Deuteronomy 8 "Not Alone" Scott Hoezee

Now it's affecting even the tomato farmer. According to a story on NPR that my wife heard this past week, tomato growers in California have noticed a significant fall-off in profits and sales. It seems that national demand for ketchup just isn't what it used to be. Why? Because so many millions of Americans are trying the Atkins diet that fast food restaurants selling hamburgers on buns and, above all, french fries simply are not selling these things as much. Similarly, demand for tomato-based pasta sauces is also off due to the avoidance of all the carbs contained in spaghetti, fettucine, and lasagna.

The notion that man does not live by bread alone has never been so popular! Some weeks ago I heard a comedian poking fun of the Atkins diet by noting that according to the late Dr. Atkins, the number one dietary enemy is none other than bread. As the comedian said, "Bread! The staff of life?! How nice it is to know that the whole human race has been eating the wrong thing since only the dawn of time!" Indeed, I've met some folks who say that the only bread they eat anymore is when communion is served in church. There may or may not be theological implications in that, but they will remain unexplored this evening!

Still, it does seem odd to treat bread, of all things, like a pariah. Bread, the breaking of bread, the staff of life, and the art of making bread are all staples of civilization and a hallmark of many important Bible passages. Bread has long been seen as God's gift. Etymologically, the word "companion" dervies from the Latin cum panis, which means "with bread." A companion is one with whom you share bread. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Frodo and Sam are saved in their quest by eating the Elvish lembas bread--a magical, almost spiritual bread one bite of which could sustain a grown man for most of a day. Scholars like Ralph Wood note that for Tolkien, there seems to have been a parallel between lembas bread and the bread of the Lord's Supper.

The original wonder bread of manna occupies a central place in what many Old Testament commentators believe is the Pentateuch's premiere masterpiece: Deuteronomy 8. This grand chapter sums up the entire Bible so far even as it charts the course for Israel's entire future before the face of God. Significantly, twice in this chapter the manna of God is mentioned as something vital. Manna in Hebrew means "What is this!?" and something of that original mystery and wonderment is alluded to in Deuteronomy 8.

Above all, however, is the curious and rather unexpected link between this bread in the wilderness and the Word of God. It is not terribly surprising to be reminded that the manna was also meant to foster dependence on God. There was a reason why the people were not allowed to store up any manna overnight: every day they needed to get up out of bed and rely on God's care once again. Stockpiles of manna could, over time, lead the people to not think much about God each new day because, whether God did anything or not, they could rest easy because they already had that covered through their secret reserve.

In the wilderness, that couldn't happen. As we have noted together before, even for us today when we enter what we could call "wilderness periods" of suffering, suddenly the props and supports we rely on during the run of our average day are all knocked out from underneath us. Suddenly instead of praying for about five or ten minutes in a given day we spend hours praying for God to please help, to please heal, to please give us direction in the face of some really big decision that got tossed into our laps. The wilderness always makes our awareness of God swell.

Thankfully, however, most of us don't stay in the wilderness forever. Israel would not either. They had been there for 40 years now. In fact, the younger generation who would finally move into the Promised Land had basically never known anything other than the wilderness. But even so, Moses knew the human heart. Moses knew that the people in Israel who were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s had never known a life other than the God-dependent one that existed on the razor's edge of whether or not manna would show up every morning. But even that, all by itself, was not enough to avoid the possibility that once those same people were all snug and cozy and well-off in the Promised Land, they would forget God more often than not. Moses knew that once the manna stopped and was replaced with pantries full of bread, vegetables, and bottles of wine, the people would no longer make the God-connection but would instead pat themselves on the back for being such solid providers, financial planners, and savvy entrepreneurs. Think of it this way: when was the last time you heard the term "breadwinner" applied to God?

So in his grand sermon to the new generation, Moses does everything he can to help the people remember that the piping hot loaves of bread they would pull from their ovens in Canaan would be every bit as much a gift of God's providence as the manna had been. Moses wanted the spiritual awareness of the wilderness to carry over into that land flowing with milk and honey. Moses wanted the people to think of God, and to thank God, just as often and as fervently when life became good as they had when life was rugged.

Moses' fear, however, was that instead the people would forget and not remember that their lives were a gift. Entitlement would displace dependence. A sense of accomplishment would eclipse a sense of giftedness. Prosperity would edge out providence. It happens to us all. Some years ago I told you the anecdote about actor Anthony Hopkins, who played a chief butler in the fine film The Remains of the Day. Wealthy people have servants around them precisely because they expect the goodies of life to appear. But the truly arrogant among the rich want to believe they are entitled to such pampered care and so don't want to feel beholden to anyone for it, including to the servants who do the caretaking. Hopkins says that the rich man at dinner expects his wine glass to be full each time he reaches for it, expects his plate to disappear the moment he lays his knife and fork down.

The rich man just wants this to happen because he deserves it and so doesn't want to have to thank anyone for doing for him what he deems is only fitting to begin with. So the trick to being a good butler is complete obsequiousness--an ability to blend into the woodwork and be no more noticeable on the fringes of the dining room than a floor lamp or the andirons at the fireplace. In fact, in researching his role, Hopkins interviewed a real-life butler who summed up a good butler this way: the room seems emptier when he's in it.

It was precisely that kind of arrogant pride, entitlement, and self-centered narcissim that Moses wanted his dear people to avoid. But the key to that comes in verse 3 when we are told that the purpose behind the manna was the grand reminder that "man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of Yahweh." And it is just that precise point that may be the single most intriguing notion in this chapter. If Moses had said that the manna was a reminder that we live by the gifts of God or by the providence of God or by the works of God, we would not have been startled to read it. But the fact that Moses mentions the word of God does surprise us.

Did God speak the manna into being? The answer to that question is, I think, yes. Because when you are God, there is no difference between word and deed, between what is spoken and what is actively accomplished. Genesis tells us that it was the word of God that gave birth to every last thing that exists throughout the far-flung universe. So why would it be surprising to learn that the manna had a similar origin?

In our human interactions we are forever yawning open a chasm between words and actions. We even have a battery of axioms and phrases that convey this: Actions speak louder than words. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Sometimes we refer to "idle talk" and dismiss someone's promise as "mere words" or "empty words." And the simple fact is that we've all learned the hard way that people can say whatever they want but that is no guarantee they will follow through on those words.

In the twentieth century, from the philosopher Wittgenstein forward, there was a huge cottage industry in philosophical circles on the phenomenology of words and deeds. Literary deconstructionists would later go on to claim that words in and of themselves mean nothing, even to the point that whatever an author intended by his or her words has no bearing as to what (if anything) those words mean now. Words are just tropes, just symbols we can toy with and into which we can pour any meaning we want. Still others have written vast treatises on interlocutionary and intralocutionary acts, pondering whether or how words lead to, or can be associated with, action.

It is much more clear-cut when it comes to God (thankfully!). Because no chasm exists for God between word and deed. God's active and vital word has so much power to it that it accomplishes what it says in the very moment the word is spoken to begin with. So when God said, "I will give you bread to eat," the manna appeared as a matter of course. How could it not! When God speaks, "Life," life appears. When God pronounces a benediction, the blessing comes into being automatically and inevitably.

So the manna was God's Word, which was Jesus' point a thousand years later when he quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 to the devil after Satan tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Even though we are familiar with the verse that says "man shall not live by bread alone," we at the same time know full well that neither do we live long without bread. The emphasis here falls not on the "bread" but on the "alone." We do live by bread. Even people on the strictest diet eat something every day because you will die if you don't eat.

But we don't live truly and at the deepest level of our souls by food alone. For life to have any meaning and any depth, the God-connection needs to be made. There are people in this world who eat gourmet food more meals than not. We are just generally a food-obsessed culture. Survey the shelves at Schuller Books or the average grocery store magazine rack and it's about a 50-50 split between items devoted to gourmet cooking and those devoted to losing weight. Either way or both ways, we ponder the bread of life a lot.

But if this focus on food stops at the plate, if there is never the connection made to the word of God that made that food available to you in the first place (not to mention the divine word that makes your entire existence possible), then you are not really alive--not in any lasting sense. Because we all know it is possible to be fully fed and yet still empty. We all know there is a hunger in us that Gourmet magazine will never sate.

Look around when you eat at even fancy restaurants and the odds are that somewhere you may spy a table with two very fit people who are eating very good food and yet they don't talk, their eyes are empty, and you know that at evening's end when they leave the restaurant, they will return home as empty as before they sat down and ordered that evening's special of a venison chop with saffron risotto. We do not live by bread alone because we were created by a God who designed us to be filled with his very Spirit.

We do not live by bread alone because when all we have is bread, we are spiritually alone. In Deuteronomy 8 the Israelites had bread but were reminded it was not enough unless they moved on to the Word of God that provided the bread as well as the rest of life's deeper meaning. In the New Testament Jesus had no bread for a little while but he did have the Word of God and it was more than enough to make up for a growling stomach. In the long run we need both: the Israelites did and Jesus did, too.

Taken together, Deuteronomy 8 and Jesus' temptations in the wilderness point to the need for balance. We underestimate neither the value of real bread nor the value of the real divine word that brings about our entire life, including the bread that nourishes us. Daily we connect all of life's bounty with the blessing of God's Word and we connect the blessing of God's Word with the real life we actually have.

In her sermon "Bread of Angels," Barbara Brown Taylor notes that to this day, if you visit the Sinai Peninsula, you will find that the Bedouin Arabs who live in the desert still collect something they call "manna." Manna is a flaky secretion that comes from a form of plant lice that feed on tamarisk trees. Tamarisk trees are not very nourishing and so these lice need to eat a lot to live and so secrete a lot of bug juice that is rich in sugar and carbohydrates and that, when harvested, can be mixed into delicious batter from which to make bread, cakes, and other such treats. Not surprisingly there are some who think this same bug juice was also Israel's manna long ago. Also not surprising, however, is the fact that many Christians don't like that idea because it doesn't seem near miraculous enough. The gift of God should plunk down directly from heaven, ready-made and glittering with golden sparks like some magical item in a Disney cartoon. But bug juice!? Manna as the secretion of lice? That can't be the gift of God!

Well, Brown Taylor says, you can look at it however you want, but probably we shouldn't be too quick to conclude that God could not have provided for his people through bug juice. Because the minute we restrict the gift of God to something other-worldly, we might start to miss most of God's very common, very earthy gifts even to this day. The next thing you know, you throw that loaf of Aunt Millie's Cracked Wheat bread into your shopping cart at D&W without ever once giving God a second thought. You may even eat the whole loaf over the course of a week but never pause long enough to connect Aunt Millie to the Word of God that is our very life in every sense conceivable. Aunt Millie may as well be bug juice: God's gift should be more obviously spiritual, right? Wrong!

When Jesus fed the 5,000 from a single loaf, the people were awed and followed him everywhere he went. Everybody likes a free lunch. But then the day came when Jesus, who is the Word of God made flesh, said to those same crowds that it was his flesh that was true bread and his blood that was true drink, and that was about the same moment when the crowds started to thin out. To their way of thinking they had been asking for Aunt Millie's Cracked Wheat bread but Jesus was offering them bug juice instead. "Yuck!" they said, and went back home to grab a hunk of pita bread for dinner. That man's body and blood could not possibly be the gift of God.

The New Testament, however, assures us that Jesus is the ultimate manna: the bread of life of which the manna in Deuteronomy 8 was just a sneak preview, just an appetizer to get us ready for God's main course. Those who see the food of the Lord's table as their truest source of nourishment know that everything else that nourishes us in life means something only if we can see the tethers that connect Aunt Millie with our Lord's table. If you eat this bread and drink this cup in the right way, then all the other food and all the other cups you take to yourself will become exactly what they should be: the Word of God in your life, nourishing you every moment of every day from now on, straight on into eternal life when the wedding feast of the Lamb will feed us forever. Amen.