24 February 2008

Exodus 17:1-7

We’ve been to the desert before during this Lent. It was just two weeks ago, in fact at the start of Lent, that we encountered Jesus in the desert during his 40 days there. Why would I choose to bring you back to it again through our Hebrew Bible reading this morning? Haven’t we had enough of this dry, arid land? Can’t we move on to oases and life?

That’s a tempting proposition. Let’s just ignore the desert and the wilderness experience. Let’s spend our time talking about life and refreshment. But we too often ignore the desert and the desert experiences we may encounter in our lives. And so, once again, we trek back to the desert. This time though with Moses and the Hebrew people.

We all know the story of the exodus. How the Hebrew people had become slaves in Egypt and Moses was called by God to lead them out. How Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff, allowing the Hebrew people to escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army followed close at their heals. How they came to be a wandering, nomadic people as they waited to find themselves in the land promised to them by God.

You know, we’ve all heard how dense Jesus’ disciples can be at times. I’ve even preached on it myself on occasion. Well, I think that they’re not the only group in the Bible who are portrayed as not getting it. As a whole, the wandering Hebrew people are often just as dense and just as often don’t get it.

Today’s reading from Exodus is the third time that the Hebrew people complain to Moses and to God about their conditions. They complain first, in chapter 15, about water. At that point, Moses turns bitter water into sweet drinkable water. Then, in chapter 16, God provides quail and manna for the hungry hoard. Finally, here in chapter 17, they’re once again thirsty.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m really on their side. I understand that water is essential to life as much as they did. I’ve been in the physical desert myself. I lived for a time on the driest continent on the earth, Australia. In the desert there, there are rivers that run less than once a year; sometimes only a few times in a century. The Aboriginal people who inhabited that parched, dry land passed from generation to generation songs that told where water could be found, so that their people could continue to survive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving land, that, though beautiful, can kill easily, all for the lack of water. Without water, life ends. It’s that simple.

We all hate to be thirsty. It’s a simple fact. Our bodies are set up to remind us that it needs a drink. In the outback of Australia, where conditions are drier than anywhere else on earth, the need for water is essential. And so it was for the Hebrew people. Knowing that death would come quickly without it, they cried out for water.

But they did more than cry out. They quarreled. They fought against Moses. They quarreled against God. They were a quarreling, bickering lot. Even with the past two times that Moses and God had taken care of them, even with the miraculous exit from Egypt behind them, even though the chains of slavery had been removed from them, they bickered and quarreled. Because they were thirsty and didn’t want their children and themselves to die.

And once again, through Moses, God provided. There in front of the elders of Israel, Moses did as he was told. We went to the rock at Horeb and struck it with his staff; the very same staff with which he struck the Red Sea previously. And there, in front of the gathered elders, water came forth. In that dry, arid, dusty place, water poured forth. And once again the Hebrew people were cared for; once again they drank deeply and revived their strength.


So why is it that we are in the desert again this week? Why do we return here for a word that will spur us to go on? Why do we have to be cognizant of our thirsting, aching souls in the midst of spiritual aridness?

I would bet that most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a spiritual desert in our lives. Times when prayer seemed like a joke and God was distant, if that close. There may be some who never experience that. For them, their faith is a lovely picnic beside an ever-flowing stream. There may be people like that, for sure.

They may make you feel a little jealous perhaps; a little less than faithful, in your desert experience. They, who don’t know the parched feeling of needing a drink, may wonder what you’re talking with your desert experience.

Those of us who do have these desert experiences in our soul, know them too well. They may go on for days, or weeks, or months, or even years. We feel disconnected and empty. And we wonder how we can go on.


The same may be true for our church at the moment. We are thirsty and needing a drink of water, perhaps. We are in a desert experience. We’ve left Egypt, sometimes known as First Christian Church of San Mateo, and we find ourselves wandering toward something promised. But along the way we become thirsty. We yearn for some refreshment. We need water. Perhaps for us, that water takes the form of someone who will take on an empty leadership position. Perhaps, it’s someone who brings special skills that we need. Perhaps, the drink of refreshing water is not a someone but a something; an idea or a plan or a thought.

But we are yearning, gasping, aching for that drink. We wonder if God has really brought us out of our particular land of oppression, simply to die. We find it hard to believe that, but the aridness which surrounds us tells us otherwise. And so we feel like quarreling; quarreling with God. Wondering what sort of God it is that would do this to us. Even challenging God; defying God.

We want results and we want them, oh so badly, now, if not sooner. We want our thirst quenched and our souls revived.


You know, if I were in the desert, and I were searching for water, I would probably bypass tons of rocks. I know that water doesn’t come out of a rock. It wouldn’t make sense. So I would just pass them by; rock after rock. I wouldn’t even try striking them with a stick. I would sensibly be searching for a water hole, or an oasis, or a well, or something. Something that looks like water.

But that’s not God’s way. And we have to remember that. We have to keep in mind that the water that’s going to refresh us may come from the most unexpected of places; the most unlikely of sources. We can’t think about this logically or normally, perhaps. We have to try to find the way that God thinks about this and act like that’s going to happen.