God is Great

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Our daughter Cady was a very young girl when Rick and I taught her the grace before meals that we both had grown up with. You know, the one that goes, “God is great and God is good. And we thank him for our food.” We prayed this grace in unison daily for years until one evening over meatloaf Rick observed how it always troubled him that in the prayer, “good” and “food” do not rhyme. So I suggested to Rick and Cady that they come up with a better prayer. And darned if they didn’t. And so ever since, the Sommer family has prayed, “God is great and in the mood to give us blessings, and our food.”

Not only is it a great theological declaration, it is also a pretty good summation of our readings for today. The writer of Deuteronomy was rehearsing salvation history for the faithful remnant who returned from Exile in Babylon. He reminded them of their forebears whom God rescued from slavery in Egypt and brought to the Promised Land. It took 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and during that time, the people were entirely dependent upon God for their food – manna – and for the water which Moses would bring forth from the rock at God’s command. And in the passage we heard today, God reminded the people, through Moses, that when they settled down in the Promised Land, and planted crops, and ate of the produce of the land, they were never to forget the One from whom all blessings flow. They were, therefore, to bring yearly before God the first fruits of their harvest – not the moldy leftovers from last year, not the stuff that isn’t fit for human consumption, but a portion of the choicest harvest.

In other words, God commanded this not because God had a particular hankering for wheat or barley, but because the people of Israel needed to engage a ritual that would remind them of God’s providential care. Once you plow and plant and harvest crops, once you build and inhabit villages and cities, once you begin to sell your surplus and amass wealth, you can easily find yourself setting your heart not on the Giver of all things, but rather on the idol of self-sufficiency. The writer of Deuteronomy understood that the seeds of Israel’s downfall were sown when the people failed to honor and keep the fullness of the Covenant – the covenant God had established with his chosen people simply because God is great and in the mood to give his blessings, and their food.

Fast-forward many centuries to the Jesus we find in John’s gospel. He has just miraculously multiplied the 5 loaves of bread to feed the 5,000 in the wilderness and the crowd has been wowed in no uncertain terms. For people who labored hard for the little food they got, this wasn’t a neat trick. This was truly miraculous. Think what association with Jesus would mean for their day-to-day lives! No more hunger! No more hardscrabble life! No more working your fingers to the bone for your daily bread. And for those who chafed under Roman rule, think of the implications Jesus presented for, let’s say, feeding an army. Heavens, he could be a one-man quartermaster corps! The people clamored for more of this kind of miracle and Jesus, of course, wastes little time in shifting their perception. In John’s gospel, miracles are performed so that people can see clearly that God’s reign has begun on earth in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus isn’t the provider of bread, he is the Bread of Life itself – the living enfleshment of God’s providential love for humankind. He is the bread that endures because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will have eternal life.

Most of us will leave this celebration of Holy Eucharist and will join friends or family for a Thanksgiving meal. It is a holiday that crosses religious boundaries and I daresay that most people in this country will find opportunities to give voice to the things for which we most thankful. Not a thing wrong with that. Embracing gratitude is a powerful corrective to our cultural attitude of entitlement. That said, I’d like to put a finer point on the locus of that gratitude for us who claim faith in Christ. Namely, it’s not about us. We can give God thanks and praise in good health and in poor health. We can give God thanks and praise in a good economy and in a bad economy. Employed or unemployed. We can give God thanks and praise when the relatives who gather for Thanksgiving behave themselves and when they don’t. In other words, the thanks we are invited to give, by virtue of our faith, is to God. It is not contingent on the fortunes we experience or the misfortunes we have avoided. We give thanks to God simply because God is great and in the mood to give us blessings. And our food.