Lent 3

Isaiah 55:1-9 * Psalm 63:1-8 * 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 * Luke 13:1-9
What did you eat today? A hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs? A healthy bowl of oatmeal and glass of juice? Some instant-breakfast drink? Last night’s left-overs? Whatever you had, was it tasty? Did it nourish you? Was the benefit worth the cost?
Our bodies are amazing things. We store up excess nourishment when we have it, we use up that excess when our diets are lacking. Our bodies will, if we pay attention to them, let us know what it is that they need – when we need protein, we crave meat or nuts; when we need fruit or vegetables we crave those. When we need fluids, we get thirsty; when we hunger, our stomachs grumble. As our need increases, so do the messages our bodies give us until we respond.
So where does our sustenance come from? Not just the fridge or cupboard within the house, or the restaurant down the way. The stores. Have you been grocery shopping recently? Likely. When we go shopping, we take part in a very old tradition known as bartering. In our culture, the main instrument of barter is money. Good, hard currency. It may be bills and coin, a credit or debit card, a cheque, whatever – but we pay for what we need and want. And what happens when we take things without paying for them? Well, then the authorities get involved, because that is simply not acceptable in this society.
So- what did you purchase the last time you went shopping? Good lean meats, lots of healthy vegetables and fruits, breads and cereals, milk and cheese. All of those wonderful things that nourish our bodies so that we can do our work in the world. Our bodies need a general blend of nourishing factors to keep us strong and healthy. If we start to go without some of these nutritional building blocks, we start to suffer. When we are more physically active, we need more nourishment, and usually more proteins and carbohydrates to keep our energy up. When we are more sedentary, we need fewer calories but more roughage in order to keep our delicate systems working properly. What we do with our bodies tells us what we need to do to nourish them. However, what we put into our bodies will determine what we can get out of them - we cannot expect high energy output if we are not putting in good quality fuel.
So what else did you buy at the grocery store? What other food – or food-like products – grace your cupboard? There are so many processed foods these days that are so accessible, and easy to prepare, but may not be the best for us nutritionally. The basic rule of foods is that if you cannot pronounce it., you should not eat it. I challenge you to read some of the ingredients on your processed foods – see if you can identify what it is, why it’s in there, and where it comes from. Snack foods are the worst – the very popular American treat-cake, the Twinkie, is not actually food. It’s mostly oil. Not vegetable oil, crude. Yes, Twinkies are not grown, they’re mined. Suddenly they’re not so tasty, when you know what’s in them. Think about it – if they were food, they would eventually go bad. Just like margarine – it’s one chemical compound away from being plastic. Fruit flies won’t even eat it. But we treat it as food. Instant foods. Potato chips. Microwave popcorn. My own treat of choice – Doritos. All of those products that are now being re-considered – they’re dangerously high in sodium, they’re disastrously high in trans-fats (did we even know what those were 5 years ago?) – these are in our grocery carts because they are tasty, and convenient, and generally inexpensive, and have a long shelf-life, and we know them.
But what do they offer our bodies? Well, they certainly offer calories. And flavour. But not nourishment. In fact, they can have the opposite effect, wreaking havoc in our bodies rather than providing us with the necessary fuel. We’re hearing more and more about the dangers of what we’re eating and how we’re eating it. We’re learning more about how food is produced, grown, transported. There are people who will only eat organic, fairly-traded or local foods, in an effort to avoid this ‘bad stuff’.
So why are we thinking about the nourishment we buy? Because the scriptures today talk to us about the nourishment that is freely given. The reading from Isaiah exudes this in its opening verses – “Ho! Come to the waters, you who thirst! Come and get food and eat it, even if you have no money!” It sounds counter-cultural, because it is. The person speaking here is God. God is offering us nourishment – spiritual nourishment – for everyone. God does not expect to receive compensation for this gift of nourishment. Instead he simply wants people to have their fill. He’s making a promise to continue feeding all those people that come to Him. And he’s not offering the cheap imitation food that isn’t good for us, he’s offering the best possible food that can be found.
God then challenges us to consider what type of nourishment we normally consume. “Why spend your money on that which is not bread?” It’s a two-part question. First God is asking if we prefer Twinkies over fresh bread. Instant and unhealthy or nutritious and tasty? It shouldn’t be a hard question. He’s also asking us if we want the bread of the bakery, or the Bread of Heaven. Physical and earthly things or spiritual and heavenly? Again, it shouldn’t be a hard question. Yet so often we make the wrong choice.
The reading is God making a covenant, or holy contract, with each and every one of us. He reminds us that His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. We get caught up on the earthly things which offer no nourishment, forgetting to fill ourselves with the spiritual abundance He is offering. And so here God promises us that all we have to do is turn to Him for our spiritual fill, whether we feel we can afford to or not.
Jesus carries this message of free spiritual nourishment one step further. He assures those gathered around that premature death or devastation is not a punishment from God for sin. But he does teach people that they should repent of their sins at all times, because we never know when the end may come. And whether it’s being sacrificed by enemy forces, caught under a falling structure, or more modern examples of vehicle collisions or devastating earthquakes, we do not know when we will leave this life. And so when we repent our sins and choose to walk with God, following His ways and His teachings, we are prepared spiritually for whatever may happen to our mortal physical selves.
And so we prepare. Especially in Lent, as we continue our journey of self-reflection, we see that holding on to our sinful ways and thoughts prevents us from fully receiving God’s grace and spiritual nourishment. We, like the fig tree, can not bear fruit as a result. And so Jesus calls us to tend to ourselves through that repentance – to dig around ourselves, to provide good spiritual nourishment through fasting, studying scripture, prayer and meditation, self-examination. And we remember that God has promised us the best nourishment, as much as we want. God’s promise to us is for our benefit – because God will delight when we will grow into the fruit-producing beings that He made us to be. It all depends if we will let Him nourish us.
So – what did you eat today? What is your body telling you it wants? More importantly, what is your soul telling you it needs? As we continue our journey towards Easter, may we continue our Lenten prayer for strength, perseverance and faith – knowing that God is providing for us the Bread for our Journey.