A Pretty Good Question

Transcription

1 Isaiah 58:1 9 Matt Mardis-LeCroy Des Moines, IA February 28, 2016 A Pretty Good Question I. Lent is a season for confession, and I think I feel one coming on this morning. You ready for it? Here it is: I don t know how to preach on this passage. Our text for today this reading from the prophet Isaiah our text describes the extravagant, abundant, overwhelming grace of God. And I get that intellectually, theologically, I get it. But I don t know how to talk about it. I don t know how to talk about because I have so rarely experienced it. I have lived most of my life by a different creed. My niece, Katy, is nineteen years old. So I guess it was about 16 years ago when I was home from seminary, visiting my family. At the age of three, Katy adored me. (The feeling was mutual). But on this particular visit, our relationship hit its first rocky patch. I never saw it coming. She gladly held my hand as we walked to the car, accepted me help getting into the car seat. But when I reached for the straps to buckle her in something I had done many, many times before when I reached for the straps to buckle her into her car seat, something inside of her snapped. Her face grew stern, her eyes fierce. Indignantly she exclaimed, I do it MYSELF. In that moment, I knew something for certain: She is one of us. She is a Mardis. I do it MYSELF. That was a very Mardis moment. People in my family were raised according to a particular creed: Do it yourself. Work hard. Earn your own way in this world. Then you can hold your head up high. Then you will have something that no one can take away from you.

2 I have lived most of my life according to that creed. And it has served me pretty well. But it does leave me a little puzzled before this passage from Isaiah. Today s text tells us about the extravagant grace of God. I just don t have a lot of experience with that. II. I like to do for myself, but Isaiah writes for a people who can do very little for themselves. They are not winners at the game of life. More like: exiles, refugees, strangers in a strange land. They have almost nothing nothing but the promises of God. Quick review: About 600 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Middle East was, much as it is today, a theatre for imperial ambition. So Babylon, mightiest empire of its day, conquered the nation of Judah, burned the holy city of Jerusalem, reduced the temple to rubble and led the people off into a bitter sojourn. For decades, God s people lived in exile, in faraway foreign Babylon. i But they never stop singing the songs of home. After some years have gone by, some of the people start singing a new song. The lyrics are pretty catchy: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God... In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD The glory of the LORD shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. In the exile time, a prophet proclaims comfort and predicts the restoration of all that has been lost. The exiles will return. Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Israel will be God s light to the nations. Soon Isaiah s song is on everybody s lips.

3 Chapter 55 our text for today is the big finish, the showstopper, Isaiah s grand finale. And it is all about grace: amazing, abundant and free. To those who have been parched in the desert of life, Isaiah offers abundant waters; to those who have been living on Top Ramen and tap water, Isaiah issues an invitation to the all-youcan-eat buffet. 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 yourself in rich food. So the people sit down, and tuck in. But the next part seems a little strange. It reminds me of that moment at the resort when they try to sell you a timeshare. Even as the exiles eat and drink their fill, God goes into a big sales pitch. It is a pitch in two parts. First, God outlines the offer. Then, God goes for the hard sell. First, the offer: God wants to start over with the people. This time it will be different. An everlasting covenant. I will be your God and you will be my people. Your life will be my light to the nations. The world will learn about me through you. That is the offer. But I think God must be a fan of Glengarry Glen Ross: Always Be Closing. God is always closing. This passage concludes with the hard sell: Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon God while God is near. What are you waiting for? This is a limited time offer! Operators standing by! Are you thirsty? Come to the water! Got no money? Come, and eat! It s abundant, it s amazing, it s right now, it s all for you! III. And I don t get it. If I am honest this morning, I have to admit: I really don t get it. I don t have a lot of experience with the grace of God. I have thought about it. I have talked about it. I wrote papers about it in seminary and I have preached sermons about it from this pulpit. But I haven t really lived it. Work hard; earn your own way, do it yourself. That s how I

4 have lived. I was raised to work hard, to earn my own way, to do for myself. There are clearly some advantages to that philosophy. It gave me my work ethic; it got me where I am today. In some ways, it has served me well. But it has a shadow side. I am very bad at asking for help. And I am, to be perfectly honest, a little challenged in the empathy department. My family went to a lot of amusement parks when I was a kid Kennywood, Hershey Park, Busch Gardens, Kings Dominion and I remember something my father once said. He liked going to those kinds of amusement parks because the high price of admission now, these were his words the high price of admission keeps the riff-raff out. It s like belonging to your own exclusive club, if only for one day. So the park offers more than roller coasters and bumper cars; you also get the smug satisfaction of knowing that you are better than some people. I worked hard. Whatever success I have enjoyed, whatever station I have attained, I did it myself. And if you have not risen as far, well, maybe you didn t work as hard. Maybe I am just better than you. God forgive me, but sometimes I think I believe that. IV. The grace of God is not like a family pass to Adventureland. It is something entirely different, in a whole other category. Food that will feed your deepest hunger; drink that will quench your secret thirst. Without money, without price. You can t put a price on what God has to offer. It isn t even for sale. You just come and get it. ii I guess there is one catch a bit of fine print. When you come to the table, you have no say in who will sit down next to you. Could be somebody like me someone nice and respectable, with reasonable table manners; someone who has worked hard and played by the rules and made something of themselves. Or it could be somebody who is nothing like me, who is nothing like you. You could end up eating with the riff raff. Or not.

5 In the millennial summer of 2000, I worked as a chaplain at the merchant seaport of Newark, New Jersey. And I lived that summer at Seafarer s and International House a hotel for merchant seafarers, just a couple of blocks from Union Square Park in lower Manhattan. Ten weeks with no paycheck and I was flat broke. Living on Ramen noodles broke. One time I couldn t get money from the ATM because it only dispensed twenty dollar bills and my account balance was $ I was bored, and broke and lonely which is probably why I fell into a strange side gig. A couple of blocks from my hotel, there was a rescue mission, staffed by two elderly women in uniforms, sort of an off-brand Salvation Army. Every night they had a worship service and when the service concluded, they would hand out bag lunches to their homeless congregation. They asked me if I would preach in that service once a week for that summer. So, I did. Every Tuesday night, I would come home from the seaport, shower, show up to preach, watch them hand out those brown bag lunches, and then go back to my sad little room where I would once again decide between the chicken flavor and the beef. It never even occurred to me to ask for one of those brown bag lunches. Because I do it myself. Because I work hard and I earn my own way, and even if all I can afford is a pack of ramen noodles at least I get to eat it by myself. At least I don t have to sit down and break bread with God-knows-who. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? I don t know. But maybe grace begins when we learn to live with the question. Plymouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ 4126 Ingersoll Avenue Des Moines, Iowa Phone: (515) Fax: (515) mmardis-lecroy@plymouthchurch.com

6 Notes i For more on the background and historical context, see Ronald E. Clements commentary on Second Isaiah in The Access Bible. Gail R. O Day and David Peterson, General Editors. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp , ii An insight I owe to Timothy Saleska. The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday s Texts. The First Readings: The Old Testament and Acts. Roger E. Van Harn, Editor. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), pp