21 November 2012 at Salem Lutheran Church, Gretna, LA
Text: Deut 8:1-10
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
“You will eat bread without
scarcity.”
That is a promise of God,
dear brothers and sisters. “Without
scarcity.” For that “scarcity” is our
problem. That is the cause of poverty
and competition, of covetousness, of fights over material goods, of wars, of
revolutions, of the mighty taking from the weak, and of the majority ganging up
on the minority. This scarcity – which
began after the fall in Eden – is what causes the love of money, what leads to
jealously, and is why we have police and courts and prisons. The reason we have hungry children is because
bread, unlike the air we breathe, is scarce.
But the Lord reveals a
glimpse into our glorious future, an existence without sin and death: “the Lord
your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of
fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat
and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and
honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will
lack nothing.”
Can you imagine lacking
nothing? Can you imagine a world without
want? “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want.” Can you imagine natural
resources being plentiful, like the air we breathe, “in which you will lack
nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig
copper.”
This plenty over scarcity,
this abundance over want, this wealth over poverty is promised to us, dear
friends, when the Lord’s plan is brought to the fullness of time, and the wages
of our sins have been abolished forever, when we return to the plenteousness of
paradise, to an existence before struggle.
“And you shall eat and be
full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given
you.”
And in a sense, the Feast of
Thanksgiving is a little foretaste, a fleeting preview, a glimpse however
imperfect into this eternal divine abundance.
For this is the time of year of the harvest, when in spite of our sins
in the Garden of Eden, our own imperfect gardens nevertheless produce the
fruits of their growth, “each according to its kind.” And crippled as they are by the genetic and
environmental effects of sin, this time of produce is still a time of feasting
instead of famine, of having instead of having not, a time to share instead of
a time to hoard or do without.
And for this gracious promise
of abundance, we give thanks to our Lord.
For as “He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna,” so
does our Lord continue to provide for us, dear friends. The Lord provides for us. And even as He feeds us bodily food, He
provides us with much, much more: for “man does not live by bread alone, but
man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
God’s Word is a kind of food
for us to eat, a bread for us to taste, a nourishing meal to sustain us on our
pilgrimage in this land. And what’s
more, the Lord provides us a holy meal, the flesh of the Lamb, a Thanksgiving
Feast of liberty, of victory over the tyranny of Pharaoh and of Satan, of
conquest over slavery and sadness, a redemption from sin, disease, and the
death that our broken world and broken existence ultimately leads us to. All of this has been swept away, dear
friends, and we celebrate this Passover with a meal – a meal we have brought to
completion in Christ, in which we partake freely this evening, and will partake
of until He comes again.
For the greatest Thanksgiving
feast of all is the Eucharistic Feast, a thanksgiving for the Lord’s death on
the cross, for His redemption of us by His blood, for His flesh given to us as
miraculous manna in the wilderness, as a sacrificial Lamb in which He Himself
is at the same time Victim, Priest, Guest, and Host. We sit at His table at His invitation and we
dine with Him and on Him. And through
Him we ascend to the Father, rolling back the corrupting ages of our fallen
world and sinful existence. For He has
replaced the scarcity caused by our sin with the abundance brought about by His
love.
And so “let us give thanks
unto the Lord, for He is good, and His
mercy endureth forever!” Let us
celebrate with all the faithful and unfaithful alike in the feast of the produce
of the harvest, of the blessings of the crops, of the loving labor of
productive hands crafting scrumptious meals.
For ultimately, the source of this bounty is the merciful Lord, who in
spite of our sins, still provides for us, in spite of the scarcity we deserve,
nevertheless, continues to feed us beyond what we can ever imagine or hope for in
body and in soul.
Most of all, dear friends,
let us give thanks unto the Lord for the eternal thanksgiving feast, the
wedding banquet, the body and blood of the Lamb in His kingdom – which has no
end. Let us glory in this bread
(prefigured in the manna of old) and in this wine (prophesied as dripping
sweetly from the mountains) as we return the thank offering of a grateful heart
to Him who saved us by grace through His forgiving sacrifice for us, Him who
shares Himself with us, Him who withholds nothing from us, Him whose mercy
endures forever, who has come to give us life that we may have it abundantly.
“And you shall eat and be
full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given
you.”
Amen!
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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