Wednesday, July 23, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Manna
Jesus tells the best parables!
A sower went out to sow. Some seed fell on the path, and birds ate it. Some fell on rocky ground and it grew until the sun rose and it was burnt for lack of roots. Some fell among thorns, which choked out the new green plants.
And some fell on rich soil, grew strong and produced much good fruit.
But today’s story is as much about the real seed, and the real bread, as it is the souls of the eaters.
For the finally free Israelites, bread without yeast was tasteless enough, but no bread at all was worse. Once again they complain to Moses, who takes their complaints to Yahweh. As he did on the shores of the Red Sea, God sent a wind to rescue them, a ruah, a spirit wind.
I will now rain down bread from heaven for you. Gather only enough for one day at a time, there will be more tomorrow … In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning have your fill of bread.
 In the evening quail came and covered the camp, and after the morning dew evaporated, fine flakes covered the surface of the desert. It was bread. They called it manna.
Since the beginning our bodies have eaten and our souls have yearned for God’s soul food. My body gets hungry several times a day. My soul does too, when I take a little time to notice. God provides for both.
Holy Communion
When church is real,
Our bodies are the food of Eucharist
And the consecrated bread and wine
Are but the appetizer. – Clarence Heller
Our son Chris was about to be ordained twenty or so years ago, and we thought about a gift for him. Finally we settled on a shofar, a trumpet made from the horn of a ram, blown by the Hebrews during religious ceremonies and in the midst of battle. Chris practiced a little and sounded pretty good, at least like what we’d heard on TV. He might have felt like a warrior, there in the church when he blew his horn. We felt like the warrior’s parents.  Over the years Chris had become his own person, and we loved him.
Love, as Jesus reveals it to us, is a relationship between persons. The word “person” is a wonderful word. It comes from the Latin words per, which means “through” and sonare, which means “to sound.” A person is someone who is sounding through.
What are we sounding through? We are sounding through a greater love than we ourselves can contain. When we say to somebody, “I love you,” that really means, “You are a window through which I can get a glimpse of the infinite love of God.” – Henri Nouwen
Looking a generation back the other way I remember Dad planting corn and beans, oats and alfalfa and wheat, running the planter back and forth all day in the spring. He sat under an umbrella on the tractor’s padded yellow seat, looking young and then older as the years passed. Mom brought him lunch in the field, and after he’d eaten he lay down in the shade under the tractor for his 20 minute nap. Dad got up at 4 am to milk the cows; by one, he needed a nap. He would be milking the cows again at 4 that afternoon.
“You are a window through which I can get a glimpse of the infinite love of God.” Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Chris. I love you.
(Exodus 16, Psalm 78, Matthew 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
