Fayre & Simple

My sister visited us this year from the other side of the world. As well as running a farm, she is a chef. This means she cooks wonderfully well and with apparent ease. The downside is that if one goes out for a meal, her professionally high standards scrutinises every section of the food. If something has been frozen or microwaved, or underdone, or overcooked, or over seasoned, or insufficiently flavoured, she knows it. Whereas I am grateful for anything to eat which I have not had to get out of a cardboard box or a tin, my sibling takes rather more effort to impress. One of my humble contributions was to select a place to eat, and pay the bill, at an eating establishment near my home. Having toured my sister and her partner about Pendle Hill and the surrounding villages, we called at the Pendle Inn at Barley. Unlike certain other establishments at which we had dined, its premises only went back as far as 1930. Yet this popular public house’s culinary offerings earned the greatest commendation from my uncompromising sister. She thought the food well cooked and suitably flavoursome. Phew! And good for them. The chef managed to impress a fellow chef.

When preachers preach, they sometimes take a similar approach. Do the church’s elders appreciate what has been said? Does the retired pastor, or indeed the current pastor, offer sufficient nods and “Amens” at the correct points? Are people wowed by the selection of Greek verbs carefully explained, at the famous commentators’ names helpfully dropped in, at the clever system of cross referencing gainfully employed?

In reality, such august figures in any congregation should not be the preacher's primary focus. They may feel a sense of satisfaction at having been challenged, or the text being, in their informed opinion, rightly divided. Yet these people’s faith will be strong and firm whatever one preaches. Perhaps the waverer, the new Christian, the seeker, the one troubled and careworn- these are the people who most need the spiritual food being offered, and for whom the digestion of which could make or break them. Well done to the chefs at the Pendle Inn for pleasing a foreigner with high gastronomic expectations, but gospel preachers should prioritise the weak, the young and the feeble. I know that I do not get this right, and it grieves me when someone says "it went over their head" or it was "too deep". Any fool can make the gospel too complicated; it takes more skill to communicate the simple gospel without diluting it or misrepresenting it.

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: 1 Peter 2:2