Deviled Ham

Last updated on: June 26, 2013 at 9:39 am by Cameron Trimble

Deviled Ham 2013-06-26T09:39:55-05:00 Cameron Trimble

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Like the demon-possessed man in the Gospel lesson this past Sunday whose problems were Legion, we often feel as though our lives are possessed by other forces, as if we are chained to patterns and behaviors from which we are helpless to escape.

We’d like be able to blame our struggles on an external force or circumstance, yet, like Legion, the real oppression is almost always inside us. Then one day Legion had an encounter with Life in the person of Jesus and somehow he was set free.

In my sermon last Sunday on living congruently, I talked about one of the most dramatic parables of the Bible. In the story, Jesus sends the legion of demons from a man into a nearby herd of pigs who then run off a cliff and throw themselves into the sea. It seems that one of the lessons that get missed in this story is that even swine are unwilling to live lives that are not congruent with their true nature so they threw themselves off the hill into the sea.

I started to call my sermon Bay of Pigs, but I figured many were too young to remember that piece of history. Actually, I wondered why they didn’t just fish the drowned pigs out and cook them. They could have served Deviled Ham.

Although I could find no evidence of this I couldn’t help but wonder if the swine throwing themselves off the cliff is the origin of the phrase “when pigs fly.”

This story originated in a Jewish context where pork was definitely not kosher. These swine herders apparently were violating their core values to make money by selling pork chops to the Romans.

So it’s not surprising that Jesus, ministering to this disturbed man, somehow got linked with a stampede that destroyed a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus got credit for it, but destroying any of God’s creatures seems to me to be out of character for him. In the story, though, people were making money raising pork, when their own faith/values taught against it.

Perhaps the loss of all that pork money was a lesson that it always costs us to do things that violate our core values.

by Michael Piazza
Co-Executive Director
The Center for Progressive Renewal

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 25, 2013

Congruent Christianity

Next Post

July 8, 2013 “When you fail, dust yourself off and move on.”

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 September 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was the name of the Roman governor who sentenced Jesus to death?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Tiberius Caesar Augustus Pontius Pilate Herod Antipas