Sermon

Isaiah 55:1-5

There Is Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Pastor Steven Molin

Dear friends in Christ, grace, mercy and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Several years ago, on a family trip to Seattle, Kyle and I attended an afternoon Twins/Mariners baseball game, while Marsha and Kindra spent the afternoon shopping at Pike’s Place Market. When they stopped for lunch at a sidewalk café and ordered pretty much whatever they wanted to eat, unconcerned about the price of the meal, they noticed a man being removed from the restaurant for scavenging the tables before the bus boys came to clear the plates. As they watched the man, he was watching them; watching them eat their sandwiches, and sip endless servings of water and iced tea and Diet Coke. After 30 minutes, Kindra and Marsha were stuffed, while the hungry man just beyond the railing was still…well…still hungry. Just before they arose, Marsha tells me, Kindra did a curious thing; she slid her plate with half a sandwich remaining, down to the end of the table, as near to the railing as it could possibly be. They paid their bill and left, and then they watched the man reach over the railing and grab the sandwich, and offer Kindra a grateful smile as he did so.

But for the remainder of the afternoon, Marsha wondered whether they had done the right thing or not. Oh, they didn’t regret leaving behind half a sandwich, mind you. What they regretted is that they didn’t invite the man to join them at the table, to allow him to order from the menu, and to share a meal with one who was dying to eat what they were willing to leave behind as scraps. And when they walked back to our car, they noticed them; dozens – perhaps hundreds of similarly hungry people – looking for a free lunch and finding none.

The lesson from Isaiah today must seem like a mirage to those who are hungry or thirsty or poor or powerless. The Lord’s invitation must certainly sound too good to be true:

Everyone who thirsts, come to the water
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk,
Without money and without price.

That sort of image is not politically popular in today’s America, the image of a free lunch. We who have rarely felt pangs of hunger; we who eat more for taste than for fuel, we believe that nothing ought to come free, lest people become accustomed to living without working. Perhaps we fear becoming a welfare state, where the workers are few and the freeloaders are many. So we have come to believe that people ought to get food the old fashioned way; they ought to earn it. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” we say; everybody must pay their fair share. And for those of us who subscribe to that sort of thinking, the words of Isaiah are an offense. Free lunch? Free lunch? Absolutely not!

I am here today to tell you that there is such a thing as a free lunch. I have seen it in every city where I have served as pastor. In Portland Oregon, it’s a storefront in the depressed north side called “Baloney Joes” which serves hot soup and cold sandwiches on damp winter mornings when the homeless people have nowhere else to go.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the feeding program is called The Banquet. Churches and civic groups sign up a year in advance to serve dinner to the homeless and poor of that community. They who come aren’t called “clients” or even “those people.” They are referred to as “guests.” They are served three course meals on glass dishes, dining at tables where fresh flowers stand in vases on linen tablecloths, and those who volunteer to serve also sit down and share the meal with their guests.

I have seen such a thing as a free lunch in Stillwater, Minnesota, where for the past 22 years, the St. Croix Valley Food Shelf has been handing out bags of food to the working poor of Stillwater. Jennifer Ferris tells me that they don’t conduct background checks or income verification on those who come in to the Food Shelf; they simply hand them a bag and lead them down aisles where they can choose their cereal, their soup, and their canned goods. To 180 families each month, Jennifer says:

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk,
Without money and without price

Indeed, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

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So why am I telling you all of this today…and especially in Washington County, Minnesota – one of the wealthiest counties in the wealthiest nation in the world? It is because, in each of the communities I have served as pastor, most of the people I have worked with have never walked into a food shelf, never applied for food stamps, and never had to ask the church for financial help to get through a bumpy time. And the result is that we have become insulated from those in need. The needy in this world are nameless, faceless people in the core of big cities, and since we’ve never met them, and have never heard their stories, it is easy to subscribe to our opinion that food ought to be acquired the old fashioned way; people ought to earn it. But once we have come face to face with someone we know or love who is destitute, everything about that opinion changes. And every once in awhile, our eyes are opened, and we learn to share – our bread as well as our lives – with those who are without.

Yesterday morning, I was at Cub, and a woman approached me and told me that 25 years ago, her family was going through a very difficult time, when some people from this community, some of them even from this church, showed up at her door with a loaf of whole wheat and a check. “We’re giving you some bread and some dough to get you through” they said. And with tears in her eyes, this woman told me that her family’s life was changed that day; changed by the generosity of the Body of Christ in Stillwater.

You see, this text in Isaiah isn’t really about food; it’s about love. It’s about acceptance. Isaiah wrote his words more than 700 years before the coming of Jesus, and yet his invitation is to those who were not part of the Jewish “in crowd” of that day. Non-Jews had no rights to God’s favor, no claim on his gracious love. And these Gentiles couldn’t even earn their way in – it was the birthright of the Jews, you see – so the Gentiles believed that forever they would stand on the outside looking in.

But then Isaiah came along and announced that God was an all-inclusive God…coming to save the entire human race. It was Isaiah who cried out “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and he shall be called ‘Wonderful Counselor,’ ‘Mighty God,’ ‘Everlasting Father,’ and ‘The Prince of Peace’ and his Kingdom shall have no end.” Recognize those words from Christmas Eve? The lunch which had been free for the Jews because God chose them has now become free for everyone, also by God’s grace. And it’s a radical thought for we in the 21st century, because nothing in this world is ever truly free. There are always strings attached, or fine print to read, or exceptions to the rule. So we look for the loophole in God’s words; there must be something I have to do, some certain way I must act if I am going to receive this gift. And since there are no loopholes, we made some up;

• You have to eliminate the sins from your life, and carry guilt around for the ones that still haunt you:

• You are required to give money to the church, even if you only come on Christmas and Easter,

• You have to learn the religious language, practice all the religious rituals, and judge and criticize those who don’t believe the same things you do.

And all the while, I think God is in anguish in heaven, calling out “WHAT PART OF FREE DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

I think that there are many in our nation today who feel like those Gentiles of Isaiah’s day…those who feel like they are on the outside looking in. Some may even be here in this place this morning. They reject our faith because they can’t find the door to get inside. They turn a deaf ear to our words because our actions have spoken so loudly. But more than anything else, they cannot wrap their brains around the possibility that God’s love is truly free. To them – and to you – today, I say this:

Everyone who thirsts, come to the water
You who have no money, come, buy and eat
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price

In a few moments, we will serve a free meal here at Our Savior’s. Oh, you won’t get stuffed with meat and potatoes; it’s just a small piece of bread and a tiny cup of wine. But this meal holds the promise to you that you belong at the table; you’re good enough to be here, regardless of what you’ve done or haven’t done in your life. This meal God offers to you, and best of all, it is absolutely free. You come. Thanks be to God. Amen.

––Copyright 2005, Steven Molin. Used by permission.