"Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

         During Lent we are following the disciples as they are on a journey with Jesus. This is for us a journey into his grace, into the love of Jesus. Today we look at moving out of the consumer-based values of our world, and into the abundant grace of Jesus. This particular journey is difficult. It is easy to get stuck along the way.

         Why is it hard for us to receive grace?

         Why do we keep the love of God at arm's length?

         A number of years ago I was active in a County Jail ministry. I would go to the jail and meet one-on-one with inmates over a period of months, studying the Bible and doing discipleship studies. The first thing you notice in a county jail is the sensory deprivation. The walls in this jail were concrete block and painted a dull color. The lighting was dim. There were no windows to the outside world. Opportunities for exercise, work and education were very limited.

         But what that meant was the jail became a great place for an inmate to really study the Bible, to pray and to think about the meaning of faith in Jesus Christ. There was not much else to do. So I saw in several of the men I met with a remarkable growth in faith and an insight into the Scriptures.

         Unfortunately, when they got out, the contrast was too great. It was as if they were blinded by the lights of the world. All of a sudden they had too many choices and too many responsibilities. They had to find a job, a place to live, pay fines, make reports, build new relationships, deal with old obligations, tend to medical needs, fit into a church, and do it all at once.

         In addition, there were so many temptations and people pulling them back into the old way of life. I also noticed that the consumer behavior of our culture did not help them. There are entirely too many pictures, too much advertising, too many voices appealing to their desires and needs. The contrast was too drastic and sudden. If you live with concrete blocks and a single TV in a common room for 6 months or so and then suddenly you are released and you walk through a shopping mall, it is an overwhelming experience of sensory overload.

         In the past few years I have come to see that the other place that I have seen this type of distraction and over-stimulus is the church. People in churches these days seem to have infinite choices and demands put on them as to how to use their time, and what to do, even on a Sunday morning. That is why I think it is a difficult journey that we talk about today. It is hard to manage the choices we have in our lives. And it is especially hard to find and choose grace, to live close to God.

         Isaiah 55 is an invitation to receive grace. This invitation is extended to groups of people who have been exhausted by the consumer choices and demands of their day.

         The first group that is invited to God's grace is the thirsty. They are invited to come to the water. Why does a thirsty person need to be invited to drink at the water? These are perhaps people who are holding back from what they know to be the answer for their lives. These are religious people, people who believe in God and yet they have become distracted and confused by the world. After doing all that the world offers them and demands of them, they are unable to identify water as the answer to their thirst. They are in need of invitation.

         The next group is those with no money, those who are hungry. Here is the offer of food and milk and wine without cost. In the consumer world, everything has a price. So here are people for whom what he world offers is too expensive, and they have used up their money and yet are still hungry and empty. They cannot seem to buy what they most desire. This is the problem of depletion. We come to be worn out in life. We feel we have nothing more to give. We cannot keep up with the demands for more and more. We feel inadequate as a mother, a father, a husband or wife, a student or a career person. The demands of life have outstripped what we have to give.

         The next group is made of those who have money, but their money gets spent on that which does not satisfy. This is the problem of temptation, and results in a feeling of lostness in the consumer world. It is a matter of desiring to do everything the TV tells you to do. It is buying into a life that does not satisfy. The world and its goods always promise that if we just pay more, if we just gain more things, they will meet our need. Yet, it never seems to satisfy.

         Here is the invitation: "Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

         Joel Green says that Jesus taught us to pray in a way that forms community. The prayer guides us out of this consumer overload, into a community where our understanding of the world is shaped by our relationship with a gracious God; where we learn to trust God and depend on him; where we actually imitate God in our moral lives; and where we look forward to the coming of His Kingdom.

         Jesus then tells us of his gracious Heavenly Father who will provide what we need and beyond our need. He tells a story that people of his day would have found amusing. A man receives a guest late at night. His clear obligation in the community is to extend hospitality, which includes serving a meal. But he has no bread. So he goes to his neighbor, someone who has bread. Will the neighbor give him bread? Everyone would say, "Of course he will give him bread. For it is the obligation of the whole village to provide hospitality to a guest." But this fellow says, "Don't bother me. I am in bed. I can't get up now." This is where the people would laugh. This is unthinkable behavior. No one would ever say that.

         Of course the man will give him bread. And if we think a reluctant neighbor is ridiculous, why would we think that of God? Green, I think, translates the last line correctly, "in order to avoid dishonor, he will get up and give him as much as he needs." So God surely is one from whom we can ask, we can seek, we can knock on his door.

         Jesus is inviting us into a life of grace, because he knows the Father. Our rejection of that invitation takes him to the cross, and through his death and resurrection we have access to the love of God by faith.

         So why would anyone reject such an invitation? And, in fact, why does everyone reject it?

         Paul Hanson points out that the only thing that can exclude you from this banquet of grace is your insistence that there are other places you would rather be.

Henri Nouwen writes about creating space in our lives for Christ to dwell, to abide with us. But then Christ says to us, "The trouble is, you are never home." We welcome Christ, but we are not present to him, abiding in him.

         There are places we would rather be. But why would you decide to be somewhere other than Jesus and his love, his grace? Why would you want to be having brunch with the world rather than sitting at the banquet in the kingdom? Paul Hanson gives a rather direct answer. He says, "Because you want to determine the menu. You want to be in control of the company you keep."

         That is what makes this particular journey difficult for us.

         John Oswalt points to one more issue we often have with the invitation to grace. He says that when you hear the invitation of God with clarity, you are given a choice. You can stay where you are in familiar unbelief; or you can go forward, but in the "immense uncertainty" of faith. The experience of salvation is a mystery. The road is not easy, and it is not predictable. The challenge, he says, is to exercise faith first and then let understanding come afterward. "If the wicked will turn from their ways and thoughts to God's ways and thoughts, even if those ways and thoughts are not perfectly intelligible to them, then they will be pardoned and restored.

         "The mighty, the wise and the noble demand that God's ways and thoughts be made intelligible to them first. But the lowly, the helpless, and the broken don't have to have things explained to them; they simply see the open door and the loaded tables."

         "Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

         Amen.