Updating Recipes
A young boy was watching his mother make the family’s traditional holiday ham recipe. After noticing his mother slice off both ends of the ham before placing it in the pan, the son asked his mother why she removed part of the ham because it seemed wasteful.
His mother thought for a moment before replying, “I think it helps the ham soak up the juices while it bakes, but I’m not sure. It’s just the way my mother always did it.” Curious, he called his grandmother, but she didn’t know why they cut off the ends of the ham. It was simply how her mother always made the recipe.
The inquisitive little boy called his great-grandmother to ask if cutting off the ends of the ham added more flavor. His great-grandmother simply chuckled and said, “Oh no, sweetie. I didn’t have a pan big enough to hold an entire ham, so I always cut off the ends to make it fit.”
The parable of cutting off the ends of the ham is told many different ways, sometimes it is a young bride or a college student preparing the recipe. But it resonates with me because it highlights a tension I feel. It’s the ongoing tension between knowing that Jesus has called each of us to live out the Great Commission in our lives, the mission of evangelism and discipleship (Matthew 28:18–20), and the reality that the methods or “recipe” may need to change.
The parable of the cut ends of the ham finds its roots in a parable Jesus told in the book of Matthew. John’s disciples came to Jesus and asked Him why the Pharisees continued to fast but Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast. Jesus answered them, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matthew 9:16–17).
Jesus wanted the disciples to grasp that God was at work in a new way, and it was going to require changes for the Jewish people to move from following a set of religious rules and regulations to being led by God’s Spirit. God’s plan for salvation was finding its intended ultimate new expression through Jesus and the indwelling of every believer by His Spirit.
The church has always been living in the tension of how to live out Jesus’ mission of evangelism and discipleship in each specific era of history and unique culture. During the Middle Ages, when most people could not read or lacked access to a Bible, elaborate stained glass windows were incorporated into churches to teach the gospel stories in a vibrant visual form. During the Renaissance, artists painted large masterpieces of biblical stories for churches and patrons that wanted to communicate the gospel in a way that would reach viewers. Today, the visual arts still help people learn the truth of the gospel and how to live it out. But now, it is often created and distributed with digital technology from sermons posted online to full production movies. The profound shift has allowed the mission of evangelism and discipleship to reach millions in new ways.
Hymns—sung poems of praise to God—have always been a part of corporate worship. An early biblical reference to a hymn comes in the New Testament. Jesus and His disciples “had sung a hymn” (Matthew 26:30), likely a psalm, before they left the upper room to go to the garden of Gethsemane. During the Protestant Reformation, hymns moved from being primarily sung psalms to original songs. The writing of hymns grew dramatically in the 1800s. Charles Wesley wrote at least 6,500 hymns by completing a new song every other day. Fanny Crosby is credited with giving the church more than 9,000 hymns. Today the definition of hymns has expanded, and many gifted musicians and writers led by the Spirit have helped people learn and respond to God’s love.
This quick overview of two ways Jesus’' ongoing mission of evangelism and discipleship have seen new expressions skims over the fact that these changes were met with a lot of resistance. The change or new recipe didn’t come easily. Charles Wesley never heard his hymns sung in his home church denomination because they weren’t authorized for congregational use until thirty years after his death. But as men and women prayed and were led by the Spirit, traditional recipes were changed that continue to nourish and feed generations of believers.
The beautiful encouragement is that the Spirit may want to do the same thing through us. He’s not done updating the recipe in our generation or communities. There is freedom that allows us to ask some empowering questions. Where are the places that you have been called to live out our mission of evangelism and discipleship? How might the Spirit use you to create something for your community? What can you learn from the past and what new expressions might you contribute to the ongoing work of Jesus’ mission of evangelism and discipleship?
–Written by Lisa Samra. Used by permission from the author.
