Divine Simplicity

Isaiah 55:1-11
March 7, 2010

How many of you have seen this dude?
How many have seen him or her standing on the side of the road trying to distract you from your day’s agenda?
How many of you, like me, are gripped by a mix of pity and anger at the sight of them?
Pity, because I can’t imagine having to do that job in the middle of February when it’s 10 degrees outside . . .
Anger, because probably the most moral and hopeful symbol of our nation is being abused for what? To sell tax services.


This is the true symbol.
And this is her message . . .
A poem penned by Emma Lazarus in 1883.
In the poem she is called “The Mother of Exiles.”
She says . . .
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

You see, in our great country, nothing is sacred.
How many of you knew that the Statue of Liberty is called the “Mother of Exiles?”
Yet how many of you connect this great symbol with a for-profit company called Liberty Tax Services?

We take powerful symbols and messages, strip them of their meaning and use them in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

The Mother of Exiles stands at our shore and cries out a message of welcome, of hospitality for the poor and oppressed.
But we, as a nation, have long forgotten that message as evidenced by our immigration laws that do exactly the opposite and weed out the poor and oppressed.
And we don’t care that this great symbol of hope for the poor of the world is parading around on our street corners like a prostitute for a pimping tax service.

Hope, symbols, morality --- it’s all for sale today in the US.
It’s not new, however. This is how empires operate.
Isaiah saw it 2600 years ago in Babylon.

The children of God were chasing after the security, the seeming comfort that allegiance to the empire offered.
They were exiles in the land of Babylon.
But they had gotten so comfortable that they had forgotten God’s call to a better life, a deeper life, a hopeful life.
They were selling out their faith to the prostitutes of the empire.
The empire was consuming them, their lives, their hopes their faith in God.

And Isaiah, in this magnificent passage of poetry calls out like God on the street corner . . .
“Hola . . .
"All who are thirsty, . . . come to the water!
Are you penniless? . . . Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money—everything's free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.” (The Message)

This message may be 2600 years old, but in its divine simplicity it couldn’t be more relevant to us today.

Some of us here today are genuine exiles.
Some of us are economic refugees who heard the call of the Mother of Exiles and somehow made it here even though we as a nation don’t embrace her message anymore.

And some of us are spiritual exiles.
Born and raised here, but watching daily as basic faith values are stripped away by our culture of greed and consumerism.

Here’s the sad truth.
For the genuine exiles in our midst, life in this country becomes anything but life as they knew it.
Many say, “I come to this country to make money, not to live.”
And the disturbing thing is that the health of immigrants and their families decline the longer they are in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But that’s our national disease, isn’t it?
We are a fast food nation.
Fast food is cheap and easy for us as consumers.
And it makes multi-national corporations like McDonalds very rich.

But is it good for us?

No. Not at all.

But our culture tells us, “Listen, you don’t have time to cook a meal . . .
You need to be out there making the money, paying the bills, hurry, hurry, hurry.”
We don’t have time for the very basic, simple things of life anymore.

But God is calling out to us on the street corner saying . . .
“Slow down. Have some of this Agua Viva. Sit down and let’s chat over the Bread of life.”
“Put your credit card in the trash. I’m buying,” says the Lord.

God is calling us out of the fast food world and all it steals from us.
God offers us a divinely simple life.
God calls to us like a mother on the front porch . . .
“Ricky, come on in. Dinner’s ready!”

When we are lost or alone, God welcomes us home.
And when we are hungry and thirsty for life, God offers the simplest of pleasures.

And when life has lost it’s meaning . . .
When the symbols of hope that you’ve known since childhood are abused and broken . . .
When all seems lost and this world has told you that you are worthless . . .
Disposable . . .
When the systems of the world are determining your net worth and it turns out to be a negative number . . .
God says, “Wait a minute . . .
“Hold it right there . . .”
“Slow down, my friend . . .”
“Who told you that?”

God says, “This is where you find your worth . . .
Here in my house . . .
Around my table . . .
As you love one another . . .
As you cook for one another . . .
As you share with one another . . .
As you bear one another’s burdens . . .
As you learn to speak to each other . . .
As you look in each other’s eyes and see me . . ."

"It’s very simple," God says.
And yet it is the best thing in all the world.

"It’s me," God says.

"It’s my Word."

"It’s my Love."

"And it’s not for sale."