March 1, 2026 Reflection

We are taught from a very young age that everything costs.

You want that extra guacamole? That’ll be $2.50.
You want to park Downtown? That’ll be your retirement savings.
You want to purchase your first home around here? Well… may the Lord be with you.

Everything costs.

We swim in an economy of exchange. If I give, I expect return. If I work, I earn. If I invest, I profit. If I deserve, I receive. We learn this logic early, and we internalize it deeply. It shapes how we handle money, how we measure success, and often, how we understand God.

And then Isaiah stands up in the middle of that logic and says:

“Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Excuse me?

Without price?

That is not how the world works.

And yet, that is exactly how God works.

Isaiah 55 is not written to comfortable people.

It is spoken to exiles.

People who had lost their land, their temple, their economic stability, their political power. People who were down and out with little power and less money.  They are a people who are exhausted, displaced, financially strained, spiritually depleted. They know what scarcity feels like. They know what loss feels like.

And into that exhaustion, the prophet does not say, “Try harder.”

He does not say, “Budget better.”
He does not say, “Earn your way back.”

He says:

“Come.”

“Eat what is good.”

“Delight yourselves in rich food.”

Theologian Michael Chan writes that the prophet is peddling something far less mundane than wine, milk, and bread. What he has on offer is nourishing, but in a very different kind of way.

This is not about calories. It is about covenant.

It is about a restored hope.
It’s about a love that does not operate on the world’s payment plan.

It is about a God who says: I am not done with you.

Isaiah dares to ask:

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?”

That question feels painfully current.

We live in a culture of constant consumption. Upgrade. Improve. Accumulate. Optimize. Curate. Protect.

And yet anxiety rises. Loneliness deepens. Division widens.

Malnutrition can happen in many ways.

You can have a full fridge and an empty soul.
You can have a busy calendar and a starving spirit.
You can cling tightly to what you have out of fear, and miss the feast entirely.

If we refuse to receive lovingkindness when we most need it…
if we hang on to control instead of surrendering to grace…
we are missing the richness being offered.

And then Isaiah lifts our eyes higher:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.”

This is the High Way.

Not the highway like the one that some of us drove here on this morning.

The High Way, the higher way. God’s way.

And God’s way is abundance.

Because our way says: secure yourself first. God’s way says: come to the table.

Psalm 37 gives us another image. It says:

“Our steps are made firm by the Lord… though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.”

I love that.

God holds us by the hand.

The psalmist says, “I have been young and now am old…”

Which means he has lived long enough to look back. Long enough to see seasons of scarcity and seasons of abundance. Long enough to testify that he has not seen the righteous forsaken.

Can you picture a small hand inside yours? Or your hand inside someone else’s?

Maybe crossing a busy street.
Maybe hiking a trail.
Maybe walking into kindergarten for the first time.
Maybe walking into a hospital room.

That steadying presence.

That is the image of God here.

Not a distant accountant tallying up our worthiness.
Not a divine landlord checking if we can afford rent.
But a steady hand.

The High Way is not transactional. It is relational.

There’s a beautiful scene early in the movie The Way where the main character Tom, while walking the Camino, arrives at a pilgrim meal. The host greets him warmly and says, “We were expecting you.”

Tom is confused. They don’t know him.

But in that place, every pilgrim is expected.

That table becomes more than food. It becomes community.
Healing.
A place where strangers argue about history – loudly… and still pass the bread.

Which feels strangely familiar to church suppers.

In that film, Tom begins the pilgrimage emotionally starved. It is not just food he needs. It is connection. Meaning. Community. The mysterious presence of his son who died, walking beside him. When they gather at that long table, even in disagreement, something feeds him.

The High Way is about that kind of nourishment.

Isaiah says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.”

Because our way says:
Earn it.
Prove it.
Deserve it.
Protect what you have.

God’s way says:
Come.
Receive.
There is enough.

Psalm 37 echoes this vision: “I have been young and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”

It imagines a world where children are not hungry.
Where generosity is normal.
Where people are “ever giving liberally and lending.”

That is not naïve poetry.
It is a radical reordering of society.

And it is deeply relevant here.

Imagine if that was our posture.

Imagine greeting every person who walks into our thrift shop, our café, our sanctuary, with: “Welcome. We were expecting you.”

Not because we knew their name.

But because we assume that whoever shows up is not an interruption, they are part of the feast.

And in many ways around here, we do have that posture already.

Someone comes into the thrift shop looking for a winter coat, but what they often receive is dignity and conversation.

Someone comes into the café for coffee, but what they find is community and someone who remembers how they take their tea.

Someone applies to our mental health program, feeling anxious or fragile, and discovers that they are not alone.

That is Isaiah 55 in action.

“Come, you who have no money…”

Come anyway.

The High Way says: you belong before you contribute.

In that same feast scene in The Way, the pilgrims argue. They debate history. They disagree on interpretation.

And they keep eating together.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Hospitality does not require agreement.

It requires a table.

The kin-dom of God is not uniformity. It is unity-in-difference.

In a time when global tensions run high, in Ukraine, in Gaza and Israel, in Sudan, in Iran, in the USA – when fear makes us retreat into camps and corners… the High Way insists on something radical:

There is enough at God’s table.

Enough mercy.
Enough bread.
Enough grace.

The scarcity we fear is not from God.

Isaiah asks a piercing question:

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?”

We could update it:

Why do we spend our energy on comparison?
Why do we invest so much in being right?
Why do we chase security that never quite feels secure?

We can be materially comfortable and spiritually malnourished.

Tom, in The Way, is not starving physically. But he is starving relationally. Grief has hollowed him out.

And what begins to nourish him?

Not just food.

Community.
Shared story.
Laughter.
The mysterious sense that his son is somehow still part of the journey.

Whenever we gather at the Table, we are joined by what the tradition calls the communion of saints, the cloud of witnesses. Those who once held our hands. Those who sat at tables with us. Those we miss.

They are not gone from the feast of God.

The High Way stretches across time.

To practice hospitality in this world is an act of resistance.

To say:
There is enough.
There is room.
You are welcome.

Even if we don’t agree politically.
Even if we see history differently.
Even if we vote differently.

One table. One family.
This is the kin-dom of God.

Imagine if every person who walked in for communion today was greeted with:

“Welcome. We were expecting you.”

Not because we knew they were coming.
But because God did.

And maybe, just maybe, whenever we gather, we are not alone.

There is a cloud of witnesses around the table.
Saints who once sat in these pews.
Loved ones whose laughter we still remember.

When we break bread, time thins.

We are fed in more ways than one.

The world tells us: protect your slice.

God says: expand the table.

The world says: there’s not enough.

God says: taste and see.

The world says: make them earn it.

God says: without price.

The High Way does not ignore real needs. It responds to them, generously.

It looks like advocating so children don’t go hungry.
It looks like caring for creation beneath these mountains.
It looks like making sure mental health is treated with compassion, not stigma.
It looks like passing the bread even to someone you argued with five minutes ago.

(Which may be the hardest miracle of all.)

Psalm 37 says the righteous are “ever giving liberally and lending.”

Not hoarding.

Not clutching.

Giving.

The High Way is not only about receiving grace. It is about embodying it.

In a region where housing prices soar and anxiety runs high, we can be a community that practices generosity.

In a culture that says, “Protect what’s yours,” we can say, “Share what we have.”

In a church world that sometimes worries about survival, we can dare to live as if God’s abundance is real.

And yes, we still need budgets.

But our posture matters.

Do we act as if there is never enough? Or as if God’s love is inexhaustible?

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth…”

God’s ways are higher, not in the sense of aloof superiority, but in expansive mercy.

The High Way does not say, “Earn your seat.”

It says, “Pull up a chair.”

The High Way does not say, “Prove you belong.”

It says, “We were expecting you.”

This Lent, perhaps the invitation is this:

Where have we internalized the lie that everything must be paid for?

Where do we resist receiving love because we cannot repay it?

Where might we loosen our grip and trust that abundance is not foolish, it is faithful?

God’s ways are higher than ours.

Higher than fear.
Higher than scarcity.
Higher than the lie that everything must be earned.

So friends –

If you are thirsty, come.
If you are tired, come.
If you are unsure, come.
If you feel like you don’t quite belong, come anyway.

This is the High Way.

The way of abundance in a scarcity world.
The way of hospitality in a divided culture.
The way of grace in an economy of earning.

And when we dare to walk that High Way, holding hands, sharing tables, making room, practicing stubborn hospitality, we become nourishment for a hungry world and for one another and we discover something astonishing:

Grace is not a limited resource.

The table is long.

The bread is rich.

The hand that holds ours does not let go when we stumble.

And the Host of the feast looks at each one of us, with our doubts, our disagreements, our grief, our generosity, and says: Welcome.

I was expecting you. Amen.