Alternate Food, Everlasting Fidelity

Isaiah 55:1-5, 10-13

Sermon by Dan Schrock

March 7, 2010

Lent 3

1 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.

¹⁰ For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

¹¹ so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

12 For you shall go out with joy and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,

for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Some of us feel trapped by the economy. I know a man here in Goshen who lost his job a year ago because his employer ran out of money. A year later, he still doesn’t have a job. This man has a lot going for him: he’s smart, friendly, and outgoing. He has a master’s degree and is known to be competent in his particular line of work. The problem is that no jobs have opened up for the kind of work he does. He could move to another part of the country where there are many jobs currently open for his line of work. The catch, however, is that he owns a house here in town that he can’t sell. So he’s stuck—he can’t find a job because none are available in northern Indiana or southern Michigan; and he can’t move to where the jobs are because he owns a house he can’t sell. He’s trapped.

The unemployed aren’t the only ones feeling trapped. Even people who do have jobs can feel trapped. Employees in some local Mennonite institutions have had to accept temporary cuts in their salaries or benefits, while still others have had to take temporary freezes. A similar situation may be unfolding in local public schools because state and local revenues have declined.

High school and college students may feel trapped too. Summer jobs simply aren’t as plentiful as they once were, and the job market for graduating college seniors isn’t as bright as it once was either. I’m guessing that most of you who will graduate from college this spring are not planning to stay in Elkhart County, for the simple reason that job opportunities are better in most other places.

If you are retired, you could also feel trapped by the economy. Although the value of certain investments has increased in the last year or so, the overall paper value is not what it was 2-3 years ago. Therefore some of you seniors may be drawing an income from smaller pots of money which you cannot enlarge. Perhaps you feel a bit trapped.

Living through the recession of the last few years has helped me to realize in a new way how much we are affected by the economy of this nation. When I was younger I used to hear my grandparents talk about how hard it was to live through the Great Depression of the 1930s. My grandfather in particular would tell stories of all the hobos, as they were then called, who came by the farm begging—desperately and passionately begging—him to hire them for just a day, or even just a few hours, so they could get something to eat. My grandfather occasionally did hire a few of these hobos, but most of them he turned away because he didn’t really need their help, or he had no money to pay them, or he felt he couldn’t feed them all. Mind you, my grandfather was a hugely compassionate man and a loyal follower of Christ—and yet he and my grandmother simply did not have the resources to help all the hobos who plead for work.

In a number of measurable ways, the Great Depression was worse than the current recession we’re in. And yet in one respect Mennonites may have felt safer during the Great Depression than we might feel now: at least they had a reliable supply of food. In the 1930s most American Mennonites were farmers who raised a wide variety of food, some to sell and some to eat for themselves. In the 1930s my grandparents raised their own wheat, corn, and oats; their own vegetables of every kind and description; their own eggs, milk, and butter; and their own meat, including beef, pork, goat, chicken, duck, goose, and pheasant. Come what may, they knew they’d always have enough food to eat well.

We may feel more vulnerable now because most of us are not farmers and do not raise large quantities of our own food. If we don’t have a job, we might qualify for unemployment, and possibly for food stamps, but we will not be eating as well as my grandparents ate throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Whether that’s true or not, the local, regional, and national economy clearly affects us in profound ways. The state of the economy affects our income and benefits. It shapes the way we spend money. When the economy is good, our outlook on life tends to be more optimistic; and when the economy is bad, our outlook on life tends to be more fearful. In more subtle and extensive ways than we might care to admit, broader economic activity shapes us, possibly even traps us.

Back in about 540 B.C., there was another group of God’s people who also felt trapped. They were Jews who lived in the decaying but still powerful Babylonian Empire. This group of Jews had been trapped in Babylon for over forty years. Forty years before, they, their parents, or their grandparents had been forced to move to Babylon after the Babylonian army had decisively defeated them and subdued Jerusalem. For forty years these Jews had been compelled to live in the Babylonian empire, subject to Babylonian laws, Babylonian politics, Babylonian religion, and Babylonian economic activity.

Every day, and in nearly every direction they looked, these Jews were surrounded by all things Babylonian. Babylonian culture was constantly in their faces. They spoke Babylonian words and ate Babylonian food. They had to use Babylonian money, Babylonian weights and measures, and pay Babylonian taxes. Babylonian soldiers and Babylonian chariots sometime paraded through the streets. Their very lives, it seemed, depended on the Babylonian empire. Their world was so visibly and so thoroughly Babylonian that they began to think Babylon was the only reality that mattered—maybe even the only reality there was.

Into this situation stepped the prophet of Isaiah 55. For the most part, biblical prophets are not people who predict the future. If you type the phrase “biblical prophecy” into an internet search engine, you’ll generally get websites that use biblical passages to predict events that are supposedly going to happen in the future. But that’s not really what a biblical prophet does.

Instead, a biblical prophet is someone who reminds us that there is an alternate reality called God. A biblical prophet reminds us there is a God of heaven and earth with whom we must reckon. And because there is a God of heaven and earth, a biblical prophet helps us to imagine fresh possibilities.

This is what the prophet of Isaiah 55 does. He—or at least presumably a he—strides into this community of Jews and declares to them that the Babylonian realties which they think are so powerful, so overwhelming, so real, are in fact not ultimate. Only Yahweh is ultimate—only the God of heaven and earth is really real. And because God is ultimate, there is a divine reality that overarches and undermines the cheap, limited pretensions of the Babylonian empire.

Specifically, God provides these Jews food and fidelity which the Babylonian world cannot provide. Through the voice of the prophet in verses 1-2, God announces free food, free water, free wine, and free milk. In contrast to the unsatisfying food of the empire, God offers an alternate source of sustenance. Instead of the empire’s junk food, God provides heavenly food. In a troubled Babylonian economy that favored powerful elites rather than the ordinary working person, Isaiah 55 speaks economic hope for beleaguered Jews.

God also offers fidelity. In the NRSV this free fidelity is called “an everlasting covenant,” which is a glorified way of saying that God is always going to stick by them no matter what. Verses 10-13 go on to declare that God will renew their community and the environment in which their community lives. This renewal will be a kind of new creation, with cypress trees instead of thorns, and myrtle bushes instead of briars. This renewal will bring the people such joy that (metaphorically speaking) mountains will sing and trees will clap in delight. The God who is powerful, faithful, and attentive will create new opportunities. God will do an end-run around the things that trap this group of Jews. God will make openings.

This text summons us, 2,500 years later, to put our trust in God, not in the ups and downs of the American economy. We the people of God have access to food that cannot be bought at Martin’s or Meijer’s. We have sustenance beyond food stamps. We have bread and wine that empires do not and cannot give.

Some weeks ago the federal government reported that in the last quarter of 2009, the nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 5.7%, which is the highest rate in over six years. If this good economic news continues, it should lead to a more robust economy, more government revenues, and an increase in jobs. Wages and investments should rise in the foreseeable future. The economy is likely to improve, even in Elkhart County.

But that economy is neither the source nor the focus of our hope. Our hope—our sustenance—comes from God, whose open hands are full of food and fidelity, ready to give away in abundance. All we have to do is ask.