Good News for Empty Hands--August 15, 2024

Good News for Empty Hands--August 15, 2024

[And Mary said:] 

"...God has shown strength with his arm; 

     he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

    and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

     and sent the rich away empty..." [Luke 1:51-53]

Of all the things God could be known for, God chooses a reputation for giving out free lunches to poor people who can't afford it.  Just ask Jesus' Mom.

Today is the date in the church's peculiar way of keeping time (called the liturgical calendar) when we remember Mary, the Mother of Our Lord. And personally, I have come to appreciate the chance, here in the late dog days of summer, to reflect on Mary's story and her faith, apart from the hectic bustle and schmaltz and saccharin of Christmas time, when she is often overshadowed by sparkle of angels and bathrobe-wearing wisemen in the church Christmas pageant.  Here, in a moment when we least expect it, Mary unsentimentally sings about the God who meets real people in the midst of real need.  And she sings in particular about the way God's agenda prioritizes feeding the hungry rather than helping the billionaires heap up bigger piles of money. Like it or not, and whether we were expecting it or not (I confess, I was into my twenties before I had really paid attention to the mere existence of this passage from Luke, even though I had been sitting in pews and going to Sunday School all my life), Mary teaches us about the kind of table her son (Jesus) will spread, and the kind of people who will find a welcome there.

It's all right there in these words from what the church has come to call the Magnificat (from the Latin words from the opening line of the song/poem, "My soul magnifies the Lord...").  As she reflects on the meaning of the baby she is carrying, Mary says that God's strength is shown by scattering the proud, pulling the powerful from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, and feeding the hungry with good things, while the smug and self-satisfied among the well-heeled are sent away.  It's a reversal of the usual order of the day, and surely one that turned heads and raised eyebrows among the Empire.  But to hear Mary tell it, this is how God's kind of banquet works.  God is more interested in making sure the empty-handed have something to eat than in multiplying the fortunes of the upper crust.  God is more invested in feeding the kids with nothing in the pantry at home than in nudging up the value of the stock market's closing number. Like we say to kids lining up for pizza at a birthday party, you make sure that everybody gets a first piece before anybody is allowed to pile six slices onto their plate.  And if you come to God's party expecting that you can elbow the other guests out your way and take their place in line because you've got more expensive clothes and shoes on, well, Mary has no qualms about showing you to the back of the buffet line or out the door altogether.  Mary knows that God is more concerned that everybody have a place at the table than in letting the meal become a free-for-all where the ones nearest to the platters take all the food for themselves.

When we talk about the kind of table that Jesus spreads, this is what we mean.  In the Reign of God, the priority is always going to be on making sure everybody gets something to fill their bellies and making sure even the lowliest are honored with a seat at the table, over the supposed "freedom" to heap your plate with as many appetizers as possible.  It's not to say that Jesus has a salary cap or a maximum allowable net worth if you want to go to heaven (although he does certainly warn that wealth can make it harder to access than getting a camel through the eye of a needle!).  But it is to say that if Jesus has to choose between everybody getting to eat on the one hand, and unrestrained cutthroat free rein for anybody to take more than they can possibly eat just for the sake of having a bigger pile than everyone else on the other, Jesus will always choose everybody getting to eat.  And yes, that may well mean that the hungry are filled with good things while the ones who already have filled their bellies from their abundance don't need to get extra.  They're not going to starve, Jesus promises; they just don't need to gorge themselves while others are going hungry.

If we take Mary's song seriously, it will affect our priorities, too, of course.  If we become people who sing her song, too, or if we dare to celebrate the birth and life and resurrection and reign of her son Jesus, we will come to care more that everybody get to eat than we will about demanding our "right" to amass bigger fortunes than we can possibly ever use. If we find ourselves welcomed and fed at Jesus' table, we'll care less about the unfettered "liberty" to acquire more-for-the-sake-of-having-more, and we'll see the utter beauty of Mary's vision in which the hungry poor still get to eat even if their wallets are empty. That's the kind of world Mary sang about as she carried her baby to term. It's the kind of world she gave as a lullaby to the child in the manger.  It's the kind of world that Jesus grew up to preach about when he announced God's blessing on the poor and hungry.  And it's the kind of world we step into, despite the insatiable greed of the culture around us, every time we share the bread and cup of communion.

After all, what is it that happens every Sunday around our altars, if not the free gift of Jesus' meal to people who come with nothing but empty hands?

Lord Jesus, take hold of our faithful imagination to dream of a world in which everybody gets to eat--and enable us to act in line with that vision today.

For the Life of the World--August 14, 2024

For the Life of the World--August 14, 2024

[Jesus said:] "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." [John 6:51]

When you think of Jesus, don't picture a vending machine dispensing snacks for paying customers with exact change.  Picture a banquet given freely for the whole world.  That's how big, how wide, Jesus understands his mission to be.  He has come for no less than "the life of the world."

I want to ask us to stop right there and just let that sink in.  Jesus himself says that he has come to give his life like bread for the hungry, not just for a holy few or for elite members in Heaven's Country Club, but "for the life of the world." All too often, we settle for a distorted version of the Gospel that makes it sound like Jesus just gives perks to the card-carrying members of Respectable Religion.  Plenty of preachers have sold a version of Christianity that goes like this:  "Once you believe this list of facts about Jesus (according to the following points of doctrine I have determined are the essentials), then you start to reap all the benefits of club membership, and you'll be saved OUT OF this sinful world, and you'll get access to the Bread of Life Buffet, hosted by Jesus for members in good standing."  If that isn't Pop Religion in a nutshell, I'll eat my hat.

Trouble is, it just isn't the way Jesus actually talks about things.  Jesus doesn't describe his coming as a matter of giving perks to a select few, as though he'll settle for feeding just a handful of devoted disciples and giving up on everyone else.  Jesus says he has come "for the life of the world."  That is, in order that the whole world may live.

It is also worth noting that Jesus is not naive, and he knows full well that "the world" is precisely "the world that typically rejects God, turns away from God, and rebels against God's good Reign."  Look through the Gospel of John and you'll see that in general, the phrase "the world" doesn't have a very positive connotation.  "The world" is John the narrator's shorthand for "the whole mess of sinful systems that are bent on rottenness and turned from God."  And yet, without blushing or second thoughts, Jesus says he has come to feed that very world, so that the world might be brought to life.

And for that matter, Jesus doesn't describe himself in that scene as the bakery's delivery man bringing a fresh baguette to everyone's house for dinner.  He describes himself as the Bread.  In other words, Jesus says he has come to give his very life for us--so that as he gives himself away, we are filled--with his own presence.  That suggests Jesus is willing to pay a pretty costly price for our lives.  After all, the hired delivery guy for the bakery doesn't lose anything when he comes and drops off your order of bread--he actually gets paid for it.  But the bread, on the other hand, gets consumed in the exchanged.  You get to live from eating it, but the bread is gone--it gives itself away, so to speak, in the transaction.   That's how Jesus sees himself.  He is not merely the one doling out goodies at no cost to himself, but the One who gives himself away that we and the whole world might be fed.

The other thing I want to note in this whole discussion, too, is what a different take that puts on the meaning of Jesus' death.  Here Jesus plainly talks about giving up his life--his own flesh and blood--in order that the world might have life. That's absolutely about the cross, but notice that at least here it's not really about "paying a debt" or "making a sacrifice for sins" or "placating an angry deity who is wroth and seething at the impulse to punish sinners."  To be sure, sometimes, the Bible talks about Jesus' death as a sacrifice.  And yes, sometimes, the writers of the New Testament will describe the cross like the cancellation of a debt or the covering over of sins.  But not always--the Bible uses multiple metaphors and perspectives to describe what happens at the cross, sometimes called "theories of atonement," too.  And here Jesus gives us something different.  Here, the cross is not about paying off a debt or appeasing an angry god, but about feeding hungry people.  Jesus casts himself here, not as "Lamb of God," or "ransom for many," but as the "living bread that came down from heaven" who gives himself away "for the life of the world."  In other words, here Jesus isn't saying, "The rules demand that sin has to be punished, so God sent me to receive all of your punishments in your place," so much as he is saying, "The world is hungry, and I am offering myself to satisfy the hunger of that whole world."  For whatever else the Bible has to say about the meaning of the cross (and, again, yes there are multiple angles and images for its meaning), here Jesus simply sees himself as the Bread that feeds the whole world.

What difference does any of this make in our lives?  Well, let me offer at least this much: sometimes we Christians make it sound like Jesus is only here to offer perks to us, like the reason to be a Christian is to get the exclusive benefits of club members.  But to hear Jesus himself tell it, he is simply not interested in advancing the self-interest of "what is good for Christians" at the expense of others.  Jesus is interested, rather in drawing disciples to himself who will share in his work for the well-being of all people.  He is interested, not in handing out snacks to insiders, but in feeding everybody with his own self.  Jesus has come not just to get church folks into heaven when they die, but "for the life of the world."  

If our picture of Jesus' mission is any smaller than that, we are the ones who need to stretch our vision wider.

Lord Jesus, allow us to be a part of your work to bring the whole world more fully to life in you.

Called to the Table--August 13, 2024

Called to the Table--August 13, 2024

"Then the Judeans began to complain about [Jesus] because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They were saying, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, I have come down from heaven?' Jesus answered them, 'Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me'." [John 6:41-45]

There's a recurring bit in classic cartoons that I bet you've seen before. Someone will be cooking something delicious in the kitchen, and the aroma wafts out from the kitchen like finger-shaped wisps of cloud, where it finds some other character who catches the scent.  And in the beautiful absurdity of Looney Tunes-style physics, the aroma of the pie in the window or the turkey in the oven actually picks up the person who has smelled it and carries them, often by the nose, into the kitchen.  

Sure, it's obviously exaggeration, but there is something undeniably truthful about the way the smell of a good meal can pull you in.  Whether it's the smell from the barbecue on a hot summer day, or the way the house fills with the spicy heat of a pot full of chili when the weather gets cold, or the aroma of brownies cooling on the stovetop after they have been baked, you surely know the way sometimes it seems like the food itself is drawing you closer, as clearly as when your grandmother called the family to the table for Thanksgiving dinner.  

And when you find yourself called to the family table, or when the aroma leads you by the nose into the kitchen to sample a chocolate chip cookie, you know that you are not being given a reward or a payment, but a gift.  You are welcome to partake, not because you were clever enough to figure out there was food, or because you have earned your daily bread, but because someone has gone to the trouble and effort of cooking and baking so that you may be fed.  The ingredients are grace... the same as the labor that went into preparing them... the same as the invitation to eat.  These are things we do not earn but find ourselves the recipients of by grace, which is to say it is love that makes us welcome.  

If you can picture that madcap moment in the cartoons, or if you can recall the way someone called you to the table as the aroma of the meal pulled you closer, then you already know what Jesus means when he talks about the way God "draws" us to Jesus, who offers himself to us all as the "bread that came down from heaven."  It's important that Jesus doesn't just envision a meal sitting in some fine dining room without telling people to come and share supper--he pictures God pulling us, drawing us, calling us, to be fed by Jesus.  You know what a shame it is if there's a good meal being offered but nobody has been told they are welcome to eat--that's a waste of a feast!  So to hear Jesus tell it, God takes the initiative to pull us in close and to call us to the table. There are no prerequisites of good behavior, no prices on the menu to be paid, and no dress code like at a fancy restaurant where they can turn away would-be customers who don't have a suit and tie.  We don't earn our place at God's banquet--we find ourselves called to the table by grace.

Now the catch to recognizing that truth is that I don't get to deputize myself to be the bouncer or some snooty maître d' keeping out the people I think are riff-raff, because it's not my banquet, and I'm not the one in charge of letting people in.  God is the One who draws us, and Jesus is both the Host and the Bread.  When I find myself at Jesus' table, it means I relinquish any pretense that any of us got there by our own achievement, and therefore, I have to let God be the One in charge of bringing others to the Table as God chooses, in God's way, and with God's timing.

It's really easy to start passing judgement about the people we don't think are worthy to come to the table of Jesus--that is, unless we actually look at Jesus' kind of table-fellowship.  From dinner parties with the notorious sinners and sellouts like Zacchaeus and Levi to breaking bread with total strangers on the shores of Galilee to including Judas at the Last Supper (and thereby at the first Holy Communion), Jesus has always insisted that our place at the table has nothing to do with our performance of piety and everything to do with his calling us. Like it or not, we are drawn to the table by the compelling pull of the Bread of Life, not by our own talent or skill.  

May we be gracious companions with everybody else Jesus draws to himself in this day.

Lord Jesus, call us and draw us to you, and let your gracious pull lead us to your table and to be filled with your very life like bread for the hungry.

Rest Stop Revelations--August 12, 2024

Rest Stop Revelations--August 12, 2024

"But Elijah himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God." [1 Kings 19:4-8]

When you are on a quest to find God face to face, God is already there on the journey. In fact, God is often the One behind the scenes making it possible for you to keep going on your way to see God, nourishing you so you can keep going.

The issue, it would seem, then, is not how we get to some particular location on the map in order to get where God is... but rather the question is whether our eyes will recognize the God who is present there already on the journey, even being revealed to us at the rest stops along the way.

This is one of the things I find so comforting--and also challenging--about these stories from Elijah's life. This is one of those scenes after Elijah has had a big confrontation with the king and queen and all their official administration-endorsed religious-spokespersons (they are usually called "the 400 prophets of Ba'al), who were all employed by the palace as Spiritual Advisors for King Ahab and Queen Jezebel to show off how publicly sympathetic to religion they were.  After getting himself into big trouble by exposing those official court prophets as frauds who were just there to prop up public support for the king and queen, Elijah became a fugitive. The royal family was furious at him, and they made Elijah into Public Enemy Number One (of course they did--the emperor always despises the one who is brave enough to say he's not wearing any clothes). So Elijah runs... and runs... and runs... to go find God.

That's an important detail in the story. Elijah isn't just running "away," but he is looking for a face-to-face conversation with God. He needs someone to comfort him, to defend him, to explain to him why he's running for his life after having been the good guy speaking up for the one true God against the powers of the day. So he heads due south, until he can get to Mount Horeb--the other name for the mountain sometimes called "Sinai" in the Bible, the same mountain where Moses had met God face to face and been given the commandments. Elijah feels like he's all alone in the world--he says a bit later in the story that he thinks he's the only one left who is faithful to God and hasn't sold out to the king for a cushy position endorsing the government and the government's gods. So Elijah goes to the place he figured you could go if you wanted to meet God. He goes to Mount Horeb hoping for his own one-on-one conference with God.

But here's the thing: God is already with him on the journey. And God not only sees his desperation, but helps him along the way. God sends angels to feed him, messengers to speak to him, and directions to get him to the end of his journey. Could God have just spoken to him right there in the wilderness on the way, instead of waiting for Elijah to make it to the mountain? Of course. The living God isn't tethered to shrines or steeples, and you don't have to go to the right mountain or hillside or valley to meet God. Everywhere is a "thin place," for the God of the Scriptures--you don't have to go find a certain spot where the boundary between heaven and earth is a little easier to breach. That's just not how it works.  But when we are convinced we have to go Somewhere Else to meet God, God just might show up at the rest stop along the highway to feed us so we make it to our destination.

It's Elijah who has the need to meet God in a certain spot. It's Elijah who has some expectation that he has to go to "the mountain of God" to hear from the divine. It's Elijah who isn't ready to hear what God will have to say. God goes with Elijah--sending angels all along the way--but God knows Elijah isn't ready to talk yet. So God just walks along the way with Elijah on the journey, making sure he gets to the place Elijah thinks he needs to go, and feeding him with divinely-appointed picnic to refresh him.

But it was never God who needed the conversation to happen on a particular mountaintop. It was Elijah.

That's us, too, of course. So often, we have these expectations of when or where we'll have "access" to God, when in reality, God's already been with us all the journey long so far. We assume that we'll have time for God later--you know, "once the kids' fall sports are over." Or we figure we can best communicate with God "in the quiet of a nature walk," or "once I get to church on Sunday," or "when the house is tidy and everything else is quiet." Or we say, "I'm feeling really stressed right now, but once I get all the things I'm worrying over resolved, then I'll be able to reconnect with God and make some time to work on my faith." And indeed, it may feel like any of those distractions keep us from connecting with God--but that's not because God isn't right there in the midst of the mess with us now. It's because we, like Elijah, have told ourselves we can't connect with God here--we have to wait until we get "there," wherever "there" might be.

That's our hang-up, not God's. But the thing about the God we see in this story is that God is willing to both go with us silently, even invisibly, on the journey now, and also to make sure we get to that spot in the future where we are finally ready for reconnecting with God. We may think it's only once the kids' schedule calms down, or once your social life is in order, or once you get past the third-quarter earnings report, that you can get back in touch with God... but God is there sending angels and bread along the way to make sure our souls don't starve in the mean time.

That might just mean that you and I can glimpse the presence of Christ with us today--even if all the other "stuff" of life isn't resolved yet, or still feels like a mess, or has lots of loose ends--if we will simply dare to open our eyes and ask honestly how we've been getting by so far. Where have there been messengers from God sent our way already--even if, at the time, maybe we didn't recognize the people who showed up in our lives as people God had put there? Where have we been given just the thing we needed to get along for a little while, to keep us going for a season until we reached a clearing and we could speak with God again? Where have we been helped along the way without seeing it in the moment--and might we recognize that today, even if we feel like we are in the middle of a crisis, or alone and brokenhearted like Elijah, or busy with a million things on the to-do list, or just unsure of what to do next, even in the midst of all that, the living God is there among us right now, and right here?

And even if we still feel we need to get to some future space or time where, like Mount Horeb, we can see God more clearly, maybe we'll spot Christ with us on the way too.

It was never God who needed to wait for an appointment at a special time and place. It was Elijah. But we can open our eyes to see Christ's presence among us right now, like a flash of light out of the corner of your eye.

Lord Jesus in the midst of our messes, let us glimpse your presence and know you are with us, making us able to keep going on the journey.

Ready for the Party--August 9, 2024

Ready for the Party--August 9, 2024

"On this mountain the LORD of hosts
     will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
     of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
     the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
     the sheet that is spread over all nations;
     he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away
     the tears from all faces,
     and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
     for the LORD has spoken." [Isaiah 25:6-8]

Spoiler alert here, friends--this is where the story of the universe is headed: a big ol' dinner party at God's table for all peoples, and the destruction of death itself.

I love these words from the prophet Isaiah, and I find deep comfort in them, whether they come up on a Sunday morning in worship, or I find myself reading them at a hospital bedside to someone near death, or I stumble upon them paging through my Bible. I love these words, and they have lifted up my heart when I have been grieving the loss of people I have loved over the years.

But sometimes I also have to stop and remind myself of just how scandalous this vision must have sounded to Isaiah's first listeners. Before these were words of deep comfort, I think they must have also been words of profound surprise, like the punch-line of an absurdist joke that no one expected.

I say that this vision of a grand divine family reunion dinner was (and is!) scandalous because of how broad and wide its scope is. When the prophet Isaiah lived, the conventional wisdom of Israel and Judah's religion was something like, "We are the chosen people, and we alone matter. God has a special relationship with us, and we are exceptional. Nobody else is really as important, and God certainly favors us and our country over everybody else."  Funny how persistent that attitude is among Respectable Religious People of all times and places, I guess.

The ancient story about God calling and choosing Abraham to "bless all the families of the earth" had somehow congealed and hardened into a rigid script that the God of Abraham only cared about the family line through Isaac and Jacob and to the children of Israel, and that their "chosen-ness" meant that God was indifferent toward anybody else on earth. We do that, we human beings. We have a way of taking a sentence like "You are special" and hearing it as, "I am better than everyone else." Well, the conventional wisdom of Isaiah's day had done about the same, and so you have to imagine it was something of a shock for them to hear the old dreamer talking about this divine dinner party.

The idea of God having a grand victory celebration might have been easy enough to swallow. Maybe even the idea of God destroying death once and for all, if the people had dared to dream of life beyond the grip of death, was fine, too. But the guest list here? "All peoples?" Really? "All nations?" What? Isaiah was envisioning something radical--a God who could still have covenant faithfulness with the "chosen" children of Israel, and who at the same time still included "all nations" to be there at the big party. This was the kind of idea that got so many prophets killed--Isaiah and his fellow prophets dared to listen when God's Spirit whispered in their ears that others were just as included, just as invited, just as precious, as the ones who prided themselves on being "in."

So consider again what it is that Isaiah is really envisioning here: that one day, the God of Israel and Judah will throw a party at which all peoples, all nations, all skin colors, all ethnicities, all languages, all cultures, and all the various and different ways of being human, would find a place set for them at the table. And there at the party, everybody eats from the same menu, even from the same platters. There is no first-class seating for the "truly chosen" with the really good food, and then leftovers and scraps for the rest back in coach. There is no division or segregation into groups. Everybody who is covered by the shroud of death is invited to watch as God rips it to shreds like an old sheet. Everyone who has wept will find their tears wiped away. Everyone who is hungry eats. Yes, the chosen people who have been stomped on by one foreign army after another will feel vindication, but Isaiah's vision of the dinner party is at the same time open to everybody.

That was scandalous. The conventional wisdom of Isaiah's day was that only fellow Israelites and Judeans were acceptable to God, and that "other people" were a threat to their way of life. The recurring advice of the talking heads of the day said that "If we let other people around into our lives and communities, they'll change what it means to be Israelites! We'll lose our way of life! Those other people, those outsiders, are dangerous, and they are threatening to make us lose our culture, our nationality, and our way of life! We must keep them out, out, out, or else they'll taint and infect everything we have tried to build for ourselves here!" The Respectable Religious Crowd of Isaiah's day said, "The Israel we all know and love is in danger of not existing anymore, because there are all these... other people around, and they are a threat to us! We have to keep them away... out... removed!" And then Isaiah, knowing full well how controversial it was to say this, declares, "Well, the God of Israel is throwing a party for all nations, and we'll all be seated together at God's table, right here on God's mountain. God's party is for everybody, and nobody else gets to revise the guest list."

In other words, God builds a longer table.

Whether the people who heard Isaiah liked that vision or not is another matter entirely--none of us ever likes to be reminded that God is not exclusively my personal possession, after all. But that wide, big, expansive vision is what Isaiah saw. All nations. A rainbow of faces, with cheeks dried of their tears by the same hand of the one God.

If we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, who was fed by vision of prophets like these, then we should be prepared for this kind of an end to the story. The prophets themselves dared to listen when they heard God speak about a party for all nations. They did not edit out the other peoples when they pictured the grand dinner table. The prophets who pointed ahead to Jesus, and then Jesus himself, had this expansive vision of who would find themselves at the table. And that made them see other people differently in their present moments, too. After all, if you have convinced yourself that someone is just not good enough to make it on God's eternal guest list, it becomes very easy to treat them like they are disposable or ignorable or less important right now when they are walking right beside you on the street, or standing in line at the store in front of you, or looking for work in your town. But if we dare to listen to the prophets and can see that all nations will be there at God's dinner party one day, you and I cannot help but treat everybody, no matter how different they are from either of us, as a future guest at the table. They may be the ones asked to scooch in their chairs to make room for you when you get there, after all!

If everybody, no matter their nationality, language, ethnicity, skin color, or culture, is going to be invited to God's big ol' table, then I should be very, very careful before I go dismissing anybody in the course of my day to day life and work. If God has said that "all nations" and "all peoples" will be there, I don't get to try and narrow down the guest list because it makes me uncomfortable. And if God says that the table has room for every tribe, tongue, and race, then I don't get to change that... and I should probably consider for a moment that such a wide invitation is actually my only hope, too, since an American of northern European ancestry like me isn't anywhere close to the actual ethnicity of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Jesus. My only hope of belonging is that God's table is big enough to include me, too, and that others who are different from me will be willing to slide their chairs over to make room for the likes of an outsider like me.

Taking God's table seriously also means that I am no longer allowed to picture the people of God as looking or sounding just like me. And I am no longer afforded the privilege of being afraid of "them," or of keeping "those people" out or away or removed from what I have. It is all God's anyway--past, present, and future--and God says here in Isaiah that all nations will find a place at the table. It would be damned foolish of me now to try and shoo away someone to whom God has sent an engraved dinner invitation already.

Isaiah had the courage--the nerve!--to stand up in a crowd that was dead certain God's blessings were only for people who lived within their borders, and to say, "Hey everybody! Our God is throwing a party for all peoples!" It took courage because accepting that wide vision was going to change what it meant to be the people of God, and the Respectable Religious Crowd were afraid of losing their old homogenous image of what it meant to be Israel. And Isaiah's vision of a future table for all nations was threatening to them... threatening enough that they were stirred up to silence prophets like Isaiah, or even to start setting up crosses for them, too. But Isaiah's was a joyful courage, too, because it meant allowing God's table to be infinitely bigger than anybody ever dreamed.

It still demands courage to see that, and to consider that God operates by the principle of "The more, the merrier," even when we want to imagine that God's blessings are our private possession.

So, again, let this be your spoiler alert: a prophet who got a glimpse of the end of the story saw that all nations and all peoples are there at God's table. If any of us has a problem with that, we'll have to take it up, not with the other nations or peoples, but with none other than God.

Get ready. Someone whose story, whose face, whose language is quite different from your own will very likely be the one scooching their chair over at God's party one day... to make room for--you.

Lord God at whose table we are fed, give us the grace and humility and courage to regard all people we encounter today as future tablemates at your grand celebration. Get us ready for your party.

Putting Food on the Table--August 8, 2024

Putting Food on the Table--August 8, 2024

  "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.

More Than Good Service--August 7, 2024

More Than Good Service--August 7, 2024

"Then Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' They said to him, 'Sir, give us this bread always.' Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty'." [John 6:32-35]

If you have ever eaten a truly delicious meal out at a restaurant somewhere and have asked your server to pass along your "compliments to the chef," you are acknowledging that the person who carries the trays out from the kitchen wasn't really the one who prepared your food.  The server's job is to wait tables.  The chef is someone else, often unseen, who is doing the real preparation--probably with a whole staff including a sous-chef, station chefs, and other skilled hands.  When you eat a splendid meal in a restaurant, you know there is someone else to thank behind the swinging butler doors who has actually made your food.  The waiters and waitresses are important in their own way, but you know they aren't the ones commanding the saucepans.  A good meal comes from a good chef, even if it also comes through the serving and by the hands of good wait staff.

Well, I mention this simply to say that Jesus is only pointing out the same here as he continues to make connections between himself and the story of the manna in the wilderness that fed the freed Israelites after their liberation from slavery.  Everybody remembered the big hero of that story was Moses, the great leader who had confronted Pharaoh, parted the Sea, and led the people forward into the land beyond.  He was remembered as the one who had been in charge when the Israelites ate the mysterious "manna" that fell like dew each morning for all the years they were emigrating from place to place in the desert.  But Jesus points out that Moses was really more like a waiter in a restaurant than a chef in the kitchen.  Moses had simply been the means through which God's provision was provided, like a server bringing out trays of entrees that had already been carefully and skillfully prepared in the kitchen.  If you wanted to know who the real Source of the manna in the wilderness, the "bread from heaven," really was, Jesus points us toward none other than God.  And his point is to say that it's really been God all along who provides for us, sustains us, and brings us to life.  It is God who has taken on the responsibility of feeding a hungry world and filling us with good things.  Moses did a fine job as a server, but he was never the chef.

That's important because God is still in the business of filling the hungry with good things and bringing people more fully to life.  Even though Moses is gone and no longer able to offer any help these days (you could say his shift at the restaurant has ended, and he's off now), we are not without sustenance.  The wondrous food of Israel's ancient memory didn't really come from Moses anyway, but came through Moses' assistance from the living God.  God has always been the One who takes responsibility for feeding the hungry.  Even now God still is the One who feeds us and fills us where we are starving, in order to bring us back to life.

And ultimately, Jesus says, God's way of bringing the world back to life is through him--through Jesus' own way of laying down his life and offering himself to us to be our sustenance.  Moses couldn't do that--he couldn't give up his life to save anybody else, but had to keep surviving personally himself in order to keep leading the people forward.  But Jesus is different.  Jesus can offer up his life for the sake of the world, like he is the very bread from heaven in his own person, not merely the wait staff who bring it out on trays.  And this is the critical difference Jesus makes.  Jesus brings us directly into the presence of the living God, who has been the hidden chef behind the kitchen doors all along, and he also offers his life up like he is the very bread we need for our lives.  This is Jesus' gift to us--and if we dare to believe him, his gift to the whole world--he offers up his whole life for the sake of ours.  Less like he is paying a penalty we owe, or placating a bloodthirsty deity with self-sacrifice, but giving us his own life to feed us like bread to hungry mouths.  This is why it is worth staking our lives on Jesus. 

It is a lovely and fine thing to have a good server at a restaurant, but at most their job is to bring the food someone else has prepared to the table where hunger diners will eat it.  Jesus, however, brings us both the loving care of the Master Chef and the actual sustenance of the Bread that renews our strength.  Jesus gives us what we have most deeply needed all along. Jesus offers more than good table service--he gives us himself.

Lord Jesus, sustain us for the day ahead with your own gift of life.