An Appeal for Wholeness (Sermon)

“An Appeal for Wholeness”

Psalm 133 and Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/27/23

 

Look at how good and pleasing it is
    when families live together as one!
²It is like expensive oil poured over the head,
    running down onto the beard—
        Aaron’s beard!—
    which extended over the collar of his robes.
³It is like the dew on Mount Hermon
    streaming down onto the mountains of Zion,
    because it is there that the Lord

has commanded the blessing:
        everlasting life.

(Psalm 133 – CEB)

 

 

So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. ² Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

³ Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you: don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Instead, be reasonable since God has measured out a portion of faith to each one of you. ⁴ We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function. ⁵ In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other. ⁶ We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us. If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith. ⁷ If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving. If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching. ⁸ If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging. The one giving should do it with no strings attached. The leader should lead with passion. The one showing mercy should be cheerful. (Romans 12:1-8 – CEB)

 

 

         Paul wrote his letter to the Romans about 57CE. Inside the city at the heart of the first century’s largest and most powerful empire, the young church seemed to have felt small and insignificant. And yet they also seem to have felt a disproportionate burden of scrutiny.

         Nero, the emperor during Paul’s ministry, was known for a fearsome capacity for political tyranny and self-indulgence. Of the few ancient historians who left details about Nero, all but one say that the emperor himself ordered the Great Fire that destroyed two thirds of Rome in 64CE¹. And some of those historians suggest that he did so in order to clear space for building projects that would glorify himself. Nero, however, quickly blamed the Christians for the fire, and thus began the practice of persecuting people who proclaimed the realm of God’s love and professed faith in Jesus rather worshiping the emperor and his empire.

         While Paul’s letter was written before the fire, Roman culture was still characterized by violence. For both sport and crime-prevention, criminals were crucified or fed to wild animals who had been intentionally starved. The powerful and the poor alike were entertained by human beings fighting to the death in the Colosseum. Any culture which thrives on public execution, slavery, lynching, or oppression of the poor and powerless inevitably treats human bodies like injured livestock.

         Let’s put ourselves in the place of the Roman Christians. How might we react when Paul says, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice…to God,” and that doing so constitutes our “appropriate priestly service”? That’s kind of like wealthy people saying to parents of starving children, Well, at least your kids aren’t overweight.

         Then Paul begins to clarify himself. “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world,” he says. And he’s saying not to mistake the temporary securities of military dominance and the material pleasures of wealth for God’s blessing. In the long run, those things tend to do more harm than good. They turn our trust and hope away from God and from God’s providence. They turn us toward detached individualism, toward personal comfort and status, things that are almost always gained and maintained at the expense of others.

The Caesars of the world, and those who worship them, cannot have excess without depriving someone of basic human needs. And to accept that disparity as the way of things is to “conform to the patterns of this world.” It is to decide that some people’s bodies, minds, and spirits are inherently less worthy. And one simply cannot conform to that worldly ideology and follow Jesus.

So, Paul says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can figure out what God’s will is.” Overcoming the temptation to devalue other people or the Creation for one’s own benefit requires a transformation of mind and heart. And while transformation is a gift of grace and something we cannot make happen, we can make room for it.

The Message version of scripture renders Paul’s room-making words this way: “Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what [God] does for us, not by what we are and what we do for [God].”

         Deepening this call to humility and service, Paul uses the image of a single human body to illustrate the diversity necessary for wholeness in human communities. He reminds his readers that just like heads, shoulders, knees, and toes everyone has their own unique purposes and gifts, and that all of them are necessary. And think about it, if a narcissistic Nero did burn his own city for personal gain, doesn’t that illustrate exactly what it means to cut off your nose to spite your face?

         Human idolatry and arrogance—which might be defined as the gluttony of individualistic heads, shoulders, knees, and toes—is all-too-evident these days. And I’m not claiming high ground here. When I’m in a cozy room with like-minded people, especially when things aren’t going our way, I give in and conform to the world. And when shackled by self-righteousness and resentment, I can’t discern the will of God. I can’t hear wisdom in the words of scripture. I can’t see the humanity I share with those with whom I disagree. I don’t hold them in authentic prayer. Because my mind is no longer transformed, I can’t filter out the toxic anger within and around me so that I feel something of the universal pain underneath it all. And doesn’t that just make me part of the problem?

Now, I’m not saying that we should be so tolerant that we ignore the actions and attitudes that contribute to injustice and create human suffering. To do that would be to forsake those who are oppressed—which is to forsake Jesus himself. I’m saying that to participate in God’s transforming work in the world, we begin by looking for the God-imaged holiness in ourselves, in one another, and in the Creation. Then, like Jesus, we can recognize, name, and celebrate the gifts of those around us because none of us are complete without all that God has created, called good, and is, even now, redeeming.

And all this hard stuff just gets harder, because, out of this generous, beautiful, God-given diversity within the body of Christ, we’re also called to demonstrate onevoice of love for God through love of neighbor.

         Discerning the will of God—something for which we pray every time we utter the Lord’s Prayer—is a life-long process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. It’s a process of dying to self and rising to Christ. And in that process, we seek and nurture challenging relationships with people who are suffering and with people whose understanding of the world seems at odds with our own. When we think of ourselves, as Paul says, “more highly that [we] ought to think,” we cannot see the humanity or the holiness in others. And so, we dismiss not just the poor and the oppressed, but those who exploit them, those who just don’t care about them, and maybe even those who advocate for them differently that we do. And who can participate in God’s transforming realm of love through antipathy or apathy? Doesn’t it require empathy, feeling and embracing the pain and the joy of others?

         Love God with all you have and with all you are, says Jesus. Love your neighbors empowered by the awareness that to love them is the loving thing to do for your own self as well as for them. And so that you can do all that, he says, take up your cross and follow me.

Jesus calls us toward lives of compassion and understanding, lives in which we will claim our gifts and share them, lives in which we can recognize all the heads, shoulders, knees, and toes around us as neighbors, as brothers and sisters without whom we cannot be fully human or fully alive. 

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero 

Crumbs Are Enough (Sermon)

 “Crumbs Are Enough”

Psalm 67 and Matthew 15:21-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/20/23

 

Let God grant us grace and bless us;
    let God make his face shine on us,
²so that your way becomes known on earth,
    so that your salvation becomes known

among all the nations.

³Let the people thank you, God!
    Let all the people thank you!
⁴Let the people celebrate
        and shout with joy
        because you judge the nations fairly
        and guide all nations on the earth.
⁵Let the people thank you, God!
    Let all the people thank you!

⁶The earth has yielded its harvest.
    God blesses us—our God blesses us!
⁷Let God continue to bless us;
    let the far ends of the earth honor him.

(Psalm 67 – CEB)

 

²¹ From there, Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon. ²² A Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, “Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” ²³ But he didn’t respond to her at all.

His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.”

²⁴ Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.”

²⁵ But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”

²⁶ He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.”

²⁷ She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.”

²⁸ Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Matthew 15:21-28 - CEB)

 

         I wish I could gloss over the fact that Jesus refers to a Canaanite woman and her ethnic kin as dogs. That comment is particularly baffling in light of the teaching that immediately precedes this encounter.

In a dispute that started with some Pharisees complaining that Jesus’ disciples fail to wash their hands before meals, Jesus says that it’s not what goes into a person that matters. Rather, what comes out of the mouth reveals the heart. So, what’s in Jesus’ heart when he speaks to this woman in such offensive terms?

Over the centuries, the most common defense of Jesus says that he didn’t really mean what he said. Already knowing how the woman would respond, he choreographed a teachable moment with spiritually-principled compassion and a touch of good-natured teasing.

         That argument asks us to accept that God Incarnate looked at this woman and called her a dog in order to make the point that her faith was strong. And he said that to her to tell us that if our faith is equally strong, our children will be healthy. Our bank accounts will be full. Our nation will prevail. And everyone will get along at Thanksgiving dinner.

Through two millennia of the Christian faith, this passage has been used to justify judgment of and disdain for those who are poor, or whose ethnicity or gender is deemed inferior, or whose sexuality is deemed dangerous, or whose religion is considered wrong. And since Jesus said it, then it must be okay to treat “those people” like some neighborhood cur.

If that sounds harsh, just remember the arguments the Church has made—thatwe have made—in defense of atrocities like the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, segregation, lynching, the Holocaust. And think about the arguments the Church continues to make in defense of humankind’s appetite for excessive wealth, and our wasteful use of resources to develop and maintain enough weaponry to destroy this planet several times over.

         And it’s not just as disciples of Jesus, but as the very Body of Christ himself that the Church has doggedly mistreated the very people on whom Jesus focused during his ministry.

While the Church does lots of wonderful things, it sometimes feels like we allow this one, brief instance, when Jesus acts more like a disciple than a Savior, to define us.

         Come on, Preacher! Ease up a little! We’re already beat down. Here we are in the dog days of summer. Covid’s making a comeback. Much of our society is spiraling. Storms, fires, and floods are killing people, destroying forests, property, and peace of mind. It’s like someone we love is sick. Where is God in all this? Where’s our hope and our confidence? Quit tearing us down!

         Does anyone feel that way? Well, what if I just said that “it’s not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs”? How would you respond if I said that we don’t matter because Jesus came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? And let’s face it, you and I, we’re Gentiles. If I said that, would you keep coming to worship?

         The Canaanite woman keeps coming—hounding Jesus for her daughter’s sake. She knows that this Galilean Jew knows, or that he will at least remember, that she matters and her daughter matters, because Gentile lives matter.

         Maybe one of the many reasons the Church is in decline is that contemporary disciples have been experiencing a continual contraction of faith, a regression. It’s like the Church is becoming less and less like the Body of the resurrected Christ and more and more like the disciples before Good Friday. 

Russell Moore, a former leader within the Southern Baptist Convention, and now the editor of Christianity Today, recently said that numerous evangelical pastors have told him that members of their congregations have begun challenging them after their sermons. The parishioners want to know where the preachers got those “liberal talking points,” points like, Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, turn the other cheek, love and pray for your enemy.

“‘I’m literally quoting Jesus,’” say the pastors.

Unmoved, these “followers of Jesus” respond saying, That doesn’t work anymore. It’s weak.

“When we get to [that] point,” says Russell Moore, “we’re in a crisis.”¹

         In their own crisis, trying to project bigotry as authority and strength, the disciples say, Go away, Canaanite woman. There’s not enough of Jesus for us and for you.

         Brush me off like a crumb from your beard, she says, but crumbs are enough. A crumb from Jesus can restore my daughter.

         Even this deep into Jesus’ ministry, the disciples still have to learn to accept the truth that, as Paul will say, “God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise…what the world considers weak to shame the strong…[and] what the world considers low-class and low-life—what is considered to be nothing—to reduce what is considered something to nothing. So no human being can brag in God’s presence.” (1Corinthians 1:27-29) And while Jesus’ response does take an inexplicable detour, he finally demonstrates to everyone who follows him that this woman and her daughter are children of God as fully as any priest, Pharisee, or ordinary Jew. As individuals and as a population, Canaanites deserve to be seen, heard, welcomed, valued, respected, and protected exactly the same as anyone from Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem.

When the Church proclaims faith in Jesus and still treats certain people as less-than-worthy, when it withholds the holy gift of welcome from strangers, and the transforming gift of advocacy from people who are oppressed, it declares that it has given up on God’s mercy and grace. It has given up on Resurrection! When people live selfishly and fearfully, crumbs are never enough. Selfishness and fear provoke us to hoard and guard what we have and to grasp for more.

Brothers and Sisters, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God has raised Jesus! And his resurrection empowers us for embracing an entirely new understanding of abundance. If the tiniest seed and the smallest measure of yeast are enough to reveal God’s realm, then crumbs are all we need to follow Jesus and to live as his Body—as his hands, and feet, and heart in and for the world.

Seeing the agony of the Father and the Son foreshadowed in the agony of a Canaanite mother and her daughter, Jesus lives generously and loves fearlessly for them, and for all of us. He sees that we are all one, and his own hunger is for humankind to live in unity and wholeness. He hungers for us to see ourselves in the faces, in the sufferings, in the joys, in the potential, and in the beauty of every human being and of the Earth itself.

As we begin to see and to celebrate our oneness, we begin to see that God, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is healing us, crumb by crumb, and making us whole.

 

¹https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak

Trust (Sermon)

 “Trust”

Psalm 104:1-6 and Matthew 14:22-33

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/13/23

 

 Let my whole being bless the Lord!
    Lord my God, how fantastic you are!
    You are clothed in glory and grandeur!
² You wear light like a robe;
    you open the skies like a curtain.
³ You build your lofty house on the waters;
    you make the clouds your chariot,
    going around on the wings of the wind.
⁴ You make the winds your messengers;
    you make fire and flame your ministers.
⁵ You established the earth on its foundations
    so that it will never ever fall.
⁶ You covered it with the watery deep like a piece of clothing;
    the waters were higher than the mountains!

(Psalm 104:1-6 – CEB)

 

²² Right then, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead to the other side of the lake while he dismissed the crowds. ²³ When he sent them away, he went up onto a mountain by himself to pray. Evening came and he was alone. ²⁴ Meanwhile, the boat, fighting a strong headwind, was being battered by the waves and was already far away from land. ²⁵ Very early in the morning he came to his disciples, walking on the lake.²⁶ When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified and said, “It’s a ghost!” They were so frightened they screamed.

²⁷ Just then Jesus spoke to them, “Be encouraged! It’s me. Don’t be afraid.”

²⁸ Peter replied, “Lord, if it’s you, order me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹ And Jesus said, “Come.”

Then Peter got out of the boat and was walking on the water toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when Peter saw the strong wind, he became frightened. As he began to sink, he shouted, “Lord, rescue me!”

³¹ Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him, saying, “You man of weak faith! Why did you begin to have doubts?” ³² When they got into the boat, the wind settled down.

³³ Then those in the boat worshipped Jesus and said, “You must be God’s Son!” (Matthew 14:22-33 - CEB)

 

 

         Jesus has been taking a lot of heat lately. The Pharisees and Sadducees don’t care for him, and they continually let him know it. And not long before the story we just read, Jesus is in Nazareth where even his own neighbors reject him.

         We know who your parents are, they say. So, don’t get uppity with us!

         And Jesus says, Prophets always get the coldest shoulder from those who think they know them best.

         That’s actually a rather loving expression of disappointment. In any age, living as a person of faith calls for embodying humility, compassion, and forgiveness toward those around us—and trust in the one who calls us to faithfulness.

         John the Baptist seems to have struggled with the idea of grace-full trust. Whether motivated by love and compassion or by anger and fear, he threw one prophetic brick after another. Finally, he threw a brick through the wrong window—Herod’s bedroom window. By targeting everyone, he made himself a target. And then it was too late for anyone to tell him that he’d lost his mind, because Herod saw to it that John lost his head.

         Hearing the news of his cousin’s brutal death, Jesus slips away, seeking solitude to grieve and to pray. And even there, crowds find him. Feeling their desperation, Jesus tends to them. He feeds them.

Afterward, he tells his disciples, We’re going to Gennesaret next. You guys take a boat across the lake and prepare things for us.

         After pronouncing a benediction on the crowd and sending them home, a grieving Jesus climbs a mountain, again in search of solitude. In biblical literature, mountains represent the ultimate “thin place,” the place where earth and sky meet, the place of confluence between time and eternity, and communion between Creator and Creation.

         While Jesus has just been a tangible, unmediated presence of divine love to the crowd, his quest for seclusion on that mountain suggests that a sense of God’s absence and the assurance of God’s presence often happen simultaneously. It’s a kind of knowing to feel a storm surge at the pit of our being, or an ache telling us that all is not right with the world. This deep knowing wells up from an ancient memory of the eternal wholeness from which we’ve come and toward which we live. The mystics teach us to receive that ache as God’s call to embrace the chaotic, complicated, and otherwise disappointing world with a heart for healing and hope. The only other options are to withdraw from the world as rather depressed and hopeless hermits, or to lash out violently, competing for security, attention, and control over so-called scarce resources in God’s Creation of abundance.

         We’re not new to that struggle. We hear it throughout God’s long story with Israel. Remember Elijah. Fleeing from the spiteful Jezebel, he hides in a cave. God sniffs him out and says, Elijah, what are you doing here?

         The prophet’s response is pure sulk: I’ve done everything right! Now I’m all alone, and everyone wants me dead.

         Elijah has sought solitude, but out of fear rather than trust. So, God invites the piteous prophet to stand outside the cave because God is about to pass by. Then come the rock-splitting winds, the earthquake, and the fire. And let the dooms-dayers within each of us take note: God is not in any of this loud, blustering, sensational stuff. God does not work that way. That’s why we can laugh it off as an absurdity when anyone wonders what God was trying to tell Jonesborough Presbyterian when our building got struck by lightning last month. Seriously, if that’s how God worked, who would survive?

         After the turmoil, Elijah finds himself all alone—again—not inside a cave, but inside “a sound of sheer silence,” and only then does he know that God is near.

         Many generations later, echoing Elijah’s experience, Peter cries out, “Lord, if it is you, order me to come to you on the water.”

         Let’s remember that, to many of the ancients, deep water symbolizes the darkness of chaos and the mystery of evil. When Peter demands a command to step out of the boat and onto the sea, he’s asking Jesus to call him out of the cave, like Elijah, and into the earthquake, wind, and fire. He’s asking Jesus to call him, like Moses, to confront Pharaoh and to tell him, Let my people go. He’s asking Jesus to send him, like David, out to face the Goliath storm threatening the boat and everyone in it. Peter is asking Jesus for proof of something one can experience only through faith.

         Jesus says to Peter, Well, come on. And the next thing Peter knows, Jesus is hauling him through the waves like a drag net.

         Peter discovers that following Jesus is about trust and risk rather than obedience and reward.

         Being “fearfully and wonderfully made,” (Psalm 139:14) we are gifted creatures. We’re capable of remarkable feats of memory and interpretation, of incisive analysis, and of heights and depths of creativity that are nothing short of holy. There comes a point, however, when our minds have done all they can. Even when a theory can be more clearly developed, a work of art further refined, or a field more evenly plowed, there comes a moment when trust is the only way forward, and trust looks a lot like letting go. At that moment, we have to step out of the boat, even if the water is troubled and terrifying. And sink or swim, we trust the way of the Christ—the way of compassion, justice, and peace.

         The life of faith is a life of trust. And while faith and doubt are often considered opposites, they are hardly mutually exclusive. As Frederick Buechner has so memorably said, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith. It keeps it awake and moving.”¹

         All the disciples see Jesus, but only Peter says, “Lord, if it is you.” Seeing may constitute believing, but believing, like obedience, often becomes an end in itself. Trust embraces all the doubt and dares to step forward into a future that lies beyond our sight, beyond our control, and way beyond the surface tension of mere belief.

All manner of waves are battering our boat: Wars and rumors of war all over the planet, more extremes in weather due to climate change, and an ever-deepening dependence on physical violence and violent speech as the only viable responses to opposition. And we can huddle together singing “Jesus Loves Me” so loud we never get quiet enough to hear the voice and feel the hand of the one who loves us.

         But God’s Christ is calling. And he calls us not away from the storm, but into it, and out onto the deep. He calls us there not to target those whom we don’t like and can’t understand. He calls us out to embrace all Creation, to target it with compassion and grace, and to receive those self- and community-restoring gifts, as well.

         Trust me, says Jesus. And follow me.

 

¹Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking A Theological ABC, Harper and Row Publishers, 1973. p. 20.

The Richest Feast (Sermon)

 “The Richest Feast"

Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-11 and Matthew 14:13-21

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/6/23

 

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!
²Why 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.
³Listen and come to me;
    listen, and you will live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
    my faithful loyalty to David.
⁸My plans aren’t your plans,

nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
⁹Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways,
    and my plans than your plans.
¹⁰Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
        and don’t return there without watering the earth,
        making it conceive and yield plants
        and providing seed to the sower

and food to the eater,

¹¹so is my word that comes from my mouth;
        it does not return to me empty.
        Instead, it does what I want,
        and accomplishes what I intend. (Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-11 – CEB)

 

¹³ When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. ¹⁴ When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. ¹⁵ That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

¹⁶ But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”

¹⁷ They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”

¹⁸ He said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹ He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds.²⁰ Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. ²¹ About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten. (Matthew 14:13-21 - CEB)

 

 

         Isaiah prophesied to Jewish exiles in Babylon. And when the Babylonians defeated another nation, they scattered all the ordinary folks, while tending to bring the wealthiest and most influential individuals and families to Babylon. Because business and community leaders had the potential to help Babylon grow, they were welcomed with relative warmth by their abductors.

By the time Isaiah began to call the descendants of the original captives back to Jerusalem, many in the Jewish community held significant standing in Babylon. And as far as they were concerned, the “richest of feasts” to which Isaiah refers was the bounty they were already enjoying as fully-assimilated citizens of Babylonian­—which had become their Stockholm-syndrome home.

In Matthew 14, Jesus offers a free and plentiful meal to a large crowd of ordinary people—hardly society’s elite. They follow Jesus to a place where there is nothing but Jesus himself. Overwhelmed with compassion for the suffering before him, Jesus feeds everyone who is desperate enough to follow him to this place that could not be more different from the opulence and extravagance of Babylon in the 6^th century BCE.

The poor and sick people following Jesus receive the meal as a sign of God’s gracious presence and mysterious abundance. While exiled from the culture of plenty around them, they have more in common with the Israelites during the Exodus than the Jews in Babylon. Utterly dependent on God’s moment-to-moment grace, they rely on whatever manna drops into their hands.

Back in Babylon, Isaiah seems aware that he’s inviting his audience to return to a lower link on the geopolitical food chain, and there’s going to be push-back. He’s going to have to reacclimate the people to the language of faith, the language of covenant with God. He’ll have to remind them that God chose them to live as a sign of God’s grace. And to remember will involve hearing a humbling truth.

Through the prophet, God says, “Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans.”

You can’t comprehend me, says God. You can’t comprehend my plans, and all of you are included in them. You have been from the start. I’ve said so over and over. And my word, which I have spoken from my mouth, “does not return to me empty. It…accomplishes what I intend.”

Israel must keep God’s story going. And while God’s people in Babylon may think that they’ve arrived at greatness by living large in one of the world’s great cities, God reminds them that God has plans for them and for their descendants. They are to live as a perpetual witness to God’s creative and purpose-full presence. Through them, God is planting seeds, watering the earth, and revealing that the Creation itself is a feast at which all humankind is welcome.

         While it would hardly be fair to say that Isaiah’s prophecy about the richest feast refers specifically to Jesus feeding the multitudes, or that it foreshadows what we call the Lord’s Supper, scripture consistently uses the metaphor of a banquet to reveal God’s realm as a place where all people gather to be nourished with sharedfood, drink, and community.

         And it is in that sharing that we meet, face to face, the presence of God’s dynamic and transforming love. And we call that love the Christ.

         To finish out this sermon, I’ve written a song for you. It’s my attempt to paraphrase Isaiah 55—thus the presumptuous voice of God from the first person.*

*Because I have yet to copyright the song, I have not included it in this post.