Sermon March 24, 2019
First Christian Church, Olney, IL
Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
“Fed by the Glory”
Holy One, through your everlasting covenant we can find delight in the abundance that you provide. In the realm of your making, all have enough to eat and drink. In your kindom, the family of your people are witnesses to all that you do for creation. No one is left out, even those who do not know your name will be drawn into your presence. We thirst only for you; we seek your glory and your steadfast love. We sing for joy. May we be satisfied, knowing of your faithfulness to all generations. We reveal who you are in us through the fruit that we bear—the actions that we take—the love that we share. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
This morning our text is from the prophet Isaiah—the prophet-poet who, one might say, expresses the full biblical message in these nine verses. “God loves us, no matter what, and reaches out to us even (or especially) in the worst of times, making promises that are not just pie-in-the-sky, not just theoretical.”[1]The promises are about the moment when the prophet is speaking—and not about what would happen someday.
Isaiah affirms and reaffirms that the message of God to and through the Jewish people was one of hospitality, inclusion, and plenty. Isaiah reminds and announces that God’s covenants with peoples are eternal and unbreakable however those covenants are test and tried. Isaiah raises up God’s hospitality and welcome generosity, like others had before and since, to encourage hope and to reveal, yet again, that through God’s people, God is calling to the entire world.
The Jewish people were in exile in Babylon when the prophet addressed them with these words of sustaining joy and hope. In Isaiah, the prophet had spoken to them sternly when needed, yet also spoke tenderly, even joyfully, as here to convey that whatever had happened—like defeat in battle and exile—God had not abandoned them and that God’s great mercy and love were still theirs.
After many decades in exile, the people needed a message of hope—a soon-to-be fulfilled promise of an end to their captivity and a new way of life in their home where they could live lives faithful to God who had made an everlasting covenant with them. These words, we might say, are a “comfort food” for the soul of the people.
The people who would be returning from exile would have told the stories of their ancestors: stories of the journey out of Egypt when the people ate manna and drank the adequate, but never overwhelming, water that was available in the desert. God gave them enough in the wilderness; yet on this return home, it’s not manna and just enough water. Isaiah characterizes the food on this return as wine and milk—rich and nourishing drink. Isaiah says that they will delight in rich food—good food.
One writer compares this call to the Jewish people in exile to his mother’s voice calling him to supper as a child: “Come and get it!” was music to his ears, not a command but
"good news." He and his brother were happy to run home when they heard these words, just as the people long ago, in exile, in “desolation and death," would have thrilled to hear an invitation to come and enjoy free food, wine, milk, and the restoration for which they longed.[2]It would have sounded to their hungry hearts like their mother, calling them home to supper. The same might be said of us, today.
In this time and place when our appetites and our food sources tend to run toward over-indulgence or fattiness, we might not think of wine, milk, and rich food as a blessing. Our nation and culture are relatively wealthy, food is always available even if we can’t buy it. Another part of our problem is that historically, our bodies were made to use calories very efficiently to conserve the food that we ate. Now we have such abundance that fat is the problem.
But during most of human history, fat was absolutely the best. As cooks and chefs know, fat carries flavor probably because our taste buds are made to respond to it—even if our digestive systems sometimes struggle. One of my seminary professors and friends says that this word delight, in Hebrew, comes from the word fat—so that this text might say, delight yourselves in delightful food or fatten yourselves with the fattiest food. Maybe not as appetizing today, but in days of famine or poverty, fatty foods are life giving. In this nine verse poem, Isaiah presents God as a provider of all that is needed and so much more.
Isaiah also recalls poetically the everlasting nature of God’s promises, God’s covenant with God’s people by recalling the stories of David. David was promised that his line would be everlasting, and yet, David’s line suffered the consequences of his often horrible choices, of their mindless and horrible choices, and of the consequences of the of changing empires and political power struggles within and nearby the united kingdom of Israel and Judah. Isaiah was writing this as their exile seemed to be endless. In other words, the people were feeling that God, the God of Abraham and the God who loved David, had abandoned them—with exile that promise felt over.
Yet in this time of despair and disappointment, Isaiah brings God’s word of hope for a time of restoration and for a time when the hope of Israel would be a beacon to the world—that is when God’s power and presence would shine in and through Israel, drawing all people, nations, to God through them.
What is God saying to us today through this poetic prophetic scripture of Isaiah?
The voice beginning the text sounds almost like a street vender:
Ho, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
But then it is:
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Having gotten our attention, HO!—come and buy!—then what?
As the spiritual goes, “God is trying to tell us something. . .” We may have settled so comfortably into a routine and worldview that keep us busy and distracted that we've lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can’t name those feelings on our own.
Another author describes the heat of the southwestern United States, where the humidity is so low that they post signs like those in the Grand Canyon National Park that say, "'Stop! Drink water. You are thirsty, whether you realize it or not.'" Isaiah the poet is doing the same thing, "telling us something true about ourselves at every moment of our lives," he writes. "We may not be immediately aware of how we have wandered away from God – how life has lost its meaning in pursuit of a promotion or raise, how we have gotten buried under the demands of economic and social status".[3]
We may not realize how thirsty we are, indeed. We may not realize how weary we have become, how buried, how pressed down. And we may have lost a sense of how precious we are in God's eyes.
What is it that we are worth to God? How do we or God determine our value?
This text, in its beginnings, challenges worth in monetary or quantifiable terms. Come buy and eat!—without money! Come, drink and live! without money or price.
Just as its original audience wonder if God thought it was worth it anymore to redeem them from their exile we, too, may have wondered why we are worth God’s redemption. I struggle as many do, with an uneasy peace in this world that imposes a "pseudo-order" on our lives. Just as “they gave their lives (and their faith) over to imperial productivity" (Texts under Negotiation), we are easily trapped from our earliest days into
thinking that worth is equated with productivity, that a dollar amount can be assigned to our value (think of the term "net worth”).
In a practical example, the compensation received by family members of those who died on 9/11 was based on the victims' earning potential. Stop and think about the grief(and the needs) of the widow of a minimum-wage worker in a restaurant in the World Trade Center. How can we tell her that her husband's life was worth less than that of the executive 100 floors above?
Perhaps our exile from the ways of God, the ways that Jesus taught us, unlike that of many others is self-imposed. Like the Jews who assimilated in ancient Babylon and found a relatively comfortable way of life if they adopted the values and ways of the empire, we might not perceive ourselves as exiles, either, Brueggemann writes (Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile).
However, like the sign that warns us that we may not realize that we are thirsty, the prophet wakes us up with a call to come back to God, the source of what will truly satisfy our souls.
And what satisfies our souls is nothing we can purchase. What we need is what is given without cost to ourselves, without any price we can actually pay.
We are all caught up in a world that is greed-driven, profit-focused, yet what we really need, what will really satisfy our deepest hunger and thirst is God. That’s what Isaiah tells us. That is the truth that lies within us—making us restless in the midst of plenty and especially in the midst of excess.
In this day, when our economy seems a little better, yet poverty persists and is growing in the vast differences between rich and poor, I don’t know about you, but I get frustrated. I get frustrated when I read that 3 people in this nation own enough to be worth more than the bottom 50% of the people in this nation.
Most of us in this room work honestly and hard to provide for families or have worked throughout most of our lives for that purpose and to be able to contribute to the wider community and to the church. That’s not an evil thing—to work hard and provide for ourselves and for other who cannot live with their means. Instead, God calls us: Come and eat! Come and buy! … to demand from our wider society the kinds of course corrections that will avoid turning more of us into something that violates the kinds of values that we share: generosity, hope, mercy, justice, gratitude, love, etc.
In the church, we give thanks for all good gifts and struggle to discern and articulate alternatives to the powers—the systems and practices —that deny those gifts to any of God's children. Like our secular culture these days, we're mindful that we can consume junk food for our spirits as much as our bodies, and we have to learn to say no.
And … we have to be aware that this bread “always comes with a price. Eat royal bread and think royal thoughts. Eat royal bread and embrace royal hopes and fears," but we remember that “we are children of another bread". [Our bread is holy, perhaps, a sign of all that Jesus offers us: life, relationship, justice in economics as well as justice in worship and particularly at the table, but it is not reserved for a select few. It is a sign of Jesus’ intentions.]
Like Jesus speaking of the reign of God, we are called to “redescribethe world," so that we might know the difference between exile and home, and learn to "live out of the promise,” together.[4]
I don’t know if anyone is attempting a Lenten discipline or has given anything up so that giving or sharing what you have is easier in this season, but in this second full week, we may have become discouraged, because we are trying to rely on pure willpower as the strength and determination for our lives. That’s not surprising. We tend to live in the pool of self-determination in our culture—whatever you or I do or do not do must be your own or my own full responsibility, no question. But maybe Lent is here to teach us how to reorder our priorities instead of our diets—maybe we should be hungering and thirsting for justice, mercy, peace, healing, acceptance, hospitality, love—not only for ourselves, but for all of God’s children. This core of the biblical message sounds like shalom.
When we gather at the table in just a little bit, we are reminded of everyone who lives beyond our walls, in the neighborhood, in the city, in the countryside and world around us. Those of us here need the realization of our great hunger and thirst for the presence of God—and those outside these walls and other walls this morning also hunger and thirst for a community of meaning in which to put down roots.
Ho! We bring glory to God who calls out to us from all around in the plenty of creation, in the need of bodies and souls, in the hope of our future in relationship with one another. Amen.
