"Free Lunch - Are You Hungry?"

Sermon Preached by John C. Hall on March 7, 2010

Text — Isaiah 55:1-3; 6-9

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight ourselves in rich food. 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. Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

When I read the passage from Isaiah, the phrase that comes to mind is “free lunch.” I thought of our coffee hour refreshments after worship. I thought of the free Christmas Day Dinner we serve. I thought of the Food Not Bombs program that runs out of our kitchen. 

Before I get into this any further, I’m going to present two statements and ask you which one you like better. They will sound contradictory, but they’re not really.  They are both valid in their own way. 1) There is no such thing as a free lunch.  2)  Life itself is a free lunch. Which statement do you prefer as a philosophy to live by?

There is a lot in the Bible we wish weren’t there.  There’s a lot in the Bible we’d like to take out, or at least argue with.  Sometimes, we feel like arguing with Jesus. This passage we just heard from Isaiah is one of those that sound great up to a point.  It’s very effusive in its promise of abundant blessings using the metaphor of a feast, the great buffet table where you don’t have to pay for anything. The feast is a metaphor for the kingdom of God that Jesus himself used. At the messianic banquet, all sorts of people will come in off the streets to feast with Jesus at the table.  This same imagery is conveyed by the Lord’s Supper that we celebrate this morning. This is Christ’s feast with the church.

This is the “free lunch” side of the Biblical message. We didn’t ask to be born. We didn’t deserve to be born. Everything we do is possible because we are given life. Every breath we take is free, totally unearned blessing. That’s good to remember. It helps us keep a healthy perspective.

But then, so often happens in the Bible, just when we’re cheered up with the promise of free food and free blessings, we hear the “no free lunch” side of the message. “Let the wicked forsake their ways.” “Repent, or you will perish.” 

It’s kind of a downer, isn’t it? Why does the promise of blessings have to be tied to a threat?  If God is unconditional love, why does the Bible so often say, “Do this, or else”?

Jesus talked a lot about undeserved grace.  He also talked about the cost of discipleship — and the cost of being alive. Like it or not, life (not the Bible) requires us to bear crosses — of many kinds.  This is the “no free lunch” view of the gospel and view of life. Life is given freely, but a cost comes with it. Being born is painful. Then we start screaming. Then we’re demanding brats for 20 years. There’s a cost to this.  Our parents pay a lot of it for us at first.  There’s a cost to our human waywardness (the cost of sin, to use the traditional language) and Jesus paid it. Other people have to absorb the consequences of what we do. There’s a cost to every aspect to being alive. It’s a messy business.  It hurts. It doesn’t go smoothly. It’s often unfair. It involves consequences. It involves death.  These aren’t just things that go wrong with life. These are life.

And wherever that cost is borne, there is Christ. The people of Haiti and Chili, the victims of crime, the people in jail being punished for crime, the sick, those who care for the sick, those who live in the  midst of war — in all of this, there is Christ in that cost-bearing and cross-bearing..

So the “free lunch” and “no free lunch” ideas are both illuminating. If you prefer the “free lunch” idea, you might benefit from pondering the “no free lunch” idea, and vice versa. 

Today, we come to Christ’s feast with the church — the Lord’s Supper.  It’s free in one sense.  But it also requires something.  I was thinking about this in connection with our coffee hour refreshments.  Are they free?   I know someone has to pay for them, but are they free for the person who just shows up and takes a cookie?  At the very least, you need to feel hunger. Feeling hunger is a cost.  And that gives us a way to approach the Lord’s Supper.

Feeling our hunger, feeling the cost of being alive, and the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, the cost of trying to live the life we’re called to live — we bring this to the table.

It’s when you don’t recognize that hunger, or when you mis-name or mis-identify it, that you get into trouble. When you feel anxious or unloved, but you think you need a doughnut, that’s mis-naming the hunger.  The problem isn’t just that doughnuts are the best food you can eat.  The problem is that the real hunger gets masked and later it can blow up in your face.

Recognizing our hunger is key.  And it’s a kind of repentance — the most basic kind and the most important kind. Not recognizing it can lead to disaster.

So this morning, what hunger do you bring to the table?  We are all anxious. We all have longings.  We all struggle. We are all fallen.  We’re all conflicted. We’re all vulnerable. We all want to belong. We want to feel God’s presence.

Whatever your hunger is, let yourself feel it, name it if you can, and bring it to the table.