Scripture: Isaiah 55: 1-5
Sermon: Gathering Around the Table
Topics: food, communion, Pentecost, dependency
Preached: October 21, 2012
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble:
This is the passage the 7th grade church school chose for tonight.
It is a wonderful, miraculous, and beautiful text.
Before reading it, let me say something about the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah covers a long, long time period.
It is sprawling, and at times confusing.
Much of the earlier part of Isaiah is heart-breaking.
It is all about Jerusalem about to be destroyed.
It is all about the Jews about to be exiled.
The tone prepares people to be hungry and homeless.
But near the end of Isaiah the tone changes.
Out of Israel’s suffering comes promise.
I think it is helpful to see how Isaiah has parallels to the New Testament.
Take Isaiah 53, the chapter on the Suffering Servant who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows – here is a chapter with parallels to the crucifixion.
The next chapter, Isaiah 54, speaks of the barren women who suddenly sings for joy. Here is a chapter with parallels to the resurrection.
And now we will read the beginning of Isaiah 55, which invites everyone to the abundant life God provides. And I think it has parallels to Pentecost.
So let’s read.
An Invitation to Abundant Life
55Ho, 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 labour 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.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to GOD
INTRODUCTION — FOOD IN THE BIBLE
The main image at the beginning of this chapter is Food.
Food has a prominent place throughout the Bible.
When Israel was wandering in the desert, they were obsessed with what they would eat and what they would drink.
They dreamed of the food they used to eat in Egypt.
When they talked about the Promised Land, they used food images.
The Promised Land would be a land flowing with milk and honey – both big luxury items back then.
In Biblical times, people were often trying to stay one step ahead of hunger.
Famine was only a season away.
Poverty and hunger were often knocking at the doorstep.
People dreamed of a time when they didn’t have to worry about food.
They dreamed of feasting with no thoughts of famine.
Today there is still hunger in the world, and still hunger in our country, but not to the same extent as in Biblical times.
Today there is often food available,
but we have other concerns.
One of them is whether we can afford it.
FEAST FOR FREE
I am going to ask you 7th graders a question:
* have you as a family ever eaten at the 1913 Room at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel?
Or how about the Louis Benton Steak House?
Probably not. And I think I know why.
I’ve never eaten there either.
That is because when your family goes to a restaurant for a meal, the cost of the meals on the menu is a factor.
This summer when our family was in Bethlehem our guide took us to a lovely restaurant overlooking a gorgeous valley. No sooner had we sat down, and we were suddenly being served food, an elaborate meal, in fact. There were no menus, and no prices, and everything was in Arabic, so, even though the food was great, the setting was gorgeous, I kept thinking, “How much is this going to cost?”
“How much is this going to cost?”
That is the first striking thing about our passage tonight.
There is this marvelous, too-good-to-be-true invitation:
“Hey, all of you.
Come inside.
Eat, drink, no price, no charge, no problem.
Eat! Enjoy!
Drink! Delight yourselves!”
That is the first striking thing about this passage – a feast is being offered for free, and we can hardly believe it.
MORE THAN FOOD
As we read this passage, we begin to sense that it seems to be about more than food.
Food is used to get us to think about our desires,
but quickly this passage starts using language that is deeper than simply satisfying our appetites.
When reading the Bible, it is always good to follow the verbs.
The verbs help us understand where a passage is going.
The end of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3 says,
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good and delight yourselves with rich food.
Incline you ear, and come to me;
Listen so that you may live.
There are a number of verbs in there.
Since this passage seems to be about food, we might think the verbs are going to be about eating and drinking, and the ways we use our mouths to bite, and chew, and savor, and swallow.
But no, the verbs are about using our ears – to listen, to trust, to obey.
There is a cost to this feast after all, but it is a different kind of cost.
The only way to get to the feast,
to enjoy the food,
to delight in the richest of fare,
is to listen to God,
to trust in his word,
and to believe that he will take care of us.
Suddenly we are beginning to realize that the food language —
the wonderful picture of feasting without a care in the world —
is actually a picture of trusting the steadfast love,
the covenant commitment,
and the generous grace of God.
FEAST IS TO BE SHARED
There is a third thing about this wonderful feast picture in Isaiah 55 that I would like you to see.
Verse 5 says this:
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.
So here is the flow of this passage.
The prophet calls these exiles in Babylon
who constantly worried about whether they would have enough,
to come, eat and drink, feast and delight in the richest of fare, and not worry.
The prophet then says that he isn’t only speaking of food.
He is speaking about trusting God – God’s love, God’s faithfulness, God’s grace. This is the real feast he is talking about.
Now here, the prophet says, don’t keep this to yourselves.
Share it!
Call others. Invite others.
Call and invite people you do not know.
Be open and welcoming to strangers who come your way.
This feast, this good news, is too good to keep to yourself.
Can you see why I think this passage has a Pentecost feel to it?
Pentecost is all about the Holy Spirit coming
and inviting everyone to believe in Jesus Christ — the Bread of Life.
Come to him, and you will never be hungry.
Believe in him, and you will never thirst.
The Holy Spirit invites us to the abundance and generosity of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit opens the door to the good news that sounds too good to be true.
And the Holy Spirit compels us to share that good news with everyone…everyone:
friends who are close;
strangers who are far off;
everyone.
WHY FOOD?
This is a beautiful passage, and I can see why you picked it.
It has also got me thinking about food this week.
I can see why food was such a strong image back in Bible times.
But I wondered whether the image of food still works well today
in our culture of fast food
in which we spend less and less time preparing food
and less and less time enjoying food.
So I started doing some reading about food.
Here is what I discovered.
Do you know that practically all book sales are going down except for one category?
Cookbooks.
Cookbooks are still going strong, up again by 10% this past year.
Our family doesn’t have cable, but I discovered that there are tons of cooking shows on TV.
There is the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, and Rachel Ray is about as popular as Oprah.
Not so long ago the Atlantic Monthly magazine had an article asking the question Why? Why are there more and more cooking shows,
and more and more cookbooks
when there are less and less people actually cooking?
Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it.
The article said there has to be more to food — to eating and drinking – than just filling our stomachs.
So what is “the more”?
When you stop to think about it, we live in a world in which every living creature needs to EAT.
That is the way God created our world.
Every living thing needs to eat.
So why did God create the world this way?
Well, here is one answer: eating makes us dependent.
Eating makes us dependent on each other, on the bounty of this earth, but also on God – whether we admit it or not.
But eating also has the power to pull us together – to pull us closer to each other, closer to the earth, and closer to God.
That is why our intergenerational suppers are about more than getting a free meal.
Working with the Feeding America Food Truck is about more than doing our part to feed the hungry.
And standing around this Communion Table later in the service is about more than simply eating a bit of bread and drinking a bit of juice.
What is the more? In a nutshell,
Food is about communion with God.
Food is about community with each other.
Food is about concord with the earth.
CONCLUSION
When I think back to when I was in 7th grade, my favorite meal was Sunday dinner.
Now your imagination may be conjuring up a Norman Rockwell image
of a large spread of ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, beans, peas, and
jello-salads.
But that would be the wrong image.
The truth is, we had the same thing for Sunday dinner every Sunday.
It was always soup and buns.
It was always this Dutch soup with little hamburger meatballs.
It was always the same buns on sale at the local grocery store.
Not exactly high cuisine.
It was not the menu that made this my favorite meal.
What made it my favorite meal is that we, as a family,
were all around the table;
What made it my favorite meal is that we often had guests,
friends spending the day with us.
What made it my favorite meal is that there was always enough –
enough food;
enough room – we could always squeeze in another chair;
enough time — no one had to rush off anywhere
or rush to do anything.
It was my favorite meal not so much because of the menu,
but because
we could enjoy each other’s company,
and each other’s conversation,
and each other’s companionship.
That is what companions are – the people we break bread with.
Am I being a little nostalgic? Perhaps.
But I find it telling that we have very few clear pictures of what the new heaven and new earth will look like.
The one clear picture we do have is of a feast…
a feast in which everyone is
enjoying the food,
enjoying each other,
and enjoying God.
No worries.
No fears.
No griefs.
One of the reasons we stand around this table
breaking the bread
and sharing the cup
is because we know this Feast is something worth hungering and thirsting and living for.
Amen
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