Come and Eat When You Have No Money

Isaiah 55:1-9

Are you thirsty?

Then come.

Come to the water, every one of you.
Come, even you with empty pockets.
Come, even you with nothing in your hands.

Do you hear what God is calling, across the long, dry country?

Come, come, come.
Buy bread without money.
Buy milk and wine for free.

There was a deep kind of hunger in those people,
a hunger that went further down than an empty belly.

They were spending and spending
on bread that left them hungry still.
Working and working
for things that broke apart in their hands.
Aching for something rich and good,
something that would fill them up
and never, ever run out.

But it cost too much.
They could not pay.
They were poor, and far from home.

So God set a table.

He spread a feast in the wilderness
for the people who had nothing.
Bread piled high and cups poured full,
the richest food and the sweetest drink.

And he said, It is free.

Come and eat, even though you cannot pay.
Come and drink, even though your hands are empty.
Sit down. Sit down at my table.
I have been waiting for you.

In our world, the best things go to the people who can buy them.
The richest get the feast.
And the poor stand outside in the cold.

But God turns it the other way around.
At God's table, the empty-handed eat first.
The penniless are filled.
The ones who could never earn it
are the very ones he calls by name.

Why spend your money on what is not even bread?
he asked them, so gently.
Why work so hard for what will never fill you?
Listen to me. Come to me. And you will live.

For God's thoughts are not small like ours.
His ways are higher than our ways,
the way the wide sky is higher than the ground.
We count, and we measure, and we ask, Can I afford it?
And God simply opens his hands,
the same hands where he carved his people's names,
and says, It is yours. Come.

The people did not know yet
how the feast would come,
or who would carry it to them.

But one day a man would stand in a crowd of hungry people
and say, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.
And one day that same man would say,
If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

His name is Jesus.
He is the free feast God promised, all along.
He is the bread you cannot buy
and the water that costs you nothing.

So if you are thirsty, little one,
if you are hungry for something good
that you could never, ever earn,

come.

The table is set.
And it was already being set, long ago,
in the wilderness, where God first whispered:

Come and eat. Come and drink. Come home.