Enough
Exodus 16:6-12; Matthew 14:13-21
November 14, 2010
Talk about your whiny, ungrateful, obnoxious, insufferable, … did I mention whiny … unappreciative … and, well, at the end of the day, typical human beings. The children of Israel, wondering with little direction and no appreciation for their leaders, somewhere on what feels like the long decline from bad to worse, uncertain of the future and unhappy with the present. Does that sound familiar?
And yet, they have all that they really need, and it has come as a gift not of their own making at all. Freedom? It’s theirs more in spite of them than because of them. Food? It’s raining bread from heaven.
And yet. And yet they rise up to complain about their lot in life. Why?
Because they are human … and they are afraid.
They are afraid that they will not have enough because they do not have control.
If I had to sum up “the human condition” in a single sentence that might just be it: human beings live in fear of scarcity because we do not have control.
That’s what is happening to the Israelites in the wilderness, and then, as Walter Brueggemann puts it so aptly:
“In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -- Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.”
And yet, we continue to believe and embrace the story of the market economy. In that story, so familiar to us that we can literally sing its hymns, we are what we own, what we create by the work of our ruggedly independent individual sets of hands, what we achieve by the sweat of our brows. The hymn book or common prayer book for this liturgy? Well, surely it includes, “just do it,” and “things go better with …,” and “have it your way.” And if you close your eyes for a moment and think back I’m sure you’d even recognize some of its hymns – “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”
Whatever its content, my copy of the hymnbook plays on my $200 i-pod nano, that I plug in after I put on my $120 New Balance shoes to head out on a run with the intention of pondering scarcity.
And wouldn’t you know it, no kidding, up pops this song:
Will you come and follow me,
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown
in you and you in me?
Will you leave your self behind
if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
should your life attract or scare,
will you let me answer prayer
in you and you in me?
Will you love the 'you' you hide
if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found
to reshape the world around
through my sight and touch and sound
in you and you in me?
I reckon that’s what I get for putting John Bell on my i-Pod.
But John has put the question rather starkly. Will you come and follow me? It is the question raised by the stories from scripture we’ve read this morning, and it is the question raised, fundamentally, by the simple word, enough.
For, you see, at the end of the day, the question for us is do we trust in the one who provides? Bread for the journey? Bread in the wilderness? Bread for the multitudes, blessed, broken, given for all? Bread of heaven? Bread of life? Do we trust this One? Or would we rather put our trust in the various gods of the marketplace? Surely, as the holiday season approaches, and as we consider our community’s budget, these are the questions that press in on us.
Brueggemann, of course, complicates the question a bit, asking,
“Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal and conservative church people, who love to quarrel with each other, came to a common realization that the real issue confronting us is whether the news of God's abundance can be trusted in the face of the story of scarcity? What we know in the secret recesses of our hearts is that the story of scarcity is a tale of death. And the people of God counter this tale by witnessing to the manna. There is a more excellent bread than crass materialism. It is the bread of life and you don't have to bake it. As we walk into the new millennium, we must decide where our trust is placed.”
When Jesus looked out across the hillside at the thousands who had come to hear his teaching, he saw hunger in their eyes. They were hungry from something that would sustain their souls as well as, at the late hour of the day, their bodies.
So he took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them.
That is the pattern, if we think of it, that all Christian life follows. Like bread, we are blessed, broken and given to and for the world, just as Jesus was.
That pattern is what it means to follow the way of Jesus, and it is what it means to care for what we have been given, that is to say, what it means to be stewards.
We tend to think of stewardship as what we do during November as we think about making pledges for the next year’s budget. We talk about “stewardship season,” as if this pattern of living with care and concern for what we have been given is a one-off consideration that ends – one might say – on Black Friday in an orgy of consumption. We talk, that is, as if stewardship is something other than the very heart of what it means to be Christian.
Stewards – that is what we are called to be as followers of Jesus, for the world belongs to God, the earth and all its people. Everything we have comes from God. Everything that we are belongs to God.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to care for what we have been given. Indeed, we are called to love it.
Douglas John Hall asks us to consider the possibilities implied in this identity, “what if,” he asks:
“What if this care became, not just a sentiment, an ethic, a duty but the very way of being? What if, in the midst of such a [consumerist, market-oriented] society, instead of showing up as a well-known religious element going about our well-known attempts at saving the world from its moral wickedness, or winning converts, or winning arguments, or influencing the powerful, or just trying to survive (!), the church began to be perceived as a community that cares for the world as such, for its welfare, its justice, its peace, its survival? […] It would not be enormously successful,” he concludes. “It would not conquer the world. It would not convert, baptize, confirm, marry, and bury everybody! But it would be … enough.”
To love the world, then. It is enough. It really does come back round to that John Bell song that popped up on the i-Pod, and the same question we asked last week: are we following Jesus? Because if we, we are loving the world, and it is enough. It is enough.
November 14, 2010
Talk about your whiny, ungrateful, obnoxious, insufferable, … did I mention whiny … unappreciative … and, well, at the end of the day, typical human beings. The children of Israel, wondering with little direction and no appreciation for their leaders, somewhere on what feels like the long decline from bad to worse, uncertain of the future and unhappy with the present. Does that sound familiar?
And yet, they have all that they really need, and it has come as a gift not of their own making at all. Freedom? It’s theirs more in spite of them than because of them. Food? It’s raining bread from heaven.
And yet. And yet they rise up to complain about their lot in life. Why?
Because they are human … and they are afraid.
They are afraid that they will not have enough because they do not have control.
If I had to sum up “the human condition” in a single sentence that might just be it: human beings live in fear of scarcity because we do not have control.
That’s what is happening to the Israelites in the wilderness, and then, as Walter Brueggemann puts it so aptly:
“In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -- Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.”
And yet, we continue to believe and embrace the story of the market economy. In that story, so familiar to us that we can literally sing its hymns, we are what we own, what we create by the work of our ruggedly independent individual sets of hands, what we achieve by the sweat of our brows. The hymn book or common prayer book for this liturgy? Well, surely it includes, “just do it,” and “things go better with …,” and “have it your way.” And if you close your eyes for a moment and think back I’m sure you’d even recognize some of its hymns – “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”
Whatever its content, my copy of the hymnbook plays on my $200 i-pod nano, that I plug in after I put on my $120 New Balance shoes to head out on a run with the intention of pondering scarcity.
And wouldn’t you know it, no kidding, up pops this song:
Will you come and follow me,
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown
in you and you in me?
Will you leave your self behind
if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
should your life attract or scare,
will you let me answer prayer
in you and you in me?
Will you love the 'you' you hide
if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found
to reshape the world around
through my sight and touch and sound
in you and you in me?
I reckon that’s what I get for putting John Bell on my i-Pod.
But John has put the question rather starkly. Will you come and follow me? It is the question raised by the stories from scripture we’ve read this morning, and it is the question raised, fundamentally, by the simple word, enough.
For, you see, at the end of the day, the question for us is do we trust in the one who provides? Bread for the journey? Bread in the wilderness? Bread for the multitudes, blessed, broken, given for all? Bread of heaven? Bread of life? Do we trust this One? Or would we rather put our trust in the various gods of the marketplace? Surely, as the holiday season approaches, and as we consider our community’s budget, these are the questions that press in on us.
Brueggemann, of course, complicates the question a bit, asking,
“Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal and conservative church people, who love to quarrel with each other, came to a common realization that the real issue confronting us is whether the news of God's abundance can be trusted in the face of the story of scarcity? What we know in the secret recesses of our hearts is that the story of scarcity is a tale of death. And the people of God counter this tale by witnessing to the manna. There is a more excellent bread than crass materialism. It is the bread of life and you don't have to bake it. As we walk into the new millennium, we must decide where our trust is placed.”
When Jesus looked out across the hillside at the thousands who had come to hear his teaching, he saw hunger in their eyes. They were hungry from something that would sustain their souls as well as, at the late hour of the day, their bodies.
So he took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them.
That is the pattern, if we think of it, that all Christian life follows. Like bread, we are blessed, broken and given to and for the world, just as Jesus was.
That pattern is what it means to follow the way of Jesus, and it is what it means to care for what we have been given, that is to say, what it means to be stewards.
We tend to think of stewardship as what we do during November as we think about making pledges for the next year’s budget. We talk about “stewardship season,” as if this pattern of living with care and concern for what we have been given is a one-off consideration that ends – one might say – on Black Friday in an orgy of consumption. We talk, that is, as if stewardship is something other than the very heart of what it means to be Christian.
Stewards – that is what we are called to be as followers of Jesus, for the world belongs to God, the earth and all its people. Everything we have comes from God. Everything that we are belongs to God.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to care for what we have been given. Indeed, we are called to love it.
Douglas John Hall asks us to consider the possibilities implied in this identity, “what if,” he asks:
“What if this care became, not just a sentiment, an ethic, a duty but the very way of being? What if, in the midst of such a [consumerist, market-oriented] society, instead of showing up as a well-known religious element going about our well-known attempts at saving the world from its moral wickedness, or winning converts, or winning arguments, or influencing the powerful, or just trying to survive (!), the church began to be perceived as a community that cares for the world as such, for its welfare, its justice, its peace, its survival? […] It would not be enormously successful,” he concludes. “It would not conquer the world. It would not convert, baptize, confirm, marry, and bury everybody! But it would be … enough.”
To love the world, then. It is enough. It really does come back round to that John Bell song that popped up on the i-Pod, and the same question we asked last week: are we following Jesus? Because if we, we are loving the world, and it is enough. It is enough.
posted by David Ensign at
8:08 AM
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