The Unconventional Offer--March 26, 2025

The Unconventional Offer--March 26, 2025

"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
    and you that have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" 
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 55:1-2)

Conventional wisdom says, "If you got it at a cheap price, it can't be of good quality."

Common sense says, "If you don't make a sizeable profit, it's bad business."

The God of the Scriptures says, "I'm giving away the good stuff for free--why would you go anywhere else?"

And that, dear ones, is the difference between the logic of the market on the one hand and the economy of grace on the other.  The people lauded as great "deal-makers" and savvy entrepreneurs in our culture are only interested in making a buck, while the living God is interested in giving graciously to the empty-handed.  You can decide whose approach you want to follow, I suppose, but you can't pick both. They are pointed in opposite directions.  So choose wisely.

This passage from what we call the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, had to have sounded shocking to the ears that first heard it.  Come and get what is good for free?  Really?  Not just water, which might have been available from a river, spring, or well, but milk, wine, and bread?  Who would do such a thing?  Who would give away valuable commodities (surely even more valuable back in the sixth century BC when there weren't dairy departments and wine aisle in every grocery store) without maximizing a profit?  Especially if you had customers who were desperate for the essentials to feed their families, as surely many of the returned exiles who first heard these words from the prophet were. No, if you have high demand, the first Law of Economics is that increased demand leads to increased prices!  If you have something everybody needs, and times are already hard, you can get away with charging anything you want!  When you have your customer-base over a barrel, you can practically name your price!  That is literally Business 101 thinking. There are lengths you might go to for the sake of closing a deal and pleasing a customer, but you don't just give away the store. That's crossing a line.

But here is God, calling to a bunch of needy refugees from Babylon looking to start over in their ancestral homeland, throwing out the economics textbook and crossing the line from "good customer service" to "recklessly generous giving." Why would God just give away good things to people who are hungry and thirsty and want to feed their families?  Well, because it turns out that God has always cared about people more than profits, and because God isn't interested in a relationship with us on the terms of vendor-to-customer, but parent-to-child, Lover-to-Beloved, Redeemer-to-Redeemed.  God crosses the line and breaks the boundary from good business sense into gracious blessing, because that's just who God is.  And it turns out that God has just never been all that interested in asking, "What's in it for me?" or "Why would I do a sucker-thing like helping someone without getting something in return?" God has only ever been interested in loving us, not profiting off of us.  

Of course, part of the tragedy that Isaiah 55 alludes to here is that so often we human beings choose foolishly and go chasing after the snake-oil salesmen and price-gouging peddlers who try to profit off of our habit of seeking the things that don't satisfy.  God keeps giving away good, cool, clean, refreshing water right from the spring, and we keep buying giant-sized fluorescent-colored Big Gulps in unnatural flavors that have no meaning or referent in the real world (What is "Baja blast" or "Purple Thunder"?).  God keeps offering genuine love, and we keep settling for counterfeits that are measured in social media "likes" and "follows."  God keeps offering authentic justice as our way of life, and we keep chasing after a vision of "Me and My Group First" instead.  God keeps calling us into real community, and we keep separating ourselves into exclusive little clubs, gated developments, and cliques.  In other words, God keeps offering us the good stuff for free, and we human beings keep insisting on paying more for shoddy knock-offs.  And that is a downright shame.

Maybe today is a day to hear God's unconventional offer with new ears, and finally to be done with the ways we have chased mirages and wasted our money on things that didn't satisfy.  Maybe today is a day to be done with the kind of obsessions with profits and deals that cannot recognize the gift of grace staring us right in the face.  Maybe today is a day in which, when we hear God's invitation, "Come to the waters," we drop what we are doing and come with empty hands to receive.

And maybe we can tell a neighbor along the way about the Recklessly Generous God who is giving it all away.

Lord God, teach us to stop spending our lives on the things that don't satisfy, and instead to receive the good things you give freely.