Epiphany 4
Creator God,
who in the beginning
commanded the light to shine out of darkness:
We pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ
may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief,
shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory
in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mark 1: 21-28
1 Corinthians 8: 1-13
Food will not bring us close to God.’ Says St. Paul. Clearly, in his day, there was no such thing as hot chips on buttered white bread with a generous lacing of salt and malt vinegar – otherwise known as the nectar of the Gods. * If there had been, he might have chosen another metaphor rather than food to explain that no amount of what we eat – or perform any other ritual – can get us closer to God. Only our faith in Jesus Christ can do that.
Paul is trying to explain that in continuing to consider physical food as a holy object, remembering when they offered it as a sacrifice with ‘magical’ properties for the giver, they get themselves in a bind. If they stop eating that food they used to offer as sacrifice to idols, they turn it into something more than it was. And if they carry on eating it as a gesture of faith – what we might call ‘signalling’ that they attach no importance to it – they do the same thing.
Food is just food. There is no such thing as pleasing to an ‘idol’. The only sacrifice God asks is that of a broken heart hungry for the closeness of truth and faith in the Saviour of us all. So, says Paul, eat or don’t eat. Stop making a fuss over things that don’t matter, and get on with loving your neighbour.
*Or even better, crispy smoked bacon on a toasted teacake eaten for breakfast on a windy morning on Southport beach.
Previous Posts
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Praying Together 8th January 2023
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Praying Together 1st January 2023
What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?
Praying Together 25th December 2022
It only takes one candle to be lit and the darkness loses its power to frighten. That is our mission.
Praying Together 18th December 2022
In a hundred years, and for hundreds of years after that, the Nativity story will still be told, as it has been for the last two thousand.
Praying Together 11th December 2022
Few of us will be called by God to do something earth-shattering. But we will all be called to fulfil His purpose in our lives.
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It’s not how we serve between Christmas and New Year that matters, it’s how we serve between New Year and Christmas.
Praying Together 27th November 2022
Pause for a moment; for a change, a Meditation rather than a sermonette. Thanks to Clare Anglicans
Praying Together 20th November 2022
He will turn His face to Jerusalem, the theatre where His Destiny will be revealed – a destiny of suffering for the sake of unrequited love.
Praying Together 13th November 2022
So on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, it is right to keep silence for the fallen, in every sphere of life, but unless we resolve to remember them as we remember Jesus – every day of the year – it means little.