Appetite for Grace
Scripture Reading: Isa. 55:1-5
When I was living in South Korea, people would sometimes ask me what I missed about the USA. Aside from the obvious answer of friends and family, my usual reply was “pizza.” Koreans have pizza, but it tends to be very doughy and cheesy, and the most popular topping is sweet potatoes (and it always comes with a side of pickles). What I really longed for was New Haven style pizza from Pepe’s or Sally’s in New Haven, Connecticut, a city that’s been nationally recognized for the quality of its pizza, with Pepe’s and Sally’s being the oldest and most famous names.
New Haven style pizza has a thin and crispy but chewy crust and is very light on cheese so as to highlight the sauce. If I were a condemned man, a red clam pie from Sally’s might well be my last meal.
When you’re living abroad, foods that provide a taste of home can make home feel like it’s not so far away. This is especially true during holidays. Back to Korea, every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving the church I served would host a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner right after worship. For the Americans in our community, who could not make it home for Thanksgiving, it was a way for us to bring a taste of home to them.
Although Thanksgiving is an American holiday, the entire congregation, most of whom were Korean, and some who were neither American nor Korean, looked forward to the feast. One of our deacons would pick up several sets of precooked meals from the American Army base in the center of Seoul. These meals came with all the staples: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and apple and pumpkin pie. Of course, it being Korea, we would add our own kimchi.
In today’s passage from Isaiah, the prophet invites the people of Israel, who are living in exile in a foreign land, to return home to feast at the table of the Lord. All who hunger and thirst are invited to come home to buy wine and milk without money and without price. They are invited to delight themselves in rich food and enjoy all the familiar tastes of home.
But before we address the homecoming, let’s first get some background on how the Israelites found themselves in exile. Ancient Israel was a small nation surrounded by larger nations with imperial ambitions. Toward the end of the seventh century BC and in the early years of the sixth century, the greatest threat to Israel was Babylon. In 586 BC the Babylonians defeated the Israelites in a most comprehensive and crushing manner. The holy city of Jerusalem was captured, the Temple of Solomon was leveled to the ground, and many of the people were carried off to exile in Babylon.
For all intents and purposes, Israel no longer existed. YHWH, the one true God of Israel, had been defeated—or so it seemed—by the more powerful pantheon of gods of Babylon.
YHWH, the one true God of Israel, had been defeated—or so it seemed—by the more powerful pantheon of Gods of Babylon.
It’s hard to overstate the kind of existential crisis that the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple represented to Jews. The closest modern equivalent we have is 9/11. When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center came down and the Pentagon burned, we asked, “How could this have happened?” “Why would God allow unbridled evil to devastate so many lives and destroy a beloved symbol of a world-renowned city?” In the aftermath of 9/11, church attendance spiked, as Americans sought answers to these and other similar questions.
But 9/11, as horrific as it was, did not result in the end of America, whereas the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple represented the end of Israel. The nation was no more. God’s chosen people were now Babylon’s exiles and slaves.
It’s to this community in exile that God’s prophet speaks. Isaiah has a message from God for all those living in exile. “Hear, 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.” It’s a message that says, As much as you have suffered, and as bleak as things look at the moment, the Lord has neither abandoned nor forgotten you.
While we may not experience a physical exile from the land, as the Israelites did, there are times when we feel emotionally and spiritually exiled from the love of God. We taste the bitterness of what feels like the absence of God. Amid all the tumult of the world and the clamorous and chaotic noise in our own lives, from God we hear only silence.
Why is God silent? Does God not hear? Does God not care? Has the God we know in Jesus Christ been defeated by the gods of the world—greed, anger, lust for power and endless self-interest? Maybe all of that is just too much for God to contend with.
Yet amid this silence, a word goes forth and comes into our ear. “Incline your ear, and come to me,” the Lord says. Like one of those old rabbit-eared TV antennas that had to be positioned just so in order to get a clear picture, God invites us to incline our ear to hear his voice. That’s because amid all the superfluous noise of life in our 24/7 always-on, always-connected world, we must set aside all distractions so that we might listen for God’s good word.
Yet amid this silence, a word goes forth and comes into our ear. “Incline your ear, and come to me,” the Lord says.
In the era of the smartphone and working from home that’s a tall ask. For so many people, their lives are overstretched as it is between work and family. Fitting God and church into an already jam-packed schedule just isn’t realistic.
That was the clear subtext of a pair of articles that I read this past week. The first appeared in The Wall Street Journal and was titled “Why Middle-Aged Americans Aren’t Going Back to Church.” According to a recent survey, the percentage of people ages 39 to 57 who attend a worship service during the week, either in person or online, fell from 41% in 2020 to 28% in 2023. One person quoted in the article who does still attend church, observed of her friends who go less often, “Their lives are just busy with jobs and kids.”
The second article, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, went beyond identifying the problem and suggested a reason for the ongoing decline in church attendance. To quote the author, “The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.”
“The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.”
The author continues, “Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.”
Isaiah was on top of this math problem 2,500 years ago. In verse 2 the prophet asks,“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?” The culture of workism that emphasizes individual accomplishment at all costs is a beast that needs constant feeding. Success is soon forgotten. Today’s achievement becomes tomorrow’s baseline. You must continue to grow, succeed, and advance or step aside. This kind of competitive environment is hardly conducive to community.
A similar dynamic can be found in the public square in our elections, when every first Tuesday of November becomes not just an election but an existential battle for the soul of the country. The other side are not just wrong, they’re evil. Not only must they be defeated, they must be destroyed.
The way we devalue community is also found in our nation’s obsession with individual rights to the virtual exclusion of any discussion of communal responsibility. Oftentimes it is Christians who make the case for the broadest understanding of individual rights, which is ironic because the Bible says next to nothing about our rights but says a great deal about our responsibilities to our neighbor.
It really should come as no surprise then that declining church attendance would coincide with increasing alienation and polarization in our society. Church is a place where we go to find meaning, purpose, and community, and to hear that we are loved unconditionally, not for anything we’ve done or accomplished but because of what God, in Jesus Christ, has done for us.
This is the everlasting covenant that Isaiah refers to in verse 3. “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” The previous covenant—the covenant that the Lord had made with the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai—was conditioned upon the faithfulness of the people. As long as they obeyed God and remained faithful to the covenant, they would be God’s chosen people.
But in that regard, the people failed. They could not remain faithful. The end result of that failure was exile, not only a physical exile from the land but also a spiritual exile, a sense of alienation from God and from one another, which is where so many of our fellow citizens find themselves today.
In a culture that celebrates achievers, the church welcomes failures.
This is where the church comes in. The church at its best represents an alternative to the hyper-individualistic, achievement-driven, status-obsessed nature of so much of our society. In a culture that celebrates achievers, the church welcomes failures. That’s right. Like Israel, we too have failed to be faithful to God. We have chosen the way of “first-come, first-served” rather than “the last shall be first.”
But the good news is that we are not bound by the old covenant. The new and everlasting covenant is not predicated on our obedience but on God’s “steadfast, sure love” in Jesus Christ. And it is Jesus Christ who calls us out of our self-imposed exile and invites us to his table. All we need to bring is an appetite for grace.