Our Gospel reading comes from Luke, chapter 14 verses 16-24
Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ Then the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
This is the word of the Lord
Thanks be to God.
In June of 2016, the Guardian released a report that showed that Americans throw away some 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually, an amount constituting about “one third of all foodstuffs.” Doug Rauch, the former president of the Trader Joe’s Company reports that grocery stores routinely trash produce for being the wrong shape or containing minor blemishes. In her reporting on food waste in the United States The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg writes that, “Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the U.S. are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards.”
The desire for cheap and aesthetically pleasing produce seems to parallel our desire for Cheap clothing. Fast fashion – a term used to describe quickly produced, trendy clothing that degrades in a few years, has taken the retail industry by storm. At least until April of 2013, when a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing at least 1134 and injuring as many as 2000 more. Since that collapse in 2013, more and more stories of abuses have come to light. This is the same industry that in the United States is valued at around 2.4 trillion dollars. As these stories are reported fashion brands and the garment industry have come under public scrutiny and pressure to conform to ethically sourced materials and ethical treatment of workers.
Everything has a cost. There is a cost to throwing away produce because it is not aesthetically pleasing. People who could eat – will not. The demands of fast fashion push producers to cut corners in safety and environmental concerns. When those safeguards are ignored, people get hurt. Each of these stories is woven through with a human cost – our stories are intertwined as producers and consumers. Which leads us back to the opening lines of Isaiah.
Come! everyone who thirsts come and drink! and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
While it may sound like these stories from today and the words from Isaiah are in direct opposition, let’s explore the context in which this particular passage from Isaiah is written and see how the words of the prophet speak to us today.
Isaiah 55:1-9 is a transitional passage between second and third Isaiah. It comes at the end of second Isaiah which is referred to as the “book of comfort”. Historically, It was written to the people returning to Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. This would be the early restoration period. This is when the Israelites were allowed by the Persian empire to return to the city of Jerusalem. It was not a prosperous time. The city had not been rebuilt since the Babylonian empire had destroyed it. There was social and economic unrest between the people that had been on the land since the destruction and those just returning to the homeland. The book of Nehemiah tells us that just 50 years after the return to Jerusalem conditions were so unstable that farmers were having to borrow money and grain or sell their children into debt slavery to pay their taxes. We can infer from Nehemiah’s account that the circumstances witnessed by Isaiah in Jerusalem were dire indeed.
The invitation to come and eat without having to pay would have caught the Israelites ears. In their absence, Jerusalem had not recovered from Babylonian destruction and the exile community had been moved away and in the time between, the exiles had become used to the ways of the Babylonian empire. It is likely the returnees had never been to Jerusalem. While they heeded the call to return, they returned to nothing more than promises, and a city waiting to be rebuilt.
So come and eat, come and drink! There is milk and bread for all and all will be satisfied.
Then the prophet shifts gears and asks why they chase those things which do not satisfy them? Why chase dreams and eat food that does not nourish? I argue that this passage is the the prophet calling out those things that people chase – like, fame or money, or perhaps a perfect apple, or a trendy piece of clothing. Those things that turn out to be nothing more than empty calories that do not satisfy our hunger or needs.
And then Isaiah shifts again, and God, through the prophet, is calling God’s people back – calling them to come and listen – listen to the promise of a berit ‘olam – an eternal Covenant. These words – berit ‘olam – would have been familiar to the sixth century returnees. The language calls back to the covenant with David as written in 2nd Samuel. By the end of the next verse, the listener is reminded that God made a covenant with David where God says “And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more”. This covenant language goes deeper. It starts with David and reaches back even further to the Covenant that God made with Abram in Genesis 15.
Let’s talk about the seriousness of covenant language. When God made the covenant with Abram, God committed to God’s own death if the covenant was not kept. When Isaiah is calling the people to listen to the promise of God’s eternal Covenant, he is using language that reminds the people of their history with God and how God has continued to fulfill the promises made to Abram and David.
Like In the Abrahamic covenant, God expands the promise that Isaiah is speaking. It is written “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.” These are strong words of hope to a people that are rebuilding that which had been destroyed. This amplifies the promises made to Abram and David while reinforcing that it is God that glorifies the people and God alone that fulfills the promises that God makes.
The last part of the passage reminds the listener to focus on God, to continue to seek the Lord. Here it is explicit that It is Israel’s part in the covenant to stay close to the source of its glory and power and to return if it has strayed. To stray from God is to become disconnected from the source of their glory.
Let us leave Isaiah for a moment knowing that God‘s ways are not our ways and that God thoughts are not our thoughts.
In his writings to the church at Corinth, Paul was worried about those things which distract and consume our attention. He argues that it is not just literal idols that will distract us from God, but those things that we make into idols that are the most damning.
After listing issues that the church at Corinth was wrestling with, Paul spoke directly to the underlying arrogance of the people that said and I’m paraphrasing – don’t worry about me, I’m doing just fine.I know there isn’t anyone other than God, so partaking in idol rituals is just part of the community that we live in. We have to look the part but it’s ok, because we know what we believe.
Hearing this, Paul challenges the reader to focus on God alone, to avoid those things that might distract from God. He argues that staying faithful and true to the covenants that God has made with humanity and through the grace that God has provided that we can overcome any temptation that we may encounter.
Paul reminds us that God’s ways are inscrutable when he says to us that God’s people were baptized in the Red Sea, ate God’s holy food, and drank the same spiritual drink that we drink and they still spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness looking for a place to call home. So maybe we can take a moment and We can explain the actions of idolatry that left them to wander in the desert, explain that they got distracted by golden idols, and news things to do and perfect food to eat – but either way, they wandered.Still, God was faithful to the promises that God made. They found their way to the holy land.
God kept God’s covenant with God’s people, even as we continued to turn away from God to find new ways to try and satisfy ourselves. And every time we look for a new way to satisfy ourselves and every time we look for new ways to satisfy ourselves we find ourselves being called back – saying come – come back, Back to God, being called back to wholeness.
Over and over throughout the Scriptures, God’s word to us is to care for creation, to care for the stranger, and to see the image of God in each other. God promises Abram descendants, as many as the stars, as numerous as the dust of the earth. God promises David a land to call home.
Remember the covenants made with David and Abram and hear the covenant spoken in Isaiah.
God through Isaiah, is calling the people back to those things that satisfy and nourish them – Gods own abundance and God’s own hospitality. The prophet then reminds us of the mystery of God and the ways that God chooses to work in the world. Even as he speaks of this mystery, Isaiah as God’s voice, is reaching back to David, back to Noah, and back even as far back as to Abram to remind us that God’s promises are fulfilled and God continues to honor Gods promises even as humanity looks for new foods and new ways to satisfy ourselves.
So how do we get back to a place where we consider the perfect harvest being the one that feeds all of God’s people? How do we look at the clothing we wear and see our stories are woven together with the people that made it?
We can see how God’s creation provides food in many wonderful and splendid ways, some more symmetrical than others, but all uniquely beautiful and all uniquely created. We have companies now that specialize in gathering so called “ugly food” and sharing it with all of us. Chefs that have made it their mission to educate people on heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables that look vastly different than what we might be used to seeing on shelves.
We can educate ourselves on where our clothing is made and advocate, with our dollars if necessary, for the producers to embrace ethical means of production and safety for those people that make the clothing we wear. We can support producers and companies that embrace ecologically sound methods.
We can see the image of God in our friends and neighbors, even those friends and neighbors that live halfway around the world that we have not yet met. We are all community.
We are all created to be in community. We are reminded through these covenants that we need to be in communion with God.
As I understand it, the call here from God is Come and eat and drink. And this is God saying to God’s people I don’t care where you have been, just come. Eat and drink your fill. Come. My food and drink will satisfy you. Come. My promises will sustain you. Come. Just come.
Matthew Messenger 