Isaiah 55:1-9. and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Transcription

1 Isaiah 55:1-9 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. 2 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. 3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. 6 Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 1

2 Feasting at the Lord s Table It has been said that there are two types of people: those who live to eat and those who eat to live. If those are the only two choices, then I am definitely in the second category. I eat to live. I eat because it is biologically necessary for me to do so. It s not that I don t enjoy eating. Of course, I do, but I would never describe myself as a foodie. Have you heard this word before foodie? It s a relatively new word that describes someone who is particularly interested in food, both in eating and preparing it. It probably comes from the word junkie. As a junkie is slang for someone who is addicted to drugs, a foodie is someone whose relationship to food is almost like an addiction. Like I said, that s not me. If left to fend for myself, I would live on a diet of breakfast cereal, yogurt, pasta, and an occasional sandwich. I m all about convenience. Actually, here in Korea I would eat out, because eating out is much less expensive here than in America. You don t even have to tip! I ve never been particular about food. When I was a poor starving bachelor years ago, I lived with a friend from high school in a small apartment in New York City. Our refrigerator was so empty it had dust on the shelves. All that was in there was milk (for the cereal), a few containers of yogurt, probably some leftover Chinese takeout, and maybe a jar of mustard. As for the freezer, there was even less in there. I think we went about two years without opening the freezer door. In fact, when we were moving out, we realized that the freezer hadn t been opened in so long that it had sealed shut. At our moving-out party we had a contest a sort of feat of strength to see who could open it. When it was finally pried open [SLIDE], we found a box of frozen corn inside. As a twenty-something bachelor, my primary concern about food was that it be cheap. I wasn t concerned with taste or nutrition. Those were luxuries I couldn t or 2

3 didn t want to afford. Most of my money back then was spent on band expenses and rent. After those were paid, whatever was left was spent on food. That was twenty years ago. My diet has changed for the better since then, although I do still have yogurt almost every day. These days I eat a much more balanced diet that incorporates all the major food groups: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, dairy, and the most important one of all kimchi. I think that I eat well, although it s hard to be certain because nutritional standards are constantly changing. When I was in elementary school we were taught that there were four food groups [SLIDE]: meat, dairy, grains, and fruits and vegetables. Eat from each of the four food groups, we were told. Then in the 90s the US Government introduced the food pyramid [SLIDE]. We were told to eat more of the foods on the bottom of the pyramid, like bread, rice, and pasta, and less of those on top, namely fats and sweets. But nutritional recommendations have changed since the 90s. What was considered bad yesterday is good today and vice versa. For example, we were once told that eggs were bad because of the cholesterol in the yolk, but now we are told that those concerns were overblown. Carbohydrates, like bread, rice, and pasta were good and then became bad. Some foods go full circle; red meat was good, then it was bad, then it was good again. To make things more complicated [SLIDE], some people will only eat food that is organic, although there is no agreed-upon definition for what that means. And now we also have GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. GMOs are plants and animals whose genes have been altered to give them more desirable traits, e.g., to grow faster or larger or to be less susceptible to disease. Given all these shifting nutritional standards and complicated food science, eating well is so much more complicated than it used to be. You could even say that eating today is an act of faith. If eating is an act of faith, how can we trust that what we are eating is good? 3

4 That is what today s scripture from Isaiah is concerned with. Isaiah tells us to eat what is good (Isa. 55:2). Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food, Isaiah writes. Isaiah is not simply telling us this, he is inviting us to the Lord s table to feast [SLIDE]: 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 (Isa. 55:1). The invitation is to everyone who thirsts. If you have no money, no matter. At the table you will find food and drink without price. The Lord is a generous host. All that God requires is that you come hungry and thirsty. Now, of course, this is not just food that Isaiah is talking about. He is using food as a metaphor for abundant life. And abundant life is not something that Israel is feeling at the moment. Their current experience is not life but death. That can be seen in the first word of the passage. The invitation begins with an exclamation Ho! This is not a Santa Claus Ho! Ho! Ho! There is nothing jolly about this exclamation. Ho here is an exclamation designed to get someone s attention. In English we might say Hey! In fact, the exclamation Ho was sometimes used during a funeral service to get the attention of the dead. It was a way of addressing a loved one who had passed away, who might require extra effort to draw their attention from the land of shadows. Thus Israel is being addressed here as if she were dead. God is using Isaiah to speak to a community that is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Ho! Wake up! Listen! Israel appears dead because the people have been taken from their land and are living in exile in Babylon. This section of Isaiah was written sometime during the sixth century BC during the Babylonian exile. The exile is like death to the people of Israel. They are not living in exile, they are dead. Isaiah is addressing a dead community, 4

5 one that has no life because it doesn t believe in itself and it doesn t believe in the goodness of its God. The people have lost the sense of their unique identity as the chosen people of God. They have also lost hope that their God is going to save them from this exile of death. Their existence is a shadow of true life. They eat but are not full. They work but with no sense of purpose. So the prophet asks them [SLIDE], Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread / and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Isa. 55:2). This might also describe our spiritual life when we feel that we too have been exiled from God s love, when we feel that God has forgotten and abandoned us. As it was for the Israelites in exile, so it can be for Christians as well. Ours is not a physical exile. We have not been taken from the land, but we can experience a spiritual exile. Spiritual exile leaves us feeling isolated from God and from one another as well. Our relationships with both God and neighbor are broken. When we live in spiritual exile we eat but are still hungry. We all have a spiritual appetite. That is what brings us here to church. We come to be fed. But when we feel that we re in exile that God is distant we look to satisfy our spiritual hunger with things other than God. With careerism to distinguish ourselves at work. With a busy social life to feel popular. With sex to feel loved. With endless education to feel respected. I don t mean that these things career, social life, sex, education are bad in themselves. Of course not. But what makes them bad is when they become substitutes for our relationship with God. Then they become like junk food they taste good but they have no nutritional value. We consume empty calories and then wonder why we still feel hungry and sick at the same time. It s spiritual fast food. Speaking of which, about ten years ago there was a documentary called Super Size Me [SLIDE]. The filmmaker ate nothing but real fast food, namely McDonalds, three 5

6 meals a day for thirty days and then documented the effects on his health. To no surprise, eating a diet absurdly high in salt, fat, and sugar had a negative effect on his health on his waistline, his blood pressure, his cholesterol, and more. I want to show one short clip from the film [VIDEO]. I showed the clip to give us a visual reminder of the dangers of seeking to satisfy our spiritual hunger with what is essentially junk food. Doing so will give us momentary satisfaction, but in the end it will only make us sick. By contrast, God wants us to eat what is good so that we may have abundant life. This is why the prophet encourages the people to listen, so that you may live (Isa. 55:3) [SLIDE]. That may sound threatening, but it is most definitely not a threat; it s an invitation, an invitation to live as we were meant to live, with the knowledge that our lives are not our own but that we belong to the God who has gathered us and shaped us into a special community with a special purpose. God tells the Israelites that he has made with them an everlasting covenant. Whereas at one time the covenant was through one person, David, now God will extend the covenant to all people. Not just all Israelites all people Israelites and foreigners: See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you (Isa. 55:5). God is gathering us and forming us into a community and tasking us with a special purpose. We are to be witnesses to the people. The timing of the Holy Spirit is amazing. I just finished reading a book that speaks to this very issue. It was written by a well known American theologian more than twenty-five years ago, but it is still relevant today. The author makes the case that the church is like a colony in a foreign society. In fact, the full title of the book is Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony [SLIDE]. The church is a colony of resident aliens in a surrounding culture that is utterly foreign to it. The church, the author 6

7 writes, is an odd place where what makes sense to everybody else is revealed to be opposed to what God is doing among us. What makes sense to everyone else? When wronged, holding a grudge. Being slow to forgive. Keeping score by maintaining a record of every wrong. But this is not God s way, as we see in the life of Jesus. How often and how much was Jesus wronged on his way to the cross? Yet even while hanging with his arms outstretched on the cross he could say, Father forgive them. They don t know what they re doing (Lk. 23:34). Nor is this God s way as we see in the life of the church, a church that is called to witness to the nations the life of Jesus Christ. God brings us together as the church, as followers of Christ, to serve the world. Here is where it gets really interesting. This is also from the book: We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely a place where God is forming a family out of strangers. We are called as strangers, but as we gather around the Lord s table, we become family. This is not our way; we are hardly so generous and welcoming, but this is God s way. God s way is also to forgive his beloved Israel for all her unfaithfulness for sins of idolatry, empty, meaningless worship, neglect of the poor, and oppression of the vulnerable. Israel must learn this lesson of forgiveness and reconciliation. The writers of the Old Testament understood the exile as God s punishment for their sins. In exile Israel feels abandoned by God. This, they feel, is what they deserve. And yet that is the precise moment that God is drawing closer to Israel than ever before. God has not forgotten them. Seek the Lord while he may be found, the prophet urges (Isa. 55:6). Let the people return to the Lord, for he will have mercy on them, and he will abundantly pardon (Isa. 55:7). As wonderful as that is, God does more than pardon. At the moment that Israel feels most abandoned, God promises to make with Israel an everlasting covenant. In other 7

8 words, the covenant will no longer be conditioned on Israel being faithful. The new covenant is everlasting and unconditional. Israel s unfaithfulness will not be a deal breaker. What s more, the new covenant extends beyond Israel. All the nations are included. In God s mysterious love, all people are invited to the banquet. God makes room at the table even for those who don t know him. I so wish we were celebrating the Lord s Supper today. If we were, I could point to the table with the bread and wine as a visual reinforcement of the message that God invites us all insiders and outsiders to the table. I can t give you a visual reinforcement, but I can at least remind you of the words of invitation that are spoken at the table. When we celebrate the Lord s Supper the first part of the liturgy is called the Invitation to the Table. Among the words of invitation said from the table are the reminder that [SLIDE] This is the Lord s table. Our savior invites all those who trust him to share the feast that he has prepared. God has prepared for us a feast. Gathered around the Lord s table no longer as strangers but as family we feast upon God s loving kindness and mercy even for sinners such as us. God has extended an invitation to the table to everyone. We in the church have been blessed with this knowledge. That doesn t mean that we re any smarter, better, or more beloved by God. We simply have been blessed to learn the truth. It is now our responsibility to live in such a way that reflects that truth to a world that is unaware of it. In closing, I return again to the liturgy of the Lord s Supper. At the end of the liturgy, after we have been fed with the bread and wine, there is a closing prayer. We pray to God that our daily living may be part of the life of your kingdom, and our love be your love, reaching out into the life of the world. Those words remind us of the responsibility that God has entrusted us with. Outside these walls there is a spiritually starving world. God has entrusted us with showing the world where the feast is. 8