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A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” ~ Isaiah 40:3-5
This is why I fell in love with this passage so long ago: Completely absent from this tale of judgment is one single word about the usual ways we divide ourselves as Christians. Jesus does not say, “Enter into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for when someone doubted the Virgin Birth you corrected them! When someone told you they were gay, you reminded them they were sinners. When someone said women could be preachers, you told them they had rejected me.” Completely missing from this scene of judgment is any notion that what we believe enters into the equation.
This is why I fell in love with this passage. It is 100% about reaching out in healing, loving, helping ways to those who need it, and it is 0% about thought policing, or faith measuring, or, my own personal favorite sin, who’s right.
Image: Christ, King, and the Great Bishop who sits flanked with the Queen of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Forerunner. (Church of St. Nicholas Toplicki, Repubic of Macedonia, 1537. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia.)
A man is going away for a while, and while he is gone, he decides to entrust his property to his slaves. To one he gives five talents—that’s about $2,000,000 in today’s terms. To the next he gives two talents—the equivalent of about $888,000. To the third, a mere single talent—about $444,000.
These are staggeringly large amounts of money. It almost doesn’t seem fair. How could one possibly know? Where to even begin? What would you do with an old-school “talent”? According to the parable, the first two slaves invested and traded. What would Jesus have done?
Image: The Parable of the Talents by Mironov, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Once upon a time, there was a man who knew that he was going to die. So, naturally, he turned to telling stories. And these stories had a decidedly “end of days” feeling about them—as if he were talking about, not only the end of his own days, but the end of an age, the end of the world. So one day, in that very same holy place wherein he had flipped over the tables and protested against injustice, he said:
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this..."
Then and now, the people who follow Jesus around tend to fall into two groups: those who find incredible hope and comfort in what he says; and those who are provoked to anger and hostility by what he says (and want to correct him, and show him up). In our passage Jesus is very much speaking to that first group. Jesus is speaking to people who are struggling, and who have come to him for words of healing and comfort.
Still, his words are a little puzzling.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Poor Martin Luther. He was a very unhappy man.
Five hundred years ago, Luther was a German monk, dedicating himself diligently to a life of prayer, fasting, reading scripture, and other good works. But he was troubled by something, a practice of the church he considered unbiblical. He was troubled by the sale of “indulgences.” These were certificates verifying that the holder had a guaranteed reduction of punishment for their sins after they died. They were a little like those Monopoly “get out of jail free” cards. They found their biblical basis in Jesus’ words to Peter that “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).
Do any of you happen to have a coin in your pocket? Who is on that coin? Is it the president we call “the father of our country”? Is it the one who wrote the Declaration of Independence, outlining the God-given freedoms of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while, nevertheless, keeping more than a hundred slaves on his plantation? Is it the president who freed the slaves, but who paid for his courageous stance with his own life? Is it the president who was confined to a wheelchair, but who brought this country out of the Great Depression, and put its people to work again, and signed the Social Security act?
For citizens of the United States, the faces on our coins tell us which qualities we value—and also, which ones we will overlook—in our leaders. For citizens of Rome, the face on their coin told them to whom they owed specific acts of allegiance, such as the payment of the tribute or poll-tax.
There are communities that can arise in the span of an evening of dancing in a club, or going to a concert. You can find yourself thrilled by music you love in the midst of a group of strangers who are also thrilled, and with whom you find yourself somehow becoming connected. You may be holding your breath together during a fantastic solo. You applaud together at the end of a piece. You may jump to your feet and hoot and holler together to show your gratitude and approval at the end of the show. Even though you don’t know one another, or maybe know only a few of the hundreds gathered there, a tangible sense of your common experience can give you a feeling of being powerfully connected to one another.
Something like that was probably happening in Las Vegas last Sunday night, when country artist Jason Aldean was finishing up a guitar lick and turning back to the microphone to sing, a little after 10:00, at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival...
Imagine with me, what it is like to be in the midst of such trauma, such incomprehensible change, such fear-mixed-with-relief-mixed-with-fear again, as the Israelites are experiencing in our story.
Imagine what it was like. Imagine a small family unit. Father. Mother. Brothers, sisters. Perhaps grandparents.
You are there. Your parents are slaves. Your father has been one of thousands of slaves conscripted to build pyramids and palaces for the king, the Pharaoh. The backbreaking work includes making the very bricks for construction. Because all the families of the slaves nevertheless are thriving, because babies continue to be born to the Israelite women, hale and healthy, treatment of them, and their families, grows steadily worse, more and more harsh.
One night your father returns from his grueling work oddly energized, not as exhausted as you are used to seeing him. He’s heard some news; it’s trickled through the ranks of workers until a friend whispered in his ear: there is a man, an Israelite, who has taken on the job of arguing with the Pharaoh for your people’s freedom. This man seems to have come from nowhere, Midianite wife and child in tow, a herder by all appearances. And yet, it was whispered, he had actually grown up in the royal palace. And now… it seems he has been appointed by God to bring every Israelite, every person descended from Jacob, out of slavery and in to freedom...
And the truth is… a vineyard is a wondrous thing. The fruit of the vine is delicious, and sweet, and can be dried to make raisins or crushed to release the sweet juices, and fermented to make wine. In hot weather you can freeze grapes, and they are amazing. In cold weather, you can open up the jar of jam that you made with grapes and spread it on some hot toast, and have it with tea, and look out at the snow...
Image: Peter Trimming, "Autumn Colour at Denbies Vineyard, Dorking, Surrey Ripe grapes, and the vine leaves turning to their autumnal colours." Wikimedia Commons,
Every Sunday when we open our scriptures to read and hear the Word of God, we are almost inevitably coming in on the middle of the conversation. I feel that’s particularly true in this passage, which begins with Peter asking a question that couldn’t be more loaded: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? I’m speaking hypothetically, Lord. Of course.” (Matt. 18:21). Where exactly did this particular conversation start? What has led up to this moment?
Image by Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, United States - Forgive., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39881838
This is a stunning theological claim. In earlier times, the prophets kept us up-to-date on God’s thoughts, and we trusted them on that. Seemed legit. But now, more recently, God has spoken to us through a Son. A Son! And that Son is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being…” The spitting image, you might say. It’s just as if God came, in the flesh. The letter to the Hebrews reminds us, in its opening phrase, of what lies at the heart of our lives as Christians: God didn’t send just anyone to us. God came. This is the heart of what draws us together. This is what gives us our unique identity. We are in Community with Jesus Christ.
As you may know, Joan and I were on a pre-anniversary cruise over the past two Sundays.
We’ve been on cruises before,
so it came as no surprise that as we walked the narrow hallway to our cabin,
we’d see trays of food outside the doors of several staterooms.
People had ordered meals and snacks through room service,
and the leftovers, sometimes it appeared whole meals, were left for stewards to dispose of.
No surprise, as I said, but no less disturbing to us to see so much food thrown away.
The same thing happened in the dining rooms, too.
Meals unfinished, untouched, or simply unsatisfying,
or sampled and then abandoned for something more appetizing…
mountains of food utterly wasted.
I suspect that one reason cruise ship food is so easily rejected is that cruisers think it’s free.
It’s true that on these huge floating hotels, there is no additional charge for meals and many snacks.
By the pool there’s a pizza place; pick up a slice or five…no charge.
Around the corner, ice cream cones…no extra charge there either.
Pastries in the piazza, same story.
Free.
And so easily tossed aside, since a) there’s so much of it, and b) you didn’t pay for it (directly).
But at the end of the cruise,
my son Jim and I stood on the cabin balcony as we awaited the signal to disembark.
Jim pointed out all the activity below on the dock,
and we watched several huge forklifts begin the process of restoring the ship’s stores,
that is, replenish the supplies for the next cruise.
And there were palates of watermelons and cantaloupes, fresh from farms and trucks,
being loaded onto the ship…a reminder that food is real, it has value, it is necessary.
Somehow, seeing the actual melons, round and green, prompted a vision of fertile fields prepared,
seeds planted, rain and sun and labor nurturing the living fruits and vegetables,
the harvests, and the shipping, and there the loading of fresh food from God’s good earth.
What a shame to see it treated as garbage left on trays outside one’s door.
If you’ve been on a cruise, or simply gone to a buffet-style restaurant,
you’ve seen the food stacked on crowded plates,
food served from bounteous, sneeze-protected stainless steel trays and platters.
What a rich variety we have to choose from!
Well, before I begin hearing the growling of stomachs as we inch toward the noon hour,
I want to set another table for you, as it were.
A sad and dramatic contrast to cruise ship dining and trashed trays of tasty foods.
[And, please…this is not at all to plant seeds of guilt for all of us who have so much
and who take it so much for granted.
My intention is to reflect on the word of God spoken to and through the prophet Isaiah.
Those verses about free food and drink.]
Yesterday, I asked Google for a list of the largest refugee camps.
The largest is in Kenya. And so is the second largest. And the third.
Also in the running is one (not surprisingly) in South Sudan.
I was wondering because when I looked in one of my commentaries at this Isaiah passage,
I found something I had downloaded many years ago when preparing a previous sermon.
It was a sheet from the Presbyterian News Service about relief efforts following the
Rwandan civil war (which tells you how long ago I filed the sheet in the pages of that book).
The article was written by Howard Cameron, an International Mission volunteer
in our denomination.
He wrote so that we would know something of life in a refugee camp.
His words now:
Go out in your backyard and choose a l0-by-l0 foot plot of ground. Choose well because
that's where you will live for a while. Get a 10-by-l0-foot sheet of blue or white plastic,
a cooking pot and a five-gallon plastic jerrycan for water.
Don't fill it yet-- That comes later.
Now you and your family (if you still have one) leave the house and move to that l0 -by-
l0-foot plot. Make yourself comfortable because that is where you are going to be tonight,
tomorrow, and many more tomorrows while politicians and military leaders play out their games,
which will decide if you can ever go back in the house and resume a normal life.
No breaks. No time-outs. No trips to the bathroom. Everything that happens happens
on that 10-by-10-foot piece of ground. If you are lucky, a neighborhood slit trench has been cut
into the rocky volcanic soil. Privacy? You learn very quickly that privacy is between your ears.
It's a state of mind rather than a closed door.
You can't leave your plot, except to go daily for a yellow jerrycan of water
or a weekly ration of beans -- 100 grams of beans per person per day. That means three (?)
ounces of beans. You can handle that except on the day when beans are handed out. Then you
have to make a choice. The water is so far away and the food line is so long that there's not
enough time to do both. [If you are by yourself], you must choose either water or beans. It will probably be beans, so that day no water.
If you or someone with you catches something (and there are plenty of “somethings" to
catch), no call to your doctor's office. You go down the hill and stand in line at a small clinic tent
set up by the Presbyterian Church. That line may be so long that you won't have time to get to
water and back afterwards. Pray that you aren't sick on bean day.
Are you beginning to get the feel?
Now, let's put you in a refugee camp. Take your 10-by-10-foot plot and put it in the middle
of a 100-acre field on a steep hillside. Scratch out a level spot with a stick. No shovel. Divide the
rest of that field into 10-by-10-foot plots and fill them with 10,000 people.
[By the way…that was the Rwandan camp; the largest camp in Kenya has 250,000 refugees.]
Understand that those others couldn't choose their plot as you, did. They took what they could find. Or maybe the one they found was occupied by a family who just died. They took the bodies down by the road so they would be picked up and they moved in.
The other refugees couldn't even choose their clothes. When they heard shooting and
screaming down the street and realized gangs were shooting and hacking to death friends, neighbors
and family, they ran with what they had on. Maybe they grabbed a pot and something else. Maybe
not. They ran until they only had strength Ieft to walk
Some walked for six days with little or nothing to eat. Their water was roadside puddles,
small streams and rain. Thank God for the rain. It was fresh and clean. And bone-chilling.
Finally, they crossed into [a neighboring country]. Some stood around and tried to understand what had happened.
Some tried to mourn, but were too numb. Some simply lay down and died. The trauma and the
trip killed them. Some quietly died from gunshot or machete wounds. Some were loaded on
trucks, driven into rough hillsides to places called “camps” and told to find a 10-by-10-foot home.
They were given a blue plastic tarp and yellow jerrycan.
And there they are.
God bless the Howard Camerons of the world, and of the church,
for they remind us of the power of God’s word to the exiled people of Israel,
a people who had abandoned hope for a tomorrow that would bring
any relief to their hunger, and slaking of their thirst, any light in their darkness.
They had seen glimpses of promise before;
but so many times had led to disappointment that it seemed easier to abandon hope altogether.
Until Isaiah’s voice spoke God’s word of invitation, saying “Come!”
Hey! Come!
In fact three times, the word Come is spoken, or shouted, or exhorted, or whatever…
and that’s just in the first verse!
We can only imagine the hunger, the thirst of that nation of exiles.
And here is God offering relief, renewal of life,
gifts not only for their deepest physical emptiness, but for their very souls.
Listen again to the invitation, and imagine you are in exile, or in a refugee camp:
All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
2 Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
3 Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will find life.
Here’s the thing: we human beings have all different kinds of hunger and thirst, don’t we?
Yes, the poor we will always have among us, Jesus says.
So, when he says he was hungry and we fed him, and thirsty and we gave him something to drink,
and when he says a cool cup of water given to one of the “little ones” who surround us
will bring a reward…
these are not mere metaphors.
These are teachings that are concrete ways to serve sisters and brothers in need.
And strangers.
Maybe especially strangers…exiles, refugees, the faceless, the nameless,
the neighbor whom we have never met.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize the gratitude you would have if,
when you were hot, parched, desperate for something to drink,
someone offered you a tall, cool glass of water.
Slaking and quenching are such good words!
Maybe your imagination is still stuck at the buffet line on that cruise.
Well, put yourself back in that 10 by 10 plot
and watch the sky for the parachuted food dropping from relief agencies ,
or the white trucks with red crosses rolling into camp,
with the most basic of foodstuffs to be shared among neighbors.
Isaiah’s prophesy is still echoing through the centuries and the continents.
Free food!
Everyone come to God’s table.
Feast on God’s bounty.
But wait…there is another level to explore.
That line from the third verse of Isaiah 55 says”,
“…come to me…and you will find life.”
The Hebrew says, “Come to me that your soul may live.”
This promise involves not only the stomach but the spirit.
For we do have other kinds of hunger in our lives, do we not?
We know that there is a thirst for justice.
A hunger for freedom.
We could break into small groups and come up with long lists of the things we long for,
hunger for…the ways we yearn to be filled, the solutions to our emptiness.
Knowledge, understanding, acceptance, human rights.
Love.
God’s voice.
The Psalmist knew those deep hungers.
“O God, you are my God.”
I seek you “with a heart that thirsts for you
and a body wasted with longing for you, like a dry land, parched, devoid of water.”
(Ps. 63)
When soul and body thirst, it is God and God alone who fulfills our greatest needs
and satisfies our deepest hunger.
But both Isaiah and Jesus would want us to know that we play a part
in satisfying both kinds of thirst, body and spirit, and both at the same time.
When I was an adjunct professor at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education,
one of our students there was Elena Delgado.
After earning her Master’s Degree there, she went to seminary and was ordained
a Presbyterian minister, and I was excited to learn she was serving a Rochester church.
Her work also took her to Kenya, to the Crossroads Springs Institute,
a primary school for children orphaned by AIDS.
Elena saw the great need for clean water both at the school and in the children's homes.
Elena started to search for a solution and found one
when a church member mentioned a simple water filter system to her.
Friends and church mission committees eagerly supported Elena's vision
to bring health and hope to the children of Crossroads Springs
and their contributions resulted in more than 300 portable filters being delivered
to the staff and students there.
Four years ago Elena founded an organization called Water=Life.
Its goal is "nurturing the human spirit through the gift of clean water."
Now Water=Life is at work in Haiti.
It’s amazing to me that a simple water filtration system,
or wells drilled by Living Waters for the World,
or cisterns that capture rain water
can make such a difference in slaking thirst, preventing disease,
and restoring health, wholeness, and hope to villages filled with our global neighbors.
This Isaiah passage speaks of not just the bare necessities,
but the luxuries of wine and milk.
This is a sign of God’s unconditional love and grace offered to all
who hunger and thirst, gifts offered at a table open to everyone who will come.
Everyone.
I have always appreciated the fact that in Presbyterian churches we have no altar.
We have a table.
And today it is set with little in terms of material or physical abundance.
A morsel of bread, barely a taste of grape juice.
But it is also set with true grace,
undeserved, satisfying, and strangely empowering for the mission that awaits us,
to feed the hungry, support the weak, and join in the liberating forces of Jesus
to free the captives of every race and clan and camp.
Thanks be to God.
