Manna Still
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 17:5-10

October 7, 2001

One day I was joking around with my Australian mentor, the Reverend Jim Cain, by roots an Adelaide boy. "Weren't all the early Australian settlers convicts of one sort or another?" I teased. With a name like Cain, he didn't like being teased. Even though he felt no real connection with that sordid historical past, it was probably his heritage.

A wandering Aramean was my father, and my mother. For Israelites long settled in the cities of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, that was not an attractive description of who they were. Yet, to remember who you once were is to understand what you have become. This is the real food we chew on and attempt to digest on this weekend of two meals.

For most Canadians, even within Saskatchewan, Thanksgiving is not personally connected with the harvest anymore. Harvest provides the occasion and the intellectual source of our thankfulness. Primarily, Thanksgiving is a meal where the family and those adopted into your family gather.

That is precisely the case with World Communion. Perhaps the difference being that around the Lord's Table we are all adopted, yet members of the household of God nonetheless.

What we talk about around the table is how things once were - good and not-so-good - and if we are a family which believes that God has yet more truth and light to break forth from his Word - we talk about how things might and should be.

Perched on Mount Nebo overlooking the Promised Land, Moses makes it clear about Israel's nomadic lineage, the darkness of its days of oppression, and the conviction that God with an outstretched arm carries them through the future. At harvest they shall give thanks with these words and with their food. Milk and honey will be flowing in the streets, or at least on every table - just like turkey and sauerkraut - those are my favorites!

The trajectory of the story is not that different for those sitting around the Lord's table. No Christian in the world can claim an aristocratic origin in faith, for our brother was a wandering charismatic, undignified and blasphemous his thoughts, and finally executed as a common criminal. We have nothing on the Aussies. Yet we too believe that God's outstretched arm raised him out of a three day tomb. We all eat the paltry bread and grape juice, no matter on which continent we sit, tasting the banquet to come at the table in the kingdom of heaven. Manna is still what we are eating, bread given to us daily.

The apostles crowded around Jesus and gave their command, "Increase our faith!" That's what we want when we come to worship, when we eat and drink at the table. We expect that this will do us some good and enable us to keep progressing. Progress is our most important product.

Somehow it is always somebody else's job to increase our faith, especially in church. Be religious for me, because I'm busy.

Jesus has a sense of humour we often overlook or don't get. "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree to go jump in the lake, and it would." That famous little mustard seed, the darling of the rags to riches program, is meant to embody our future success in the religion business. Certainly, everyone can have as much faith as a small mustard seed which will grow up eventually to become a big tree in whose branches birds come to nest. Jesus is pulling your leg. The mustard plant was a weed, forbidden by Jewish law to be planted in a garden. Skunk cabbage is more likeable.

Our faith is like a mustard seed, despised and rejected as was our brother. The last time you spoke about faith outside of church, how well were you received? When we eat together around Thanksgiving and communion tables, it is not with a sense of triumph that we are finally better than those who are not sitting with us. Indeed, you and I are much less than most others around the tables. We are, after all, descended from nomads and convicts.

What you and I are promised is that if you devote all of your heart, soul, mind and strength to the moment in which you are now - not the mere 30% or less we normally use of our brain capacity - then we will be fed the food which fills you always, and we will be thankful beyond imagination.

The only thing you have to do is eat. Let us simply eat - don't be pious or serious, but let us enjoy ourselves and one another, for we are at a wonderful family meal. And if you just eat, your faith will know no bounds.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan