A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
2nd July 2023
Isaiah 55.1-9
Matthew 14.13-21
The cost of living crisis
which is currently affecting our country
has meant that many of us are making savings wherever we
can,
and the king of
money-saving top-tips surely has to be, of course,
the great Martin Lewis, whose MoneySavingExpert website
made him one of the most valued, and valuable, people in the country,
These days, if Liz and I
want to buy anything,
from a holiday, to a new phone, to a meal out
the chances are that we
can generate some kind of discount code or voucher
that will get us a bit of money off the listed price!
Well, the net result of
this (if you’ll pardon the pun),
is that our home email address has become the registered
recipient
for a seemingly endless plethora
of special offer after special offer;
Some related to things we
might be interested in,
and some where you just have to wonder what they were
thinking
when they sent that
particular offer to us!?
Well, a quick sort through
these offers
reveals a wonderful and beguiling set of invitations
to apparently get something for nothing
From the traditional and
clichéd BOGOF – Buy One Get One Free
to the more sophisticated free trials, introductory offers,
and 50% off your main meal (excluding drinks and
starters)
I could almost start to
convince myself
that there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch!
But of course, it doesn’t
work that way.
And whist there are
some great offers our there
there’s always a catch, somewhere along the line…
Someone, somewhere, is
going to try and make some money from me
if I respond to these invitations to temptation.
And it’s always been the case, hasn’t it,
that you get nuffin for nuffin?
At least, that’s what
we’ve always been warned…
So, you can imagine the
surprise of the ancient Israelites,
when the prophet in Babylon
suddenly started calling out in the market place,
inviting them to come buy without money,
to eat without payment!
The normal market stall
holders’ cries of,
‘Roll up, roll up, for the bargain of the century!’
‘Cheap at half the price!’
‘Buy today, gone tomorrow!’
Were suddenly overshadowed,
by the prophet’s invitation to buy without money.
As Eugene Petersen
paraphrases it:
"Hey there! All who are thirsty,
come to the water!
come to the water!
Are you penniless?
Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
Buy without money—everything's free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on candy floss?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest."
This was the unexpected cry of the prophet of
the Lord
to
the Jewish people in the market place of Babylon
some
540 years before the birth of Jesus
At this point in history, it has to be said,
things were not
looking too good for the people of Israel:
Nearly 50 years earlier, the great, beautiful
and lavish temple of Solomon
had been destroyed by
the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar
and the city of Jerusalem had been laid waste,
with its defensive
walls reduced to rubble.
The leaders of the people,
the politicians, the
civil servants and the priests
had
all been carted off into exile in Babylon,
where
they had grown old and died,
leaving their
children and grandchildren
with
nothing but the memory of a now lost land, city and temple.
These words of our prophet, to come and buy
without money
came
to a people who had lost everything.
They came to people who had had to struggle
to
make a new life for themselves
in
exile in Babylon.
The words of the prophet came to people
who
had no land, to people who couldn’t grow crops,
to
people who had nowhere to graze their sheep and their goats.
These were people who knew full well that
nothing comes from nothing,
because
they had lived with nothing for generations
as
an oppressed underclass in a foreign land.
In many ways, their situation is analogous
to
those in our own land
who
have come here as asylum seekers,
or
those who have been brought here through duress or deception,
to
work as economic slaves in shadow-industries
such
as the sex trade, or other unregulated labour markets.
It matters not one bit if you were a doctor or
a lawyer back home,
whether
you were a bright pupil at school, or the beauty queen of your town.
It matters not one bit whether you owned cars
and houses and animals,
or
whether your parents loved you and wanted the best for you.
As an unregistered exile in a foreign land,
you
can’t work, you can’t earn, you can’t own,
you
are reliant on illegal work,
or
on the charity of others,
to feed yourself, your family, and your
children.
And you are always under the threat of being
declared illegal
and
imprisoned and deported.
Imagine how an invitation
to
come and eat without cost, or to buy without money
would
sound to such exiles in our world,
and you get some idea
of
how the prophet’s words sounded to the ancient Jews
living
in exile in Babylon.
Into their hopeless situation
the
prophet of the Lord dared to declare words of hopeful invitation.
Into their poverty
his
message of food for the hungry and water for the thirsty
would
have seemed like an impossible pipe-dream,
a
fantasy incapable of fulfilment.
And yet, the prophet declares that these are
the words of the Lord,
and
he says that the invitation he is issuing comes not from him,
but
from the Lord God himself.
This message of hope in hopelessness
is
not some idle daydream of wish-fulfilment,
but an invitation from the Living God
to
experience life differently.
And as such it is one which cannot simply be
dismissed
as
the hopeful ramblings of a hopeless dreamer.
The invitation to eat without cost, to drink
freely of water,
points
the exiles to a hopeful future;
to a time when once again they will be restored
to their land,
when
they will have the freedom to plant crops and to harvest them,
freedom
to own sheep and goats, and to graze them on their own fields
It points, in other words, to the end of exile.
The prophet is saying to people who have lost
hope,
under
the oppression of the evil empire,
that the empire will not have this power over
them forever,
and
that one day God’s freedom will come to them.
And, of course, from a historical point of
view,
this
is exactly what happened.
The exile in Babylon ended shortly after these
words were spoken,
as
the new king Cyrus allowed the displaced people
to
return to their land, and to rebuild their temple.
But the prophet’s words don’t just point to a
hopeful future,
they
aren’t simply words of comfort for the afflicted,
a
promise of pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by.
You see, they also spell out the responsibility
which
the people of God must take in the here-and-now
for
all those who continue to find themselves exiled and enslaved.
The prophet continues:
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I'm making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.
I set him up as a witness to the nations,
made him a prince and leader of the nations,
And now I'm doing it to you:
You'll summon nations you've never heard of,
and nations who've never heard of you
will come running to you
Because of me, your God,
because The Holy of Israel has honoured you."
6-7Seek God while he's here to
be found,
pray to him while he's close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life
and the evil their way of thinking.
Let them come back to God, who is merciful,
come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness.
The words of the prophet summon the people of
God in all ages
to
take seriously what it means to be good news to all people.
Just as the Lord has summoned the ancient
people of Israel
to
the good news of his kingdom
by restoring them to their land
where
they could eat and drink together in freedom from slavery;
so also the people of God are to continue the
task
of
summoning all the nations of the earth
to join them in this journey from slavery to
freedom,
in
this journey from Babylon to promised land.
This is not a gift from God to a select group
of people,
it
is an invitation which God issues to all God’s people,
and
which God expects them to then send out into the whole earth,
calling all peoples to join in God’s kingdom of
good news
where
the water of life is freely available
and
where bread is broken and shared by all who come to the table.
Five hundred years after the prophet in Babylon
summoned
the people of God to eat and drink freely
the food and water of
the kingdom of God,
Another prophet in Israel repeated the
challenge
to
take that good news and send it out into the whole world
Not in a market place, but on a hillside,
not
to exiles in Babylon,
but
to a group of people who were far from home with no food to eat.
Our story this morning from Matthew’s gospel,
of
Jesus’ miraculous multiplication of food,
echoes
the invitation to the exiles in Babylon,
because it, too, is a story of exodus
from slavery.
When Matthew tells us of Jesus taking bread and
fish, and blessing them,
and
using them to feed the hungry multitude on the hillside,
he wants us to remember the words of the
prophet to the exiles,
inviting
them to eat and drink freely of that which comes from God.
But there is another layer of memory here too,
as
Matthew invites us to remember a different,
and
even more ancient, story of freedom.
It’s not just Babylon that’s in view here, it’s
also Egypt;
where
God’s people were enslaved for generations
before
being led by Moses through the wilderness,
on
their journey from slavery to promised land.
We know this story well, as did the first
readers of Matthew’s gospel:
Moses
led the children of Israel through the waters of the Red Sea,
and
on into the inhospitable wilderness,
where
they were fed with manna and quails (Ex 16, Num 11)
which
fell to the earth in abundance,
but
needed to be consumed that day,
as
they would go bad overnight.
We don’t really know what Manna was,
and
we can be fairly sure that quail are birds,
but the Jewish tradition was to remember
the
manna as ‘bread’ from the ground (Deut 8.3),
and
the quail as food ‘from the sea’ (Wisd. 19.12).
And it’s here that we find a link with the
bread and the fish
that
Jesus took and multiplied to feed the people on the mountain.
Like Moses, Jesus doesn’t work alone in his
provision of sustenance
to
those who are in need of help.
The Old Testament book of Numbers tells us that
Moses asked the Lord,
‘Where
am I to get meat to give to all this people?’
and that the Lord instructed him to commission
70 elders
to
share in his task, asking him rhetorically,
‘Is
the Lord’s power limited?’ (Num. 11.13-17)
Jesus has an analogous conversation with his
disciples,
which
similarly ends with him commissioning them
to
share in his work of feeding those who are hungry on the hillside.
He says to them,
‘the
crowds need not go away, you give them something to eat’ (13.16).
And so the twelve disciples distribute the
food,
and
collect twelve baskets of uneaten food at the end
symbolising the fulfilment of God’s promise to
the 12 tribes,
that
they shall eat their fill and bless the Lord their God (Deut 8.10). [1]
But Matthew’s story of bread and fishes (fish?)
on a hillside
doesn’t
just echo the prophet in Babylon,
it
doesn’t just reference the exodus from Egypt.
It also looks forwards,
to
a story that is told later in the gospel,
which
becomes a significant part of the life
of
the community that Matthew was writing form,
and
which is still significant for our own community
gathered
here in Bloomsbury today.
When the gospel comes to tell of Jesus’ final
meal with his disciples,
it
speaks of him taking bread, blessing it,
breaking
it, and distributing it (26.26).
When Christians gather, as we have this
morning,
to
break bread, and share in it together,
we enact not just the last supper itself,
but
also all that comes before it.
The last supper that Jesus Shared with the
disciples,
was
the Passover meal.
It was the meal at which the story was
remembered and retold,
of
how the Lord led the people of Israel out of Egypt,
through
the wilderness, sustained by manna and quail,
to
the promised land.
The Passover meal was a meal of liberation,
of
celebration that slavery was ended.
And Matthew wants his readers to realise
that
when they celebrate the Lord’s supper together,
they are aligning themselves with the great
tradition of God’s people,
a
tradition stretching back through Babylon, wilderness, and Egypt,
a tradition of being a people of liberation.
The
Lord’s supper is a meal of manumission,
it is a eucharist of emancipation.
And
those who celebrate it do so to receive the Spirit of Jesus,
as the elders received the spirit of
Moses.
As
they eat together their compassion and commission are renewed,
and they take upon themselves the call
to feed the crowds,
to invite those who are still enslaved
to join the final feast of
freedom
that God is preparing for all
peoples (Isa 25.6; Matt 8.11-12). [2]
So, where does this leave us, today,
as
we gather around the table of the Lord’s supper,
having
heard once again the stories of the marketplace in Babylon,
of
the exodus from Egypt,
and
of bread and fishes on a hillside in Palestine?
Well, firstly it strikes me that it is a matter
of supreme irony
that
the current political nation defined as Israel
is involved in a systematic programme of
destruction
against
another people group.
The people of slavery and oppression have
become transposed,
and
the people of God should not ignore this.
But secondly, it makes me wonder whether slavery
in some form
is
the inevitable end result of capitalism?
I find myself despairing
at
the seemingly inevitable commodification of humanity,
where
people are reduced to objects
for
trading, use, and abuse.
And I find myself wondering what this miracle
of the fish and loaves
might
say to a world that is seduced by increasing consumption.
What happens when Jesus gives more than anyone
needs?
What might happen if the people of God
learn
to care more for needs of the individual,
than
for the good of the market as a whole?
I wonder what it would do to our models
of
consumption, consumerism, and commodification,
if those who have received the Spirit of Christ
were
to echo in their lives
the
miraculous distribution of food on the hillside in Palestine.
I wonder what it would do to structures of
subjugation
and
systems of societal oppression
if resources were to be shared,
so
that each received sufficient
to
free them from economic enslavement,
whilst those who have more than enough
are
freed from the consumerist compulsion
to
multiply their own stockpile ad infinitum.
But thirdly, we who are called to freedom
cannot
avoid that most difficult of questions:
Where
is God in a time of slavery?
This is the question that so readily confronts
those who are enslaved,
and
which is so readily avoided by those who are not.
It's all too easy to believe in God
when
everything is going your way.
But it is very hard to believe in God,
or
to know where God fits into the scheme of life,
when everything has gone wrong,
when
everything you thought you believed in,
every
certainty that you hold dear,
has
been ripped away from you.
Where is God when there is nothing left?
Where
is God when people abuse you?
Where
is God when people defeat you?
Where
is God when people take you away from your home
and
make you live in a foreign land
surrounded
by those who seek only to do you harm?
This is the question of the exiles in Babylon,
the
question of the slaves in Egypt,
and
it is a question with the most surprising of answers.
Because God, it seems, is right there in the
midst of it all,
not
turning away from the horror and loneliness and terror,
not
rising above such banalities,
but
entering into the depth of human suffering,
becoming
at one with those who face death.
And out of this identification comes
transformation:
death
does not get the last word on life!
The cross is not the end,
freedom
is coming.
The one who goes to the cross
is
the same one who lifts up his hands to multiply the loaves,
and
he is the same one who lifts up his voice
to
invite outcasts and strangers to join him
at
the table of the banquet of the kingdom of God.
Come, he says, come eat without cost,
come,
drink without charge.
How can this be?
It
is so because the people of God make it so.
We proclaim the in-breaking kingdom of God,
and
then we live as if it is so, until it is so.
There is good news in the gospel to those in
slavery,
and
it is good news mediated
through
those of us who share the spirit of Christ.
The
call on the people of God, on all of us who gather around this table today,
is to repeat the mantra of Moses in
the wilderness,
to reiterate the message of the
prophet in Babylon,
to relive the multiplication of loaves
and fishes in Palestine.
We
are called to proclaim freedom for all,
and to live that freedom into being by
our lives.
So we campaign against injustice,
and
we join our voices with others
that
together we might make a compelling sound that cannot be ignored.
And we support those who work for peace and
justice and reconciliation,
as
we become people who are passionate about other people.
And we resist the lie that one human life is
worth more than another,
as
we learn to recognise the image of God in each created being.
So we come:
we
come to this table,
we
come to eat, to drink,
freely,
and without charge.
We come to be changed, to be transformed,
to
become people of freedom,
people of liberation,
people of action.
We come to receive the spirit of Moses,
to
receive the Spirit of Christ,
to
learn once again the words of the prophet in Babylon.
So come, to the table of the banquet of the
kingdom of God.
[1] Roots
Worship, 3 August 2014, p. 22
[2] Roots
Worship, 3 August 2014, p. 22
