Come and Eat When You Have No Money

(from Isaiah 55:1-9)

God's people were far from home in Babylon,
the same tired people who had cried,
"God has forgotten us."
Every morning they went down to the market.

The market was loud.
"Bread! Hot bread!"
"Milk! Fresh milk!"
"Wine from the hills! Who will buy?"
Coins clinked from hand to hand,
and anyone with empty pockets
walked past the good things
and went home hungry.

But God had given his prophet Isaiah words for them,
already waiting on an old scroll,
and in those words
God called out over all that noise,
and he sounded like a seller too:

"Come, everyone who is thirsty!
Come down to the water!
You with no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy milk and wine
without money and without paying a thing!"

(No seller in Babylon had ever shouted that.
A baker who gives away every loaf
goes home with an empty cart
and nothing for his own supper.)

Then God asked them a question:

"Why spend your money
on what is not even bread?
Why work so hard
for what never fills you up?
Listen to me, and eat what is good.
Come to me, and you will live.
I will make a promise with you that lasts forever,
the same faithful love I promised to King David."

The people knew what he meant.
They had worked their whole lives
for things that could not fill a heart:
more coins, more sheep, bigger barns,
and gods carved from wood
that could not hear a single word.

"Look for the LORD while he can be found," Isaiah wrote.
"Call to him while he is near.
Let the wicked leave their wicked road
and come home to the LORD,
and he will have mercy on them.
He will forgive, and forgive, and forgive."

The people frowned and scratched their heads.
Forgive everything? For nothing?
That is not how markets work.

So God told them why:

"My thoughts are not your thoughts,
and your ways are not my ways.
As high as the sky is above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways,
and my thoughts above your thoughts."

(Look up on a clear night,
past the roof, past the clouds,
past the farthest star.
That is how far.)

Every free feast has a bill somewhere.
Somebody always pays for the bread.
Isaiah called the hungry to the table,
and the people waited,
year after year, king after king,
for the one who would pay for it.

Then, at a great feast in Jerusalem,
on the last and biggest day,
a man stood up in the crowd
and shouted like a seller in a market:
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!"
He had already told a hungry crowd,
"I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry."

He asked no one for a single coin.
He paid for the whole feast himself,
when he died on a cross.

His name is Jesus,
and his table is still set.