Hamburger Meat

The other day I was eating my quarter-pounder at a local McDonald's restaurant. I don't often think about the animal that I am eating but this day I couldn't stop thinking about where this hamburger meat came from. With each bite my mind proceeded from the cow's birth as a calf through maturity and then off to the slaughter-house. The hamburger tasted pretty good but not as good as it has at times when I wasn't thinking about where it came from.
I had said a quick thank-you to God before I started to eat, and in return God began to give me a comparison between a Christian and a calf.
When we first receive the revelation that we are born again into a living union with Jesus Christ, we are like a calf born to its mother, cared for by its mother, and shipped out to pasture. We prance and dance in the sweet, lush meadows of magnificent grace with little thought as to our function and purpose beyond the euphoria of freedom.
One day it dawns on us that we were bred to become hamburger meat!
Just as it is true that we were chosen in Him from before the foundation of the world to become actual children in the family of God with all the blessings thereof, it is equally true that we were chosen in Christ for good works, also planned from the beginning (Eph. 2:10).
There will come a day when the cavorting in the meadow will be interrupted by the sound of the roundup to market – to become food for the multitudes. There will come a time when we realize that only in dying to our own comfort, pleasure and self-interest, will there be sustenance for the hungry and hurting around us. It has been said that the greatest day in our Christian lives is when we realize we must die so that others may live. In fact, we have already died with Christ on the Cross to our old nature of selfishness (Gal. 2:20).
We celebrate the Easter and Pentecost season with its recalling of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. But our gaze at the Cross should be directed not just to see Jesus, but us there too, in Him, dying, dead – then buried and risen to newness of life.
When we get hold of a new truth, we are apt to embrace it at the expense of other equally vital issues. That is what we do with grace versus works. We seem capable of only tuning into one or the other, while ignoring where the two come together in the plan of God. The freedom of grace is wonderful. The calf is overjoyed with the wonderful lifestyle of the pasture. The calf did nothing to earn the rights of the pasture. Everything was given freely to him by grace.
But the rancher-owner has deep plans for the calf's use to him. There are works to be done in the use of the calf to provide food for the multitudes. The good life in the pasture is tempered and balanced by the providing to others - hamburger meat.
The longer I walk in Christ, the more I long for balance in my life. While I revel in the provision of His life as mine, chewing on my cud in restful rumination, I am never free from the powerful pull of the energy within that wants to express that life in service to others. We know that it is God who works in us, willing us to fulfill His plans (Phil. 2:13), but the hands, the feet, the MEAT are mine.
Our role is to be active in and co-operative with the intentions of God.
Much of the ambivalence, and sometimes resistance, of believers to accept that there is work to be done comes from living in fear of adding the leaven of self-effort to the great bowl of fragrant and satisfying ingredients of grace. Some of us may have spent a lifetime of mistakenly doing things to maintain our relationship with God and the soothing invitation to come home to grace is blissful.
But the bliss is short-lived (the pasture does not last forever), for we live in a permanent tension on this earth. The primary example of tension has to be the struggle between good and evil, and we live in a material place that, no matter how great our revelation of the ultimate Truth, we still see through a glass darkly. The writings of Paul, the revelator of our in-Christ position, are replete with exhortations to works. In truth, we cannot receive the gift of grace without also getting the mandate of works.
But why must we die to self and become "hamburger meat" to others? What does this mean in our everyday life as directed by Christ within? The work we refer to here is not the everyday employment and survival tasks we all have. Our work as God's children on earth is the injunction to be His hands and feet – co-workers with God – to make known His limitless love to all. Expressions of this will take a multitude of forms – from a Mother Teresa missionary life to serving at a soup kitchen.
Jesus was quick to meet the basic physical needs of the people as demonstrated in the feeding of the hungry hearers on the Judean hillsides or in the preparing breakfast on the beach for His headstrong, hurting disciples. His good works flowed out of His union with the Father – naturally, without any self-concern.
As we come to grips with the marriage of grace and works – as we let go of the fear of falling into legalism – we see that not only are they compatible, but they are INSEPARABLE. We will lose our squeamishness of the words do and work, and intentionally look for the path of good works that He has laid down for us from the foundation of the earth.
The dictates of our hearts cannot be denied forever. The love of God from within us in Christ must break through and find a way to bless others.
But again, why hamburger meat?? Why must we die so that others may live? It is the nature of the One within us. Jesus said, "He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for My sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:39).
The world needed the life of Jesus Christ to die and become food for the multitude. This is the essence of redemption. Christ became "hamburger meat" to nourish the whole world spiritually. He died to Self for the benefit of others (John 3:16).
Now we too are His Body in the present world to nourish those in need. In a way, Christ is still hamburger meat to the world through us.
Whether we are frisky young calves or settled, mature members of the herd, our ultimate purpose of the owner-rancher is to be HAMBURGER MEAT. We can be quarter-pounders to a starving world around us by losing and using our flesh to benefit others. And we will TASTE GOOD TO THEM!

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