Journeys to the Cross: Enough Already!

As I mentioned in worship, Christ Lutheran is part of the northwest ecumenical cluster in Lancaster City, and this year we took a perhaps more active role in what has been an annual tradition for the cluster - the Friday Lenten luncheon and worship series.  I was so blessed to have the privilege of preaching on Friday, March 9, at St. John's Episcopal Church at Chestnut and Mulberry Streets.  The theme for this year's series is "Journeys to the Cross," and I chose to focus on the wilderness journey of Israel after God led them out of Egypt, and specifically on the manna story.  Check it out below!

Ecumenical Lenten Lunch & Worship Series – Friday, March 9, 2012

St. John's Episcopal Church, Lancaster, PA

Text: Psalm 78:18-29; Exodus 16:2-8,16-29; John 6:30-35

As you might be able to tell by the fact I'm not wearing a stole today, I am a seminarian, and I'm very blessed to serve as the pastoral leader this year over at Christ Lutheran Church, just around the corner at King and Manor. Yes, I've finished two years of seminary and I have one more to go after I finish this internship I'm doing right now. Like the art students here in Lancaster, in the time-honored tradition of graduate students everywhere, I like to consider myself a “starving seminarian.” I enjoy this perception that I am indeed a “starving seminarian” when I happily accept the leftovers from just about any event that happens at Christ Lutheran. You see, I'm always asking myself this question, “do I have enough?” Do I have enough to pay the car payment in two weeks? Will my financial aid come in on time? How much can I save on books at amazon.com? And so when I'm asked, “do you want to take home this tray of lasagna?” Suuurree! I'm happy to take that off your hands, I'm a starving seminarian. 

 

I got married last summer before I started here, in fact, to the intern who preceded me at Christ Lutheran. And so that gave me the chance to worry if I could save enough to buy rings and rent a tuxedo. And now I worry if we're going to have enough to pay all my student loans (that's undergrad too) when they come due in a few years. What about replacing my wife's car? What if we have kids? Do we have enough?

But then I take my head out of my budget spreadsheet for about five seconds, and I remember that, of course, I'm not starving. I may be a seminarian, but I'm about as far from starving as Bill Gates. I have everything I need. I've fallen into the trap of believing that the basic truth about the world is scarcity. It's the bedrock principle of our economic life. Scarcity – that there's a limited supply of just about everything, so you have to do whatever you can do to make sure you get enough for yourself. The problem with trying to get enough is that, of course, there's never enough. I can never make myself feel secure enough about my bank account. Our congregation has a lot of legitimate needs, but even if we could renovate our 120-year-old building we wouldn't be satisfied. I look at my brothers and sisters who come to the community meal that happens in our parish hall every week and I realize that my pursuit of enough means that they really don't have enough to get by.

In the mystery of God, God brought Joseph, and his father Jacob, and his 12 sons and their children, to Egypt, where they would multiply from a clan to a nation. Egyptian society embodied the principle of scarcity, just as ours does. There's never enough. There's never enough jewels in the palace, never enough slaves to work, the pyramids are never high enough. And so the Israelites were made to work. They were made to bear the whole endless, mindless pursuit of enough on their backs. God heard their groanings and rescued them through Moses, but brought them immediately into the empty, barren, wilderness of the desert beyond the Red Sea. 

 

At least they could depend on a meal in Egypt! Israel quickly realized they didn't have enough, and you can imagine that after a few days of having to listening to their complaining Moses had had enough of them! But it was there, in the wilderness, that God, as God usually does, came up with a characteristically surprising and creative solution. Bread from heaven. Manna. But God didn't drop a big pile of manna down in the desert and say, “ok, folks, have at it!” You can imagine what would have ensued. No, God imagined a different way of being based on abundance, not scarcity. God gave them enough for today, but just enough for today. The people were told to gather as much as each of them needed, and so some gathered more and some less, as they had need. There was plenty to go around. Of course, scarcity was deep in their blood and immediately some try to stockpile, to prepare for the worst, maybe even to engage in manna price speculation. But God thought of this – if some was left until the next morning, it bred worms and became foul; if they kept it in the sun, it melted; if they went to see if they could find some on the day of Sabbath rest, they found none.

This manna story that most of us have heard time and again isn't just a neat story of Israel's wilderness wanderings. It's a model of who God wanted Israel to be. A people with a theology, with an economy, of enough. God is simply enough for them. God's promises can be trusted. No one has to gain power over anyone else by stockpiling food, or weapons, or whatever else. God will provide. 

 

Of course, it was this same God, the Father, who raised Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, from the tomb, and said that his own Son's death was enough for all of us. Just as we do not have to spend our lives in endless acquisition of stuff to make us feel secure, in order to have enough, in the same way we don't have to spend our lives wondering if we are good enough, or faithful enough, for God's grace, because the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ was, and is, enough for our salvation. We have a Lord, Jesus Christ, who says “I am enough. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” 

 

We worship of God of abundance, not scarcity. Someone else's salvation does not come at the expense of our own. There's plenty of space around the great banquet table of Christ. There's nothing for us to pile up in our storehouses. God's grace comes to us, fresh and new, every single morning, enough for another day.

Christ is enough for us, and so not only does God serve up heaping, smorgasbord-sized portions of his love and grace, God also uses us to spread his overflowing, lavish provision for the world to those who do not yet have enough to survive. When I see all of our different churches hosting and serving community meals, when I see the Council of Churches food bank, and hear about Faith Food Boxes and the Winter Shelter and the CROP Walk, I rejoice that God has given us a manna perspective. God has given us a trust in God's abundant provision for the world. And so we're able during these forty days to journey with Christ from the relative security of Egypt, or our own quest for enough, into the unknown wilderness of Lent, where we often cannot see God's hand providing for us until we stumble over the manna at our feet. We ask Christ to help keep us there in the wilderness with him, so that the manna way of being might be written even more deeply on our hearts. And we wait, together, for the Easter resurrection, when we shall all take our seat at the great feast of victory. Amen.