How does God feed us? (Sermon prep for Sept. 18 by Ray Webster)

The first reading is Exodus 16:2-15

I always like to step back and look at the setting of Bible stories. We come in today on the people of Israel after the Exodus.

God has acted in history to set them free. The great formative foundational action by God has taken place. The Hebrew people are no longer slaves in Egypt. They are free people on the other side of the Red Sea and you would think wow, they should be dancing in the desert, and singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Wrong.

They were not happy. They were mad. They were complaining.

What they were remembering was not what God did but the good old days back in Egypt, when they were taken care of or at least thought they were being taken care of.

And their complaining is clearly directed at Moses and his brother Aaron, who led them out here into the middle of nowhere. Where they were hungry.

Of course the “good old days” back in Egypt were under the conditions of slavery, which did mean one got minimal food to survive – as long as one’s master wanted one to survive.

This very human complaining would characterize the people of Israel for good deal of there early freedom.

What the people of Israel did NOT say was OK we are free, what does God want us to do and to be? It would take forty years in the wilderness to sort that out.

God had acted to free them – but the people are strikingly hazy about who God is and where God is and what God might be doing, let alone wanting them to do.

But now the writer tells us God fed them in the wilderness. God sent meat in the evening (quails in the New Revised Standard Version) and bread in the morning – the mysterious manna in the wilderness.

God gave bread to the people to eat.

How does God feed us, here in Chicago today? What is the bread we are given?

There is the Bible. By means of the Scriptures God speaks to us the Word God has for us – always, at its center, the word of God’s love for each person. Each one. No one left out.

God feeds us in the Eucharist in which the bread and wine are the great signs of God’s presence with us and love for us in Jesus Christ.

God feeds us when we go to God in times of quiet prayer, as Jesus did throughout his ministry.

When we think and pray about a decision or an opinion, I believe God by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (I love the Quaker image of the Inner Light) guides our consciences. I also believe God gives us the strength and courage and wisdom and love to carry what we are given to carry and do what we are given to do.

In Thomas Aquinas wisdom is the first of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I believe God gives us the wisdom to love.

These are all ways God feeds us on our journey in Chicago today.

The second reading is from the Letter of Paul to the Philippians 1:21-30

We begin today reading from Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Philippi. Paul calls them to live in a manner of life worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and to face persecution as Paul has faced persecution.

The Gospel reading is from Matthew 20:1-16.

The setting of these stories of Jesus teaching his disciples is his journey from the north of Israel down to the city of Jerusalem.

Last week Jesus spoke strongly about forgiving. From the cross Jesus would pray, “Father, forgive them” – giving us in those words, and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, that prayer to make our own.

Today he gives us this earthy teaching – relevant to any of his communities – that the newcomer is loved and welcomed by God just as much as the old timer who has borne the burden of the day.

For the wages given to each disciple is the friendship and love of God in Jesus Christ and God does not ration that out.

It strikes me that in our first reading about God feeding the people in the wilderness, and the Gospel reading about the wages paid to God’s servants by God, the great fundamental accent is on what God is doing.

Good to step back periodically in the life of the church to ask what God is up to? God is up to a whole lot – loving each person. The newcomer. The old timer. The outsider (how Jesus went to such effort to reach the outsider). The people on the “in” (Saul of Tarsus was educated on the “in”) and the people of the “outs” (like a tax collector named Levi who took the new name Matthew, which is the name given to this Gospel from which we are reading). And you and me.

(Ray Webster)

Looking ahead to the Third Sunday in Easter: Luke 24:13-35

That very day, the first day of the week,

The first Easter Day

two of the disciples

What you and I are – disciples, followers of Jesus.

were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

It is characteristic of these beautiful stories of the visible presence of the risen Jesus, that the disciples do not at first recognize him. The writers seem to be saying, it is really him, it is Jesus – however he is (to use the great word of Paul) changed.

And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas,

It is not surprising we do not recognize the name, because there was a wider group of disciples of Jesus beyond the original twelve – a wider group of men and women.

That wider group includes all those who have followed Jesus as disciples down through the centuries. And includes you and me today.

answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him."

Then (Jesus) said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

“Was it not necessary” – characteristic of the Gospels to say that Jesus “must” do what he did. I believe the “must” – what was necessary – was that Jesus face what came in self-giving love, not running away, taking on suffering inflicted on him.

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

Jesus had a profound sense that in his ministry of self-giving love he was fulfilling all that had been spoken and written about who God is, and who the Messiah was to be, and what faith means, in the Hebrew Bible.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over."

For me these simple words “stay with us” are among the most beautiful in the New Testament. They were not sure who this was, but asked him to stay with them. So we ask the risen Lord, who we cannot see, to stay close to us.

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

This was evening on Sunday, the first Easter, and on the evening of the Thursday before he had done exactly the same thing – he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” – and it was when he did it again that they recognized him.

Just so in the Gospel on Easter Day (John 20:1-18), when Jesus was present with Mary Magdalene, it was when he spoke her name, when he said simply “Mary” as he had so often before, that she recognized him.

They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"

I believe the risen Christ draws near to us when we read the Gospels, when we read the Bible. I believe God the Holy Spirit – dwelling within us – lights up passages and phrases and images in the story as we read it. Not always, not everything, but we should pay attention to phrases or images that catch our attention.

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Risen Jesus, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.

(Raymond Webster)