God provides

 

Today’s readings are about how God provides for his people, and how ungracious our response usually is!

Our Old Testament reading is set shortly after the Israelites have been set free from Egypt.
You remember how God sent various plagues on the Egyptians,
and then parted the waters of the Red Sea,
or more probably one of the lakes that’s now part of the Suez Canal,
to allow the Israelites to escape from Pharoah’s armies, which drowned if they didn’t get out of the way in time.
So now they are wandering about in the desert,
waiting to be shown the way to the Promised Land.
And they are fed up and hungry.
Wouldn’t they have done better to have stayed in Egypt,
where at least they had delicious food to eat?
Forgetting, of course, all the nasty things about having been in Egypt.

But God provides for them –
quails in the evening, so they can have a hot meal, and manna for the rest of the day.
Nobody seems to know quite what manna was –
the Bible tells us that it looked a bit like white coriander seeds,
and tasted a bit like a wafer with honey, but that doesn’t really help.
Nor, of course, does it matter; it’s not about what manna was, after all!
I’m sure that those of you who are interested can research further into the whys and wherefores of it;
scholars have argued about it over the years, and they have some very weird and wonderful ideas!
But for now, suffice it to say that God provided enough food for his people while they were wandering in the desert.

I am always interested when I read the rather longer version of this story, since it’s made quite clear that every family was only able to collect enough manna for its own needs.
You couldn’t store it.
You couldn’t hoard it.
If you gathered too much,
and didn’t give it to someone who wasn’t as able to gather it as you were,
then it went rotten on you and had to be thrown away.
The only exception to this was on a Friday –
you were allowed to gather enough to last you for the whole Sabbath day,
so that you didn’t have to gather it on the Sabbath,
but that was the only time you could gather more than needed for immediate use.
Strictly enforced socialism!

All the same, the people were still not satisfied, so we are told,
and went on and on grumbling and muttering and being generally miserable.
As you probably remember, it came to a head on several occasions –
for instance, when they thought Moses and Aaron, their leaders, had been gone up Mount Sinai for too long,
so they decided God must have abandoned them, and built a golden calf to worship, instead.
And so it went on, grumble, grumble, moan, moan, never satisfied.....

Actually, are the Israelis ever satisfied?
Seems like it’s going on still – there are, of course faults on both sides in this conflict between Israel and Gaza, and I don’t want to get into it now, but strikes me that Israel would like to increase its borders, largely at the expense of the Palestinians.

Anyway, never mind that now. Let’s turn to our Gospel reading. Jesus is telling a story of what the Kingdom of Heaven – God’s country, if you like. We, like Jesus’ first hearers, want to think of God’s country as the most wonderful place there is, and, indeed, Jesus does tell us that it’s worth giving up everything else for. But –
oh dear –
it’s not at all what we thought!
Weeds everywhere, attracting masses of birds which could and did eat all the crops!
And the food, far from gourmet, is rotten bread made by women!

And then there’s this story. It’s harvest time, and so many labourers are needed. These days, of course, the harvest is usually done by machines as it is, sadly, more economical. A winemaker of my acquaintance told me that, although he would have preferred to continue using seasonal labour, his mechanical harvester paid for itself in under two years!

But back in the day, machines weren’t available, so you used seasonal workers or nobody. So the winemaker goes to the market, where the unskilled workers were waiting to be hired, and negotiates with them for a fair day’s pay. But he found he hadn’t taken on enough people, so he goes back mid-morning, at lunchtime, and then again mid-afternoon, and finally just an hour before knocking-off time. And then he gives everybody the same wage that he’d negotiated with those who worked a full day. And they, of course, were livid. Wouldn’t you be? These layabouts only worked for an hour, and we’ve done the whole shift! How come they get the same money as us. It’s Not Fair!

But the winemaker says, “No, listen, I paid you exactly what we agreed I would, and if I choose to pay those who came later the same, how is that your business? You be thankful for what you have and don’t tell me what to do!”

I think most of us would sympathise with those workers! It really does seem unfair, and probably most of them would have hired on with someone else next day. But let’s twist it round a second, and look at those who came late. Perhaps some had family responsibilities to deal with and couldn’t get there for a six am start. Some might have hired on elsewhere, but been let go early, as their employer had overestimated the amount of work there was.
Some might have worked almost a full shift but taken on an extra hour’s work because they needed the extra pay for – oh, I don’t know, shoes for their children, or something. Some might have been different, not “people like us”, perhaps they had some kind of disability and employers were reluctant to take them on in case they didn’t give value for money.

But this is God’s country, and God knew everybody’s needs, and provided for them. The employer – God if you like – was not being unfair to the ones who worked all day; they got what was agreed. It was God’s immense generosity which gave more to those who had worked less, and who, arguably, needed the full amount. God’s country is very much not what we think it’s going to be. After all, if we are honest, we probably all secretly think we deserve more!

I expect the Israelites would have liked an occasional change from manna and quail! But they had what they needed. They couldn’t take more than they needed, unless they were gathering it for someone who wasn’t able to get their own for whatever reason. But they had sufficient. The workers who worked a full day’s shift were paid the agreed amount – a very fair day’s wage, back in the day. And those who came later were paid the same amount, which in God’s eyes is very fair, even if it isn’t in ours!

We are taught to believe, and these stories show us, God’s provision for us as His people. But what of those he doesn’t appear to provide for? What of those who desperately need to use the food banks or they’d not be able to feed themselves or, worse, their children, by the end of the week? What of those in Nepal, trying to recover from those terrible mudslides? What of those in Gaza or Yemen that we know are starving? And there is so often famine in Africa, too? Has God forgotten these people? Why do they not have enough?

You hear of people who say these people brought it on themselves. They don’t work hard enough. They spend what they have on luxuries. And so on, you’ve heard it all before.

But you know what? It almost never is their fault! In this country, our systems are cursed by those years of austerity – still going on – which makes it incredibly difficult to climb out of poverty, especially if you don’t have the qualifications for a well-paid job, or you are trying to bring up young children single-handed, or you are disabled and can’t work. The powers that be have been known to refuse – refuse, I tell you – to give these people the benefits to which they are entitled. Not all of them, and not all of the time, but enough so that people still rely on the food banks and soup kitchens. And the food banks and soup kitchens rely on our generosity – yours and mine – to keep going and provide the service they do.

And abroad – well, they say the Nepal mudslides were caused, primarily, by climate change. And again, that is very largely down to us. We have turned a blind eye to the reality of global warming, until it hits us in the face as it has this summer. As individuals, we can’t stop global warming single-handed, but we can do our own bit – using refillable water-bottles, reusing supermarket carrier bags, being scrupulous about recycling properly, minimising food waste, and, while we are at it, minimising food miles. That sort of thing. If we all did it, it might make a difference, and we mustn’t think that just because not everybody does it, we needn’t bother either! We should, and we should encourage our friends to do so, too.

And so many of the famines we see are caused by war. Certainly in Gaza and Yemen, in Sudan, in so many countries whose wars we don’t really hear about. I think there are people going hungry in Ukraine now, too.

The thing is, God can, and God will, provide for all these people – but almost always that provision will be through us. It’s so easy to get what they call “compassion fatigue”, fed up with the nightly sight of suffering on our television screens. You know and I know that if we gave three pounds a month to all who beg us to, we’d soon go broke! But we can and should sit down with God and work out where our own personal giving should go – to the church, of course, but what other cause yells at you? Don’t forget, that if you’ve committed to being God’s person, as I’m sure most of us here has, that should be all of us, including our personal finances!

Now you might, of course, be thinking “But I can’t afford to give anything – I can barely feed my children as it is!”, and if that’s you, then rest assured, I’m totally not getting at you! All I can say is that I’m sorry the Social Security are such arses on occasion! And there are the food banks and there are the soup kitchens!

Meanwhile for the rest of us, there are ways to make our giving relatively painless. Perhaps you buy a coffee on the way to work – could you bear to take one with you, just one day a week? That would be around a fiver you could give to your chosen charity. Or perhaps you buy your lunchtime sandwich? Could you bear to take one from home, not necessarily every day, but perhaps once a week? Again, that bit of lunch money could go towards your charity.

You’ll have your own ideas, I’m sure. But I want to close by reminding you that you can’t outgive God! Jesus is recorded as saying, in several places, that God rewards us: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” This doesn’t necessarily mean material blessings, of course – in fact, it very probably doesn’t. The Israelites were given plenty of manna, but not too much. But it does mean enormous spiritual blessings, and love, and awareness of God’s love for us, both as individuals and as churches. Amen.