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From March 11, 2007 Eat Up! Isaiah 55: 1-9 "Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." I can see it now, the multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Paula Deen and her people would launch it or maybe some restaurant chain serving up Emeril Lagasse's best recipes. "Delight yourselves in rich food," an enticing voice would purr as the camera slowly panned over platters and bowls of delectibles so inviting, so luscious, that just the sight of them would send your mouth watering and your tummy growling. "Rich food? Delight yourselves!" The genius of the campaign wouldn't be the slogan. Oh no. It would be the scriptural citation that accompanied it: "Isaiah 55: 2." What could be better than that scriptural stamp of approval? Eat up, everybody! It's God's will! Americans would gobble it up, this biblical endorsement for indulgence. Gone would be our Krispy Kreme guilt and Pizza Hut regrets. Gone would be remorse about that second visit to the buffet line and those ice cream parlor pig outs. Gone, even, would be our Lenten sacrifice of chocolate. "Eat what is good," we would say to one another holding up Hershey's kisses before popping them in our mouths. "Eat what is good; the Good Lord commands it!" But I wonder. Even with a campaign like this, even with the scriptural exhortation to dive into the deep end of the culinary pool, would we find ourselves satisfied, delighted? I know all that rich food would eliminate body hunger. But what about the hungers of our hearts and souls? In any number of ways, today's passage from Isaiah has already come to life here in this great nation. We live, as you well know, in a land of plenty. "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" isn't exactly the life we've been given to live. But close. When you consider all that America grows, when you consider the rich variety of fruits and vegetables cultivated here, when you look at our agricultural resources in contrast to those of, say, Ethiopia or Nepal, it is easy to see that we have been graced with an Eden-like existence. Food here is plentiful and inexpensive. The same abundance we find in our national bread basket is there when you consider all our other resources - oil and coal and the raw materials that have made this nation an industrial giant. The fertility and abundance here is reflected in other ways, too. This almost-paradise country is rich with intellectual and creative gifts, as well. "Come buy, without money, without price." Economics aside, God really has set Americans down in a land where pretty much all we have needed to do - collectively - was reach up and pluck the fruit right off the trees. If we were to call our country the United States of Abundance, we wouldn't be stretching the truth one bit. God has spread before us a banquet life. So why aren't we satisfied? When we come home from the mall or the vacation or the evening out, why it is that something inside still feels unsatisfied? Why is it that the thing we hungered and worked for - the promotion, the car, the relationship - doesn't fulfill but only renews in us a sense of emptiness? Our reading today reflects a reality at the other end of the spectrum. Israel's circumstance was the opposite of ours. Instead of living lives of freedom and abundance, God's people were languishing in exile in Babylon, living off a diet of bitter tears and oppressor's bread. God's people in exile were hungry for home, hungry to taste again the life into which God had led their newly-freed ancestors: their land of milk and honey, Israel. Through Isaiah, God asks the exiles "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" It was, I suspect, a question that didn't shock God's people so much as it summed up something they'd already been asking themselves. The Hebrew captives were well aware that their exile wasn't political happenstance; they were in Babylon in large part because they had chosen to step away from God's table, away from covenant life, to feast on their own willfulness. "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" Our forty days of wilderness living, our forty days of Lent invites us to hear God's word echo through the centuries and into our lives. Because even in the land of the free and the home of abundance we are held in captivity. We, too, know the feeling of being exiled, of having to live with the consequences of non-nourishing choices. The church has missed the mark when it comes to Lent, I believe. The church has encouraged us to trivialize our Lenten sacrifices. "Give something up," the church says as if this season was a kind of late New Year's, just another occasion for resolution making and self improvement. The church has erred in the other direction, as well. Throughout history the church has taken this season, one ripe with opportunities for honest self-reflection, and has encouraged us to use it as a time to pick at and abuse ourselves. We don't see this too much in the United Church of Christ but all across Christendom believers are proceeding through Lent subjecting themselves to harsh treatment on account of humanity's base nature. Lent should neither pamper nor harm, neither coddle nor punish. Whatever Lenten practice we take up should enable us to look more closely at ourselves. But not with our own eyes but through the eyes of a loving God, a giving God, a life-affirming God. Whatever Lenten pursuits we take up should help us identify habits of heart, mind, and hands that do not satisfy the deep craving we have for God because they habits keep God at a distance. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver has what I think is a perfect Lenten poem. Perfect because reminds me of Jesus and his marvelously scandalous way of coming at truth. Oliver's poem begins with this shocker: You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. Listen again: You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. Well, what then ARE we to do? Oliver tells us: You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Which is, as I hear it, Oliver's way of coming at the very same thing Isaiah gives us. "Eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." Both invitations are, at root, affirmations. Affirmations of life's goodness. Affirmations of the miracle it is to be alive. Affirmations of the healthy appetites and humanness God has gifted us with. Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. When true love makes decisions, it chooses wisely and well. Does that make you nervous, that claim? It's nothing new if it does. Again and again, Jesus tried to help us see what it is that love wants, what it chooses. Remember? Jesus taught that what is most important isn't the outward expression but the inward attitude. This is what matters to God. If we boiled down all the run-ins Jesus had with the Pharisees, we would see a theme: appearances deceive. What seems holy may actually be profane. What looks ungodly may actually be grounded in a sense of the sacred that runs deep and true. Jesus' perspective was more than some rebel's attempt to offer a competing viewpoint. It rose up out of his relationship with God, one that had Jesus see that the rigid enforcement of Jewish law was causing a kind of spiritual starvation of his people. Rather than helping people feast on God's love, all those rules and regulations were keeping people exiled from God. Friends, God is not afraid of our appetites, our hungers, our longings. Neither is God afraid of our humanness and the choices we sometimes make because we try to meet our need for God in unskillful ways. How could God be afraid of God's own creation? It is God, after all, who crafted us the way we are. God is never afraid of us but is often concerned. God sees how we gorge ourselves on activities and attitudes that don't satisfy, things that don't even begin to touch our real hungers. What concerns God is that the very things that are meant to draw us to God wind up becoming substitutes for God. Let me leave you with a lesson I learned in Sunday School. But let me warn you first. While it's a fun and funny story, it's also one to chew on. It's about far more than meets the eye - or ear, as the case may be. Years ago when I was teaching a class of middle schoolers, I would occasionally surprise them with sugary treats - donuts and maple bars and such. Our last Sunday together, I bought enough yummy treats for each student to have two. Believe me, I heard no complaints! As my students happily devoured their goodies, I began to feel guilty. Was all this sugar irresponsible of me? An unnecessary indulgence? "Is this sinful, eating so much of this stuff before church?" I asked. Heads bobbed in the affirmative as the chewing continued. "But what if," I asked, "but what if, as you're eating your maple bar, you begin to appreciate the great gift it is to have taste buds, and you remember that it is God who has given you these taste buds and so many delicious things to enjoy?" "What if, as you eat your maple bar, your heart begins to swell in gratitude for all that God has given you, for the many ways God has made sure your needs are satisfied? Then eating a maple bar wouldn't be a sin. It could be a kind of prayer, a way of thankful communicating with God about this and God's many other delicious gifts in life." When I finished, one of my students paused and looked thoughtfully at his maple bar. And then at me. "Yes. You're right. I think I'll pray more often!" And with that, he took a huge and happy bite. (Close with prayer.) Amen. © 2007 Rev. Karen Winkel "Wild Geese" from New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver |
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