Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sermon: "Grace for Tomorrow / Bread for Today?"

Scripture Lesson: Jeremiah 31: 31-34

Reverend Larry Gerber

God did not make us as reservoirs able to store up great quantities of love, joy, faith or grace. Instead, God gives it when we need it.

J.I.T. - Jeremiah In Trouble. Or, Jesus In Time.

Maybe, but in fact, J.I.T. is short for "Just in time."

That's the term for how many manufacturers handle the inventories of materials they use to create their products. In fact, J.I.T. is a major shift in inventory management.

In the past, to ensure that their production lines were always running, manufacturers acquired substantial quantities of materials and kept restocking those supplies as the parts were used. But here's the problem with that:

-Huge amounts of money must be kept in flow and this adds costs for the use of that money as well.

-Warehouses are needed to store all that material.

-Standing inventories have built-in risks from fire, theft, flood, wind, infestations and obsolescence.

-These risks raise the cost of manufacturing even if the materials were insured, which itself is an additional expense.

-The possibility always exists that innovations to the manufactured items might have to be delayed until the existing inventory is used up.

Eventually, however, the J.I.T. way of handling inventory emerged. It scheduled materials to arrive just as they were needed, thus reducing risks and costs. Ironically, although the concept was first used at the Ford Motor Company and is described by Henry Ford in his 1923 book, My Life and Work, it did not get fully implemented there for a long time. In the auto manufacturing world, it was Toyota who first made it work, and they modeled their J.I.T. system not on Ford but on the supermarket chain, Piggly Wiggly (a chain grocery store that I shopped in during my Arkansas days), which had figured out how to use it in the grocery business.

J.I.T. is a big improvement, but it's not perfect because it's susceptible to interruptions in the supply line. If, for example, a strike occurs at one of the suppliers, it can have a domino effect on up the line. A problem in the transportation industry will telegraph itself pretty quickly to the manufacturers as well. But all in all, J.I.T. inventory is more cost-effective than the older method, and, of course, manufacturers are always looking for ways to increase profitability.

J.I.T and Jeremiah

Our reading from Jeremiah is about God's grace. Jeremiah had his troubles, but in this text, we read of the failure of the people of Israel to keep the Mosaic covenant. So God, instead of abandoning them, promised them a different kind of covenant, one where the law would be written not on tablets of stone, but on the tablets of their hearts.

The church has understood the coming of Jesus as a major fulfillment of that new covenant. But even we under that new covenant aren't so much conscious of God's grace as an overarching covenantal principle as we are of receiving it in doses as needed.

In other words, God's economy operates on the J.I.T. principle, too. God did not make us as reservoirs able to store up great quantities of love, joy, faith or grace. Instead, God gives it when we need it. For example:

-Exodus 16 illustrates J.I.T. grace. God supplied the Israelites with manna only for a day at a time. It was delivered just in time and each day's quantity had to be eaten that day; any they tried to hold for the next day spoiled. God cared for them, the Israelites learned, but it was on a day-by-day basis; he didn't stock up their larder for the long haul.

-We also hear echoes of J.I.T. in verses like this one from Isaiah: "O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning" (33:2).

-And this passage from Lamentations: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies ... are new every morning" (3:22-23).

-Jeremiah himself seemed to have J.I.T. grace in mind when elsewhere in his book he spoke of God as "strength every morning, our salvation also in the time of distress" (Jeremiah 16:19, NASB).

-Likewise, Jesus alluded to daily grace as part of the routine of life when he said to not worry about what we will eat, drink or wear, and added that "your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things" (Matthew 6:31-32).

-And Jesus included J.I.T. grace as a subject in the model prayer he gave his disciples, with the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11). Asking for daily bread meant asking for all the necessities of spirit, soul and body, and it is an apt metaphor for present needs.

-Paul writes to the Corinthians, saying that the Lord told him that his "grace was sufficient."

Consider actual bread. For many years now the food industry has figured out how to add preservatives to store-bought bread that prolong its freshness for several days, but if you've ever baked your own bread or used fresh loaves from the bakery, you understand why, before preservatives, bread needed to be made fresh every day. Bread does not keep.

Fresh from the oven, and for a few hours afterward, bread is a wonderful food. If you seal it in something like plastic wrap to keep the air from it, you can keep it soft for a day or two, but the second day it doesn't taste nearly as good. And by the third or fourth day, green mold starts to appear on it.

Of course, you can keep the mold away by not sealing up the bread. The only problem with that is that within hours, it turns stale and hard.

So for centuries, the only way people had good and tasty bread was to bake more every day.

So when Jesus tells his disciples - and us - to pray for daily bread, he's implying that the blessings of God are given for immediate use, for the present moment, and that we are never self-sufficient.

J.I.T. grace is not for the past. Our prayers might be like this: "We thank thee, O Lord, for all the blessings you have given us. But, O Lord, we know that we cannot live on past blessings, so please give us today what we need." 

J.I.T. grace is not for the future, either. While in a Nazi prison for resisting Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us resist in all the time of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone."

Just as we cannot sustain our outer life on past meals or promises of future ones, neither can we sustain our inner life on past blessings or promises of future ones.

Consider the almost constant unease we live with in our world today: terrorist threats, rogue nations seeking nuclear capabilities, financial instability, job security, worries about our loved ones, health concerns and so on. But then consider them in the context of J.I.T. grace. We might want a lifetime of assurance all at once, but wouldn't we be inclined to, as Bonhoeffer suggests, rely upon ourselves and not on God alone? "Give us today our daily bread," is a plea for day-by-day provision, not for a lifetime of security.

One day, when the ancient rabbi Ben Jochai was teaching his students about the miracle of the manna in the wilderness, one of his students asked him why God did not furnish enough manna for Israel at one time to last the entire year. The rabbi answered him with this parable: Once there was a rich man who had a son to whom he promised an annual allowance. Every year on the same day, he would give his son the entire amount. After a while, it happened that the only time the father saw his son was on the day of the year when he was to receive his allowance. So the father changed his plan and gave the son only enough for the day. Then the next day, the son had to return to receive the next day's allowance. From then on, the father saw his son every day. As hard as it may be to grasp, God apparently wants to see us daily.

"Give us today our daily bread" is a short, but powerful expression of our day-by-day dependence on God. But there are other ways we can pray it. "Give me what I need for today, O Lord" or "Help me to be your person today," or "Make me faithful just for today." But whatever vocabulary we use, the point is to trust God day by day and to serve him day by day. The challenge for us is to see that such daily provisioning is enough.

In 1939, Hitler's troops invaded Poland, an act that would soon bring Britain into the war. That autumn, C.S. Lewis delivered a sermon at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Oxford, England. In the congregation that day were young men who realized Britain would soon be at war, and they had no idea whether they would live or die, or even whether the world as they knew it would survive. Here's a little of what Lewis said that day:

A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God's hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment "as to the Lord." It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

How many times have we ended a day exhausted in multiple dimensions, and wondered where we would get the strength to continue tomorrow? God has promised us only strength J.I.T., but that's sufficient.

If the day has extra demands on us, if events of our days bring us unease, it is important to recall with Jeremiah that God is our "strength every morning, our salvation also in the time of distress."

The key to having grace when we need it is to stay connected to the Supplier.

In other words, Jesus In Time.

Thanks to Robert N. Bedford for the conceptual idea for this material.

Sources:

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers From Prison, Revised Edition, Eberhard Bethge, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1967. 11.

"Just-in-time." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Just_In_Time_(business).

Nutter, Charles S., and Wilbur F. Tillett. "Day by Day the Manna Fell." The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church. New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1911. 230.