James 2:1-9

John 6:56-60, 66-69

Feeding Time

I.        A few years ago I saw a movie called “The Missing.”  One of the characters was an evil medicine man. He captured a man, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and was about to kill him.  But before he did, he said:

          Inside you are two dogs -- one is evil, the other is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the           time.  Which one wins?

Tommy Lee Jones said:  

          I don’t know......whichever one I feed the most.

II.       This is one of the greatest exchanges of dialogue I’ve seen in the movies because it’s true. That medicine man could have been speaking to any of us. Each of us has two dogs fighting in us, one evil and one good -- fighting all the time.  Which of them is winning?

III.      It’s the one we feed the most -- the one that’s bigger and stronger.  So the question is -- which dog are we feeding the most?  The good or the evil one?

IV.     This is an old idea.  In 1863 the German philosopher   Ludwig Feuerbach said:  “Man is what he eats.”  But Jesus said the same thing 2000 years earlier.  He said:  “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them......whoever eats me will live because of me.”  Jesus wants us to eat him. 

V.      Of course --  he didn’t mean this literally.   Jesus didn’t want us to become cannibals.  He was speaking like a medicine man, using material things to teach spiritual truth.  And the spiritual truth is:  whatever we eat -- whatever we fill ourselves with -- is what we become.  

          And look at what we eat each day!  Music -- radio -- television -- conversations --  this is our food!

          Right now I’m feeding you this sermon -- I hope it’s not making you sick!  We should give Pepto-Bismol or Alka-Seltzer with each bulletin!  Because I know some of the things I say -- or write -- have made some of you ill!

          The scriptures can be upsetting.  People often took Jesus literally -- and they stopped following him.  We are told in  John 6:66:  “Because of Jesus telling people to eat him, many of his disciples ... no longer followed him.”

VI.     I wrote about this in the dome.  I said be careful about what you watch on TV and hear on the radio.  There’s a lot of angry, bigoted and mean people in the media

and if we listen to them enough, we will be like them. 

          If our steady diet is Jesus Christ -- we will become him.  My prayer for us is that we will become Jesus Christ -- living expressions of his love.