e-vo for week of August 15

Dearest e-votees-

Our appointed Old Testament text for this coming Sunday comes from Proverbs.

May God’s wisdom and invitation stir us to put aside our simple ways and receive the Lord more fully.

Peace,
Karl

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1 Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. 2 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. 3 She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, 4 "You that are simple, turn in here!" To those without sense she says, 5 "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."

Proverbs 9:1-6, NRSV

This text accompanies another one of the bread texts in the gospel. There is an invitation in both for people to come and eat the bread, drink the cup and live. The invitation seems rather direct and rather simple—and yet we balk.

For some the invitation might seem too simplistic. How can eating bread and drinking wine bring life? How can we be saved and given life by heeding such a simple invitation? Surely there is something I must do. Sure there is something I can add. Surely we can find something better to convey life and God’s promises than mere bread and mere wine. These invitations worked in Jesus’ time and in the time that Proverbs was written, perhaps, but the world is a much more complicated place now. Surely we can nuance and enhance the message a bit for modern sensibilities. But God continues to invite us to come to the simple yet life giving meal of bread and wine. In the body and the blood we are assured life. The meal that is offered to us is offered to all (Peter, Judas and all we might deem unworthy). We are called to partake and to bring others to the table.

For some we might push back against the implications that we are simpletons. We want to think we are so much further along the road than we are. We want grown up food beyond mere bread and common wine. We are like Naaman (see 2 Kings 5:1-19) refusing to stoop into the cleansing waters of the Jordan. Just as he pushed against the baptismal foreshadowing we can push against the promises found in the meal of bread and wine. We think we know better than Elisha or the writer of the Proverbs or Jesus or even God. We hear the call for the simple to turn and be granted life yet in our pride we want to stride right on by and persist in our immaturity.

For some we might resist the implications of the simplicity. If we are invited in through no merit of our own to receive life at God’s gracious table than so are all the others. Since the meal and the life come from the gracious hands of the one offering the meal we have no means to boast. We cannot distinguish ourselves as more saved or more worthy or having a better place at the banquet. Jesus offered little time and attention to such requests. He said that we ought to enter banquets and sit in the way back and perhaps get invited to a different and better place. Jesus was talking about the humility in which we should receive what is offered to us.

There is life and healing offered to us in the wine and the bread. It is simple yet so very fulfilling and true. Will we enter into salvation on God’s terms and will we invite others to do the same? There is life and healing offered to us in the waters of baptism. It is so simple yet so fulfilling and true. Will we enter into the waters on God’s terms and invite others to do the same? Will we lay aside immaturity and walk in the ways of God’s insight? Will we help others, particularly those who may wish us harm, to do the same?


God, never stop offering the bread of life and the cup of reconciliation to us. Draw us into your simplicity and grant us life. Help us never stop offering the bread of life and cup of reconciliation to all who come our way. Help us make room for all in your simplicity and for us to grow in communal life. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us everything you had on this earth including your body and shedding your blood. Amen.