"So God commanded the clouds above
and opened the doors of heaven,
raining down manna upon them to eat
and giving them grain from heaven.
So mortals ate the bread of angels;
God provided for them food enough.
The Lord caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
and powerfully led out the south wind,
raining down flesh upon them like dust
and flying birds like the sand of the seas,
letting them fall in the midst of the camp
and round about the dwellings.
So the people ate and were well filled,
for God gave them what they craved." [Psalm 78:23-29]
When I hear people recount growing up in hard times, particularly for children of the Great Depression, I often hear them say, "We didn't have much, but there was always food on the table." I hear grown adults looking back on how their parents scrimped, saved, and sacrificed for the sake of their families. And I hear those adults voice a deeper appreciation for what their parents did now that they themselves are the grown-ups who know how difficult it can be to manage a family and provide for hungry children. But the recurring refrain I hear is that for however hard it was, they knew they could count on their parents to provide enough to get by. And somehow even if there was hardship in those lean seasons of life, the assurance that your family would make sure you got to eat has a way of binding your family together. You might not have gotten the fanciest clothes or newest shoes, but you knew you were loved because Mom and Dad put their own needs and wants on hold, if necessary, in order to make sure that everybody in the house got to eat.
Hold that in mind when you read this poetic snippet from Psalm 78 (which was the appointed Psalm for this past Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary). It gives a glimpse of how ancient Israel remembered its own corporate childhood, so to speak, and how God provided like a parent during the lean years of the wilderness wandering. Despite all the challenges of living as migrants and nomads across the empty spaces on the other side of Sinai, the Israelites told their family story a certain way: they told it as the memory of God providing, to make sure everyone got to eat, even when times were tough. They even were willing to commit to memory how often they had been ungrateful and spoiled in the face of God's provision--and how God continued to be faithful and forgiving. (That, by itself, is a wonder--nobody wants to face the memories of the times we were spoiled or ungrateful in our own childhood, and yet ancient Israel didn't edit out its failings when it remembered the wilderness years and the gift of manna in the desert. That says something about the importance of truth-telling in our own lives, too, I suspect.) Even when they were like entitled little children living through lean times, ancient Israel knew that God was reliable, and that God provided for them. Like a good parent, God made sure there was food on the table, because daily bread isn't something you have to "earn" in a family; it is a gift of grace (and, as Jesus would put it in Luke's Gospel, God is "kind to the ungrateful and the wicked" like a merciful Father).
This is the core memory of ancient Israel's self-understanding. They were freed from enslavement (before there were any commandments given, so it wasn't a reward for their good behavior or rule-following), and then they were fed and sustained through all their wilderness journeys (despite the fact that they were regularly ungrateful and unappreciative) by a God who gave daily bread to all. Their whole way of life--the life God traced out in the Torah's instructions--flowed from an understanding that God had fed them in the wilderness, despite their childish complaints, as a gift of grace. It was like a family, rather than a club: everyone in the household gets to eat, even when times are lean. The whole rest of Israel's story in the Old Testament unfolds in light of being people whose first memories were of a God who put food on the table faithfully, and on whom they could rely through whatever came next.
All these centuries later, as people who, through Jesus, claim to be adopted into that family story, it is worth us remembering that story, too. Much like many of us were born too late to have lived through the Great Depression ourselves but still come from families who did have to go through those times, we didn't directly go through the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites--but we do trace our family story through those who were fed with the manna. And that means we do start from a place of trusting God to be reliable in providing, to feed everyone in the family apart from our earning or deserving, and to care for our essential needs like daily bread. Our fundamental belief is not that "God helps those who help themselves," or that "Everyone has to earn their own keep," but rather that we belong to a family in which God, like a loving parent, commits to putting food on the table for all. That's where we start, and everything else flows from there.
Once we take that seriously, it will affect our outlook on the rest of our lives, I suspect. We will be less fussy over who has the right "attitude" to be worthy of compassion, or food, or necessities. We will be more honest about our own privileged positions and spoiled attitudes that God is willing to set aside while giving US our own daily bread. And we just might come to see that if we as Christians have been adopted into the family story of ancient Israel like latecomers to the party (or prodigal sons welcomed back home), then maybe God reserves the right to include others still under the roof of mercy to find a place at the table as well. Maybe there really is "food enough" as the psalm puts it, for all of us.
Lord God, help us to see ourselves as children in your family who have been given a place at your table by mercy, so that we will welcome others to your family table, too.
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