In the name of God, source of all being, eternal word and holy spirit. Amen.
How are we to live?
The people in the wilderness cried out and God said to them, I will give you bread from heaven. They were in a time of turmoil and change, of fear and doubt. All that they knew in the security of their captivity was gone!
Something new was coming. But what was it?
How are we to live now? Between the old place and the promise?
To begin to accept ourselves as sustained by the grace of God.
To begin to trust Jesus – that the source of our being is the source of all being.
To trust God’s provision and providence – and move forward through life alive to that promise – and its fulfillment here and now.
In the desert the people yearned for their past, the security of their captivity, and they complained. Paul in the epistle says, put away rancor and wrangling and bitterness and anger – as a Lutheran theologian, Paul Lee, said to me last summer, Badmouthing is negative prayer – put all that away and be imitators of God. God is loving, God is kind, God is forgiving and tenderhearted. In your speech and in your actions be imitators of God.
God’s word builds you up, sustains you.
May God make us a gracious people, a generous people.
SO how are we to live? We are to live as imitators of God, as members of his kingdom.
Be kind to one another, be tender-hearted to one another, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.
How are we to live? Through Jesus: he is the bread of life, bread from heaven, bread for the world.
Live free from fear, free from want. Rejoice in God’s abundant grace and sustaining love.
Hope in the promise of the presence of God with us, giving us life through his son, sustaining us.
Act secure in the knowledge of the love of God, as his hands in the world, heralds of his kingdom arriving in our midst.
God is with us. Christ is with us. Let’s live that way. God give us the bread we need today – the sustenance of your saving love.
Jesus live in our hearts forever. Amen.
August 9, 2009
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Showing posts with label Bread in the Wilderness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bread in the Wilderness. Show all posts
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Saturday, September 20, 2008
bread
Bread from Above
Bread for the Journey
Bread for the World
In the name of God, merciful Father, compassionate Son, Spirit of wisdom.
The people of God wander in the wilderness. They long nostalgically for the ‘fleshpots of Egypt’ – for the familiar, however uncomfortable, however impossible to recover.
God has drawn them out of bondage – led by Moses, whose very name means “he who draws out” or “he who has been drawn out” (both true of Moses).
By a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, God has led them into the wilderness. They follow – but they grumble.
For they are on an adventure.
And as Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, says,
“Adventures are a logical and reliable result – and have been since at least the time of Odysseus – of the fatal act of leaving one’s home, or trying to return to it again. All adventure happens in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one’s home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep … you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret.
“For better or worse it (the story of the Jews) has been one long adventure – a five-thousand-year Odyssey – from the moment of the true First Commandment, when God told Abraham lech lecha: Thou shalt leave home. Thou shalt get lost. Thou shalt find slander, oppression, opportunity, escape, and destruction. Thou shalt, by definition, find adventure.”
Michael Chabon, Gentleman of the Road (Ballantine, 2007) 201-202, 203.
Now the people of God are embarked upon a great adventure. They are seeking – home, but a new home, which is their true home, their only home; they are seeking the land of promise where God dwells with them.
God has pitched his tent among them - but God has promised: this is only a way station. You are on a pilgrimage, a journey, to the place where you really belong: the place that I prepare for you.
So. They are walking here. They are walking in the desert. And they are getting hungry.
The people of God cry out – and God hears them.
So, God provides. Quail in the evening, manna in the morning. Day after day after day. Forty years of it. They are sick of it within a week. (Just wait till they run out of water.)
What have they got? They have
Bread from Above – Bread from Heaven.
The Holy One has provided them with what they need.
Notice: he provides them just what they need. As it turns out, no matter how anyone gathers, each person finds they have just enough for the day – or to tide them over during the Sabbath. There is nothing left over, nothing you can hoard: it turns bad by morning.
What do they have?
They have the bread that the Lord has given them. They might want to sing:
All I have needed thy hand has provided; great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
They are able to go on, as the God who has called them forth from the familiar fleshpots on the way of the great adventure, as God leads them forward to the place of his purpose.
The bread from above is bread for the journey.
***
In the story of the laborers in the vineyard, the bread from heaven appears again – as the daily bread, the bread we need.
Imagine hanging around the Shell station all day, waiting for a job. Nobody has hired you and it is getting on toward 5 o’clock. How will you explain to your family you have nothing for them? There is nothing to eat. Nobody picked you and now you have nothing.
Then a man in a truck says, get in -- you’re hired.
And at the end of the day, he pays you a full day’s wages.
After all that waiting, all that wondering, worrying, it is like – bread from heaven.
You might be a little surprised to hear what the other guys say after you leave: “Hey! That’s not fair. We worked all day. Through the heat. And all you give us is –
“A day’s wages. As agreed.”
Each of them, however much they’d gathered or hoped to gather, has their daily bread.
They have it from God.
Whether this seems like abundant providence or stinginess – they have the staff of life.
God provides it: not from merit, but from – something else.
Because the complaining laborers are thinking about what is right, what is due, for each. But the landowner is concerned with what is right for all: the welfare of the whole community, the whole people of God.
And that is a pretty big group.
Last year Sarah and I went to a class taught by Art Simon, founder of the Christian citizens’ group Bread for the World. The course had been billed as how to preach on behalf of the poor to the rich – but he quickly threw out the title. We are all in this together. Rich and poor, we are all one people. God’s people.
So the bread from above is bread for the world.
We are given this bread, and it is bread from heaven.
It is for us to bless it, break it, share it among ourselves, and pass it on.
How will you receive the bread from heaven this week? How will you take in the body of Christ, the bread of Heaven, to be renewed and energized? How will you take the bread from above, blessed and broken, and extend your hand to offer it to another?
There are very practical ways: in the past weeks, we’ve taken up offerings for local food banks – and we’ve learned how to help with hurricane relief.
There are other opportunities for mission and service ahead – from working in local direct assistance programs to supporting mission work far away.
There is the citizenship side of the poverty issue. We, without regard to party, can become advocates for the work of relief and development.
There is our own good work, done in the course of getting a living, done for the glory of God.
We can continue to develop our mission and our outreach as a community – finding the ways each of us and all of us together are called to serve – and to discover what our own place is, in the sacred story of the people of God.
Show us your way, Lord, as you showed the men and women and children in the desert of Sinai, the way to worship you and to serve you, and to become your people in the midst of the world. Provide us with the bread we need; and give us the grace to become part of your gift: bread from above, the bread of heaven – bread for the world.
Amen.
Proper 20, Year A - Pentecost XIX
Exodus 16:2-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16
+
Bread for the Journey
Bread for the World
In the name of God, merciful Father, compassionate Son, Spirit of wisdom.
The people of God wander in the wilderness. They long nostalgically for the ‘fleshpots of Egypt’ – for the familiar, however uncomfortable, however impossible to recover.
God has drawn them out of bondage – led by Moses, whose very name means “he who draws out” or “he who has been drawn out” (both true of Moses).
By a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, God has led them into the wilderness. They follow – but they grumble.
For they are on an adventure.
And as Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, says,
“Adventures are a logical and reliable result – and have been since at least the time of Odysseus – of the fatal act of leaving one’s home, or trying to return to it again. All adventure happens in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one’s home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep … you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret.
“For better or worse it (the story of the Jews) has been one long adventure – a five-thousand-year Odyssey – from the moment of the true First Commandment, when God told Abraham lech lecha: Thou shalt leave home. Thou shalt get lost. Thou shalt find slander, oppression, opportunity, escape, and destruction. Thou shalt, by definition, find adventure.”
Michael Chabon, Gentleman of the Road (Ballantine, 2007) 201-202, 203.
Now the people of God are embarked upon a great adventure. They are seeking – home, but a new home, which is their true home, their only home; they are seeking the land of promise where God dwells with them.
God has pitched his tent among them - but God has promised: this is only a way station. You are on a pilgrimage, a journey, to the place where you really belong: the place that I prepare for you.
So. They are walking here. They are walking in the desert. And they are getting hungry.
The people of God cry out – and God hears them.
So, God provides. Quail in the evening, manna in the morning. Day after day after day. Forty years of it. They are sick of it within a week. (Just wait till they run out of water.)
What have they got? They have
Bread from Above – Bread from Heaven.
The Holy One has provided them with what they need.
Notice: he provides them just what they need. As it turns out, no matter how anyone gathers, each person finds they have just enough for the day – or to tide them over during the Sabbath. There is nothing left over, nothing you can hoard: it turns bad by morning.
What do they have?
They have the bread that the Lord has given them. They might want to sing:
All I have needed thy hand has provided; great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
They are able to go on, as the God who has called them forth from the familiar fleshpots on the way of the great adventure, as God leads them forward to the place of his purpose.
The bread from above is bread for the journey.
***
In the story of the laborers in the vineyard, the bread from heaven appears again – as the daily bread, the bread we need.
Imagine hanging around the Shell station all day, waiting for a job. Nobody has hired you and it is getting on toward 5 o’clock. How will you explain to your family you have nothing for them? There is nothing to eat. Nobody picked you and now you have nothing.
Then a man in a truck says, get in -- you’re hired.
And at the end of the day, he pays you a full day’s wages.
After all that waiting, all that wondering, worrying, it is like – bread from heaven.
You might be a little surprised to hear what the other guys say after you leave: “Hey! That’s not fair. We worked all day. Through the heat. And all you give us is –
“A day’s wages. As agreed.”
Each of them, however much they’d gathered or hoped to gather, has their daily bread.
They have it from God.
Whether this seems like abundant providence or stinginess – they have the staff of life.
God provides it: not from merit, but from – something else.
Because the complaining laborers are thinking about what is right, what is due, for each. But the landowner is concerned with what is right for all: the welfare of the whole community, the whole people of God.
And that is a pretty big group.
Last year Sarah and I went to a class taught by Art Simon, founder of the Christian citizens’ group Bread for the World. The course had been billed as how to preach on behalf of the poor to the rich – but he quickly threw out the title. We are all in this together. Rich and poor, we are all one people. God’s people.
So the bread from above is bread for the world.
We are given this bread, and it is bread from heaven.
It is for us to bless it, break it, share it among ourselves, and pass it on.
How will you receive the bread from heaven this week? How will you take in the body of Christ, the bread of Heaven, to be renewed and energized? How will you take the bread from above, blessed and broken, and extend your hand to offer it to another?
There are very practical ways: in the past weeks, we’ve taken up offerings for local food banks – and we’ve learned how to help with hurricane relief.
There are other opportunities for mission and service ahead – from working in local direct assistance programs to supporting mission work far away.
There is the citizenship side of the poverty issue. We, without regard to party, can become advocates for the work of relief and development.
There is our own good work, done in the course of getting a living, done for the glory of God.
We can continue to develop our mission and our outreach as a community – finding the ways each of us and all of us together are called to serve – and to discover what our own place is, in the sacred story of the people of God.
Show us your way, Lord, as you showed the men and women and children in the desert of Sinai, the way to worship you and to serve you, and to become your people in the midst of the world. Provide us with the bread we need; and give us the grace to become part of your gift: bread from above, the bread of heaven – bread for the world.
Amen.
Proper 20, Year A - Pentecost XIX
Exodus 16:2-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16
+
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