August 2, 2020
55 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.
Jesus loved to tell parables. Stories that on the face of them meant one thing, but if you scratched the surface you could find a deeper meaning. So many of the stories, parables of Jesus, fall into this meaning, deeper meaning category. Think of the Parable of the sower and then the parable of the weeds we talked about recently. Or how about the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. Stories with meaning and deeper meaning. Parables are found in literature as well. Aesop was famous for telling parables like the Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
A parable could offer one meaning to one group and a different meaning entirely to another group. Consider the parable of the Lost Sheep (Lk 15:3-7). It is a story about a dedicated shepherd, or it can be an analogy about God’s love and care for those who follow Jesus.
Even miracles can have a level of parable-ness to them. The Gospel reading for today is the feeding of the 5,000 (Mt. 14:13-21) a wonderful story of providing food, but it also tells of the provision of God, Jesus’ power, and foretells the heavenly banquet, the kingdom feast.
We even have examples of meaning and deeper meaning today. Take wearing a mask for example. The initial meaning is that the wearer seeks to keep those around him or her safe, by limiting the potential spread of the virus. On a deeper level it also means the wearer believes the science, supports the wellbeing of the community, and places personal inconvenience behind flattening the curve.
Meaning and deeper meaning applies as well to the Isaiah passage we read today. Let me set the scene. This is the last chapter in the section of Isaiah known as Second Isaiah or the Book of Consolation. It starts with “Comfort, oh comfort my people, says your God” (Is. 40:1). It speaks hope and consolation to the people cut off from their homes for generations in Babylonian exile. The intelligentsia and wealthy of Judah who were deemed important enough to deport to Babylon, now have hope of their return to Jerusalem, the land of God’s promise.
The initial meaning of this passage might be free food and drink! “You that have no money, come, buy, eat (v. 1). The list of imperatives, Come, buy, eat, listen, delight and behold, speak to the fact something else is going on. Even the opening line is a rousing gathering cry: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.” Instead of “Hoy,” today we might say, “Hey, Listen up!” Or given the marketplace language that follows say, “Attention shoppers!” Starting with our universal need to consume food and drink, it quickly disrupts a market economy saying come without money and without price. Who wouldn’t want to come and buy and eat without the need of money? Millions of unemployed Americans certainly hope for something like that right now. To have the luxury of food and drink without the burden of paying for it while they are out of work through no fault of their own. But to people in exile that is simply a fantasy. They live in an economy of scarcity, of buying and selling, so what is the deeper meaning of this? What starts out as an exile economy quickly becomes covenant theology. The deeper meaning is that God continues to make a covenant with us.
As I was writing this, my non-believing sons asked me about my sermon topic. That led to a question about the overarching theme of scripture. They shared how they like the fascinating stories of mythology compared to Bible stories, like Noah and the Ark. I reminded them of the covenant God made with Noah after the flood (Gen. 9:16). God will never again be angry, rather will share an everlasting covenant with humanity demonstrated by the rainbow. I reminded them how all of scripture is a narrative of God being faithful to this covenant and humanity turning away. The heart of that promise is known as berit olam, the everlasting covenant. God made an everlasting covenant with Noah and the rainbow, with Abraham promising land and progeny, then with David as a king. Here we see it again with the people in exile. God declares, “I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David” (v. 3). God’s everlasting covenant is what transforms the economy of scarcity in exile into God’s abundance. Samuel Giere writes,
“What is promised here is outrageous. The economy of the promise here reiterated is built not upon the scarcity of exile but upon God’s abundance. God’s outrageous abundance, the center of the everlasting covenant, spills out of any boundary that anyone might place upon it, promising to fulfill Isaiah’s earlier words: “… for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9) …. God’s steadfast, sure love is not underwritten by notions of scarcity but works on the principle of abundance that cannot be contained. This is new creation” (Working Preacher, 8/14).
This covenant continues with the promise of not only food and drink, but also life. “Listen so you may live” (v. 3). In the immediate sense, it is physical life; if you listen to God and follow God’s ways you will live. But as we think about this in a larger theological context it is also a spiritual life in God.
God’s everlasting covenant we know most fully, not through Noah, or Abraham or David, but through our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Christ is the flesh and blood covenant, the word become flesh that dwelt among us, showing us how to live in God’s ways.
Christ is the everlasting covenant we live. Christ came and gave meaning to the people of his time.
And Christ lives in us and we have a deeper meaning of knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior, the one WE lean into in times of trouble, the one we sing praise to because his is near, the one who fills our heart with love because of the love we know with God.
Soon we will join in a meal with our risen Lord. In the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper we will be breaking bread together, eating and drinking without cost.
Yes, we will be feeding our bodies with nourishment, but the deeper meaning lies in the bread we break with Christ providing sustenance for our souls.
In this sacrament we find deeper meaning of God’s gift of abundant life, of God’s gift of provision so we have enough even without paying for it, of God’s everlasting covenant with us as God’s children.
Soon you will put to your lips the bread that satisfies and the cup of salvation.
You will taste and delight in the rich spiritual food of God.
In closing I want to share with you a new thought I read about the deeper meaning of communion from Brian McLaren. Writing about the disciples encounter of the Risen Lord on the Road to Emmaus he writes, “Could it be that in the holy meal, when we remember Jesus, that we are making space for his body and blood to be reunited and reconstituted in us? Could our remembering him actually re-member and resurrect him in our hearts, our bodies, our lives? Could his body and blood be reunited in us, so that we become his new embodiment? Is that why the two disciples saw him and then didn’t see him- because the place the Risen Christ most wanted to be seen was in their bodies- and our, among them and us, in them and us?” (Seeking Aliveness, p. 244).
Let us eat what is good and delight ourselves in the rich food God graciously provides for us through Christ. Then maybe, just maybe, we can have Christ resurrected in us and we become his hands and feet in our hurting and broken world. Amen.
