Food

YEAR B & C, EASTER 4, MONDAY, DAILY MASS: PSALM 96:1-9; ACTS 11:1-18; JOHN 10:1-10

This past fall I led a Bible Study on Genesis. What people can eat has a suprising history. Adam and Eve and their descendants are allowed to eat vegitables and things that grow. It isn't until after the flood and when Noah and his descendants start eating meat. At the end of Genesis a different issue around food has arisen, the Egyptians refuse to eat with foriegners - this we find out in the story about Joseph and his brothers in Egypt. As the other books of the Penteteuch are written, what can and cannot be eated and who it can be eated with remains an issue. In the early church food continued to be an issue. Jesus tells his followers that what goes into a person is not a problem, rather it is what comes out. Still, early Christians refused to eat certain food that were sacrificed to other gods and in effect ostracized themselves from the larger community.

Today's first reading from Acts runs with this food imagery. Peter's vision of all animals made clean by God spurs him to bring the Gospel to the gentiles, a whole people he had considered "unclean". I'm not sure if we can ever be reminded enough to keep spreading the Gospel to new people. Again and again I think we can take a fresh look at the world we live in and see what new ways use to bring new people to Jesus.

Many sermons added from past years...

I figured out how to post things under their original date. So, I am cleaning up this blog and putting sermons on the date they were preached.

Also, I am in the process of cleaning up my hard drive. In the process I noticed I had 4 seperate folders with sermons in them. I've decided to post most (all?) of the sermons in there as a record of what I've preached. The first (from 2002) is my first sermon, preached at Saint James Church while I was in Seminary. For me personally, its interesting reading these old sermons simply to see what I said 5 years ago. Its also interesting to see what has changed and what has not since then.

Anyway, you can reach those sermons by clicking the various years to the left. I will add more as I move through the sermon folder on my computer.