"What is Good"

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Isaiah 55:1-9

¹Ho, everyone who thirsts,

come to the waters;

and y’all that have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without price.

²Why do y’all spend your money for that which is not bread,

and y’all’s labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

and delight y’all’s selves in rich food.

³Incline y’all’s ear, and come to me;

listen, so that y’all may live.

I will make with y’all an everlasting covenant,

my steadfast, sure love for David.

⁴See, I made him a witness to the peoples,

a leader and commander for the peoples.

⁵See, all y’all shall call nations that you do not know,

and nations that do not know y’all shall run to you

because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel,

for he has glorified y’all.

⁶Seek the LORD while he may be found,

call upon him while he is near;

⁷let the wicked forsake their way,

and the unrighteous their thoughts;

let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them,

and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

⁸For my thoughts are not y’all’s thoughts,

nor are y’all’s ways my ways, says the LORD.

⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than y’all’s ways

and my thoughts than y’all’s thoughts.

Sermon: “What is Good”

I have been on a zip line veering dangerously close to the edge of a cliff in South Africa; I have rappelled down the most bombed building in Europe, the Europa hotel in Belfast; I have flown in an airplane so small that the pilot just invited me to sit in the rickety co-pilot’s seat, where I saw how some of the control panel was duct-taped in place.  But I have never been more terrified than when I was a camp counselor in Texas.

You see, the temperature was usually about 105 degrees, and I was responsible for the lives of children whose parents, in a total lack of judgment, trusted me completely.  And these kids weren't just relaxing in a pool all day; they were kayaking and canoeing, they were rock climbing and horseback riding.  In that Hades-like heat, they were always on the verge of dehydration.  We had to resort to forced water-drinking at mealtimes. 

Before they were allowed anything else to drink (such as juice or tea), they had to drink a full glass of water first.  On particularly brutal days, we made them drink two glasses first.  You see, they did not even realize they were thirsty, until the heat made them really sick.  So, while I wanted these kids to have a meaningful experience of God, community and creation, what I mostly wanted was for them to just not die.  You can see why I was terrified.

Isaiah sounds to me like an exasperated camp counselor.  “Hey!” he says.  “All y’all who are thirsty, come to the waters!  And y’all over there – who are broke in spirit and resources and stressed out about it – come over here!  There’s really good food, and it’s free.  There’s wine, milk, (coffee), all you could need and more.  And it’s the really rich stuff…no tofu here, we're talking biscuits and gravy! You get the very best.  Aren’t you thirsty?  Aren’t you starving?”

And we, y’all, tend to respond like independent, have-to-prove-how-tough-we-are campers.  “Nope, I’m not that hungry.  I just had some microwaved doubt and leftover anger, I’m good.  I’m not thirsty, either…I’ve been drinking bitterness all day.”  Like those campers, we don’t even realize how hungry and thirsty we are: how we have filled an emptiness with “fast food” that can never really nourish or satisfy, how our souls have been ignored so long that they are as parched as an unwatered garden in the Texas sun.

Our camp counselor Isaiah shows us that God doesn’t want to force us to drink this living water and eat this nourishing food.  God wants us to want what is truly good for us. 

Gosh, how often we spend our whole lives refusing to do that.  We crave what is easy, what is convenient, what is comfortable, what is fast, but we do not crave what is good.    Perhaps like choosing brussels sprouts over chocolate cake, this is because what is good for us is just not as much fun.  But I don’t think so.  I think we’ve actually lost our moral compass for what is good for us and the world, and so we don’t even know the difference between soul-satisfying fare and cheap cardboard imitation food. 

So, when Isaiah asks us, “What do you spend your money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?”, the honest answer is that we don’t know how to distinguish between the high-in-ego and low-in-discipleship boxed dinners that are for sale in popular Christian culture from the high-in-mission and low-in-selfishness meals that God freely sets before us. 

How do we then tell the difference?  Well, our kind camp counselor Isaiah tells us that, too.  Listen.  Incline our ears.  Literally turn our head in the direction of God, and away from distractions, so we that can hear what God is saying to us. 

Listen.  The irony is, when we acknowledge that our souls are rumbling like hungry stomachs desperate for a real encounter with God, listening for God comes more easily.  But so often, like stuffing our stomachs with french fries before we can begin feeling hunger (to keep us from feeling it), we fill our ears and hearts with comforting and simplistic Christian “answers” before we can even truly feel the questions of our faith. 

God does not call us to a faith that is protected and pacified from hunger and thirst; God calls us to a faith that is always in a state of hunger and thirst, desperately seeking the nourishment of our Creator. 

Lent is a season when we in the church willfully close our mouths, that we may open our ears.  When we sit before the wonder of God in the wilderness and say, “God, your ways are not my ways.  Your thoughts are not my thoughts.  Thank God!”  When we stop trying to buy salvation or security with showy piety or a selfishly private faith and instead come to the waters, remembering that the God who chose us here before we could even form the words to choose God, still chooses us. 

Listen.  Listen.  Listen.  It is the only way we will ever know the difference between what is fast and what is good. 

But, let me gently remind all y’all about my “Southern” version of today’s scripture reading.  This nourishment we seek, these waters of grace that never run dry, this abundant rich food of life, is not just for me, or for you, or for us.  It is for all.  And so as much as the season of Lent is about patiently listening to God for a word of challenge and change, it is also about patiently listening to one another.  Because what brings me personal gratification while willfully ignoring the needs of others will never be good.  Goodness is only "good" when it is for all.  Satisfaction only satisfies when it brings hope to all.  That greatest counselor of all – Jesus – said it best, “What good is it for a person to gain the whole world [that is all worldly possessions] and lose their soul?”

We are thirsty. We are hungry. God made us this way, so that we would realize that we need to seek a satisfaction, a goodness, that is beyond us.  When we fill our spiritual hunger with materialism, self-sufficiency or halfhearted devotion, we deny God’s wisdom in creating us for community.  But when we confess our state of need, and open our eyes and ears to the hunger and thirst all around us in poverty, war, loneliness and meaninglessness, we will taste and see that the Lord is good.  Thanks be to the God who gives us hunger from our first moment to our last, to the Spirit who feeds us with the heavenly food of hope and to the Savior who invites all those who thirst for righteousness to come to the waters of grace.  Amen.