But
perhaps, our Creator means for that gratitude, that world of beauty, to reside
inside of our communities, too? Perhaps God longs for our ordinary lives to be
filled with such right relationship?
Our
society sure doesn’t form us for gratitude. I identify with the confessions in an
old David Brooks column.[1] He admits that his high
expectations for life are what deprives him of the gift of gratitude for what
he’s given. The better off we are, the more we expect from life. He points out
correctly that our American culture teaches us that we’re masters of our own
fate. We expect life, God, and other people, to give us the benefits that we earn
by our good works. When that doesn’t happen, disappointment leads to
dissatisfaction and resentment. When I work hard, I expect a reward: a
vacation, a nice dinner out, a new dress. I tend to see these things as
something due to me, rather than as a blessing bestowed on me by my loving God.
In
our world today, where so much seems to be going awry, it’s hard to feel honest
gratitude in our daily lives. I might be working hard and doing the right
things, but I’m not getting what I feel I have earned. It’s hard to see a way out
of this consumer mindset that tries to control our actions and ruin our earth. I
certainly recognize myself these days in the dissatisfied complaints of the people
of Israel in today’s first reading. I’m the first one to want what I think I
had back in the “good old days.” And I’m the first one to want my blueberries
in December and the easy clean clothes that our detergents and washing machines
provide.
Did
you know that “manna” is a play on the Hebrew word for “What’s this?” Or, given
the context, “what is THIS?!” I can picture the people of Israel looking at God’s
gift of manna with the same wrinkled noses and worried tone that young children
use when presented with some mushy vegetable casserole. Given a gift that requires
us to try something strange, our honest human response is indeed, “What is THIS
....?” Take away our comforts, take away our sense of privilege and reward, who
doesn’t cry out to God, “What is THIS?” When we’re afraid of change, transformation
sure is difficult.
For
the people of Israel, their forty-year wanderings in the desert are an
opportunity for such transformation, a time where the ways of Egypt can fade
away and the ways of God can enter in. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis clearly
shows how the manna story contrasts the world of Egypt from the new world that
God desires for God’s people.
The
Hebrew Scriptures call Egypt the “Iron Furnace.” It represents industrial
society, a society built on slave labor, exploitation, social hierarchy, and a consumer
mentality.[2] All land and produce ultimately
belong to Pharoah. Pharoah is allowed to take the gifts of the earth for his
own profit and for that of his cronies.[3] The gifts of earth are
stored up in silos, leaving the farmers themselves hungry and in need, burdened
with taxes. Indeed, it’s a world that sounds a lot like our own industrial, consumer
society, and it’s a world that has been ground into the consciousness of the Israelites,
like it has been ground into ours.
In
giving the Israelites manna and quail each day, God is showing them a different
way of understanding themselves and their world, a new way of living. God wants
them ready to live differently in the land of Canaan, the Promised Land that God
is giving them. Did you catch God’s loving response to their anxious
complaints? “Draw near to the Lord,” offers Moses. God will act. God will provide
what you need. God’s food comes as “daily bread.” It can’t be hoarded or stored
up in granaries for pharaoh. God will feed you with meat and manna, so that you
may know that he’s your loving God--your God who will always provide for you,
who will always care for you, no matter how much you rebel and complain, no
matter how little you notice—not because you deserve it, but because God is a
God of abundant love. God’s miraculous food, with all of its rules for
gathering, teaches us dependence on God; it makes us a part of God’s free and
abundant Creation; it allows for Sabbath rest for all.
While
God shows the Israelites a new way of living as they wander in the desert,
Jesus, too, shows us in his teaching a way of life without fear and scarcity, reward
and punishment, tit for tat, debt and debtor. Jesus shows us the opposite of
our American “merit economy” that’s based on an abundance of possessions. Jesus
offers us life abundant, rather than an abundance of things; he puts the first
at the end of the line; he puts forgiveness above rule-following; he tells
stories like today’s Gospel, in which all of the workers receive the same wage,
no matter how long they work. Jesus spends his time surprising us, reversing
the hierarchies and judgements that we build into our lives. He wants to shake
us out of our old ways and into the ways of God’s Kingdom.
I
was interested to learn that the landowner’s question to the complaining
workers in our Gospel parable, “Are you envious because I am generous?” really asks
in Greek, “Do you have an ‘evil eye’ because I am generous?” For Matthew, an “evil
eye” is an unhealthy eye; it’s an eye that doesn’t see rightly. As the “lamp of
the body,” the eye determines whether we’re filled with light or filled with
darkness. The complaining workers fail to see the truth of God’s Kingdom. Where
they could see a “We,” they see an “Us vs. Them.” Where they could feel partnership,
they feel contempt. Where they could see and celebrate a vineyard of God’s
grace, they see an arena of competition, and a cause for resentment. Their
whole way of seeing the world is distorted and obscured.[4] Jesus is trying to teach
us to see with the light of grace and compassion.
Both
the manna economy and Jesus’ upside-down economy of light sound much like the kind
of life that people like the late Wendell Berry see in a life lived close to
the earth, a life in harmony with Creation. Berry calls the economy of creation
the “Great Economy.” It’s an interconnected whole that includes all creatures. [5] Berry’s poem, “Manifesto” urges
us: “Ask the questions that have no answers./ Invest in the millennium. Plant
sequoias./ Say that your main crop is the forest/ that you did not plant,/ that
you will not live to harvest./ Say that the leaves are harvested/ when they
have rotted into the mold./ Call that profit. Prophesy such returns./ Put your faith in the two inches of humus/
that will build under the trees/ every thousand years... Be joyful/ though you
have considered all the facts.”[6]
I wonder, can we find in our Scripture lessons—and in the writings
of people like Wendell Berry and Bishop Charleston—a way back to ourselves, to the
selves that God created us to be? Can we bring our brief moments of mountaintop
wonder and gratitude for Creation back with us into our troubled world, our
troubled lives? Perhaps this is our time in the wilderness, the years when God will
work lovingly and persistently to free us from the evils of “Egypt” that have
worked their way into our bones. Perhaps this is our time to let Jesus’ new
logic of love and gratitude turn us upside down and inside out, so that we,
too, can see rightly? Such is my deepest prayer.
[1]
David Brooks, “The Structure of Gratitude” found at http://nytimes.com/2015/07/28/opinion/david-brooks-the-structure-of-gratitude.
[2]
Ellen Davis, Scripture,
Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), 69.
[3]
Davis, 72.
[5]
Davis, 77.
[6]
Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” found at Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry.
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