Liturgy of Lent: Abundance
Day Three
call
God of abundance, come teach us how to walk the fields, accepting the abundance we are offered as we go.
meditation
“I don’t know the origin of the giveaway, but I think that we learned it from watching the plants, especially the berries who offer up their gifts all wrapped in red and blue. We may forget the teacher, but our language remembers: our word for the giveaway, minidewak, means “they give from the heart.” At the word’s center lives the word min. Min is a root word for gift, but it is also the word for berry. In the poetry of our language, might speaking of minidewak remind us to be as the berries?
…The berries trust that we will uphold our end of the bargain and disperse their seeds to new places to grow. . . . They remind us that all flourishing is mutual. We need the berries and the berries need us. Their gifts multiply by our care for them, and dwindle from our neglect. We are bound in a covenant of reciprocity, a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us. And so the empty bowl is filled. . . .”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
reading
Now it happened that Jesus was passing through some grain fields on a Sabbath, and His disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And Jesus, answering them, said, “Have you not even read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God, and took and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for anyone to eat except the priests alone, and gave it to his companions?” And He was saying to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Luke 6:1-5
prayer
Abundant God, we are so grateful for your covenant of reciprocity. We are so grateful that the key to abundant life is found in all the ways you have tied us to one another. Help us to remember where your abundant life is found: in the places we sow, in the places we share, and in the places we accept the empty bowl as well as the full. Help us to remember that where Jesus experienced provision, he also experienced rest. You teach us that abundant life is not dependent on our hustle or our perfection.
confession
We confess of our greed and the ways that it is linked to our lack of trust. We confess to taking more than we need, because we don’t trust there will be enough for tomorrow. Often we try to manipulate the rules, capture righteousness for our own gain, cash in on the promise of tomorrow by hoarding today. We confess to shouting at those who take from our fields, forgetting that no field is ours alone, and forgetting that abundance is the result of work and rest and generosity.
benediction
May the God of abundance feed you richly today, berries and wheat and lovingkindness and mercy, and may the same abundance flow richly from you.