Year C, Lent IV
The Reverend Dr. Brent Was
March 10, 2013
“…the
Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that
year.”
Last
week we spoke about repent and return, right?
We spoke about the Kingdom of God being simply how things are supposed
to be, right? We are called to repent of
our sinful ways and return to the way things are supposed to be, return from
exile from the kingdom of God. The real
question is what is it supposed to look like, this Kingdom of God? We are called to return from our posture of
consent to, of complicity in, of collaboration with forces of idolatry,
gluttony and avarice that rule our 21st century American lives; the
call to return from that life is as clear as it was in the days of Isaiah and
Jeremiah as well as Jesus. But where is
it we are returning to? What does that
kingdom of God look like? How is it supposed to be? That is our Lenten question this morning
which finds its voice right there in our lectionary this morning.
The
book of Joshua is the story of the conquest of Canaan. In the wake of Moses’ death, God gives
command of Israel to Joshua. It is a
tough book, lots of smiting and really reinforces a manifest destiny narrative
for Israel in the Levant that is still hideously unresolved. In any case, that’s where our lectionary
leads us, to the first celebration of Passover in Canaan and the end of the
rain of manna.
What
was manna? Right, bread from
heaven. In the Exodus story, Israel
escapes from Pharaoh and the people find themselves starving in the desert and
they began to have nostalgia for “…the land of Egypt, where we sat by the
fleshpots and ate our fill of bread.”
God heard their cries and through Moses declared, “At twilight you shall
eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread.” So from that day forth, for all forty years
of the Exodus, quail covered the camps in the evening, and in the morning, as
the dew lifted, a manna was left on the ground.
It was “as fine as frost” (Ex 16:14) or like “coriander seed, white, and
the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.” (Ex 16:31) Enough meat and bread for
everyone; the way it is supposed to be.
And, of course, it coming from God via Moses, there were rules.
Does
anyone remember the rules of manna? Rule one:
“Gather as much of it as each of you needs.” (Ex 16:16)
Pretty simple. Take as much as
you need. Rule two: “Let no one leave any of it over until
morning.” (Ex 16:19) Do not
accumulate. Do not hoarde. What happened when they tried to store
it? “it bred worms and became foul.” (Ex
16:20) Have faith that God will provide. And rule three: Keep the Sabbath. “Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy
Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you
want to bake and boil what you want to boil, and all that is left over put
aside to be kept until morning.” (Ex 16:23)
Miraculously, on the Sabbath, the seventh day, the manna did not turn
foul when kept overnight. Sabbath is key.
In the words of Ched Meyer, with whom I studied two weeks ago, “Sabbath
observation means to remember every week
this economy’s two principles: the goal of ‘enough’ for everyone, and the
prohibition of accumulation.” Take what you need. Don’t accumulate. Observe the Sabbath. To sum it up, abundance
is a gift from God, it is the true nature of things that there is enough for
everyone AND, self-limitation is the appropriate response to such a divine
gift. A Sabbath economy is part and
parcel to the kingdom of God. It is
there that we are called to return.
“Great
idea, Fr. Brent. Manna. There’s there’s solution to the hunger
problem in Oregon.” True, manna in its
pure form is scarce. It is not traded on
the Chicago mercantile exchange. But
that is the very point. Our world is not
commodifiable, actually. It is not
ownable; not really, or at least really not in the kingdom of God. God’s plan is not to carve up the earth for
the strongest, the most aggressive and competitive to accumulate more than they
can possibly use while others do not have what they need. It is that world that
we need to repent and return from. An
economy of Sabbath; that is where we need to return to.
The
conference I went to was all about Sabbath economics. This is an economy that is based on the
principles of gift and limit. There is
abundance, enough for everyone. Moving
at the pace of the Sun, there is food, clean water, clean air, space for
everyone. Even with nine billion of us,
there is enough of everything necessary for everyone to live if we all just got
along and shared of the abundance. No,
the world cannot consume like we do in Eugene 2013, there is distinctly not
enough for that, but there is enough that no one need starve to death, or
freeze to death, or die of thirst. You
see, disparities of the order of magnitude in the world are not natural, but
rather are the result of human sinfulness.
Wealth disparities are are anthropological aberrations. It does not
happen like this in nature, that 1% of a population controls 50+% of the
wealth. The phenomenon of the 1% is
unique to humanity, but at least we are consistent. If we read the Gospels closely, Occupy’s
critique of the 1% in our day mirrors Jesus Christ’s critique of the 1% in His,
which mirrors the critique of the prophets 500 years before that. And the solution that Jesus Christ offers is
the solution that Moses offered, which is what God offers: jubilee. When shared, there is enough. Vast disparities of wealth through improper
accumulation are not part of God’s plan but are the result of human sinfulness,
and the solution is jubilee, the redistribution of the abundance gifted to us
by God. I said it: the redistribution of wealth, the jubilee,
this is God in Christ’s economic plan. I
fear that Jesus’ political career would be short in modern day America talking
like that, but He does talk like that, and if we are going to be serious about
following Jesus Christ, we need to pay attention.
God’s
plan for the Israelites was simple, the wandering for 40 years was to purge the
Israelites of the habits of the fleshpots of Egypt. The duration of 40 years was key. In 800 BCE when this all takes place, 40
years was the far end of life expectancy.
So after 40 years, the first hand experience of slavery was going to be
aged out of Israel, that is why Moses had to die before crossing the Jordan
into the Promised Land, that land was not for him, but for the children. 40 years away from the concentration of
wealth, of man’s dominion over humans, over animals and plants and rivers and
soils. And over the course of that 40
years, they lived in a Sabbath economy.
Every day their life was sustained by the gift of God’s grace: manna and
quail with water occasionally pouring forth from rocks. 40 years… the lazy habits of empire broke on
the rocks of God’s hesed, steadfast
love. Israel was prepared to enter the
Promised Land and to practice the Sabbath Economy they had been trained in, so
on that day, in the midst of that first Passover, the manna was to cease and
they ate of the crops of Canaan. With
the tools they had acquired in the wilderness and backed up by the Law, usuary,
the collection of interest was forbidden, the Sabbath every 7th day,
every 7th year, and in the years 7 times 7, the 49th
year, the year of our Lord’s favor, the proclamation of jubilee. All debts were
forgiven, all accumulated land was returned to its rightful owners, all
indenturedness ceased. Israel was living the dream.
Well,
they lived the Sabbath economy for a while, maybe a few of hundred years. By the time the prophets are writing in the
Babylonian exile, 500ish, they are primarily decrying the destruction of Israel
in terms of their distance from jubilee, in their participation in Empire, in
accumulating wealth, in placing faith in the 1%. We here, we don’t have forty years to clean
up this mess. Climate-wise alone, the
past 100 years raised the globe’s temperature 1.3 degrees, something it took
5000 years to do of its own volition.
How much warmer will it get in the next 40 the way things are? But we don’t have 40 years. Fortunately, we don’t need 40 years. We know the truth when we see it, we know
right from wrong when we see it, and it is right here. The kingdom of God is at hand for those with
the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it, the voice to proclaim it.
Our
story of repentance, of the repentance required of us, very specifically us in
this room is specifically the story of the Prodigal Son. This is a uniquely Lukan story, and we all
know it. There are two brothers, one cashes
in his inheritance and “squandered it in dissolute living.” He ends up broke and starving and humbly
returns home, where to his surprise he is joyously welcomed by his father
because to him, “…this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and
is found.”
The
trusty, devoted, stay at home brother is not impressed with his whore mongering
brother’s return and the grandiosity of his welcome, but the father explains,
“…he was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” And then they dug into that fatted calf at the
feast.
That
is our story. We are a wasteful and
spiteful people; a prodigal people. We
have squandered the earth, our inheritance.
Talk about dissolute living. But
every day, every moment of every day we have the choice, the chance to do it
different. And God in Christ is there,
waiting, waiting with infinitely wide and eternal patient arms to welcome us as
we return from our sleep walking, our blindness, our death to the kingdom of
God. There is enough for everyone.
Disparity is not God’s
plan. God’s plan is Jubilee,
redistribution. Repent and return to this brave new world. Now that is a Lenten
message we can sink our teeth into. AMEN
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