Lent Exercises: Come - The Deep Wisdom of the Table

“If you were God and you’d come to earth to show people what you were like, what would you do?”  This question brings to mind hundreds of conversations with students on campus.  Faces flash to mind.  The frat leader tilts back his head and smiles.  The nursing student’s eyes widen in surprise.  The president of the hip hop club nods slowly.  

“I’d tell people I was God,” a student says, sheepishly.  “Really,” I say, “there have been a lot of people who’ve said something like that.  How do you think it would go?”  

“No, you know what you should do,” a friend chimes in, “you should cure cancer, end war, and eliminate poverty.”  

“I can see why you’d do that,” I say. “What do you think keeps us from curing disease, ending war, and eliminating poverty?” 

Someone else chimes in, “It’s the bad people, you know the greedy, selfish, power hungry, colonialists who oppress others to get what they want.  If I were God, I’d get rid of them.”  

“Totally,” I agree.  “How would you know where to stop though?”  

“What do you mean,” she says.  

“Well, it seems like most people I know are pretty willing to step on others to get what they want.  If we took all the ‘bad people’ away, it seems to me there could be a vacuum and others, perhaps even you or me, might be tempted to step in and make others live how we want.  How would you know where to stop ‘getting rid’ of people?” 

I’m grateful God doesn’t act in the ways that seem most intuitive to us.  

Today’s reading is from Isaiah 55:1-13. The first verse says.  

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.

God’s announcement of space and place does not start with zapping the ‘bad’ people.  Nor does God’s announcement absolve human beings of responsibility for addressing the needs of the sick, poor, and oppressed.  Instead, God’s announcement of space and place begins with an invitation to come, eat, and drink.  There is a deep wisdom here.  

I experience something of this wisdom when I visit my mother-in-law.  “Did you eat?”  These will be her first words.  No matter how we answer, her next words will be, “kain na,” come eat.  This is an invitation, not into the task of fueling our bodies, but into a sacred space.  Time loses relevance.  We will sit, eating rice and fish with vinegar.  We will enjoy fruit or some other sweet.  At this table there is abundance.  At this table there is time.  At the table we make space to know and be known, to laugh and cry, to simply be present.  

I’m not sure if God is like my Filipina mother-in-law, or if my Filipina mother-in-law is like God.  (I suspect it’s both.). In a world that rushes to news, and to judgment, God says, “come eat.”  

Read Isaiah 55:1-13.  Imagine this invitation offered to you in love.  What emerges?