Daily Bread

Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16

Years ago, I used to drive home from work along Sheridan Road in Evanston.  And when it was dark, at a certain point I’d look up and see a vision:

A warmly lit window, an armchair, and a floor to ceiling bookcase.

It’s not a very sexy fantasy, I know, but at the end of a long day of hauling gear, juggling staff and guides, managing clients, and - of course, a ringing phone, incessant email, and most days, something wrong that I couldn’t fix – a life full of books sounded like heaven.

Your vision might be different. But I used to look into that window as I drove past and think, “God, I want that.”

Five years later, one seminary evening when I was up to my ears in deadlines, theology to read and papers to write, meetings to attend, services to plan, I reached up to switch on a lamp and recognized my vision.

I was sitting in a chair in a warmly lit window, right next to a floor to ceiling bookcase.

Oh.

What do you do when God answers your prayer?

Or when God answers what you didn’t even think was a prayer?

It happens all the time.

Thousands of years ago, out in the dry and lifeless wilderness, the Israelites weren’t actually talking to God. They yelled at Moses and Aaron,“What kind of dumb idea was this, hauling us out of Egypt to die out here?  At least in Egypt there was food.  This place has nothing but rocks.  Couldn’t you have left us in Egypt to die?”

It’s actually a clear and honest assessment of the mess they’re in, an entire nation out in the middle of nowhere with no chance of dinner in sight, much less breakfast or supplies for a long and dangerous journey.

And in that moment, God speaks to Moses: I’ll feed them.  I will give them what they want, and everything they need. And that will be a test.

Huh?  It’s a test when you get everything you wanted?

Well, it might be.  Extravagant good fortune is as good at pointing out true character as horrible bad luck and distress.  But I think the question God is raising here is exactly the question the Israelites raised themselves: Are they ready to be out of Egypt?

It’s not an exam, it’s an experiment. 

So far the people of Israel have only known God in crisis.  God appears in the midst of genocide and oppression, swoops them out through plagues and wonders and whisks them dry through a sea that crashes in to drown the pursuing army.  They see God’s dramatic power, and they believe.

But now here they are in the wilderness.  Rescued.  Free.  But hungry and facing the everyday problem of something to eat.

They don’t turn to God. They turn to what’s behind them – the predictability of working for Pharaoh – and blame their leaders for losing it. For a story with so much complaining in it, it’s remarkable to note that no one is ever scolded for whining.  Instead, over and over we hear that God hears. 

And God responds.

They need bread.  God gives them bread.

They want meat.  God brings quails.

It’s not dramatic.  It’s mundane.  And the “bread” that appears isn’t readily recognizable.  The name manna actually comes from the Hebrew for “What’s that???”  

So it’s quite possible, despite all Moses and Aaron can say, that the Israelites don’t quite understand that their prayer has been answered.  They didn’t think they were praying, after all, when they complained about their leaders and their practical, daily needs.

And that’s why this bread is a test. An experiment, to see if we’re ready to live in the promised land, in the kingdom of God.

Are we ready for God to be this involved in our daily lives?  To know God not as the one we turn to in crisis, but as the one we breathe with, the one we eat with, the one we trust for basic, practical, and intimate daily needs – and wants?

Are we ready for our daily lives to be this engaged with God – so that what we murmur is answered and the very bread of life is so clearly not our possession or our pay, but a gift?

In God’s country, it’s not our own resources and efforts that keep us fed and safe and even comfortable.

In Egypt, food and safety come from following the rules and working hard.

But in God’s country, daily bread is a gift.

And it’s completely different to receive a gift than to earn a living.

That’s what Jesus says about the kingdom of heaven: It’s like a crowd of day laborers – people who quite literally have to find work today to eat tonight. Some of them are hired for a day’s work that assures they’ll feed their family. Some of them are still standing there, waiting to be hired, all day long, so dependent on being hired to eat that they do an hour’s work for the hope of “whatever’s right.”

And every one of them goes home with daily bread.

No less.  But no more.

Because in God’s country, you don’t need more to have enough.

In God’s country, life is a daily gift.

And receiving is different from earning.

Earning is about expectations, limited resources, and “productivity.” Receiving is about open hands and delight, and our relationship with the giver. 

To earn, you have to do things right. To receive, you have to trust.

The laborers in Jesus’ parable get in trouble when they focus on what they earned, instead of noticing what everyone received:

Daily bread. 

The thing you and I pray for all the time, whether or not we’re paying attention.

Give us today our daily bread.

And you know, most of the time we get it. 

But as we eat, we’re often too distracted to recognize each meal as an answered prayer. 

Our wilderness has grocery stores instead of quails, and a different set of dangers and fears.  But our daily bread is still the same: the answer to a prayer, and a test. An experiment to see if we’re ready to live from trust.  Ready for the knowledge that God is listening powerfully, not just in crisis, but in the murmuring of our wants and daily needs. 

We’re ready to live in God’s country when we can look around at the answers to the prayers we never knew we prayed and say,

Oh.

This is where I belong. Because this is where God is.

This is what I need.

Because God is here.

The pain and the grace

Matthew 18:21-35

I couldn’t turn on the radio or the internet all week without hearing something about Nine Eleven. Conversation, reporting, commentary.  Stories about what’s changed and what we remember. 

In self defense, I kept the TV tuned to House Hunters.

Because all week, it’s felt like bleeding from an open wound.  And I was looking for a bandaid.

It’s different if you were there that day, or if you were here.  Different for each of us.  But wherever you were, on Tuesday ten years ago, you probably remember.

And then life goes on.

Not just after Nine Eleven, but after a death in the family, after a terrifying diagnosis, the loss of meaningful work or the breakdown of an important relationship.

It’s not always welcome news that life goes on.  But it does, so we look for a thing called “closure.”

We heard about closure in May when Osama bin Laden died.

We heard about it in September and October and November 2001 in the long search for missing persons and something to bury.

And, in fact, we heard about it – ever so briefly – in the gospel today.

“How many times do I have to forgive?” Peter asks Jesus. “Say, seven times??”

Peter’s being generous.  He knows he’s already been forgiven much himself, he knows that miracles and grace are more abundant than he’d expected.  So he wants to forgive as much as possible.

But still he wants closure.  He wants to be able to be done with forgiving.

He may want to know when he doesn’t have to try anymore, but I rather imagine he wants to know when it will stick.  When forgiveness will be complete, and he’ll have “closure” for the pain of being hurt.

But Jesus says, Seventy times seven.

(The gospel math is ambiguous.  It could be 77, it could be 490.  Either way, Jesus’ actual answer is No.)

No, you can’t count the times you have to forgive.

No, you can’t forgive in order to be finished.

“Forgive and forget” is probably one of the most misleading sayings out there.

If you forgot, you wouldn’t need to forgive.  And forgiving – really forgiving – won’t really help you to forget.

Because forgiveness is not a bandaid.

It’s open heart surgery.

It’s about opening up all that’s blocking the flow to our heart, in and out, in all our relationships. About not letting pain cut off the vibrant, complex strength of those relationships.

When we love someone - parents, children, siblings, spouses, friends - we will get hurt.  And we’ll hurt those we love.   Same for living in community – a community like Calvary, or like our nation. So we have to keep turning back to those relationships with open hearts after angry words, and careless mistakes, and major trauma. 

And then do it again. 

And we need forgiveness that washes over and over and over our souls, over the raw anxiety, sorrow and fear of having done wrong or hurt someone else.

Forgiveness is the other extreme from closure.  And it’s even more healing, because its continuous nature makes us resilient, able to dream and hope and act to make our visions real.

When I’ve been hurt, what I usually want most is for the pain to stop.

There are times when hurting someone else runs a very close second.   But mostly I want to block off the pain, to walk away or “forget” with an act of will.  To turn on House Hunters and ignore the grief and anger and fear of memory.  To ”move on.”

That helps with the pain, which is not a bad thing. And sometimes it is the very best thing we can do.

But it’s not forgiveness.  Not the forgiveness Jesus is talking about.

Because forgiveness doesn’t set limits, it opens doors.

It’s not something we do by ourselves or by an act of will.

It’s what we do when we let God flow through us, when we open our hearts wide to God, through God’s people.

When I close my eyes and think about September 11, I don’t see the towers any more. 

I see first responders: firefighters and police and paramedics.  I see frightened, confused people reaching out to take hands with strangers, and making safe space for others in even greater pain and fear.  I see people carrying those who cannot walk.

I see people who literally reached into that burning wound and pulled it further open trying to save and to heal.  People who breathed the physical form of loss and heartache and horror.   People who did that because they wanted desperately to help and people who did it just because it was their job, or because they happened to be there.

I see the glory and the grief and the steadfast love.

And I go ahead and cry.

Because I can’t separate the pain from the grace.  And that's probably a good thing. 

It might be the way God looks at us, day in and day out.

To stay in relationship with us, God doesn’t fence off the angry words and careless mistakes of our everyday sins from our everyday acts of grace.  Nor does God separate the intentional murder of thousands from the wild outpouring of compassion and unity and self-sacrifice that happen in the same place at the same time.

But over and over and over and over again, God turns an open heart to us, refusing to let grief or anger block the flow of love and grace.

We need this, and we pray for it in confession and in the Lord’s Prayer.

And we are invited to do the same. To turn our open hearts toward God and to one another and to strangers, and let the grace flow with the pain, so that nothing can block or limit the hope and love and caring and strength that God offers us and we give to one another.

I haven’t forgiven the hijackers, or the sheer impersonal pain and fear, or the nation of liberty and justice for all for not living up to our dream.  And I haven’t forgiven – or been forgiven – all the errors and omissions of family life, and life with you, and the rest of my communities.

But I am forgiving them, and I will be, with God’s help, the rest of my life.

After this weekend the TV, radio, and internet will fill up with other news: football scores, Washington politics, traffic, and the everyday working of Murphy’s law.  We’ll talk less and less about the particular tragedy of September 2001, and more about our other tragedies and joys and daily routine.

The wound won’t be as open.

But closure isn’t the good news.

The good news is that it isn’t over.  That we are still, always, forgiving and forgiven, for that day and for every day. 

Because as our hearts stay open to living with memory and grief and fear, great or small, we stay open to unlimited, lively compassion and love. We stay in stronger relationship with one another, with our community, with our dreams, and with God.   

And that’s what living is for.

 September 11, 2011