21 September 2008

This sermon was delivered in the out-of-doors at a member's home. Their name and the name of the town where they live has been changed for their privacy.

Exodus 16:2-15 & Matthew 20:1-16

It’s my difficult job, in the wooded, sylvan beauty in which we find ourselves today, to remind you about the desert. Yes, here in the lush loveliness of the Johnson's pleasant Hillside home where we get to escape to for our worship at their invitation annually, I find myself in the unfortunate position of needing to draw your attention away from all this: away from the trees with their green leaves providing a dabbled shade for us; away from the plants, the flowers that surround us; away from the wee birdies chirping overhead and flying about as they go about their necessary chores.

Instead, I need you to think about the desert. Yes, the desert; that barren, arid, difficult place where existence is far from assured; the place where people seem to be driven to, rather than drawn into; the place where creatures and plants that do survive there have adapted to live a life that is harsh and demanding.

It seems a shame, doesn’t it? “Can’t we just revel in the greenery that surrounds us and pretend that deserts don’t exist?” I can hear many of you saying right now. Ah, how I wish we could do just that: just relax in the comfort of this inviting place and soak in the comeliness of trees and flowers and those wee birdies.

But somehow God has seen fit that we should deal with the contrasts between our setting today and the setting in which the Israelites found themselves in today’s Exodus passage. So, I ask you, put all this [indicating all that is around us] out of your heads and put yourself in a desert; a hot, sun-baked, food-free, waterless desert.

Why would we want to do that? Well, that’s almost exactly what that wandering bunch of Israelites was thinking all those thousands of years ago. “Why again, would you tell us,” they queried, “did we leave the comforts of Egypt for this? We’d truly rather die well-fed, contented and, okay, oppressed in Egypt than meet our ends hungry and thirsty out here in the middle of abso-freakin-lutely nowhere!”

Now Moses and Aaron, not to mention God, had a whining gang on their hands, for certain. I’m sure that Moses thought many times that he wished he had left that burning bush alone all those years earlier. Life would have been much easier. And, undoubtedly, this was one of those times for him.

The people didn’t even know what they were saying, if you think about it. They had yearned for freedom from the oppression of their Egyptian rulers. Pharaoh was the pinnacle of evil as far as they were concerned; the very embodiment of all that was wrong with their world. They labored and toiled under terrible working situations and all sorts of harsh requirements were heaped upon them time after time.

And now they had that precious freedom. They had escaped from the cold tyranny of their Egyptian overseers and at this point were early on in the journey to the promised land; that land pledged to their ancestors all those years ago, the stories of whom had been passed down generation to generation. They had had to work together for their liberation; they had to unite under a leader who seemed to come out of nowhere and they had traveled out of Egypt with one purpose in mind.

Except…well, except that now they wanted to go back. Maybe that liberation thing was overrated; maybe the Egyptian bosses weren’t all that bad, after all, they were human too. They missed the lamb stews and the homemade breads not to mention the roofs over their heads and the bed to sleep on at night. They hadn’t planned on this desert experience in their escape to freedom; they didn’t expect that things would go from bad to worse and then even worse before they’d get better.

Hunger is very real. Hunger is a major driving force in the history of humankind. Hunger changes perspectives and makes priorities get reevaluated. And that’s just where this ragtag Hebrew group was when we drop in on their story today. Hungry. And scared. And really wondering if all this was actually worth it. Reevaluating priorities.

And so they longed for the good old/bad old days in Egypt. They looked back instead of forward. They griped and complained about very real issues and very real problems. Their bellies rumbled in the scorching hot midday sun.

And God did what God does; God took care of their needs. There were quail and there was manna. They ate their fill and learned to share and found out that God would even take care of them on the sabbath day.

But still there was that embarrassing, ungrateful moment in which they turned their backs on the future that had been laid out for them and to which they were called and they longed for the past, however bad it was.

How like them we are. In spite of thousands and thousands of years of change in civilization; in spite of the differences in the way we do something as fundamental as communicate; in spite of the fact that the nomadic culture of these early Israelites is as different from ours as possibly can be, how like them we are.

For here we are: God’s people in this day and this age; so often looking back and remembering; remembering the glory days of American Protestantism in the mid-20th century; looking back and remembering the ways we used to do things and adhering to them even though they are outmoded and no longer working; looking back and remembering when we were a defiant band leaving behind the oppression of dysfunction; looking back and remembering how good it was “then.” Looking back and remembering and glorying and reveling and celebrating and…well, forgetting, actually, that we can’t look back and look forward at the same time; forgetting that the good old days weren’t really all that good for some of us; forgetting that God is always, always ahead of us coaxing us onward.

God provides. God does indeed give us what we need, we learn from these verses from Exodus. And, if we are to believe the parable Jesus told in Matthew from today’s gospel reading, God is foolish to the point of excess in this providing. God doesn’t even know how to manage money and accounts; God just gives and gives and doesn’t really check your timecard or credentials when God is doling out the pay.

The people in the desert saw this stuff on the ground and said “manna.” Unfortunately, we’ve come to associate that word with the stuff that they found there that first morning and which nourished the whole congregation of Hebrew people in their desert. But actually, the word “manna” means “what is it?” “What the heck is this!?” they were saying either out of incredulity or astonishment or disbelief or just plain ignorance. They had no idea of the gift they had just been given. All they could say was “manna?”

We may neither recognize nor appreciate the gifts we have been given in our own desert experiences. Curses may be blessings; disappointments may be opportunities; setbacks may in fact be unsure steps inching ever forward. We may be saying “manna?” and all the time not know that we are being nurtured and fed on our desert journeys.

Manna? Why, it’s the One who calls us and prods us and goads us into ministry and mission feeding us and seeing to our needs.