March 3, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. | Third Sunday in Lent

Lent as Alternative to Empire

Walter Brueggemann
Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

Isaiah 55:1–8
Psalm 63:1–9
1 Corinthians 10:1–13
Luke 13:1–9

In one large study, the main wish children expressed in terms of how their families could be different was for their parents to be less stressed and less tired. . . .

A substantial portion of our time devoted to work is unfulfilling. We allow unnecessary levels of inequality and poverty. And our consumption habits include unhealthy and wasteful patterns. . . . The urgent need to produce and achieve, both in our jobs and in other parts of our lives, contributes to the neglect of organic social interaction.

John Brueggemann
Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America

Some of you will remember the TV ads from AT&T a bit ago. They featured a winsome young teacher or librarian, sitting at table with young children. He engaged them in friendly talk through a series of questions. The questions, of course, led to the conclusion that we should buy AT&T products. But the teaching addressed to the viewer through the children was this:

It is better to do two things at once, rather than only one thing at a time.

Or other lessons:

Big is better.
Faster is better.
More is better.

This is the standard line of corporate insistence. If we have better equipment and investment of high energy, we can succeed and expand and grow and take control and make our lives completely secure and prosperous. It all depends on being productive, and the products will help us to be productive.

Well, I am a productive guy and I am glad to be among you, you company of productive people:

Because Presbyterians are productive people.
And Fourth Presbyterian types are productive types.
And Magnificent Mile people are productive.

And back in ancient Babylon, the Jewish exiles were productive. They wanted to get ahead in the Babylonian Empire, and the way we get ahead in the empire is to do two things at once and dream of bigger as better and faster is better and more is better. So they hustled and learned and invested and hustled some more. They were willing to participate in the greed, the anxiety, and the systemic violence of the empire in order to get ahead and make a good life for themselves.

And then, right in the middle of their busyness with “Big is better” and “Doing two things at once is better,” Isaiah disrupts with his poem:

Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread?
Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?
Why do you use your energy on the seductions of the empire?
Why do you pursue greed and anxiety that will never make you happy?

In a word he stops them up short:

What are you doing?
How have you been seduced?
Have you lost your mind? Or your identity?

Not a bad question for us in Lent. What are we doing with our endless pursuit, to get ahead, not to fall behind, and make our life an endless chase?

And then Isaiah offers an alternative:

Anyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
You who have no money, come buy and eat;
Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

It is all free! It is all a gift. It is all a sacramental offer of God’s goodness in our faith tradition. So quit accommodating the empire; stop the endless cycle of greed and anxiety and the rat race.

Because big is not better,
Because doing two things at once is not better,
Because faster is not better,
Because more is not better,
Because such a pursuit will talk you out of your faith and out of your true identity and will leave you busy and exhausted and unthinking and anxious and running endlessly.
Says the poet:
Return to your roots; seek the Lord.
Be a Jew, not a Babylonian;
Be a Christian, not a rat-raced consumer;
Be a gospel person, and not a rat-race producer. Act baptized!

II.

Because, says the poet, says God:
My ways are not your ways,
My intention is not your intention.

Because I have another life in mind for you for which you are destined and to which you are summoned. The news is that we are not fated to the endless compulsion of production and consumption. This alternative is a life grounded in pardon and marked by mercy:

Let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Seek God: quit the mindless practice of anxiety;
Quit the endless collusion in greed;
Stop the eager readiness to win and control.

Because our God will abundantly pardon and take you as you are. There is no other venue for pardon like the venue of faith with this God who gives free gifts. Our God shows mercy; the gospel is the only place in which mercy is given in the midst of our fear and our inadequacy for which we can never compensate enough.

So I thought about Fourth Church of what little I know of it. I thought of its budget and its programs, its urban presence and it clout as you are about to begin a new ministry. And then I thought that Fourth Church is a carrier of this stunning poem, and a venue

For return to faith,
For recovery of faith identity,
For the practice of mercy,
For the truth of pardon,
For the free wine and free milk and free water and free bread.

Fourth Church is that reference point for this God in the season of Lent who disrupts our life with a question and a summons and an invitation. Lent is a summons for us to focus on this mercy that is given nowhere else and this is pardon that is offered in no other venue.

This poem of Isaiah is a wake-up call for us when we have been nearly talked out of faith by the force of empire, when we have wanted to prevail instead of trust mercy, when we have decided to gut it out rather than let the pardon come, when we have bought in on the phoniness of the AT&T ad rather than the God of the gospel who gives free gifts.

III.

So Lent is for free gifts. But then there is this abrasive Gospel lesson with its hard sayings:

Jesus says to his hearers:
Unless you repent, you will all perish.
Jesus says a second time:
Unless you repent, you will all perish.

We can believe in a punishing God if we want. But Isaiah suggests, rather, that if we do not change, our faith will evaporate and we will disappear into the woodwork of the empire. We will eventually forfeit our faith and our identity by trading out the mercy of God for “big is better” and the pardon of God for “doing two things at once.”

And then Jesus takes up a fig tree as a life lesson: If it does not bear fruit, cut it down!
If it bears fruit next year, well and good.

Fig trees have the task of bearing figs. If it cannot produce figs, cut it down. If you do not bear the fruit appropriate to your life, your Jewishness will vanish; your baptism will disappear. So with us, the fruit of mercy and pardon are our true vocation without which we die.

The summons of Lent is not just to stop what we are doing that marks us by greed, anxiety, or systemic violence. The summons is to stop that . . . and then start again this other way with new resolve. Do the first fruit of the new life which consists in pardon and mercy and compassion and generosity and hospitality and justice.

IV.

I am left with this thought: Lent is a question, a gift, and a summons:

The question of Lent is:

What are we doing?
Are we working for that which does not satisfy?
Are we spending for that which is not bread?

The gift of Lent is free gifts in the gospel that sustain life:

Free wine and milk,
Free water and bread,
All the markings of sacrament that refuse our thin attempts at empire.

The summons of Lent is to bear new fruit:

Do what is in sync with the God of the gospel,
the God who has another intention for our lives,
who wants us out of the rat race of “big is better” and so has mercy,
who gives us pardon when we do not do enough by doing two things at once.

We are left with a new sense of ourselves as God’s people:

No longer working for that which does not satisfy;
Receiving good gifts that we need for life;
Engaging in a new productivity of that which heals and transforms.

This could be, for any one of us, a return to our true self after almost being talked of it. So the psalm for the day ends in trusting satisfaction:

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63:5–8)

’Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be!