Luke 4:1-13
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
SERMON “Hungry Gods”
The traditional focus for the first Sunday in Lent is the temptation of Christ, the time when Jesus underwent a period of deprivation in the wilderness. It reflects a relatively common practice among would-be prophets of that era, and indeed across cultures, a sort of ancient vision quest. But as they say, “been there, preached that,” and fairly recently, when we discussed the fact that within the context of the gospel story, Jesus choosing the poor as the focus of his redemptive ministry was a real choice. After all, Satan had offered him ultimate earthly power.
Instead, I want to look at Deuteronomy, the source of our reading from the Torah, and the idea of sacrifice. After all, some still lean into the ancient practice of “sacrificing” something for Lent, frequently chocolate for some reason. I’ve never heard of anyone giving up Brussel Sprouts until Easter. Or coffee for that matter.
The Book of Deuteronomy is traditionally attributed to Moses, and much of the book presents itself as the words of Moses. The only real narrative action comes at the end of the text, when Moses, having been forbidden to enter the Promised Land, dies alone on the holy mountain and is buried by Yahweh. And as I asked the group in Monday School this week, if Moses dies alone on the mountain, who wrote that part?
Of course, Moses did not actually write the Book of Deuteronomy, or any other book in the Torah. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe in the historicity of Moses and the slave escape from Egypt. But I recognize that the texts are the product of a much later age, with the first layers of the Torah created after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom during the 8th century B.C.E. Refugees entering Judah from Israel brought with them new texts and new ideas, including exclusive worship of Yahweh, something we saw last week in the conflict between the Northern Kingdom prophet, Elijah, and the royal household of Ahab and Jezebel.
In the wake of this national catastrophe, the surviving Southern Kingdom underwent a period of reform and cultural construction, creating something we can begin to recognize as proto-Judaism. This culminated during the reign of King Josiah, which began around 640 B.C.E. Scripture tells us that under Josiah’s reign, repairs were made to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, and that during that process the High Priest Hilkiah discovered a long lost “Book of the Law,” now believed to have been a core portion of Deuteronomy.
And by found, we mean fabricated, for much of the text has to do with a cultural context unimaginable to Moses, unimaginable to the next several generations that lived in a loose confederation for a couple hundred years after the Exodus, before the pivotal century when the warlord Saul consolidated power, the usurper David conquered Jerusalem, and the heir Solomon constructed the Temple.
That is not to say that the Torah is wholly bad just because it wasn’t actually written by Moses, but also not to say that the Torah is wholly good. There are laws specific to that one ancient culture that no longer fit with our understanding of the world, ancient misogyny and homophobia for example, and quite a few laws that we ignore, like the prohibition on charging interest or the command to pay a just wage, both replaced by our true modern religion of neo-liberal capitalism.
Our reading, dedication of the first fruits of the harvest, falls into a pretty complex system of sacrifices required under the Temple cult and detailed in the Torah. If we are honest, the sacrificial system of the Temple was about supporting the staff of the Temple. Few offerings were slated for a holocaust, a completely burnt sacrifice as a sin offering. Most of what came in as meat and bread and first fruits fed the priests and their households.
The prophets remind us more than once that God does not eat meat and does not require that sort of sacrifice. We do not worship hungry gods. This is the exact topic of the canon within the canon, the sixth chapter of the Book of the Prophet Micah, which says:
“With what shall I come before the Holy One, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before God with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Holy One be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Holy One require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
And that, just maybe, is the little redemptive takeaway from this passage in Deuteronomy, a door to Lenten conversion.
Yes, the tithe or one-tenth is an ideal for giving. Any form of proportional giving would be a start, keeping the story of the widow’s mite in mind, giving according to our capacity with no strings attached, trusting in the discernment of our democratic congregational system.
The first fruits passage, which reminds the ancient people of the goodness of God, the goodness of a liberating God, the goodness of the abundance of this earth, at its heart is humility and love and celebration all wrapped up in what should be a great Thanksgiving, so very different from our autumnal day of over-spending, over-eating, and listening to that obnoxious cousin yell at the referees.
Deuteronomy calls for the sort of gratitude expressed in the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher’s phrase translated as “utter dependence” or “absolute dependence,” the idea that everything finite depends on that which is infinite, and that which is infinite is the holy mystery we name as God.
Deuteronomy calls for the sort of gratitude reflected in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2013 book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” the source of our first reading which moves from gratitude to reciprocity in the tradition of indigenous peoples.
Deuteronomy calls for the sort of gratitude in spiritual writer Anne Lamott’s reduction of prayer to three words, “help,” “thanks,” and “wow,” with the latter two as expressions of gratitude, twice as much praise as petition.
Maybe, if we must do penance during Lent, this week we can repent for our failure to fully appreciate the gifts and abundance of every minute of life, of every hug, of every unpleasant but important lesson learned, of the still speaking voice that says “Get up! Roll up your mat! Roll up your sorrow! Live!”
And I confess that it is hard to be grateful in the midst of so much anger and so much hate, that the evil around us can not only smother the light of gratitude, but can deform us if we let it, and if we are not careful, turn us into the self-righteous and performative people Jesus condemns, instead of the practical and humble people Jesus celebrates. We shouldn’t let it.
Jesus did not exactly live in the bucolic times seen in so many depictions, lambs and children on a hillside. The end of Lenten journey, betrayal and violence, can feel like a one-off. Betrayal and violence were the daily, and crucifixion, rather than a unique event, was common, with the dying moaning from crosses and corpses decaying on them outside every city in the empire.
Finally, let’s turn from the spiritual to the concrete. We have gotten so far from anything that is real, processed food in plastic packages. I mean, most of us can, in our economic privilege, buy organic at Wegman’s, but so many cannot afford to do so, and entire communities only have access to dollar stores and bodegas for their food.
Our community garden is a beautiful ministry, a source of exactly the kind of first fruits they imagined over 2500 years ago when they were writing Deuteronomy, but what about a food coop, which makes food affordable year round? And not one of those fancy expensive granola coops. How about a food coop that sells staples and teaches people how to cook them?
A quarter of Elmira’s residents do not have access to a car, including the poor and the elderly, so how about a rolling green market that goes to impoverished communities, sort of a Bookmobile, but instead BroccoliMobile, though the Brussel Sprout Mobile can just keep on rolling to the next town.
Gratitude and first fruits seem an appropriate response this Lent, as hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their jobs and prices spike as a result of an idiotic autocrat and his trade war. And while we can depend on Jenny bringing in surplus from her harvest this summer, maybe we all should expand our gardens this year, not to feed hungry gods, but to feed hungry people.
Speaking of… the longer I preach, the longer it is going to be until we all get to that after-church lunch, where we will once again practice gratitude and community, where no one will be turned away, and where the goodness of our God will be before us. Come, you who are hungry, for you will be fed.
Amen.