fruit of the vine."  I say this with confidence that what was used to celebrate the Passover, and what Jesus used to institute his memorial was not wine as we think of it today.  Making wine with alcohol required yeast, otherwise known as leaven.  The same leaven that makes the bread ferments the wine.  It would not have been on the passover table.

The body that was broken for us and the blood that was shed for us was without sin.  The emblems that are used in this memorial should not be that which contain the symbols of sin.

Our Father's Love,
Tom