Steak

A  Bishop is visiting Dublin for a conference. While there, a fellow clergyman recommends a restaurant to go to en route to the railway station.
He takes the advice, and decides to treat himself to a steak . He goes in, sits down, and waits for his order to be taken.
Finally, a waitress comes over.

“Good day!” he says, “one steak please, rare”.”

She returns to his table some ten minutes later, puts his plate of sirloin down before him, and says, ““ONE BLOODY STEAK, Father”.
The bishop says, ““Young lady,  I am a ‘man of God’ and cursing like that offends me.”

She replies, “Oh no, I wasn’t swearing. That’s what we call an underdone steak here – it’s how the chef cooks it….bloody”

“Right so”, replies the bishop accepting this explanation, “Sorry, I misunderstood”
A  year later, the Bishop is back in town, at a three day conference.

On the last evening he says to a couple of priests who are with him, “Look, lads, we’ve had a grand time here, but the cookin’ hasn’t been wonderful. So am treatin’ you to a slap-up dinner in a wee place I discovered last time I was here in the city. How’s about it?”

So they go to the restaurant, sit down, and when the waitress comes over, the Bishop says, three bloody  steaks, please””
As she goes off to get the order, one of the priests shouts after her, “Aye, and we’ll have  plenty of fecking chips with them!”

Soul Kitchen

Bribery!

A young girl’s parents decided to take her to visit a new church one Sunday morning.  As a small bribe, they told her that if she were good during the service they would take her to her favourite restaurant afterwards.

During the pastor’s rather fiery sermon on the destination of the good versus the destination of the evil he asked, in a rather loud voice. “And where do you think those who live a pure, just and good life before the Lord are going to go?”

The girl stood in her seat and cried out, “To my favourite restaurant!”

Mexican Jews

Sid and Max were sitting in a Mexican restaurant.

Sid asked Max, “Are there any Jews in Mexico”?

I don’t know,” Sid replied. “Why don’t we ask the waiter?”

When the waiter came by, Max asked him, “Are there any Mexican Jews?”

“I don’t know Señor, let me ask,” the waiter replied, and he went into the kitchen.

He returned in a few minutes and said, “No, Señor. No Mexican Jews.”

“Are you sure?” Max asked.

“I will check again, Señor,” the waiter replied and went back to the kitchen.

While he was still gone, Sid said, “I cannot believe there are no Jews in Mexico. Our people are scattered everywhere.”

When the waiter returned he said, “Señor, no Mexican Jews.”

Are you really sure?” Max asked again. “I cannot believe there are no Mexican Jews.”

“Señor, I asked everyone,” the waiter replied exasperated. “We have Orange Jews, Prune Jews, Tomato Jews and Grape Jews, but no one ever heard of Mexican Jews!”

Soul Food

A missionary once told this story;

In the 1980’s during the apartheid era in South Africa, I worked as a missionary in Zambia. My colleague, a European missionary working with me in the same mission, visited South Africa for his vacation. He came back to Zambia and was excited to tell everyone how much better South Africa was in comparison to Zambia. He told of the wonderful preaching he gave in South Africa, calling on the youth to give up their anti-apartheid struggle.

His reasoning was that since Zambia had Black majority rule and its economy was in a shambles, and since South Africa had White minority rule and its economy was doing much better, they should give up their struggle for Black majority rule unless they wanted to be poor like Zambia.

In reply I said to him, “Why don’t we do this: we lock you up in prison and then give you everything you want to eat and drink, but still keep you locked up in prison.” Immediately he got the point.

The hunger of the human spirit goes beyond the hunger for food and drink. We may have all the material food in the world but if we lack such spiritual food such as freedom, truth and love our hearts will never be satisfied.

 

The clock in a restaurant window had stopped at a few minutes past noon. One day a customer asked the owner, “Bert, do you know that the clock in your window has stopped?” Bert said he knew the clock wasn’t working.

“In fact,” he added, “it hasn’t been working for months. But you would be surprised to know how many people look at that clock, think they are hungry, and come in to get something to eat.”

 

These days, we don’t need a broken clock to remind us that we are spiritually hungry. There are so many dislocations and empty spaces in our lives that the spiritual self-help business has become a booming multi-billion- dollar industry.

We know that there’s something missing. The only real question now is how to find something that will satisfy the hunger. There’s a good deal of spiritual “fast food” out there. And then there’s Jesus, the Bread of Life

 

Scripture reference:  John 6 verses 24-35